She tried so hard. She gave it her all.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1933 – 2020.
She made America a more just society, for women, and for so many others.
A true American hero and an American original. Rest in Peace. Tears.
Please share widely!
Reality-based commentary on politics.
This is one of those stories that caused networks to interrupt their programming. My first reaction was to blurt out Oh….! Dems need to one way or another insist on the Merrick Garland rule.
Obama, Biden, Schumer, and many others are already invoking the McConnell rule. He’s well past the point where any of us could invoke Joe Welch and ask if he has no decency. We know the answer. It’s up to the five Republican senators who were on record opposing a vote before an election as recently as last week.
My prediction is that Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump will make an immediate red-meat nomination (like Ted Cruz) and then “reluctantly” concede to delay confirmation until after the election. That nomination will then be passed with full GOP support in the lame duck session regardless of the election results.
This blitzkrieg cannot be stopped by our party and our government. And yes, Christopher, I use the word intentionally.
Hopefully, Dems can run out the clock, but constitutionally the Republicans have every right in the world to do what you suggest. The prospect may drive Dem turnout, but while it won’t help a lame duck session, it will be better long term. I’ve reluctantly come to the view that adding seats has to be seriously considered, and 12 Associate Justices would make 1 per circuit, which I think is reasonable.
A nomination fight before the election will suck all the air out of the Trump campaign while he’s well behind. And it will put of lot of GOP senators on the spot.
They might just fake being decorous until the lame-duck session.
I’m contemplating a trip to Washington DC next week. I’m not sure what I’ll do there, but I see the crowds gathering in front of the Supreme Court and I’m thinking that next week is a time when those of us who care might want to make ourselves visible at the Capital, the White House, and the Supreme Court.
I grew up there, and marching around the Boston Common or Copley Square isn’t the same.
Perhaps this is not the right time or place, but we honestly have to consider judicial term limits, as nearly every other G7 democracy does with their highest courts. This way there are more frequent and regularly occurring vacancies and it would lower the stakes of pitched confirmation battles.
https://fixthecourt.com/fix/term-limits/
So far as I can tell, the primary impact of term limits is to drastically limit the influence of truly stellar figures. I think this is particularly so of Supreme Court justices. I view term limits as suffering from the same flaws as mandatory sentencing — both are sledgehammers that react to other more fundamental issues and generally end up making the situation worse.
The piece you cite proposes an 18-year term limit on Supreme Court justices. While I only briefly skimmed it, I did not see any text addressing the most obvious question: which justices would have been forced to step down and when if it had been in force from the beginning?
I’d then like to see an enumeration of opinions and decisions made by those judges after they were forced to step down.
I prefer approaches that involve changing the number of judges, so that a judge who retires or dies is not necessarily replaced or whose replacement triggers the addition of an additional judge.
My bottom line is that I’d rather see the number of judges change in a controlled way than impose term limits.
Unfortunately, it seems like the “stellar” figures on the Court, the ones with the most consequential decisions and long tenures, tend to be on the right.
In terms of impact, folks like Rehnquist and Kennedy have had much more impact than any liberal justice in more than a generation.
Warren, perhaps the most consequential justice of the last century, never even made it to 18 years of tenure.
So, I’m not sure about term limits, but the generational stakes of the health of a single old person have to change.
I call your attention to the following (in no particular order):
Thurgood Marshall: 1967-1991
William O. Douglas: 1939-1975
Hugo Black: 1937-1971
Louis Brandeis: 1916-1939
The best way for people to change the “generational stakes of the health of a single old person” are to vote. The rightward shift of the court over the last decade is strongly influenced by the apathy of at least two generations who couldn’t be bothered to register or vote and who now complain about the consequences of their irresponsibility.
Yes, we haven’t seen justices like that in more than a generation (or two or three). On the right side, we have seen many more.
It has also been an explicit project of the right and something elected Dems have not cared about.
When Dems had the Senate and the Presidency under Obama, Sen. Leahy, as chair of judiciary, trusted his Republican “colleagues” and kept the blue slip rule, which meant that hundreds of court seats went unfilled. Didn’t want to break tradition or remove the filibuster for nominees. How’d that work out?
And when there was an opening, Obama nominated a full centrist in Merrick Garland, and then didn’t fight for the seat. Republican presidents nominate conservatives (and have notably misjudged a few times in history). Democratic presidents nominate centrists and moderate liberals. A true left candidate has not been put forth for the Supreme Court basically ever. And it probably won’t happen because Dems only appoint people with a common background for district and circuit seats. Not too young, top 5 law school, BigLaw or US Attorneys office background, nothing even remotely controversial in their background. Republicans, with the help of the Federalist Society, get under-40 conservative freaks into many seats.
