In the Western judicial field, there is often an image of a blindfolded goddess, holding a sword in one hand and a balance in the other.
This goddess was named Judithia, the god of justice in ancient Rome.
This week, with the death of a highly respected female judge in the American judiciary, the liberal and conservative forces in the United States are arguing about who will inherit the vacant position of justice, and the "war for justices" is full of gunpowder.
Will the balance of the American judiciary be tilted because of this?
On September 18, local time, the U.S. Supreme Court announced in a statement that Justice Ginsberg died at his home in Washington DC at the age of 87 due to complications from pancreatic cancer.
In the past few days, in front of the Supreme Court, there has been an endless stream of people who come to remember Ginsberg, day and night.
On Wall Street, the "fearless girl", who symbolizes equal opportunities for women to work and promote, was put on Ginsberg's favorite lace collar.
American people:
We feel like we have lost a family member.
Recalling what we have learned about her over the years, there are documentaries and movies.
This weekend is very sad for us, and it is very important for us to bring our children here and relive her deeds.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-level judicial institution in the United States. It often has 1 chief justice and 8 justices. According to the judgment style, it is often divided into leftist liberal justices and right conservative justices. judge.
The chief responsibility of the justices is to interpret and judge major federal-level cases involving the constitutional level, and the judgment of the case is ultimately completed by voting.
The New York Times commented that during Ginsberg’s 60-year legal career, he served as a Supreme Court justice for 27 years. As a liberal judge, Ginsberg is for gender equality, especially for women’s equal rights. Made an irreplaceable contribution.
In 1933, Ginsberg was born in a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York City.
After graduating from Cornell University in 1956, he entered Harvard Law School.
Ginsberg (data):
What is it like to be the only 9 women in a class with more than 500 students?
You often feel that you are very conspicuous in the class. When you are named in class, you will worry that if you do not perform well, you will lose not only your own face but also the face of all women. You also often because The gaze projected from the surroundings made you feel uncomfortable.
Due to his outstanding grades, Ginsberg became the only female editor in the well-known academic journal "Harvard Law Review."
At that time, Ginsberg’s daughter had just been born, and her husband, who was also studying at Harvard Law School, was in poor health and often needed care.
Ginsberg arranged his studies and family in an orderly manner.
Later, she said that the family not only did not become a drag on her, but instead gave her more motivation from it.
After graduating with honors, Ginsberg was surprised to find that no law firm in the entire East Coast was willing to hire her.
Harvard Law School alumnus Miller:
Both Harvard classmates went to the recruiting partner and told them that we have a classmate who once worked in the Harvard Law Review.
We think this is a big stepping stone. We think the law firm will definitely hire her, but when I started to use the pronoun "she", the senior partner looked at me meaningfully and said, "You seem to be young I don’t know the situation, this law firm does not hire women.”
The United States at that time was experiencing post-war prosperity, and "happy housewives" became the typical image of "American women" at that time.
Beauvoir, the founder of the French feminist movement, noted that in the last census before the Second World War, 42% of women aged 18 to 60 worked in France, 26.9% in the United Kingdom, and only 17.7% in the United States.
"For most workers, work is a nasty corvee. Work deprives women of social dignity."-Beauvoir
Despite being strongly recommended by Harvard Law School Dean Sachs, Ginsberg's subsequent application for the position of clerk of the Supreme Court ended in failure just because he was a woman.
In the end, Ginsberg chose to teach at Rutgers Law School and opened a new course "Gender and Law".
Ginsberg noted that in 1970, most state laws stipulated that employers could legally fire pregnant women on the grounds of pregnancy, which was grossly unfair to women.
In the 1970s, with the development of the black civil rights movement, the women's equal rights movement also surged.
In 1972, Ginsberg helped the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) establish a women’s rights project.
The most famous of these is the Frontiero v. Richardson case.
In 1973, Frontillo became the first female second lieutenant in the history of the U.S. Air Force, but she soon discovered that her income was not only much lower than that of men of the same level, but also that she could not get the housing subsidy provided by the army just because she was a woman. .
Ginsberg (data):
Dear Chief Justice, please allow me to make the following statement in court: Today’s women are being discriminated against in the workplace.
Compared with minority ethnic groups, women suffer more generally, but it is difficult to detect.
The differential treatment of gender implies an unequal evaluation system.
In order to request the court to determine that gender is not enough to be the criterion.
We express our firm position with a statement made by Sara Grimke in 1837.
As a famous black abolitionist and advocate of equal rights for men and women, she said: I don't ask women to get extra benefits, all I ask is for men to take their feet off our necks.
In the end, the case was won.
Of the more than 300 cases involving gender discrimination that Ginsburg took over in the 1970s, 6 will eventually be transferred to the Federal Supreme Court, and 5 of them won.
In 1993, under Hillary's recommendation, Ginsberg was nominated by President Clinton as Justice of the Supreme Court.
Biden, then chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over Ginsberg's appointment hearing.
In the end, Ginsberg won the overwhelming support of the Senate 97 to 3.
During his tenure as a Supreme Court justice, Ginsberg dared to be a minority and challenged the verdict.
In cases such as the Shelby case involving voting rights and the Burwell case involving reproductive rights, Ginsberg believed that the verdict did not allow the rights to apply to everyone, so he bluntly commented on the verdict. An objection was raised.
The phrase "I dissent" (I dissent) made Ginsberg, who dared to go against the wind, become an idol in the minds of American people, especially young people.
Because Ginsberg’s full name abbreviation "RBG" is similar to Wallace, a rapper from Brooklyn, New York, who has the nickname "Notorious BIG", Ginsberg was crowned over time. The nickname of BIG was loved by fans as the "notorious RBG".
