[News]Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies and a political war begins for the renewal of the US Supreme Court.

[SougarLord]

 

 

The US Supreme Court has reported this Friday the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the dean judge of the highest judicial instance in the country. The death of Ginsburg, 87, comes in the middle of the electoral campaign for the re-election of Donald Trump and represents a political earthquake with uncertain consequences. The replacement of the magistrate could affect the ideological composition of the decisive body on the interpretation of the Constitution and the country's legal system and will provoke a battle in the Senate that will affect the elections next November.

 

Ginsburg, a progressive stronghold on the Supreme Court and a pop icon for left-wing sections of the US in the final stretch of his life, died of "complications from metastatic cancer," the court said in a statement. The judge had been fighting cancer for more than two decades. In 1999 she had to be treated for colon cancer, an ailment that in recent years also suffered in the pancreas and lungs.

 

Ginsburg was a central figure in the fight against gender discrimination before joining the Supreme Court. She was appointed to the position by President Bill Clinton in 1993. At the time, she was only the second woman to wear the toga in US history.

 

The political scene that opens the death of Ginsburg is volcanic. Donald Trump and the Republicans of the Senate - the body in charge of confirming the nomination of Supreme Court judges - have enough time to appoint a new judge before a new president is elected and a third of the upper house is renewed in the elections of 3 November. They could also do so after the elections, because the presidency and the Senate would not change hands until January.

 

The renewal of the Supreme Court has been one of Trump's great electoral cards. In the 2016 elections, the then candidate insisted ad nauseam on the importance of the high court to win over conservative voters uncomfortable with a talkative and womanizing billionaire. Trump has more than complied with that electorate in his first term: he has had the opportunity to appoint two judges and has nominated conservative justices.

 

You now have the opportunity to elect a third as your first term is about to end. If it succeeds, it would leave a Supreme Court with a much more conservative line than the one it found, with six Republican-nominated justices and only three Democrat-elected. This new conservative supermajority could shape America's future on core issues - abortion, racial profiling, gun access, LGBT rights, electoral funding - and tilt the country toward that ideological position for many years (the post of Supreme Court Justice). Does not expire).

 

Trump learned of Ginsburg's death from the hand of journalists. Just after a rally in Minnesota, on the way to the presidential plane, journalists asked him for a reaction to the death. "Is he dead?" He answered with a gesture of surprise. He had an amazing life, what more can you say? She was an amazing woman, whether you agreed with her or not. It saddens me to hear it. Later, in a statement, he highlighted her efforts to achieve "legal equality for women and the disabled" and described her as a "titan of the law."

 

The renewal of the Supreme Court with the bell about to ring for Trump looks back at 2016. In March of that year, eight months before the presidential elections that would elevate Trump, Barack Obama elected Judge Merrick Garland, a progressive, to occupy the gap left by Antonin Scalia, Curator. Then, like today, the Senate was under a Republican majority. Also like today, its leader was Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky. Under his leadership, Republicans stymied Garland's confirmation process to avoid a new progressive judge in the Senate. They then defended that it was not fair in a presidential election year to vote for a nominee for an outgoing president and that voters had to be given a voice to choose the president to nominate the next judge.

 

The play worked:

 

Garland was unconfirmed, Trump won the election and nominated a conservative judge, Neil Gorsuch, who the Senate confirmed.

 

Four years later, that justification from McConnell and the Republicans no longer works. At least for McConnell, who, shortly after Ginsburg's death, announced that he would do what he did not allow in 2016: The nominee Trump chooses will be voted on. In a statement, McConnell justified that the situation is different. Then there was a Senate elected to oppose Obama. Now the Senate is elected to fulfill the Trump agenda.

 

What lies ahead will be a fierce battle in the Senate, which will affect the composition of the Supreme Court, the election of the president and the configuration of the Senate. It remains to be seen whether an ‘in extremis’ election of a conservative judge mobilizes the Democratic electorate or, perhaps, reaffirms the conservative voter on the importance of electing a president and senators with the ability to influence the composition of the Senate.

 

The Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, intervened in the matter as soon as the judge died: “The voters must choose the president. The president must choose the judge. That is the position that the Republican Senate took in 2016. That is the position it should take today.

Democrats need at least three Republican defections to avoid confirmation of the new judge before the election. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, already said Friday that she would object. Other Republicans from moderate states who are at stake for the seat could follow. Others, like Lindsay Graham, who argued in their day that they would never confirm a Supreme Court judge in an election year, will have to eat the newspaper library if they don't.

 

A few days before her death, Ginsburg made a last wish to her granddaughter, Clara Espera: "My most fervent wish is that she not be replaced until there is a new president." Whether it is fulfilled or not is going to be the great political battle this fall, along with the reelection of Trump.