And even THIS EFFING WEEK, about 80% of Dem senators voted in favor of multiple Trump court nominees, as they have been doing for 4 years.
This has very little to do with Gen X and Millennial voting apathy.
I’m as disappointed as you by the way we Democrats have rolled over.
Given the demographics and voting behavior of each age group, how can you assert that “this has very little to do with Gen X and Millennial voting apathy”?
The behavior we each abhor is enabled in no small part because a huge part of our base checked out two decades ago and wasn’t heard from until — perhaps — 2018.
Extremist Republicans do what they do because they are forced by their deplorable supporters.
I encourage you to compare the attitudes of the Tea Party and Occupy movements. The first took over the GOP, killing the traditional party and transforming it into the disgusting mess it is today (and setting the stage for the hostile takeover by Donald Trump and his ilk).
The Occupy movement was too pure for “mere politics”.
When those who claim to care for our values and priorities refuse to participate in politics, they hand government over to the ignorant, racists, misogynists, and greedy who DO participate.
The Tea Party movement was totally fake and was backed by billionaires, like the Koch brothers, to put rabidly pro-business people in office. GOP members knew they had to move there because otherwise they would get outspent and lose their seats in primaries. We see a different thing on the left now with grass roots progressives challenging incumbents, but for the most part these challengers are significantly less funded, and certainly not backed by billionaire-funded PACs. And they are often hated and fought against by the Party.
Ultimately both parties do the bidding of who funds them. On the GOP side it is anti-tax billionaires with some sprinkling of evangelicalism. On the Dem side it is pro-corporate millionaires and billionaires with more progressive social views. GOP funders are invested in reshaping the court to that pro-corporate and socially conservative bent. Dem funders like social liberalism but don’t want a pro-worker or anything resembling a leftist judiciary – that’s why there is no well-funded counterpart to the Federalist Society.
Sure, the left needs to do a better job electorally, and I think they are, especially since 2016, but it doesn’t help when there is activity and commitment, and even massive support for policies (65-80%+ of the party members supporting) and leadership is in no way responsive to that. It’s how to feed more apathy. Very few Dems give their base any red meat.
But the facts still remain, when Dems have controlling power or even the chance to use minority power with regards to judicial nominees, they have done bupkis. And they should be held to account. But how? Obviously withholding one’s vote is too far a bridge, right? It seems like the only option we’re allowed on this side is to win primary challenges in only the very bluest of blue seats. Everything else is too dangerous . . . you’ll be helping the other side win . . .
Shut down streets and bridges. Fill the streets. Make it so that criminals like Mr. Trump, his entourage, and his enablers can’t shop, can’t eat, can’t be seen in public.
Make MAGA-wearing Trumpists just as uncomfortable in Boston, New York, or Chicago as black men and women have always been in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
Make the movement impossible to ignore.
What did labor do in the early 20th century? What did civil rights activists do in the 1950s and 1960s? What did antiwar activists do in the 1960s? What, for that matter, happened in 1776?
There is no time in history when men with power and money (and I use the word “men” intentionally here) gave away either. The gains made by men and women without power have been made when those men and women TOOK power and money.
Politics is a lagging indicator. Politicians FOLLOW power, they do not lead it. Surely it is clear by now that those in power today do even pretend to obey the law.
It’s time to stop making excuses for apathetic GenXers and Millennials. Political activism was, if anything easier in their day than it was for those who came before them.
Thousands of Baby Boomers forced an 18-year old vote, including yours truly. I have no patience for those who whine about how “pointless” it is.
It is easy to check out. It is hard to stand and fight.
Tell ya what Tom, I’d be more than happy to wear a MAGA hat and meet you on Boston Common, say 4th of July. As long as I get to take on any off ya’ll one on one I’m good to go.
Or are you all talk no action??
Did you just challenge Tom to a duel?
Sure, Scott. You just keep on talking, because that’s what you’re good at.
You brought up using intimidation, want to try it with me?, I will challenge you. name place and time. (It’ll have to be next summer, in Fla for the winter)
Do you really think I’m talking about some testosterone-fueled fight? You’ve been watching too much television.
Perhaps you should consider trying out for Mr. Trump’s WWF.
I didn’t vote for Trump, I don’t like Biden. The very few Biden supporters I see in the clubhouse or on the tee box are treated with respect, at least while I’m around.
Alvin Shaw a 33 yr old black Biden supporter in Calif punched 84 yr old Donna Snow in the face for holding a Trump sign.
