RIP RBG
US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, aged 87.
While her judicial philosophy was not one I shared, she was a titan of the legal world. Some of her achievements:
- Graduated 1st equal from Columbia Law School
- Served on Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review
- Professor at Columbia Law School
- Appeared six times before the US Supreme Court, winning five out of six
- Praised by Justice Scalia as the leading litigator on behalf of women’s rights
- Appointed to US Court of Appeals for DC in 1980
- Appointed to US Supreme Court in 1993 and confirmed 96-3
Obviously much focus will now be on her replacement. We will see every Senator argue the opposite of 2016. All Republican Senators will claim a replacement should be confirmed even though it is an election year and all Democratic Senators will claim there should be no replacement as it is an election year. I will be pleasantly surprised if even a single Senator argues the same way in 2020 as they did in 2016.
The most likely replacement it seems is Judge Amy Comey Barrett who is on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh District. She is only 48 years old and if appointed would probably mean a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for the next 15 years or longer.