RUTH BADER GINSBURG

(Via Daily Howler)

The wingnuts have been whining that Ginsburg was a radical leftist nominee but was confirmed so Bush should get to nominate a freak like Scalia or Thomas. They also mention that she worked for, horror of horrors, the ACLU.

But let's look at the facts:


Judge Ruth Ginsburg Named to High Court; Nominee's Philosophy Seen Strengthening the Center; [FINAL Edition]
Joan Biskupic. The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Jun 15, 1993. pg. A.01

On the D.C. Court of Appeals, to which she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, she has become a swing vote. A 1988 computer study by Legal Times newspaper found that she had sided more with Republican-appointed colleagues than Democratic counterparts. In cases that were not unanimous, she voted most often with then-Judge Kenneth W. Starr, who became George Bush's solicitor general, and Laurence H. Silberman, a Reagan appointee still on the court.

While Ginsburg supports abortion rights, she has criticized the legal analysis of Roe v. Wade. Her point, which was first made public in a 1984 speech at the University of North Carolina and generated new controversy after a recent talk at New York University law school, is that the broad framework for a right to privacy to end a pregnancy is not constitutionally sound.

She criticized the ruling for preempting state legislatures, which in the early 1970s were moving more toward the legalization of abortion. She credits Roe's overreach with spawning the vocal "right- to-life movement" and bitter legislative attempts to counteract a liberal abortion policy.

Ginsburg contends that Roe's legal authority was weakened by author Blackmun's concentration on the privacy and autonomy elements involved in a woman's decision, in consultation with her physician, to end a pregnancy. She said the court should have grounded its ruling more on a sex-equality basis.

"I do not suggest that the court should never step ahead of the political branches in pursuit of a constitutional precept," she said in her speech in New York. She noted the importance of the 1954 school desegregation ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, but stressed that in that situation, prospects for state legislation to desegregate schools were "bleak."