The Supreme Court confirmed Friday evening that Justice Ginsburg passed away at 87 of complications with pancreas cancer.
NPR reports:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas.The court, in a statement, said Ginsburg died at her home in Washington surrounded by family. She was 87.”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 tired and resolute champion of justice.”…Architect of the legal fight for women’s rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg subsequently served 27 years on the nation’s highest court, becoming its most prominent member. Her death will inevitably set in motion what promises to be a nasty and tumultuous political battle over who will succeed her, and it thrusts the Supreme Court vacancy into the spotlight of the presidential campaign.Just days before her death, as her strength waned, Ginsburg dictated this statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”She knew what was to come. Ginsburg’s death will have profound consequences for the court and the country. Inside the court, not only is the leader of the liberal wing gone, but with the Court about to open a new term, Chief Justice John Roberts no longer holds the controlling vote in closely contested cases.
[WAJ adds] Ginsburg was liberals’ Scalia. She was that important intellectually and in her public presence to them as Antonin Scalia was to us. She was a giant, and I hope that we can treat her death and memory with the respect liberals disregarded when reacting to the death of Scalia.
The fight over her replacement is going to be vicious and reshapes the presidential election in ways that are hard to predict.
Flashback to our prior posts about filling a vacancy this year, Republicans gearing up to fill possible Supreme Court vacancy this election year, and why it would not be inconsistent with Republicans’ position on Merrick Garland.
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