Perhaps it’s a testament to the chaos that has typified 2020 that you are reading the third wholesale rewrite of this column.

The original version was an omnibus complaint about the failure of our elected officials to substantively address the challenges facing the country. From Republicans in the U.S. Senate not even attempting to negotiate another coronavirus relief bill and their counterparts in the N.C. General Assembly adopting a laughably inadequate stimulus package to schooling disasters and wild fires and gun violence and so much else, it seems like we’re getting government with all of the costs but few of the benefits.

But this is 2020. “Will it hold up topically in another week?” my editor wrote in an email before I sent him the draft column. And of course, the answer ended up being “no.”

So I scrapped the original and started over with a focus on the UNC system, where on Thursday the Board of Governors followed up their wholesale mismanagement of back-to-school plans by giving System President Peter Hans brand-new powers to anoint his political cronies as chancellors of our public universities—a proposal I mentioned last month, which a competent governing board would have dismissed out of hand.

Then came Friday night. I was talking on the phone with a client, through a face mask, waiting to pick up a pizza I’d ordered at my local Costco, when a buzzing on my wrist notified me of a text message. “RGB!!! NO!!!” it said.  Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away after her valiant fight against cancer.

Needless to say, the second iteration of this column got deleted, too.

Ginsburg—“Notorious RBG” to her fans—was a legend in the legal community. Long before she became a Supreme Court justice, her advocacy work as general counsel for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project led to a string of court victories that fundamentally reshaped how courts and legislatures viewed the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

As just one anachronistic example, did you know states had different minimum drinking ages for men and women as recently as 1976? The case, Craig v. Boren, was one of several where Ginsburg argued the Constitution required the sexes to be treated equally under the law; the Supreme Court agreed.

She carried that same commitment to gender equality with her when Jimmy Carter nominated her to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980 and when Bill Clinton nominated her to the Supreme Court in 1993. Justice Antonin Scalia, the conservative firebrand with whom Ginsburg shared a well-documented friendship, described her as “the Thurgood Marshall” of women’s rights.

But before anyone had an opportunity to properly memorialize Ginsburg or her legacy, elected Republicans decided it was time to nominate her replacement. Senator Mitch McConnell released a statement saying the “rule” Republicans used to justify keeping Scalia’s seat vacant in 2016—“it’s an election year, let the people decide”—would be scrapped in favor of Donald Trump getting his replacement as soon as possible. On Friday night, the president released a surprisingly coherent statement honoring Ginsburg; by Saturday, he was joining his supporters at a rally in Fayetteville in a chant of “Fill That Seat!”

Democrats and progressives, many of whom were far less motivated about the Supreme Court when Trump was replacing Scalia, now recognize the very real possibility of a 6–3 Republican-appointed majority on the Court that could roll back reproductive rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, and a host of other rights largely taken for granted since Ginsburg’s time as a lawyer four decades ago.

The thought of a Yapping Yam getting a third Supreme Court pick is nauseating in itself. And it is the first time in more than a century—since Salmon Chase was confirmed as the sixth Chief Justice on the day he was nominated by Abraham Lincoln in 1864—that a Supreme Court vacancy has opened this close to an election.

The political turmoil over Ginsburg’s replacement, and Republicans’ hypocrisy about “letting the people decide,” is likely to dwarf anything we’ve seen so far this election cycle. More than 200,000 Americans dead because of the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus? All eyes will be on the court. Mass protests in cities around the country over unending police abuse of racial minorities? All eyes will be on the court. Our daily march toward fascism, with the president claiming he’ll issue an executive order banning Biden from being president? Yes, that really happened—but all eyes will be on the court.

The confirmation process is going to be a street fight in the halls of Congress. And if the people won’t get to decide, here’s hoping those opposed to Donald Trump’s recklessness brought their switchblades. Ginsburg’s legacy deserves nothing less.

T. GREG DOUCETTE is a local attorney, criminal justice reform advocate, and host of the podcast #Fsck ’Em All. He continues to be a pain in the UNC System’s ass. Follow him on Twitter. Comment on this column at [email protected]. 

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