How apt that much of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s most distinguished work was written in dissent. A Jewish woman from prewar Brooklyn, her rise to the US Supreme Court was itself a kind of “No” — to the hurdles of race, class and above all gender. In 27 years on the bench, she helped to lower all three.
With her death on Friday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has lost its most tenacious opponent. Liberals have lost a figure they cherished more than most Democratic presidents. And the US has lost what chance it ever had of a “normal” election. With six weeks left until voters choose a president, the question of when and how to fill Ginsburg’s place promises to crowd out most other subjects. “Fill that seat!” is the chant that greeted President Donald Trump at a campaign rally over the weekend. What it lacked in taste it made up for in clarity of intent. A fraught election has become yet more volatile.
Even Ginsburg’s enemies allow that the empty seat will daunt whoever fills it. In retrospect, what stands out about her career is not just the liberalism but the prescience. Seven years ago, Ginsburg dissented from Shelby County vs Holder, in which the court struck down provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Effectively, jurisdictions with a history of race discrimination no longer had to pre-clear changes in their voting laws with Washington. As reports of voter suppression increase, her opinion reads like an eerie warning.