Washington | With progressive judge and icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg looking increasingly fragile, big maneuvers have begun to prepare for her succession to the United States Supreme Court, with the November 3 presidential election in everyone’s mind.
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The 87-year-old dean of the American temple of law has liver cancer, treated with chemotherapy, and seems to have trouble getting rid of an infection in the bile ducts.
After a few days in the hospital in mid-July for a “possible infection”, she was hospitalized again Wednesday to “check a stent”, a small tube placed on the bile ducts in August 2019.
As every time “Notorious RBG” – her nickname inspired by rapper Notorious BIG – has health problems, the Supreme Court’s press release is reassuring: the magistrate “is resting comfortably and should be released from hospital. ‘here the end of the week’.
Despite these assurances, anguish was palpable on the left. Social networks were immediately inundated by a flood of prayers addressed to this champion of the cause of women, minorities or the environment, as much to hope for her recovery as to ask her “to hold on” until the presidential election.
If she were to leave the Supreme Court anytime soon, President Donald Trump would hasten to name his or her successor and it is likely that the Republican-dominated Senate will confirm her choice before the election.
This would cement the conservative majority of the high court, which has the last word on the subjects that most divide American society (abortion, minority rights, carrying of arms, the death penalty …).
Today, the five conservative judges – out of nine – are in fact not united, and it is common for one of them to vote with his progressive colleagues. Thus, recently, a restrictive law on abortion was struck down and the rights of gay and transgender workers were extended.
These decisions “only mean one thing: we need NEW JUDGES”, commented in June Donald Trump, furious, promising to publish by September 1 “the list of new conservative candidates”.
Leaks to court
His new selection is not yet known, but the most right-wing circles are pushing for it to include even more conservative magistrates than those he had selected during the 2016 campaign.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley said in particular that he “would vote only for candidates who have explicitly” criticized Roe v. Wade of 1973 in which the Court recognized the right of American women to have an abortion.
In this context, the legal circles were moved by a series of “leaks”: sources within the venerable institution, known for its hermeticism, described to a CNN journalist the content of recent deliberations between the nine judges.
In particular, they revealed that Judge Brett Kavanaugh, appointed in 2018 by Donald Trump, did not immediately support his Conservative colleagues in two explosive cases and tried, in vain, to convince them to kick in touch.
Another indiscretion: the head of the Court, the moderate conservative John Roberts, made it clear to his peers that he would not support an extension of the right to carry weapons.
“What is the purpose of these leaks?” the lawyer Raffi Melkonian asked on Twitter. “I think they are aimed at supporting the Hawley-style-you-must-name-people-committed-against-abortion-and-other-subjects-position,” he said.
Not to be outdone, the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has also indicated that he will make public a list of his favorites for the Supreme Court. His criterion? diversity: “We are building a roster of qualified and experienced African American women,” he said.