Fighter for women’s rights and champion for liberals, the amazing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has passed. Ruth Bader Ginsberg was like a modern day Wonder Woman. She was 87.
Often referred to as the Notorious R.B.G. (a play on the late rapper’s moniker, The Notorious B.I.G. she was unlike any other person I knew in politics. But with her sudden passing on Friday night, the Erev (night) of Jewish high holiday Rosh Hashanah, folks are worry who will take her place.
Here is a snippet of just some of her achievements, some of which you may well known.
Appointed in 1993 by President Clinton, Ginsberg was the 2nd woman to serve on the Supreme Court following Sandra Day O’Connor. Although she served for a quarter of a century, Ginsberg dedicated her life to so many amazing causes before earning her seat such as equal pay and affirmative action.
She was one of just nine women in a class of 500 students at Harvard Law School in 1956 and became the first female member of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
Ginsberg graduated top of her class in 1959 without a single job offer from a New York law firm. Yet this did not deter her as she accepted a clerkship with a federal judge in Manhattan.
She later transferred to Columbia University Law School. All this while caring for first child and then sick husband, Martin Ginsberg who then been diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Ginsburg was eventually offered a clerkship with Judge Edmund G. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where she served from 1959 to 1961.
In 1970, Ginsburg co-founded The Women’s Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal in the United States devoted to gender equality issues. Two years later, she moved from Rutgers to Columbia University Law School and became the first woman to receive tenure there. In 1973, she argued her first case before the United States Supreme Court. After the American Civil Liberties Union referred a number of sex discrimination complaints to her, she founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From there she served until replacing the then retiring Justice Byron White on the US Supreme Court.
She’s faced many challenges throughout her career, including the loss of her husband. She suffered through colon cancer, pancreatic cancer. She also suffered a fracture to 3 ribs after a fall, which many thought would completely end her career but she kept on.
Her death comes not only with tragedy but the notion that most liberal and even some conservatives fear… That is her replacement being appointed by President Trump. Although, he had not heard of her passing while at a campaign rally, he later urged the Senate to expedite filling her seat.
Trump has reported that he may likely choose a female candidate. He said that choosing a woman “would certainly be appropriate” to replace Ginsburg, and complimented two Appeals Court judges said to be on his shortlist, Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed on Friday night, hours after Ginsburg’s death, to call a vote for whomever Trump nominated. Democrats said Republicans should follow the precedent they set in 2016 by not considering a Supreme Court choice in the run-up to an election.
Regardless of what choice we may be given or what happens in the future, it is my hope that whomever replaces RBG is that they stand for justice and equal rights for all.
Indeed 2020 has been a bleak year.
Until Next Time Kiddies,
Shalom
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