Every time the RBG dissent in the Supreme Court in the ancient years, it can lead a trend on social media.
Although a fitness expert, Ginsberg’s health has been worrying for many years.
In 1999, Ginsberg was diagnosed with rectal cancer and underwent multiple operations and chemotherapy.
In 2017, Ginsberg was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer again, and has been fighting cancer for nearly 20 years.
Since U.S. justices are lifelong and can only be nominated by the current U.S. president, in 2018, someone suggested that Ginsberg, who was 85 years old, retire early, so that then President Obama could nominate another liberal president. Judges to preserve the power of liberals in the Supreme Court.
But it was early to Ginsberg's refusal.
Ginsberg (data):
I will always stick to my post, as long as I can go all out.
When I am unable to continue, then it is time for me to give way.
On the day after Ginsberg’s death, US President Trump publicly stated that he would nominate a female conservative candidate to fill Ginsberg’s vacancy and asked the US Senate, which is responsible for related matters, to speed up the appointment process.
This move was immediately strongly opposed by the Democrats.
Democrats believe that rushing to select candidates to replace Ginsberg when the U.S. election is just over a month is inappropriate and lacks operability.
On September 26, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, President Trump formally announced his nomination for the Supreme Court justice at the White House.
Amy Koney Barrett was formally nominated as the next justice of the Supreme Court.
According to the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president, and then the Senate holds a hearing. After 100 senators vote, the nominees who get more than half of the votes will be appointed by the president.
Since Trump took office, two conservatives have been successively appointed as justices of the Supreme Court.
At present, among the nine justices, excluding Ginsberg, five justices tend to be conservative, and three judges tend to be liberal.
NBC believes that the current situation is already very unfavorable to liberals. If Trump appoints another conservative judge, it will "turn to the right" for the future political landscape of the United States.
Although according to the principle of the separation of powers in the United States, the position of the justices needs to be neutral, and to judge cases strictly in accordance with the spirit of the US Constitution, and cannot be politically inclined, in reality, this ideal is extremely difficult to realize.
Generally speaking, Democratic presidents only nominate justices whose resumes tend to be liberal, while Republican presidents only nominate conservative justices.
Nominating and appointing justices to the Supreme Court of the United States has always been an important political legacy of the President of the United States.
U.S. analysts unanimously believe that from the current point of view, because the Republican Party is dominant in the Senate, no matter how the Democrats object, it will be difficult to prevent Trump from nominating the Supreme Court justice again.
US President Trump:
When you control the Senate, it means you have enough votes and you can do whatever you want.
On September 20, Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, reluctantly issued a request to Republicans: to obey conscience in the seat of replacement Justice Ginsberg.
However, such a request was not only ineffective. Only two hours after the news of the death of Senate Majority Leader McConnell in Ginsberg, a notice was sent to Republicans in the Senate, asking Republicans to unite and quickly Approved Trump's nominee.
Ironically, in March 2016, with more than 7 months left before the presidential election that year, the then-U.S. President nominated the liberal Garland to replace the conservative Justice Scalia who died of illness.
It was strongly obstructed by Republicans in the Senate.
McConnell, who is in charge of the senator, refused to hold a Senate hearing for Garland on the grounds of entering the election year.
In the end, Obama's appointment of Garland failed.
In 2017, Trump, with the support of Republicans, successfully nominated Gorsuch to fill the vacancy in Scalia.
There are also senior Republican senators who have solemnly stated that Republicans will never vote for the appointment of justices in an election year.
In response, Schumer, the leader of the minority in the Senate and Democrat, criticized the Republicans for being hypocritical and strongly condemned the Republicans for implementing "double standards" on the justice issue.
However, the Republican Party is not "monolithic."
In the Senate, there are a total of 53 Republican congressmen, 45 Democratic congressmen, and two independent congressmen leaning toward Democrats. The Democrats only need 4 Republican congressmen to turn their backs to bankrupt Trump's appointment plan.
At present, the two female senators from Alaska and Maine have made it clear that they do not support voting on the candidates for justice before the election day.
According to historical data, after the president announces the nomination, the Senate of Congress will conduct deliberations and voting.
A 2018 report by the US Congressional Research Service showed that since 1975, it took an average of 67 days from the president’s formal nomination of the Supreme Court justice to the first hearing in the Senate.
As of the 19th, there are only less than 40 days left until the voting day of the US presidential election.
The outside world generally believes that the nomination of a justice is now a matter of early days for both Trump and Republicans.
Nominations as soon as possible can increase Trump's attention on the one hand, and on the other hand help win the votes of conservative people, especially those Christian voters who oppose abortion.
CNN believes that the elections between Trump and Biden are now inseparable in multiple swing states, which is reminiscent of another election in 2000.
In 2000, the election of the Republican presidential candidate Bush Jr. and the Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore fell into a serious stalemate.
In Florida, Gore's popular vote was only 1784 behind Bush Jr.
According to Florida law, if the difference in the number of votes obtained by candidates is less than 0.5%, the votes must be recounted, but this has been strongly opposed by Republicans.
In the end, in December of that year, the Supreme Court, which had the largest number of conservative justices, made a ruling and no longer recounted the votes. Bush Jr. became the 43rd President of the United States.
The 2020 U.S. presidential election will usher in the first television debate next week. The topic of "Nomination of Supreme Court Justices" has recently been combined with the "New Crown Epidemic", "Economic Recovery", and "Anti-Racial Discrimination Movement". The media was included in the hot topics of the first debate.
From this point of view, the death of Justice Ginsberg at this sensitive time has undoubtedly added uncertainty to the already convoluted election.