There Oughta Be a Law

 I can’t think of anything uglier than what happened right after  the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barely hours after the reports of her passing, there was already discussion about filling the vacant court seat. That part, unfortunately, was to be expected, but Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said there would be a vote soon after the President announced his nomination for replacement. Many of the same Republicans who blocked President Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the court in 2016 on the grounds that approving a new justice should wait until a new President took charge, are now in a hurry to fill Ginsburg’s seat before a possible change of administration in January.

For Democrats, there is really only one hope here. Enough Republican senators must see the unfairness in filling the seat early, based on the precedent of delay set in the Garland situation. Unlike the complex arguments in the presidential impeachment trial, this simple principle of fairness may persuade a few more Republican senators to accept a delay.

Then there is the President’s hint that he will cling to power if mail-in election ballots are ruled invalid – which he expects that a full Supreme Court with a solid conservative majority would do if he doesn’t win. Will that be a bridge too far for some GOP senators?

For many Republicans, there is another matter, which may trump, if you’ll pardon the expression, all those issues: life and death. Another conservative justice is needed on the court, they feel, to help overturn Roe v. Wade and protect unborn children from abortion.

The  court vacancy problem can likely only be solved in the future by codifying the timeline in law, like requiring that a Supreme Court nominee in an election year be confirmed, say, at least 60 days before Election Day. After that, any court vacancy would stay open until the next administration took charge.

Adding justices to the Supreme Court is not a good fix for the court’s ideological imbalances. Whichever party is on the outs would push for  more judges. The nine justices there now have enough trouble getting through their seasonal docket as it is.

But here we are today. All is fair in love and war, and those who hold the power get to use it, and who’s to stop them? We are at war in this country, ideologically speaking. Let’s really try to keep it…uh…civil this time around.