Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87
Category: News & Politics
Via: texan1211 • 6 years ago • 179 commentsBy: By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press 25 mins ago (MSN)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a diminutive yet towering women's rights champion who became the court's second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87.
© Provided by Associated Press FILE - In this April 6, 2018, file photo, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg applauds after a performance in her honor after she spoke about her life and work during a discussion at Georgetown Law School in Washington. The Supreme Court says Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.
Ginsberg's death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to set off a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate, and the Republican-led Senate should confirm, her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his race against Democrat Joe Biden is known.
Ginsburg announced in July that she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lesions on her liver, the latest of her several battles with cancer.
Ginsburg spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court's liberal wing and became something of a rock star to her admirers. Young women especially seemed to embrace the court's Jewish grandmother, affectionately calling her the Notorious RBG, for her defense of the rights of women and minorities, and the strength and resilience she displayed in the face of personal loss and health crises.
Those health issues included five bouts with cancer beginning in 1999, falls that resulted in broken ribs, insertion of a stent to clear a blocked artery and assorted other hospitalizations after she turned 75.
She resisted calls by liberals to retire during Barack Obama's presidency at a time when Democrats held the Senate and a replacement with similar views could have been confirmed. Instead, Trump will almost certainly try to push Ginsburg's successor through the Republican-controlled Senate — and move the conservative court even more to the right.
Ginsburg antagonized Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign in a series of media interviews, including calling him a faker. She soon apologized.
Her appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993 was the first by a Democrat in 26 years. She initially found a comfortable ideological home somewhere left of center on a conservative court dominated by Republican appointees. Her liberal voice grew stronger the longer she served.
Ginsburg was a mother of two, an opera lover and an intellectual who watched arguments behind oversized glasses for many years, though she ditched them for more fashionable frames in her later years. At argument sessions in the ornate courtroom, she was known for digging deep into case records and for being a stickler for following the rules.
She argued six key cases before the court in the 1970s when she was an architect of the women's rights movement. She won five.
"Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not need a seat on the Supreme Court to earn her place in the American history books," Clinton said at the time of her appointment. "She has already done that."
© Provided by Associated Press FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2017 file photo, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. The Supreme Court says Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
On the court, where she was known as a facile writer, her most significant majority opinions were the 1996 ruling that ordered the Virginia Military Institute to accept women or give up its state funding, and the 2015 decision that upheld independent commissions some states use to draw congressional districts.
Besides civil rights, Ginsburg took an interest in capital punishment, voting repeatedly to limit its use. During her tenure, the court declared it unconstitutional for states to execute the intellectually disabled and killers younger than 18.
In addition, she questioned the quality of lawyers for poor accused murderers. In the most divisive of cases, including the Bush v. Gore decision in 2000, she was often at odds with the court's more conservative members — initially Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
© Provided by Associated Press FILE - In this July 31, 2014, file photo, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in her chambers in at the Supreme Court in Washington. The Supreme Court says Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
The division remained the same after John Roberts replaced Rehnquist as chief justice, Samuel Alito took O'Connor's seat, and, under Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the court, in seats that had been held by Scalia and Kennedy, respectively.
Ginsburg would say later that the 5-4 decision that settled the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush was a "breathtaking episode" at the court.
She was perhaps personally closest on the court to Scalia, her ideological opposite. Ginsburg once explained that she took Scalia's sometimes biting dissents as a challenge to be met. "How am I going to answer this in a way that's a real putdown?" she said.
When Scalia died in 2016, also an election year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to act on Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the opening. The seat remained vacant until after Trump's surprising presidential victory. McConnell has said he would move to confirm a Trump nominee if there were a vacancy this year.
Ginsburg authored powerful dissents of her own in cases involving abortion, voting rights and pay discrimination against women. She said some were aimed at swaying the opinions of her fellow judges while others were "an appeal to the intelligence of another day" in the hopes that they would provide guidance to future courts.
"Hope springs eternal," she said in 2007, "and when I am writing a dissent, I'm always hoping for that fifth or sixth vote — even though I'm disappointed more often than not."
She wrote memorably in 2013 that the court's decision to cut out a key part of the federal law that had ensured the voting rights of Black people, Hispanics and other minorities was "like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."
Change on the court hit Ginsburg especially hard. She dissented forcefully from the court's decision in 2007 to uphold a nationwide ban on an abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. The court, with O'Connor still on it, had struck down a similar state ban seven years earlier. The "alarming" ruling, Ginsburg said, "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."
© Provided by Associated Press FILE - In this June 15, 1993, file photo, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., left, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Supreme Court says Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87. (AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander, File)
In 1999, Ginsburg had surgery for colon cancer and received radiation and chemotherapy. She had surgery again in 2009 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and in December 2018 for cancerous growths on her left lung. Following the last surgery, she missed court sessions for the first time in more than 25 years on the bench.
Ginsburg also was treated with radiation for a tumor on her pancreas in August 2019. She maintained an active schedule even during the three weeks of radiation. When she revealed a recurrence of her cancer in July 2020, Ginsburg said she remained "fully able" to continue as a justice.
Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933, the second daughter in a middle-class family. Her older sister, who gave her the lifelong nickname "Kiki," died at age 6, so Ginsburg grew up in Brooklyn's Flatbush section as an only child. Her dream, she has said, was to be an opera singer.