Labor movements, anti-war protests in the 60’s, used violence to get their point across.
You said “Make it so that criminals like Mr. Trump, his entourage, and his enablers can’t shop, can’t eat, can’t be seen in public.”
So if you really want to go down that road I’d be happy to oblige you personally, or are you all bluster? You said “stand and fight”
Indeed we did. More often than not, we used the THREAT of violence to get our point across.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already been killed by the criminal negligence of the mob those Trump supporters in your club still support. Don’t preach to me about “violence”.
Sure. Please see the daily protests in city streets right now. Going on for months. The press has gotten tired, but there are still daily protests in many cities.
Literally happening right now. Daily. But what does that mean for the relationship of those folks and Joe Biden? The constant rage and activity is there, and the response of the person leading an electoral response is to start statements about protests with the bullsh*t that property destruction is unacceptable and needs prosecution.
Again, withholding a vote from a non-responsive “leader” is dangerous and unacceptable, right?
Two people had a realistic chance of winning the presidency in 2016. Enough people chose to “withhold a vote from a non-responsive ‘leader'” that Donald Trump chose the justice that replaced Mr. Scalia and will choose the justice that will replace RBG.
If those who sanctimoniously withheld their vote had instead voted for Ms. Clinton, do you think our situation would be better or worse today?
Perhaps we can agree on two facts: GenXrs and Millennials chose to sit out elections since they were 18 and the GOP has been packing the Supreme Court with increasingly right-wing justices for the same period.
Whatever it is GenXrs and Millennials have been doing before 2018, the result is that things got MUCH worse.
“Dangerous” and “unacceptable”? I don’t know. Words like “self-destructive”, “ineffective”, and “childish” come to mind, though.
If you don’t vote, you hand power to those who do.
Record turnout in 2008, including among all younger voters.
Democratic President, Senate, and House.
What happened with the courts then?
I love that it can only ever be the fault of voters and never candidates. ~80,000 black voters in Wisconsin voted in 2012 and did not in 2016. What was the campaign for those voters in 2016? What is it now?
If your approach is to blame large groups of voters and not offer them anything to vote FOR, what do you expect?
But sure, let’s repeat it and hope for a different result. What’s that definition of insanity?
(And this isn’t just 2016 redux, it’s also 2000 and 2004 again)
On August 6, 2009, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in on August 8, 2009.
A year later, on August 5, 2010, Elena Kagan was confirmed by the Senate. She was sworn in on August 8, 2010.
Democrats turned out in 2008 in force. The result was two excellent Supreme Court appointments and the ACA.
What do you want?
What do I want?
Liberal judges in 100+ district and circuit seats that were open during those years. The ones that are now full of Trump judges.
The judiciary ain’t just those 9 people we can name.
What was the turnout among GenXrs and Millennials in the elections that left the Senate in the hands of the GOP during those years?
I wanted those openings filled as well. I’m angered by the raw arrogance of the Senate GOP in blocking the nominations of Barack Obama. I think you’re mistaken about the GenX and Millennial turnout in the Senate elections nationwide of 2010, 2012, and 2014.
Which of those 80,000 black voters in Wisconsin in 2016 with a room-temperature IQ needed a campaign to know what would happen to THEM after Donald Trump was made president?
Our government is run by the people who turn out. It is true that too many of the people who turn out are driven by greed, hate, prejudice, and lies.
That’s why it’s so important for those who claim higher values and priorities to turn out.
That’s why I am so impatient with those who claim that “the system” is “too corrupt” for them to sully their hands by turning up in a voting booth every two years.
The Senate was in Dem control until the 2014 midterms. The GOP was only able to “block” nominees because Democrats adhered to the 60-vote and “blue slip” traditions until 2013 (they got rid of the 60-vote rule except for SCOTUS nominees then). Many nominations languished during the 5 years before that when Obama was President and Dems held the Senate.
I’m glad to see your thinking distilled here. That all the political problems rest squarely with younger voters. No matter what someone does (vote, organize, march in the streets) they can never be allowed to complain if their side loses.
Perhaps if you weren’t so focused on arguing with me and finding snarky lines (“I’m glad to see your thinking distilled here”), you might be able to hear what I’m saying.
I didn’t ask which party controlled the Senate. I asked specifically about GenX and Millennial turnout in the midterms of 2010, 2012, and 2014.
We AGREE that traditional Democratic officials did not get the job done in those years. The fact that so many younger voters were too “pure” to even vote is a significant factor in why those traditional Democratic Party stalwarts behaved and voted as they did.
