On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued an impassioned and heartfelt speech on the Senate floor honoring the late-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her steadfast commitment to her office and her ability to befriend those with whom she disagreed.
Speaking in his famous slow and steady cadence, McConnell hailed the late-justice as an “exceptional American life” who climbed over obstacles and mountains to achieve her position in America’s highest court.
“Our nation is mourning the end of an exceptional American life,” said McConnell. “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg meant so much to our country. First and foremost, she was a brilliant generational, legal mind who climbed past one obstacle after another to summit the very pinnacle of her profession. Justice Ginsburg was a fixture on our nation’s highest court for more than a quarter of a century. She was not just a lawyer, but a leader. From majority opinions to impassioned dissent, her life’s work will not only continue to shape jurisprudence, but also enlightened scholars and students for generations. By all accounts, Justice Ginsburg loved her work because she loved the law.”
McConnell went on to extoll Ginsburg for her courage and steadfast commitment to excellence despite battling a series of life-threatening illnesses, saying it was a befitting climax to any heroic story. However, his most gentle words were reserved for the justice’s ability to find kinship with her ideological opposites, most especially, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
“On the court, Justice Ginsburg was a universally-admired colleague,” he said. “No wonder that so many Americans have taken particular comforts in these past days by remembering her famous friendship with her ideological opposite, the late Justice Scalia. Together, they made sure the halls of justice would also reign with laughter and comedy. They rarely sat on the same side of a high profile decision, but they still sat together at the opera and most any other time they could manage to be together.”
After praising Ginsburg’s commitment to overcoming sexism and plowing through barrier after barrier in her rise to the top, helping “entire generations of talented women build their lives as they saw fit,” McConnell then praised Ruth Bader Ginsburg for being a unitive figure in a time of tremendous divisiveness.
“While Justice Ginsburg relished forceful writing and detailed argument, she was also in important ways a uniter,” he concluded. “In recent years, many people who consider themselves for admires, might wish to claim the justice for their political side, have come to embrace reckless proposals to politicize the very structure of the court itself. But Justice Ginsburg remained unswerving in her public commitment to preserving the neutral foundation of the institution she loved. The entire senate is united in thinking of and praying for Justice Ginsburg’s family.”
Justice Ginsburg died last Friday due to complications from pancreatic cancer just a little over 10 years after the death of her husband Martin of 56 years.
Sen. McConnell tribute to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "She was not just a lawyer. No, not just a lawyer, but a leader."
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