[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 163 (Monday, September 21, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5722-S5724]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                Remembering Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am here with an incredibly heavy heart. 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--a tireless, legendary champion of equality 
who reshaped our society for the better--passed away on Friday, the 
first eve of Rosh Hashanah. Adherents of the Jewish faith believe that 
a person who passes away during the High Holidays is a person of great 
righteousness. Truer words could not be spoken of Justice Ginsburg. 
Standing just over 5 feet tall, she was a giant among us, a moral 
beacon whose life and legacy have inspired millions of Americans to do 
their part to bring upon a more perfect and just union. We are all 
forever indebted to her.
  The Brooklyn-born daughter of working-class Jewish parents, the young 
girl who would become just the second woman to serve on the Supreme 
Court knew from early on she had to fight for a place in the world. And 
what a fighter she was.
  When she entered Harvard Law School in 1956, just 1 of 9 women in a 
class of over 500, the United States was truly a man's world. Women 
were expected to stay home and out of the workplace. Even when they had 
jobs, they could be fired for getting pregnant

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and they otherwise earned barely half of what men earned for the same 
work. Women couldn't get credit cards without their husband's consent. 
As Justice Ginsburg remarked some years later, these and other gender-
based rules helped to ``keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.''
  Justice Ginsburg refused to accept the status quo. She believed 
unwaveringly that equal justice under law fundamentally required gender 
equality. When she joined the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in the 
early 1970s, she waged a systematic legal campaign against gender 
discrimination, and she ultimately won five out of six of the cases she 
took to the Supreme Court. She eloquently and incisively convinced the 
then all-male Court to see--and strike down--the visible and invisible 
lines that kept the genders unequal.
  In Reed v. Reed, she convinced the Supreme Court for the very first 
time that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment barred 
discrimination on the basis of sex, enshrining constitutional 
protections for generations of women and men. During oral arguments, 
she spoke quietly yet confidently, piercing through dense legal 
arguments with moral clarity.
  In Frontiero v. Richardson, in which she convinced the Court to end 
gender discrimination in the administration of military benefits, her 
words resonate powerfully today. She said:

       In asking the Court to declare sex a suspect criterion . . 
     . ``I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is 
     that they take their feet off our necks.''

  Within a few short years, Justice Ginsburg had already empowered 
millions of American women through her zealous advocacy, granting them 
more autonomy over their lives, their bodies, and their careers. She 
was widely hailed as the Thurgood Marshall of women's rights. She could 
have simply rested on her laurels from that point forward.
  She was just getting started. In 1980, President Carter nominated her 
to be an appellate judge on the DC Circuit. I was so proud to vote for 
her confirmation back then, 40 years ago. There she developed a 
reputation as a pragmatic consensus seeker, often finding common ground 
and building friendships with conservative judges. One of the best 
known of those friendships was hers and Justice Antonin Scalia.
  It was no surprise that in 1993, President Bill Clinton selected Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg to be Justice of the Supreme Court. He called her--and I 
am rather proud to say that she and her husband were visiting Vermont, 
my home State, when she received the call. I still vividly remember her 
confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee as head 
Judiciary of the committee. She was the embodiment of humility and 
grace and strength and wisdom. She endured 4 long days of, at times, 
intense questioning from Senators of both sides of the aisle. Never 
once did she lose her poise. I remember that so well. I thanked her for 
fighting for a world in which my daughter would have opportunities 
equal to those of my two sons. Unsurprisingly, she was confirmed by a 
96-to-3 vote, becoming just the second woman to ascend to our Nation's 
highest Court. My vote for her confirmation to the Supreme Court is 
among the most consequential and impactful I have cast as a Senator.
  This weekend, my wife Marcelle and I drove here to the Capitol. We 
walked over to the Supreme Court. We saw all the people around writing 
notes in chalk on the sidewalk, praising her, leaving flowers, leaving 
pictures. I really was struck by the number of teenagers and people 
probably in their early twenties who were just standing there sadly. I 
talked to a couple. We were all wearing our masks. I am sure they had 
no idea who I was. I talked to them. They all said in one word or 
another: She was our inspiration.

