Just two hours after the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Kentucky Senator and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell pledged a speedy confirmation of President Donald Trump’s eventual
supreme court nominee. This promise came after reports from Clara Spera, Ginsberg’s granddaughter, stating that her grandmother’s dying wish was that she “not be replaced until a new president is installed,” according to NPR.
Grief spurred on by the passing of Ginsberg, an iconic champion of gender equality and civil rights, had just begun to proliferate national media, and already the conversation was shifting drastically. Joey Smith, a former theater performance and mass communication major, remembers there was little time for mourning.
“I felt a mix of grief and horrific fear of the future, so it was a very uncomfortable feeling,” he said.
The following day, Sept. 19, South Carolina Senator and Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham came forward to support McConnell’s pledge in a tweet.
“In light of these two events, I will support [Trump] in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsberg,” he said.
These bold moves forward threaten precedent both Graham and McConnell set under former President Barack Obama. After the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia in Feb. 2016, Senate republicans blocked Obama from holding hearings to consider Judge Merrick Garland for his replacement, arguing that a supreme court seat should not be filled so close to that year’s election – nine months away.
Graham made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor attempting to establish some precedent regarding the matter in March 2016.
“If there is a Republican President in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,’” he said, adding that “you could use those words against me and you’d be absolutely right.”
But under President Donald Trump, with less than 40 days until the election and a vacant supreme court seat for the taking, Republican ideology has shifted on the matter.
“They don’t really seem to care about precedent, or emotions or anyone’s wishes if they don’t agree with them, and that’s been apparent over the last four years,” Smith said, adding that, ultimately, he was unsurprised by the effort.
“While I do think that it is awfully hypocritical… I kind of believe that Democrats would honestly probably do the same thing if we were in that position,” he said.
Still, Trump has since claimed that his nominee will “likely be a woman,” and in the days since, a suspected shortlist has begun to circulate.
“In order to get points with women – female voters – I feel like it works in his favor to nominate another woman on his team this close to the election,” freshman political science major Ella Miller said, adding that she was “surprised he would put a woman in charge of women’s rights.”
But the two most frequently discussed candidates (as of Sept. 25), namely Barbara Lagoa, a Cuban-American judge from Florida, and Amy Coney Barrett of Chicago, have exhibited “pro-life” leaning tendencies in their time on the court, a reality that causes concern for Miller, who worries her rights may soon be threatened.
“Trump has often used minorities as tokens when his policy does not actually represent the interests of those groups,” Smith said.
Miller says she’s confident, however, that recent events may galvanize young female voters and cause them to turn out in higher numbers this November.
“I feel like a lot of us are pro-choice and a lot of us are democrats and I feel like that will energize us,” she said.
The impact of replacing a liberal supreme court justice with a conservative nominee could impact the Supreme Court and American politics for decades. With this decision, a 5-4 conservative majority court lurches even further to the right, sealing in a 6-3 majority.
President Trump will choose to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett, as of the night of Sept. 25, according to the New York Times.
Graphic by Lizzy Talbert.
