We Have to Burn Down the Supreme Court to Save It
Author David A. Kaplan explains how the rest of 2020 might play out on the Court
In the days since Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, countless Americans have pointed out how undemocratic it is that the future of so many civil rights issues rested on one woman’s shoulders. It’s part of a broader point that author David A. Kaplan makes in his book about the court, The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court in the Age of Trump.
For the book, which was published in 2018, Kaplan spoke with a majority of the justices on background, so he can’t say which ones he talked to and therefore whether Ginsburg was one of them. “But I had met [her] decades ago and had seen her on various occasions as a Justice, occasions having nothing to do with the book,” he tells GEN. “I liked her. I greatly respected her, and whatever one’s partisan or ideological leanings, she’s impossible not to respect.”
GEN caught up with Kaplan to talk about what Ginsburg’s passing means for the future of issues like Roe v. Wade, why a 4–4 court on Election Day would not lead to a constitutional crisis, and the case for packing the court if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins.
