UNITED STATES – The Supreme Court recently announced the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The liberal feminist icon’s passing gives U.S. President Donald Trump a chance to make changes in the Supreme Court that may not be beneficial for the American women who look up to Ginsburg as an icon.
This will be the court’s most extreme ideological shift since President George H.W, Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace legendary civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall in 1991.
If Trump succeeds in filling her seat with Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the american feminist movement would feel the shift was catering to Trump’s view on women.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Ginsburg said to her granddaughter citing her outlook on Trump’s administration.
Ginsburg passing may be the “biggest loss yet,” as written by Adam Feldman who runs the Empirical SCOTUS blog.
He specified that if Ginsburg had been replaced by a conservative, the recent victories of the liberals might have gone the other way. Some of these cases are the legalization of same-sex marriage, the upholding of Obamacare and the abolishing of restrictive abortion laws in Texas.
The fight over Ginsburg’s replacement will surely be vicious as Kavanaugh’s nomination was already blemished by allegations of committing sexual assault when he was in high school. This clash promises to be an unpleasant one, not only will it take place in the middle of the presidential elections and during a pandemic, but it also given that in 2016, Former president Barack Obama was prevented by the Senate Republicans to confirm a nominee to the court to replace the late Justice Antonio Scalia.
It has been reported that the white house had already been preparing for Ginsburg departure because of her faltering health.
There was an instance last November 2018 when she broke three ribs from falling in her office. The doctors discovered two cancerous growths in her left lung while treating the broken ribs.
The justice underwent surgery to remove the nodules just before Christmas that year and was declared cancer-free, but the surgery affected her badly.
She had had both Colon cancer and pancreatic cancer, but never missed a day on the bench. But this time, the surgery for her lung cancer kept her off it for the first time in her 25 years on the court. She missed the first week of Oral Arguments in 2019.
She then announced that she had been undergoing chemotherapy to treat lesions on her liver after being admitted to the hospital for an infection in July.
In fear that the Republicans would take control of the Senate and that Former president Barack Obama would be unable to get any more nominees confirmed along with the fact that the Republican president would end up naming her replacement, some Democrats had urged her to retire.
Ginsburg believed that her friend Justice Sarah Day O’Connor had retired too soon, so she refused.
She stated that she will do the job as long as she can do it “full steam,” a statement she repeated after her fall in 2018 and when she revealed that her cancer came back last July.
People laid bouquets of flowers outside the Supreme Justice Court to bid her farewell as the U.S elections turn to a fever pitch as the post now comes up for grabs.
