Liberal icon, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away Friday at her home in Washington D.C. due to complications from pancreatic cancer.
The 87-year-old jurist who spent nearly three decades on the Supreme Court after her appointment in 1993 by President Bill Clinton died surrounded by her family the Court said in a statement:
“Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”
In the days leading up to her death, Justice Ginsburg directed a statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera stating that she did not want Donald Trump to be the one to pick her replacement. The statement in full read, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
The Political Battle ahead
With just weeks until the election, Americans are about to witness an attempt by the GOP to undertake a rapid process to nominate, confirm, and seat the next supreme court justice.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell whose had a contentious impact on the shaping of the court over the past four years has already stated that Donald Trump’s nominee would get a vote on the floor of the Senate possibly setting up a partisan battle on the Hill to the extent that the public has never seen.
Typically speaking, the nomination and confirmation process of seating a supreme court justice takes around two to three months during the normal course of the procedure. However, this is hardly normal times which could play into or hurt the GOP’s chances of taking a stranglehold on the balance of power within the high court.
As it stands right now, Republicans would only need 51 votes with 53 total GOP senators to seat the next Supreme Court justice. This essentially means they can only lose three votes during the process and with Mike Pence casting the deciding vote in the event of a 50-50 tie.
Despite, McConnell’s intentions to quickly push a nominee through the confirmation process, succeeding, in the end, isn’t exactly a slam dunk for conservatives. The timing could certainly still pose a problem for both democrats and republicans, as there’s still time (yet limited) for republicans to push a nominee through, even in a lame-duck session.
For democrats though, the timing factor could also work in their favor. Rumors and reports have already been circulating that Senators Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have said they would not seat a new justice until after Inauguration Day.
For Collins who is in a fight for her political life, there’s speculation that her approach and eventual vote for Brett Kavanaugh has led to her falling behind in the Maine senate race.
Meanwhile, a fourth vote could be lost if former astronaut Mark Kelly defeats incumbent Martha McSally in a race for Arizona senator based on that state’s rules when it comes to a defeated incumbent who was appointed rather than elected. In this case, rather than waiting until the new year, Kelly could be sworn in as early as November 30 if his reported double-digit lead holds in that State.
The Democratic Response
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of resistance Democrats will put up in the days and weeks ahead. Not only that, but it’ll also be equally if not more intriguing to see if that resistance shows any backbone in the usually limp Democratic leadership that occupies the so-called opposition party on Capitol Hill.
But given the actions of McConnell though from stealing the seat from Merrick Garland to changing Senate rules to confirm a judicial nominee, the long-term democratic response to RBG’s now empty seat could have its own massive impact on the court for decades to come. This could come in terms of reversing McConnell’s rule changes during his four-year term as senate majority leader or possibly implementing term limits for justices and lower court appointees.
However, the biggest impact democrats could have is “packing the court” by adding to the number of appointed supreme court justices.
There is no wording in the Constitution that limits the number of Supreme Court justices so a Biden administration plus a democratic majority on Capital Hill could certainly look to make an expanded Court a real possibility.
This is not unprecedented. The number of justices has not been static at nine; it’s changed six times, from as few as six to as many as ten. All it takes is for Congress to pass an act, and for the president to sign it. If a Biden victory comes with a Democratic congressional majority, expanding the number of Supreme Court justices isn’t all that hard to do.
It’s probably also prudent to note the Judicial Reforms Bill of 1937 also known as the “Court Packing Bill” put forth by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an effort to obtain more favorable justices on the High Court to pass the New Deal which the court had previously deemed unconstitutional. FDR too took note of the lack of any Constitutional verbiage pertaining to the number of Supreme Court justices so “packing the court” became one of his strategies to pass what would eventually become landmark legislation in the United States for decades to come. Central to the Bill too was giving the president power to appoint additional justices to the Supreme Court (up to a maximum of six) for every member over the age of 70 who didn’t retire.
The Judicial Reforms Bill of 1937 didn’t quite work out how FDR initially planned, yet it really didn’t matter when it came to the New Deal since it eventually passed. It also may not be the ultimate direction Joe Biden and a democratic majority go but hypothetically if it is and they’re successful in implementing something like the 1937 bill, Biden could have an immediate opportunity to add three additional justices with Clarence Thomas (72), Stephen Breyer (82), and Samuel Alito (70) all being 70 years of age or older.
Of course, all of this is dependent upon a Joe Biden winning in November, the balance of power in the Senate shifting back to the democrats, and members of the DNC having any kind of a backbone, to begin with.
The Left and the Election moving forward
I’m really not sure Democrats and liberals alike have any great awareness on the issues with the Supreme Court in hand. I mean, it’s not like the death of Ginsburg all of a sudden became a highpoint issue in the election. Yet if you scroll through Twitter or listen to the talking heads on corporate media it certainly seems like the issue of the Supreme Court and Ginsburg’s death came out of nowhere. It’s not like an 87-year-old Ginsburg was going to make it another four-years when you take into consideration the multitude of health issues she was dealing with. So Trump was going to get his shot at nominating his third Supreme Court justice whether it be now or sometime within the next four-years if he wins re-election.
In any sense, issues when it comes to the Supreme Court are going to be catapulted into the forefront of the election as we enter the final stretch. But as the court becomes an even more prominent issue, it would seem like this would be the most opportune time for democrats and especially Joe Biden to start to really push and adopt progressive policies in a last-ditch effort to bring on disenfranchised progressive voters.
Yet, that has still not happened and liberal supporters continue to vote shame progressives, which will probably only ramp up in the wake of Ginsburg’s death and without holding their own candidates accountable.
An then, if and when Donald Trump wins re-election, appoints another Supreme Court justice, and re-shapes the court corporate democrats and liberals will only have themselves to blame.
