And why is there such a big
storm of controversy surrounding her death?
There have been demonstrations in the streets,
President Trump was
booed visiting her casket
and we've even seen protesters try
to disrupt a memorial service.
Surprise, surprise,
a lot of this has to do with the
upcoming US election
between President Trump and Joe Biden.
But before we get to the controversy,
it's important to understand
who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was.
RBG, as she was affectionately known,
was one of nine justices on
the US Supreme Court,
which is the top court in the country,
kind of like Australia's High Court.
But that's not all that she was known for.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a legal giant and a pioneer for women
She actually argued a half dozen cases at the court in the 1970s
on behalf of the movement to have legal equality for men and women.
During her time as a lawyer
RBG also co-founded the
Women's Rights Project,
which was involved in hundreds of cases
about gender equality.
She's my superhero.
We owe her a tremendous debt.
She believed in equality for all people.
Her work over the years inspired countless Americans
and later in life,
she actually became a bit of a celebrity.
It has been said that Ruth wanted to be an opera virtuoso,
but became a rock star instead.
She might be the only Supreme Court justice to become a meme.
He's not kidding.
She scored the nickname notorious RBG,
named after the rapper Notorious BIG,
who also happened to be from Brooklyn, New York.
You could find RBG on late-night talk shows.
She had celebrity impersonators.
She was the subject of documentaries.
I am 84 years old, and everyone wants to take a picture with me.
And there were even films made about her life.
You're asking us to overturn nearly a century of precedent.
I'm asking you to set a new precedent.
Supreme Court justices like RBG serve until they retire or die.
And this is where a lot of the controversy is coming from.
When it comes time to replace a Supreme Court justice, it's up
to the president to nominate a successor
and then it goes to the Senate,
which is their upper house,
who has a vote on whether
to approve them.
Trump's already made his pick:
Amy Coney Barrett.
I assure you that I will meet the challenge with both humility and courage.
The thing is, some politicians don't think a big decision
like this should be made right before an election.
This is going to be decided by the American people
and the next president,
whoever that may be, will fill this vacancy.
They've also argued that appointing a Supreme Court justice
in an election year
isn't something that's historically done.
It does bear repeating that there hasn't been a vacancy,
created in a presidential election year,
filled in 80 years.
This appointment should be made by the next president.
The other side of that argument
comes from senators who say
it's an important part of their job.
And it doesn't matter how close
to an election it happens.
We have an obligation under the Constitution,
should we choose to take advantage of it
to fill the vacancy
and I assure you that's very likely to happen.
If you're thinking "wow, I can't believe those identical twins
with the same name have such different opinions on the subject".
It's the same guy.
It's Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell,
except one of them
is his opinion in 2016 and
the other is his opinion in 2020.
Following the death of
Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016,
Republicans in the Senate
blocked the nominee put forward by President Barack Obama.
What is shocking is the
hypocrisy of the Republicans
led by Senator McConnell
to go directly opposite to their position
when Justice Scalia died,
and Barack Obama was in office,
coming up to an election.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham even encouraged Democrats
to use his words against him
if the Republicans changed their mind,
the next time it happened.
If there's a Republican president in 2016,
and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term,
you can say,
Lindsey Graham said,
"Let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."
And you could use my words against me,
and you'd be absolutely right.
And here is what Lindsey Graham is now saying in 2020:
I will be leading the charge
to make sure that President Trump's nominee
has a hearing,
goes to the floor of the United States Senate for a vote,
because that is my job.
And I believe I'm doing
what the people of South Carolina want me to do
in this regard.
Mitch McConnell has said
that he thinks things are different this time around
because in 2020,
the Republicans control the presidency
and the Senate,
whereas in 2016,
Democrats only controlled the presidency.
But why would Republicans
and now Democrats
even want to block a president
from choosing a Supreme Court justice?
The whole point of being a judge
means making decisions based on the law
and not your personal opinions.
So technically it shouldn't really matter
who chooses them
as long as they're good at their job, right?
Well,
like a lot of things to do with politics,
it's unfortunately a
bit more complicated than that.
Judges in the United States
are often labelled as being
conservative or liberal or moderate,
depending on the kinds of decisions they've made
throughout the career.
One of the big things about being a judge
is how you interpret words on a page.
If your interpretations are closer to the kind of ideology that the
Republican party has,
then you might get labelled a conservative.
If your interpretations are more in line
with what Democrats believe,
then you may be labelled a liberal judge.
Trump's nominee, Amy Coney Barrett,
is considered to be a conservative by some
because of some of the rulings she's made in the past,
her affiliations with a
conservative organisation called
the Federalist Society,
and also because she has been picked by Trump
who's a conservative president.
Well, if Barrett is confirmed, it would take a court that had
been essentially a 5-4 court
with conservatives in the majority
and make it a 6-3 court.
So I think the Democrats
have reason to worry.
But it's not just about the possibility of future laws made
by Democrats being blocked
or old laws that Democrats have made,
like Obama's healthcare, being taken down a peg.
Some are worried about the impact this could have
on the upcoming election.
President Trump has already accused the Democrats
of trying to cheat.
This is going to be a fraud like you've never seen.
He says that mail in voting, which is being encouraged by
Democrats because of COVID-19,
leads to fraud.
And that the Supreme Court
will end up playing a role in
who wins the election.
I think this will end up in the Supreme Court.
And that's why so many Democrats are alarmed
that there could be so many Trump appointees
in the Supreme Court,
who may then award
an election challenge to the president.
When it comes to mail in voting,
there is a legitimate concern
that it needs to be handled properly,
because there will be a huge increase
in mail in votes this year because of COVID-19.
But when it comes to mail voter fraud,
a commissioner of the
Federal Election Commission has said there's simply no basis
for the conspiracy theory
that voting by mail causes fraud.
Also, according to a recent study,
the rate of actual voting
fraud overall in the US
isn't very high.
So if the Democrats
are unhappy with how all of this is going,
what can they realistically do?
Not much.
Right now, they don't have the
votes needed to block or delay a vote.
What some top Democrats
have mentioned in the past,
is increasing the number of Supreme Court justices
from 9 to 13 if they win the next election.
There isn't actually a limit on
how many Supreme Court justices you can have
and stacking the court with another
4 liberal justices
would swing the majority away from the conservatives.
So where does all of this leave us?
Even though people think they have an idea
of how Trump's nominee will vote,
we won't actually know until she becomes
a Supreme Court justice if she gets approved.
And people that know her
say that she wouldn't let
her personal opinions affect her judgement.
She has said over and over again,
whatever her personal,
political or religious beliefs,
her fidelity is to the rule of law
first, foremost, and only.
As for the future of the Supreme Court,
unfortunately,
many politicians believe
it's only going to get more ideologically divided
from here on out.
You're going to have the most liberal members of your caucus
pushing you to pick the most liberal judges,
because you don't need to have to reach across the aisle
to get any of our input.
And we'll do the same.
So over time,
the judiciary is going to be more ideologically driven,
because the process in the Senate now
does not require you to get
outside your own party.
And with that, I'll leave you with the words
of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and what she hoped for the future of the court.
I don't know what it will take.
But we really should get back
to the way it was.
When people were examining the qualifications
of someone to be a judge,
rather than trying to guess
how they would vote.