  I think of my own daughter when, a year ago, Justice Ginsburg was 
being honored by a congressional group against cancer. She asked my 
wife to introduce her. My wife is a cancer survivor. My wife brought 
our daughter as her guest, and they sat there. My daughter has told me 
so many times that it was one of the most meaningful times in her life 
to sit with a woman who had always been her hero. Marcelle and I just 
stood there in silence and thought of the memories of the times we had 
been with her and what she has done for this country.
  Over the course of nearly three decades, Justice Ginsburg secured a 
place as one of the most ardent defenders of equal rights for all 
Americans in Supreme Court history. She never tired of being a voice 
for the voiceless. She always tried to use her power--her power--to 
uplift the powerless. She authored the landmark majority opinion in 
United States v. Virginia, which struck down the Virginia Military 
Institute's male-only admissions policy as being unconstitutional. Her 
words still read like a treatise on what equality must mean in America: 
Laws or policies are ``presumptively invalid,'' she wrote, if they 
``den[y] to women, simply because they are women, equal opportunity to 
aspire, achieve, participate in, and contribute to society.'' I think 
of my wife and my daughter, and I think of my three wonderful 
granddaughters.
  Even when she was in the minority, Justice Ginsburg did not go 
quietly. She always left an impact. In the Lilly Ledbetter case, where 
the majority ruled the claim of unequal pay was barred by an arbitrary 
statute of limitations, Justice Ginsburg retorted that the majority 
``does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which 
women can be victims of pay discrimination.'' She urged Congress to 
correct the Court's ``parsimonious reading.'' Two years later, we did 
just that. We passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a copy of which 
she proudly hung in her chambers. It is a bill that I was so proud to 
help bring to fruition on the floor of this body.
  In Shelby County v. Holder, the disastrous decision to validate key 
provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Justice Ginsburg's dissent spoke 
truth to power. She wrote that throwing out key provisions of the 
Voting Rights Act ``when it has worked . . . to stop discriminatory 
changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you 
are not getting wet.''
  Of course, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was right. Since that 
decision, we have witnessed a torrent of voter suppression laws because 
the Supreme Court did not listen to her. That is why I championed the 
bipartisan John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the 
Voting Rights Act. These drives for change, and many others, often 
began with two words from the Justice wearing the bejeweled collar: ``I 
dissent.''
  All the greatness of Justice Ginsburg was matched in spades by her 
authentic goodness. I will always remember the Action for Cancer 
Awareness event I mentioned earlier that she and my wife Marcelle spoke 
at together last year. She was so genuinely kind to Marcelle, to me, 
and to all the people she interacted with. She loved people, so it is 
not surprising they loved her right back. It is not surprising. We saw 
tears in people who knew her and didn't know her as we stood in front 
of the Supreme Court this weekend.
  Justice Ginsburg became a beloved cultural icon, inspired books, 
movies, and even ``Saturday Night Live'' skits. Some of us did tease 
her about that, and she took it all in good humor. Her dogged public 
battle with cancer and her can-do attitude--in fact, she missed less 
than a handful of arguments despite her yearslong illness--inspired 
millions across the world. She gave hope to people she would never see 
and never meet, but they felt they knew her, and she gave them hope. 
Through it all, she never lost her humility.

  When asked how she would like to be remembered, Justice Ginsburg 
simply said: ``Just as someone who did whatever she could, with 
whatever limited talent she had, to move society along in the direction 
I would like it to be for my children and grandchildren.''
  I am proud to stand on the floor of the Senate, as dean of this body, 
and say with certainty that she is going to be remembered for that and 
for so much more. She will be remembered long after any of us are.
  This incredible life and legacy should be the only story of today. 
Sadly, that is not the case. Instead of celebrating her life and her 
many contributions to our society, President Trump and the majority 
leader have forced our attention to turn to her vacancy on the Court 
days before she has even been laid to rest.
  In fact, immediately after the news of her passing, Senator McConnell 
announced that he would rush to replace

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her on the Court. Even as her family was standing there, mourning her, 
he made that announcement. He tossed aside all precedents and 
principles and declared his intent to ram through a nominee no matter 
the cost. Despite all of Senator McConnell's talk and promises 4 years 
ago--that, when a vacancy arises 269 days before a Presidential 
election, the American people should have a voice in deciding which 
President fills that vacancy, which is what he said when President 
Obama was the President--the majority leader is doing everything he can 
today to deny the American people a voice and, this time, with not 269 
days but just 42 days remaining before a Presidential election.
  Seeking a fig leaf of institutional cover, the leader is trying to 
conjure up yet another rule today that, essentially, there was an 
unspoken exception to everything he promised in 2016. I guess I didn't 
hear that unspoken exception. Apparently, the American people do not 
get a voice when the White House and Senate are under the control of 
the same party.
  Pay no attention to the fact that this contradicts everything Leader 
McConnell and many other Republicans claimed to believe ad nauseam for 
10 months in 2016. Yet even this desperate hair splitting falls flat on 
its face. If the majority leader's 2016 rule to let the American people 
decide only applies when there is a divided government, then the 
unprecedented 10-month blockade of Merrick Garland contradicted the 
confirmation of Justice Kennedy by a Democratic Senate during the 
election year of 1988. As did virtually every other Democrat, I was one 
who voted for this Republican nominee.
  The majority leader's abrupt about-face is not about following 
precedent, and it certainly isn't about principle. The blatant 
hypocrisy--and the belief that norms and principles apply only to the 
other party or apply only when nothing is at stake--is the result of 
something even more insidious. It is the direct result of the 
President's and the majority leader's wanting to bend the courts to 
their will no matter the cost--no matter the cost for the Senate and, 
certainly, no matter the cost for all of our courts across the country.
  I will have much more to say about this. Make no mistake, the actions 
that we take during these waning days of the Trump administration will 
forever stain or redeem this institution in which we proudly serve 
depending on whether we go along with this or not. The 100 Members of 
this body represent 330 million Americans. We are entrusted to act in 
their best interests. Through our actions in the weeks ahead, we risk 
forever eroding the American people's trust and faith in our 
independent judiciary, and our actions will have a lasting impact for 
good or for ill on every American's most basic rights--the rights of 
equality and fairness--that Justice Ginsburg spent her lifetime 
securing.
  We all know what we should do. We all know how we can make the U.S. 
Senate be as it should be--the conscience of the Nation. I fear that we 
are willing to close America's door on that conscience. Yet, today, I 
simply seek to honor Justice Ginsburg. She dedicated her life to the 
causes of equality and justice and made both a reality for millions of 
Americans. She has left us a rich legacy to cherish and, more 
importantly, to carry forward. We will be forever in her debt. A 
generation--actually, more than a generation--of women and all 
Americans have been inspired by her leadership and courage. Generations 
to come will have her trailblazing legacy to thank. Let's honor her 
memory by following her example, by recommitting ourselves to pursuing 
a more perfect union not just for the few--no, not just for the few--
but for all Americans.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ernst). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.