As Republican senators gear up to conduct hearings later this month on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) nominee, Amy Coney Barrett (ACB), filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s (RBG) seat, Democrats gear up to fight it. They have floated a constitutional defense built on a house of cards the media irresponsibly ignore. Most damning is, as between RBG and ACB, the true champion of the Constitution is the latter. Democrats’ logic and ignorance of judicial history make their defense irrational and hypocritical.
RBG – the longest serving SCOTUS member until her death – was confirmed in 1993, establishing herself as a liberal icon. This was unsurprising. Her ideological roots went back to the 1970s as co-founder and later a director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project. If ever an organization has challenged the Constitution’s original interpretation, it is the ACLU. A nonprofit group founded in 1920, it wasestablished “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States” – a noble cause gone awry as it drifted far left, supporting subversive movements today.
An indicator of ACLU’s influence on RBG was revealed in a 2012 interview she gave in Egypt. Post-Arab Spring Egypt was looking to draft a new constitution. When revolutionaries asked if RBG would recommend the U.S. Constitution as a model, she responded negatively, suggesting post-World War II constitutions or charters such as those in South Africa, Canada and Europe be considered.
A 2005 statement RBG made was most telling. She admitted weighing foreign law in addition to U.S. law when forming legal opinions, looking beyond the four corners of our Constitution. There was little more a sitting judge on the highest court in the U.S. could say to undermine the sanctity of a document she was specifically charged with interpreting.
But this was the philosophy she brought to the Court. She imposed her own mindset upon our Founding Fathers’ intentions – moving constitutional interpretation in a progressive direction rather than accepting the Constitution’s original meaning as one frozen in time.
Ironically, this also ran contrary to a warning she gave the Egyptians, “If the people don’t care, the best constitution in the world won’t make any difference.” But caring depends on continuity in knowing what is expected under a document frozen in time rather than wondering how a progressive judge might choose to interpret it.
RBG’s philosophy ran completely contrary to that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He noted, “The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.”
Constitutional changes are up to the Congress and will of the people. As one critic pointed out following Ginsburg’s death, her “loyalty to leftism meant she was often intellectually dishonest.”
The undeniable reality is this: What Colin Kaepernick has done to our national anthem, RBG has done to our Constitution. Yet despite an RBG history taking the constitutional vehicle out of park and into a progressive tailspin, Democrats air a false claim ACB’s nomination abuses the Constitution. It was RBG who committed this sin during her 27-year tenure on the high court, not Trump now.
The claim has been echoed loud and clear by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that ACB’s nomination ignores the will of the people as to be determined Nov. 3. Asserting he IS the Democratic Party and qualifying himself as a constitutional legal expert for having taught it, we are to believe the Republicans’ position violates the Constitution.
One should worry about the crop of legal scholars Biden has produced teaching his interpretation of constitutional law. He is no expert. In fact, dozens of progressive legal experts wrote a letter attesting to what the president’s legal “duty” is.
And, despite family claims RBG’s dying wish was she “not be replaced until a new president is installed,” RBG herself noted in 2016, when of sounder mind, “nothing in the Constitution” prevents a president from doing so. (Rest assured too, despite RBG opposing court-packing, which most Americans oppose as well, her “wish” will not stop Democrats from doing so should they win the election.)
It is important to understand the clear verbiage our Founding Fathers used in the Constitution. The Article II Appointment Clause specifies the trigger for the president to act is the vacancy of a SCOTUS seat, which has happened. It is then his duty to nominate a replacement for Senate consideration, which he has done. In turn, a Senate duty then arises to vet the nominee, providing “advice and consent” concerning confirmation. There is absolutely no basis for delaying confirmation to await results of an upcoming national election.
Dozens of progressive constitutional law professors, citing Article II, wrote the president, advising him of his duty to move the SCOTUS nomination and confirmation process forward to a floor vote in the Senate before year’s end – with “no exception for election years.” Although written in 2016 to then President Barack Obama, the letter remains relevant today. The only difference was Republicans, by holding a Senate majority in 2016, were able to derail Obama’s nomination; today, holding both the Oval Office and a Senate majority, they are able to confirm Trump’s nominee.
As Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, explains, all 29 times a SCOTUS vacancy occurred in a presidential election year, a nomination was made. Additionally, of the 19 times the Senate majority and presidency were of the same party, 17 were confirmed.
Doing so also avoids the risk of a possible 4-4 split on Court decisions due to the seat’s vacancy.
Despite Biden’s ridiculous constitutional law protestations, an Article II confirmation constraint is nonexistent. However, liberal Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., claim Trump attempts an “illegitimate power grab.” She and other Democratic senators therefore refuse to meet with ACB while attempting to delay the confirmation process utilizing various ploys.
An ACB confirmation pretty much assures the country an originalist’s interpretation of the Constitution will be preserved. ACB is viewed as heir to a mindset, both intellectually and spiritually, of Scalia for whom she clerked.
Democrats raise a faulty constitutional defense to ACB’s nomination for a single sin: she is the conservative hope to save a Constitution RBG butchered.
