Ruth Bader Ginsburg

[dantana]

Yeah, but did the American people want a younger, progressive Supreme Court Justice?

I would venture to guess the MDB poll numbers, as to this question mirror poll numbers as to their preferred party affiliation of the MDB Supreme Justice. Whether MDB member party affiliations mirrors the American population's affiliation, I don't know

[Gunnar]

I'm not blaming anyone for this, but it is still unfortunate for the country that Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not choose to retire during the part of Obama's term when he could easily have nominated a younger, progressive Supreme Court Justice.

Yeah, but did the American people want a younger, progressive Supreme Court Justice?

I think they did. I think Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans are opposed to legally banning abortion, are in favor of universal, or, at least, more comprehensive healthcare, and recognize the dangers of global warming and the need to mitigate it.

[Gunnar]

[people may bring up]... the question of whether Ginsburg was right in refusing to succumb to the pressure to retire during Barack Obama’s second term, which critics say would have cleared the way for another liberal judge to be appointed in her place.

Ginsburg was skeptical about that logic. “When that suggestion is made, I ask the question: Who do you think the president could nominate that could get through the Republican Senate? Who you would prefer on the court than me?” she told NPR’s Nina Totenberg in 2019. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that Republicans led by McConnell successfully blocked Obama’s second-term Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, from joining the bench, refusing to consider a new appointment until the 2016 presidential election. McConnell indicated earlier this year that he’d have no such scruples under Trump. Within hours of the announcement of Ginsburg’s death, he vowed that her replacement would get a vote on the Senate floor.

There may have been a gendered element to the calls for Ginsburg to give up her spot on the court. She observed in interviews that people hadn’t leaned hard on justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer to step down, despite their advanced age, and she purportedly thought that justice Sandra Day O’Connor had effectively been forced out of the court before O’Connor was ready to leave. “I think that story is playing in the back of Ginsburg’s head when she’s like, No man is going to tell me it’s my time, because I saw that happen to a person who really, I think, in many ways was her sister at the Supreme Court,” journalist Dahlia Lithwick explained last year...

[Sarah Todd, in a tribute to Ginsberg]
https://qz.com/work/1906067/Ruth Bader Ginsburg-never-r ... eeded-her/

I agree that by the time Obama started his second term, it was probably too late for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's retiring to have made it likely for Obama to have succeeded in nominating a younger liberal to take her place. I don't think she had any viable choice other than trying to hold out until it became possible to nominate another liberal to replace her. However, during at least part of Obama's first term, the Senate had a democratic majority. Had Ruth Bader Ginsburg chosen at that time to take a well deserved and honorable retirement, she would probably have done the nation a great favor, I think. Of course she could not have known at the time how much or whether that might have turned out to be important.

[dantana]

[people may bring up]... the question of whether Ginsburg was right in refusing to succumb to the pressure to retire during Barack Obama’s second term, which critics say would have cleared the way for another liberal judge to be appointed in her place.

Ginsburg was skeptical about that logic. “When that suggestion is made, I ask the question: Who do you think the president could nominate that could get through the Republican Senate? Who you would prefer on the court than me?” she told NPR’s Nina Totenberg in 2019. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that Republicans led by McConnell successfully blocked Obama’s second-term Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, from joining the bench, refusing to consider a new appointment until the 2016 presidential election. McConnell indicated earlier this year that he’d have no such scruples under Trump. Within hours of the announcement of Ginsburg’s death, he vowed that her replacement would get a vote on the Senate floor.

There may have been a gendered element to the calls for Ginsburg to give up her spot on the court. She observed in interviews that people hadn’t leaned hard on justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer to step down, despite their advanced age, and she purportedly thought that justice Sandra Day O’Connor had effectively been forced out of the court before O’Connor was ready to leave. “I think that story is playing in the back of Ginsburg’s head when she’s like, No man is going to tell me it’s my time, because I saw that happen to a person who really, I think, in many ways was her sister at the Supreme Court,” journalist Dahlia Lithwick explained last year...

[Sarah Todd, in a tribute to Ginsberg]
https://qz.com/work/1906067/Ruth Bader Ginsburg-never-r ... eeded-her/

Thankyou for the reply Lem. I have great respect for your opinion. As I said earlier, I have no qualifications to be questioning her motivations. This then is obviously amateur, armchair observations. Your reference refers to happenings post senate falling over to the the Reps, when trying to keep her seat 'left' seemed to appear futile. My reference described attempts to point out to her the potential for disaster, while the Democrats were still in control.

[Gunnar]

There is no way to know, of course, but I can't help wondering if she had any regrets, as she was dying, that she had not elected to retire when Obama could have nominated her replacement.

[honorentheos]

There is one person, and one person only, to blame. Mitch McConnell. “F” anyone who wants to get political over RGB choosing to work the job she loved and elevated to the end and not lay blame squarely where it belongs. McConnell has effectively crashed the normal function of government since becoming majority leader. “F” that guy.

[Lem]

My reference described attempts to point out to her the potential for disaster, while the Democrats were still in control.

There is no way to know, of course, but I can't help wondering if she had any regrets, as she was dying, that she had not elected to retire when Obama could have nominated her replacement.

I sincerely doubt that she did.

...at her confirmation hearing for the US Supreme Court, Ginsburg remembered the "many indignities" — instances of gender bias — that she'd faced during law school. Ginsburg, who passed away this month, was only one of a few women in her class. At a dinner with the dean of Harvard Law School, which Ginsburg attended before transferring to Columbia, the women were asked to justify taking the place of a male applicant.

This behavior clearly wouldn't fly in 2020. Administrators would be ousted; headlines would be made.

But gender discrimination is still part of most women's daily lives.

In place of the flagrant offenses that Ginsburg and her classmates encountered is something more subtle. Educators, employers, and politicians
all too frequently question women's professional competence...

That gender disparity has a lot to do with implicit biases, or beliefs about how someone should behave based on their gender. Many people don't realize that they hold these implicit biases, or that these beliefs are influencing their decisions about, say, hiring and promotions. And instead of openly sneering at an ambitious woman,people in positions of power can make subtle comments about the way women look or act.

(These comments are sometimes called microaggressions.)

Discrimination today is not as in your face as it was before," Caryl Rivers, coauthor of "The New Soft War on Women" and journalism professor at Boston University, previously told Business Insider. "It's often harder to see. Legally, you can't say 'I'm not going to hire you or give you this assignment because you're a woman and you can't do it,'

but the old attitudes still run deep and are expressed subtly."

Those 'subtle expressions' are tricky to talk about, I understand.

[Lem]

There is one person, and one person only, to blame. Mitch McConnell. damn anyone who wants to get political over RGB choosing to work the job she loved and elevated to the end and not lay blame squarely where it belongs. McConnell has effectively crashed the normal function of government since becoming majority leader. damn that guy.

"choosing to work the job she loved and elevated to the end."

Thank you for that, honorentheos. Thank you.

[Morley]

There is one person, and one person only, to blame. Mitch McConnell. damn anyone who wants to get political over RGB choosing to work the job she loved and elevated to the end and not lay blame squarely where it belongs. McConnell has effectively crashed the normal function of government since becoming majority leader. damn that guy.

"choosing to work the job she loved and elevated to the end."

Thank you for that, honorentheos. Thank you.

This.

[Brack]

With Justice Ginsberg having passed away last September, the Supreme Court is now more conservative than it has been in over 80 years. But that hasn't stopped Trump from lashing out at the Conservative-leaning Supreme Court.

https://www.businessinsider.com/Trump-s ... 020-12?amp