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Life, Death & the U.S. Supreme Court
Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could not hold on
It is very clear how the U.S. Supreme Court is in the sordid state it is in right now. Death. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the death of Thurgood Marshall.
It is not just because President #45 was able to name three justices. It is because these two justices got sick and died just a little bit too early and the person who replaced them is the antithesis of their jurisprudence.
And I am not even saying that these two legal minds were radicals or revolutionary thinkers. They were not. But, for the most part, they were rational human beings who approached their duties with humanity in mind, at least much of the time.
They were also sharp lawyers. They did their work as modern judges and not as if they were living in a time before the creation of stone tools. And they both believed and endorsed a “living Constitution.” The current Court is an abomination.
That is why we are now entering a depraved phase of legal history. What is a living Constitution? Here is Justice Marshall’s take:
“…I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice…
