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Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser proclaimed that 'Justice Ginsburg’s feminist legacy teeters on a knife’s edge' because for once she adhered to the text of the law. //
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is about to lose her feminist card. Ironically, it’s for departing from her usual legal schtick to reinforce that what the law says matters, instead of giving authorities license to do whatever the heck they want.
On Monday, Ginsburg reinforced previous assertions that the legal deadline for passing a 1970s and 1980s constitutional amendment to ignore sex distinctions has passed.
“I would like to see a new beginning. I’d like it to start over,” Ginsburg said about the so-called Equal Rights Amendment Monday.” There’s too much controvery about latecomers — Virginia long after the deadline passed — plus a number of states have withdrawn their ratification. So if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said, ‘We’ve changed our minds’?” //
Currently a large chunk of federal policy is built on court decisions that have added horrific things to the laws that the people’s representatives never put in there. Massive parts of social and regulation policy belong in this category, such as Roe v. Wade, U.S. v. Chevron, and Obergefell v. Hodges. That makes these policies unstable if jurists with power begin to decide cases based on law rather than politics. And that’s where the Supreme Court is headed right now.
A case in point is none other than Ginsburg’s signature accomplishment: getting the Supreme Court to pretend that the Constitution says anything about the sexes in Reed v. Reed and United States v. Virginia (cases she argued as a lawyer and helped decide as a justice, respectively). If Supreme Court justices start taking the Constitution seriously, like the left fears, they could undo a whole lot of fake laws upon which rest huge sources of leftist power.
That’s why “The fate of Ginsburg’s feminist legacy is uncertain,” Millhiser writes. “…And cases like Virginia and Reed are even less likely to survive if President Trump gets to fill more seats on the Supreme Court.” In other words, Ginsburg’s legacy may be consumed by the very means she used to build it. If that happens, expect the left to take revenge on people who tried yet failed to secure that power — such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. //
“[N]o amount of swag or hagiography can obscure the fact that, while Ginsburg is responsible for a great number of landmark legal decisions, her legacy may be sorely tarnished by one truly terrible one: refusing to retire when President Barack Obama could have named her replacement,” wrote Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer in 2018, when Felicity Jones was about to portray the “Notorious RBG” on the silver screen. //
But Ginsburg has already disappointed the left in her final act. And when she’s gone, don’t expect them to hide their rage. It sucks to be part of a revolution unless you somehow manage to be the last one holding the guillotine string.