By JACK CROWE | The National Review | September 18, 2020 8:05 PM
Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at
the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., November 30, 2018. (Jim
Young/Reuters)
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away
Friday at age 87 from complications related to metastatic pancreatic cancer,
the Court announced.
“Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature,” said
Chief Justice John Roberts. “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.”
Ginsburg was appointed to the court by President Bill
Clinton in 1993. She immediately staked out a position on the court’s
progressive wing and in recent years emerged as an icon on the activist left
for her strident positions on abortion rights, gay marriage, and other major
progressive causes.
Her death leaves eight justices on the court just weeks
before the 2020 presidential election. It may prompt a heated partisan battle
over the question of filling a vacant seat so close to a presidential election
— a seat that has the potential to cement a conservative majority for decades
to come.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday evening
that the seat should not be filled ahead of the election, citing the American
public’s right to influence the direction of the court through the election.
Ginsburg survived four previous bouts with cancer and the
disease reemerged earlier this year in the form of lesions on her liver.
“I have often said I would remain a member of the Court
as long as I can do the job full steam,” she said in a statement in July 2020.
” I remain fully able to do that.”
Ginsburg died surrounded by her family in Washington, D.C.,
the court said. She will be buried in a private ceremony at Arlington National
Cemetery.
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RELATED ARTICLE
McConnell: Trump's Supreme Court nominee 'will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate'
Ginsburg, 87, died Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell said unequivocally Friday night that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee to fill the vacancy of late
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “will receive a vote on the floor
of the United States Senate.”
Ginsburg, 87, died Friday from complications
surrounding metastatic pancreas cancer.
“The Senate and the nation mourn the sudden
passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary
American life,” McConnell said in a statement Friday.
“In the last midterm election before Justice
Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because
we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second
term. We kept our promise,” McConnell continued. “Since the 1880s, no Senate
has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a
presidential election year.”
McConnell added that “by contrast, Americans
reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to
work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding
appointments to the federal judiciary.”
“Once again, we will keep our promise,” he
said. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United
States Senate.”
In May 2019, McConnell, R-Ky., made clear
that should a vacancy materialize in the midst of the 2020 election cycle, the
GOP-majority Senate would likely “fill it.”
McConnell’s comments last year were met with
criticism from Democrats who accused him of hypocrisy, based on the treatment
of former President Barack Obamas Supreme Court nominee and D.C. Circuit Court
of Appeals chief Judge Merrick Garland.
Obama nominated Garland to replace the late
Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away in 2016, but McConnell and Senate
Republicans refused to hold a hearing or vote on his nomination, citing the
imminent 2016 presidential election.
Speaking to Fox News last year, McConnell
suggested his stance was not hypocritical -- because in 2020, Republicans would
control both the White House and the Senate, unlike Democrats in 2016, who
controlled only the White House.
"You have to go back to 1880s to find
the last time a Senate controlled by a party different from the president
filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court that was created in the middle of a
presidential election year," McConnell told Fox News.
But the nomination and
confirmation process for the latest addition to the high court, Justice
Brett Kavanaugh, took 89 days total for confirmation. It took 57 days from
Kavanaugh's nomination to his confirmation hearing.
There are 45 days until Election Day.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,
D-N.Y., on Friday night said Ginsburg’s vacancy should not be filled until “we
have a new president.”
“The American people should have a voice in
the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted
Friday. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new
president.”
There was an active vacancy after the death
of Scalia in 2016, but the next presidential term could be even more
significant for Supreme Court nominations.
Ginsburg’s death leaves a vacancy; and
several other justices are over 70, including Justice Stephen Breyer is 82;
Clarence Thomas is 72; and Justice Samuel Alito is 70.
Meanwhile, President Trump last
week announced a list of more than 20 people he would consider nominating
to the Supreme Court.
Top contenders, prior to Ginsburg's passing,
included Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of
Appeals; Judge Britt Grant of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of
Appeals; Judge Amul Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th
Circuit; Judge Steven Colloton of the 8th Circuit U-S Court of
Appeals; Judge Allison Eid of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of
Appeals; Judge Raymond Gruender of the 8th Circuit U-S Court of
Appeals; Judge Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd Circuit U-S Court of
Appeals; Judge Raymond Kethledge of the 6th Circuit U-S Court of
Appeals; Judge Joan Larsen of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals;
Judge Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of
Appeals; Justice Thomas Lee of the Utah Supreme Court; Judge
David Stras of the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Judge Allison
Jones Rushing of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; and Judge Don
Willett of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Meanwhile, Ginsburg, who passed away late
Friday, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton,
spent more than two decades on the bench, and is survived by her two children
Jane Carol and James Steven Ginsburg.
Ginsburg battled two forms of cancer in the
past, but her health began to take a downturn in December 2018 when she underwent
a pulmonary lobectomy after two malignant nodules were discovered in the lower
lobe of her left lung.
On Jan. 7, 2019, the Court announced she
would miss oral arguments that day for the first time since she joined as she
continued to recuperate from that surgery.
Fox News' Shannon Bream, Bill Mears and Chad
Pergram contributed to this report.
Brooke
Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeSingman.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcconnell-supreme-court-nominee-vote-floor
