Editor’s Note: Adapted from “NINE BLACK ROBES: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences,” by Joan Biskupic, to be published April 4 by William Morrow.
Within days of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memorial service in late September 2020, boxes of her files and other office possessions were moved down to a dark, windowless theater on the Supreme Court’s ground floor, where – before the ongoing pandemic – tourists could watch a film about court operations.
Grieving aides to the justice who’d served 27 years and become a cultural icon known as the “Notorious RBG” sorted through the chambers’ contents there.
The abrupt mandate from Chief Justice John Roberts’ administrative team to clear out Ginsburg’s office and make way for the next justice broke from the common practice of allowing staff sufficient time to move and providing a new justice with temporary quarters if needed while permanent chambers were readied.
It upset employees throughout the building. They were aware that in the weeks before Ginsburg died, her staff had labored to ensure she had case documents at hand, whether in the hospital or at home. They were exhausted from all the memorial arrangements, which had attracted thousands of people to Washington.
But the confirmation of then-President Donald Trump’s chosen successor, Indiana-based US appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, was as much a fait accompli at the court as in the political sphere.
That behind-the-scenes drama and internal tensions over cases that followed, accelerated by all three Trump appointees, led to a new level of distrust and discord among the justices that lingers today.
Almost as abruptly as Ginsburg’s possessions were cast out, the court’s 6-3…
Read the full article here