U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lies in repose at the Court in Washington, D.C., but the battle over her replacement is already shifting into high gear.
Conservatives think they may finally achieve their holy grail: a majority on the high court that will overturn Roe v. Wade and end the Constitutional right to an abortion.
"Justice Ginsburg really had a much deeper agenda, which was to kind of deconstruct the breadwinner-homemaker model in American law," said Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Hastings Law School in San Francisco, where she is Director of the Center for Worklife Law and a renowned feminist legal scholar.
"She championed that through Constitutional equal protection law," Williams added.
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No issue will loom larger in the confirmation hearings of President Donald Trump’s appointee, and that will elevate an issue that wasn’t expected to be a major one in the presidential campaign.
Now abortion will be the rallying cry, on both sides, whether voters want to preserve that right or end it.
"I think it will dominate the confirmation process," Williams said of the 1973 landmark case. "A separate issue is whether it will dominate the election."
Williams speculated a potential battle over abortion could really hurt Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden among white, working class voters. That’s the same group that is known to have delivered the 2016 election to Donald Trump.
Some conservatives, however, have said they will only back a SCOTUS nominee that denounces Roe v. Wade.
"It is emblematic of just how politically-charged this issue has become," Williams said.
President Trump has said he’ll announce his nominee for the court this Saturday.