by Amy Howe

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazer who fought for gender equality as a lawyer and became a beloved hero of the progressive movement as a justice, died on Friday of complications from pancreatic cancer. When she was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 1993, Ginsburg was a reserved and relatively unknown court of appeals judge, but during the course of her 27 years on the court she became an improbable pop-culture icon, inspiring everything from an Oscar-nominated documentary film to her own action figure. She was 87.

With the presidential election less than two months away, Ginsburg’s death will undoubtedly kick off a heated battle over how quickly the vacancy should be filled. After Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Senate Republicans immediately announced that they intended to oppose any effort to confirm a successor to Scalia until after the 2016 presidential election. Although President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland in March 2016 to take Scalia’s place, Garland’s nomination went nowhere, and Neil Gorsuch, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit nominated by President Donald Trump, was confirmed in April 2017 to fill the vacancy created by Scalia’s death. Even before Ginsburg announced her most recent bouts with cancer this summer, McConnell had already made clear last year that, if a vacancy occurred on the court in 2020, he intended to fill it.

At her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Ginsburg told the Senate Judiciary Committee that her life story “could happen only in America.” Read more via SCOTUS blog