Ginsburg graduated at the top of her Columbia University law school class in 1959 but could not find a law firm willing to hire her. She had "three strikes against her" — for being Jewish, female and a mother, as she put it in 2007.
She had married her husband, Martin, in 1954, the year she graduated from Cornell University. She attended Harvard University's law school but transferred to Columbia when her husband took a law job there. Martin Ginsburg went on to become a prominent tax attorney and law professor. Martin Ginsburg died in 2010. She is survived by two children, Jane and James, and several grandchildren.
Ginsburg once said that she had not entered the law as an equal-rights champion. "I thought I could do a lawyer's job better than any other," she wrote. "I have no talent in the arts, but I do write fairly well and analyze problems clearly."
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Liberty for all has just suffered a near fatal blow. However, one way or the other liberty will survive. Thank you Justice Ginsberg for your 'lifetime' of service.
Just remember, liberty and justice always eventually win, even if they have set backs. Progressive's and liberals always see to that, conservatives can gnash their teeth and dig in their heels against it but as Dr. King once said “ the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". These cowards who are so fearful their current dip shit and chief is going to lose they will do anything to try to cling to power have shown who they really are and that they cannot be trusted. I believe the American people will see it for what it is and if they choose to do this regardless of the cost, the eventual cost will be higher than they can ever imagine.
Her last dying wish will not be honored.
Dismayed Patriot, she gave us her all. She kept the course! She honored, us. She did not take the easy way out. She found "good trouble" and thumped its butt in her day! She locked her sails towards oblivion and she took off fiercely! "Long live the memory of "Notorious RBG."
It most certainly was hers to decide.
Whether it's honored by a wholly dishonorable man is another matter.
Still having an issue recognizing that words matter I see. Analysis of a word is relevant in a venue where words are our main form of communication Tex.
Which is why it's ironic that you seem to think that you're insulting me by saying I parse words when in this venue it's actually a compliment.
So thanks, thanks, thanks.
Never said he did, DID I Tex?
She really was a strong woman. I am sorry to hear of her passing. Rest easy Ruth.
I expect women voters will be paying close attention.
Maybe not "paying closer attention" but definitely feeling less represented. Women are 50% of our citizens yet now just 2 out of 8 supreme court justices. And yes, some worthless pieces of shit might claim that's more than there were back in the 1950's that they so desperately want to get back to with their precious white Christian patriarchy running America, but I think most women will take this into consideration as they vote this November, and if one was on the fence about the stakes in this election, I have no doubt how Republicans handle the next 46 days will definitely play a part in their decisions.
Right. Because for progressives, identity politics is what matters to women. All that matters is a judge like their VP nominee, checks the right boxes in the diversity Olympics.
. So if Trump nominates a woman, problem solved.
While other pieces of shit want a woman to be president, not because she would make the best president, but because she’s a woman.
if all the left wants is a woman?
amy barrett would do...
Well, that's thinking like a sane person. Remember, a segment of the left is so obsessed with race and gender that biological factors are just as , if not more, important to them. Hence, openly wanting a black woman to be VP, with race and gender being the most important qualifications.
Absolutely.
A woman of strong principles.
RIP great lady.
Thank you, Sunshine for not discussing today. Very decent of you.
She was indeed. For once we can be in agreement. I will definitely hold her up as a role model for my daughters when they are old enough.
She made a big difference in my daughters lives
Anyone confident in a Trump win should be pushing for McConnell to stick to his word and let the next elected President decide. If not then that really tells us how insecure and desperate they really are.
All those who who are nothing but worthless slimy piece of shit hypocrites will of course demand Trump continue to wipe his dirty ass on our nation and constitution by supporting the sniveling weasel McConnell as he shamelessly shows America just how much we should trust his word and goes ahead with a nomination that just four years ago he held for nearly 11 months supposedly on "principle". But I get it, we can't expect Republicans to have principles or ethics anymore, many have all but abandoned any reason, logic or patriotism. Those who will push to replace her before her body is even cold are just dogs of Trump groveling at the feet of their master desperate for the crumps from his corrupt table. Any patriotic American would feel shame for even thinking about opportunistically and hypocritically filling this seat at such a time, but I have little faith that any of Trumps sycophantic supporters have even a shred of shame left.
yone confident in a Trump win should be pushing for McConnell to stick to his word and let the next elected President decid
Just like Clnton supporters pushed Obama to follow Biden's advice and let the next elected President nominate a replacement for Scalia?
They are going to force it through no matter the November results. The rules are broken, in fact they no longer exist.
The 2016 "rule" of Mitch McConnell. Again, if the GOP isn't going to honor their own rules, then fuck it, game on.
I was thinking more of dodgeball where you intentionally target the head.
now that, is our kind of game....
the left can even go first
American Democracy is totally fucked lol.
Who knew that the death of one Justice could be the straw that broke the camels back?
The GOP will not play by the same rules that they held "oh so dear" in Obama's last year (who gives a shit that this is 6 weeks before the election), and if the Democrats should take the presidency and senate, I think they should play in kind. Stack the court. Fuck it, there are no rules anymore.
Mrs. Ginsburg (Ceremoniously Retired.) You did good by all people. May our Lord richly bless you.
Demons and men will decry you and shred your good works, even do all they can to rid themselves of your values imposed upon them. Mrs.Ginsburg stand tall in Heavenly places, looking into the face of God who directs you from here on. The noise of angry and repressive men fall away at the gaze you are now transfixed to face! Shalom.