We also agree that there has been strikingly more interest in politics among these voters after the 2016 debacle. The dramatic increase in participation of those younger voters has a great deal to do with the pronounced shift in the national party agenda since 2018.
Finally, just to help keep our exchanges fact-based, I encourage you to review record of judicial appointees of Mr. Obama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_judges_appointed_by_Barack_Obama).
I think you’ll see that the loss of the Democratic majority in the senate after the 2014 mid-terms essentially turned off the flow of Mr. Obama’s appointees. Mitch McConnell became Senate Majority Leader in that election. He personally vowed to block every appointee of Mr. Obama, and worked hard to keep that vow. Was the animosity of Mr. McConnell and GOP any secret in 2014?
Take another look at the data about the age distribution of those who did and did not register and those did and did not vote in 2014 (https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/p20/577/table01.xls).
Whether or not you want to admit it, the participation of GenX and Millennials was abysmal in those years, especially in comparison to their older counterparts.
Some of us turned out in 2014. Others of us did not.
Dem voters haven’t done a great job caring about the Court either.
True. Every four or eight years it becomes important because “The Supreme Court is on the line/Roe is on the line/ACA is on the line/LGBTQ equality is on the line.”
The rest of the time no one cares because we think our Senators are doing something right.
It fits with liberal thinking generally. Thinking that is more concerned with federal electoralism and individual heroes than structural issues and collective action. (Please see no one really caring that 80% of Dem senators vote for Trump judges every week but now posting on social about how the courts are under attack.)
Obama will save us. Joe will save us. “If Hillary had won, we’d be at brunch.”
No, I don’t want a Justice looking for his next gig. The only thing I would consider is mandatory retirement/senior status age.
So obviously this would not apply to current justices but would apply to the next ones. In due course, every president in both parties would mathematically get an equal number of appointments barring an 20 year span of Democrats as we saw between 32-52, both parties usually have the presidency during those times. It makes it easier for senators in both parties to confirm qualified justices from the opposite party. It makes it more likely that a Kavanaugh or Thomas can be opposed by senators in both parties for their poor character since another qualified nominee without their blemishes could take their place and serve out a similar term. It lowers the stakes. 18 years is longer than any legislator or president and still longer than the terms of other nations.
Japan has a ten year term subject to a retention election and a mandatory retirement age of 70 for its Supreme Court. Now the loophole the ruling LDP has exploited is to nominate justices who are over 60 to avoid that retention election.
Canada has a mandatory retirement age of 75 which would have turned over our own court many times over already. The Philippines has a mandatory retirement age of 70. Worth nothing that the Japanese and Philippine constitutions we’re heavily influenced by New Deal Democrats and jurists who came over to assist during the occupation and reconstruction of both states. Germany has similar term limits as well for similar reasons.
So this is a reform worth considering to lower the stakes and ensure that our civil rights are not dependent on actuary tables.
Worth nothing the justice merely rotates out of the Supreme Court and still has a lifetime appointment to the federal appellate bench and can step in to hear cases. Justice O’Connor, who laments she retired early, could simply come back on the court under this scenario until the Ginsberg vacancy is filled.
I would also tie it to the court packing since that makes it more politically palatable and less like a power grab. We don’t want a situation where every time a party gains a trifecta it adds the justices it feels it was robbed. I do think the extraordinary nature of Garlands rejection and the Kavanaugh hearings lends credence to the idea that 2 Trump appointees need to be balanced by 2 Biden appointees. Having those new justices serve under the new term limits confirms that change to a wider reform and a new precedent of a larger court. I like 15 since most countries have that number.
Similar arguments were made in support of the 22nd Amendment. That disaster has been even worse than prohibition, which at least had the good sense to reverse when its stupidity became clear. Mandatory sentences have been a disaster for minorities.
America is not Canada, Japan, the Philippines, or Germany. While there have certainly been some terrible decisions, the US Supreme Court has been a positive example to the entire world for centuries — until a shamelessly corrupt GOP destroyed it for their own personal political and venal gain.
The answer to broken appointees is to fix the broken appointment process, not impose arbitrary limits on those who are appointed.
Since Trump has already released a list of potential nominees, one good tactic would be to put public pressure on the people on the list. There should be petitions and public demands that they state that they will not accept a nomination under these circumstances. This is a much better group to pressure than Senators (not that there shouldn’t be maximum pressure on them too).
The only silver lining is that this does put pressure on Biden to court pack, and it seems that the polling is behind it. That nuclear option could finally force both sides to some kind of process based judicial truce.