Howard Bashman.

Upon Further Review

As I write this month's column, the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to join the U.S. Supreme Court have just gotten underway. I wrestled over whether to devote last month's installment of this column to encouraging readers to vote this November with the future of the federal judiciary in mind, because it seemed clear that the next president of the United States would likely have some significant appointments to make to the nation's highest court. But I knew I could still wait another month to make that point in this month's column, my last before this November's general election.

In the interim, of course, we received the very sad news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Given all of her many health concerns over the years, it perhaps should not have come as such a shock, but her resilience again and again made so many of us believe that she could last forever. Now we are forced to confront the final of the five stages of grief: acceptance. President Donald Trump will appoint Ginsburg's replacement on the court—in the form of a very conservative female judge who might like nothing more than to overturn numerous liberal victories achieved over the past 50 years.