A life lived for the Living Constitution
September 24, 2020 By William J. Watkins, Jr
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, on the occasion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 10th anniversary on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, referred to the diminutive jurist—who would later join him on the high court—as “the best of colleagues, as she is the best of friends. I wish her a hundred years.” The iconic Supreme Court justice fell short of that mark, passing away recently at the age of 87.
Ginsburg was as liberal as Scalia was conservative: he a constitutional originalist, she embracing the concept of a Living Constitution.
Some remember Justice Ginsburg as a trailblazer and champion of women’s rights. That may be so as “women’s rights” currently is understood, but she also was a defender of judicial power who preferred that lawyers and judges, rather than democratically elected public officials, have the last word on public policy decisions............
Her sweeping opinion ordered the school to admit women,
constitutionalizing a presumption against public, single-gender
education. Through raw judicial power and in the name of women’s rights,
Ginsburg and the Court took from the people of Virginia and their
elected representatives the ability to make their own decisions about
the value of VMI and whether its approach to martial education was
suited to women as well as men..............
Not surprisingly, Ginsburg also was a steadfast defender of Roe v. Wade
(1973), the famed decision that constitutionalized (and thereby
nationalized) abortion by divining a right to privacy that previously
had gone undetected in the Constitution.........For
Ginsburg, activist lawyers always knew best—especially those in robes.
That’s her legal legacy..........To Read More....
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