U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Ginsburg died of pancreatic cancer last Friday at the age of 87. Being the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Ginsburg was devoted to advocating gender equality in her days before and after taking up the position of Justice, despite being in the legal profession over which males predominate. Her legendary experience has even been turned into two films, On the Basis of Sex and award-winning documentary RBG, which has reflected she was widely respected by the legal profession and the mass. By common sense, people across the country, which has just lost a person of great ability, regardless of political parties and factions, should spend some time in cherishing the memory of such a heroic woman who had served the nationals for her whole life, like what they did when veteran Senator John McCain passed away two years ago. .

That being said, American conventions like “common sense” and “regardless of political parties and factions” are not applicable in the new era under Trump’s governance. No sooner had Ginsburg breathed her last gasp than Democrats and Republicans quarrelled fiercely over who should fill in the vacancy. It is because there is a huge difference between nominating a candidate now and after the presidential and Senate elections, which are held less than two months from now. Trump and his confederates, such as majority leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell and senior Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, have shouted from housetops that the nomination has to be completed and the nominee confirmed as soon as possible before the presidential and Senate elections. However, what they have been doing runs counter to Ginsburg’s last wish – “the vacancy to be filled in by someone nominated by the next president”, as well as the proposition put forward by the Republican Party four years ago to stop Obama from nominating a Justice on the ground that that was an election year.

In March 2016, 8 months from the presidential election scheduled for November and 10 months from the shift of presidential term in January in the following year, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice to succeed Antonin Scalia, who died in February. Yet, the Senate dominated by Republicans did not want the vacancy to be filled in by a liberalist. Though they were concerned that a Supreme Court slanted to liberalism would be unfavorable to the Republican Party pushing through the anti-homosexual marriage, anti-abortion and anti-gun control agenda, they could not vote down the nomination as they could not pick on any shortcomings in Garland’s competence and character. So, they wielded “2016 election year” as the “reason” to table the nomination, holding the view that the nominee should be decided by the newly elected President.

McConnell and Graham were among the advocates of tabling the nomination that very year. In 2018, when Graham talked about that, he even announced before camera that " if there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court in the last year of Trump’s term while primary elections are activated, the matters concerning nomination for Associate Justice should be tabled until after the election", and asked the journalist to “keep the video record well as evidence”. While all of them are still on the stage, they are making a scene called " U-turn", which is 8 months, not one and a half months, from the election. Looking so disgraceful, they should not have blamed Democrats and moderates for their ferocious objection.

The key is the Republican Party aspires after extending conservative faction’s ascendancy on the Supreme Court to 6:3, in order to influence how the social agendas are going to proceed in the few decades ahead. The most pressing agenda among all is to reverse the ruling given by the Supreme Court in 1973 on women’s right to abortion being constitutional. While this religiously conservative notion appeals to a flood of props in villages in the South Central States, among which Mississippi and Alabama even passed a bill, two year ago and last year respectively, to prohibit victims of rapes and incest from having an abortion, it is not acceptable in big cities on the West and East Coast. If the concerned bill is to be brought to the Supreme Court again, the nine Associate Justices will influence the result, which is Republicans' calculation.

Yet, pressing people to live up to such a narrow-minded religious conception turned social policy, firstly, goes against the principle of separation of church and state set out in the First Amendment, and secondly, dismisses autonomy of women’s bodies and their rights and interests, which will definitely trigger off a backlash from liberalists against it. Ginsburg’s formulation about women’s right to abortion is “the government is not entitled to make the choice for a woman”. Ironically, the Republican Party, which advocates minarchy, presses for filling in the vacancy of Associate Justice right after Ginsburg’s death in a bid to “empower the government to prohibit women from making a choice”. This subject of debate will be heating up, and shaping into one of the controversies of domestic affairs before and after the presidential election.

(Lam Hoi, Journalist)

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