MINNEAPOLIS — Over the weekend, the nation grieved. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at age 87, having served since her inauguration in 1993.
The partisan divide over how things should proceed over this now empty seat on the highest court is, in fact, divisive.
For one thing, Minnesota Senator Tina Smith and former congressman and Jason Lewis, who is challenging her, agree on one thing, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made history.
"I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy is her civility," Lewis said. "She had a great friendship with Antonin Scalia, diametrically opposed in judicial philosophies but they agree that they loved opera and they also agreed in the rule of law to make certain that we have peaceful transitions of power."
"Because of her work, women of my generation have more opportunities, more freedom to pursue the careers and the lives we want to," Senator Smith said. "She is really the architect of gender equality constitutional law."
Justice Ginsburg's absence is being felt thoroughly in the American public's core, as her empty seat, and how it should be filled is now a topic of debate with less than 45 days until the election.
In 2016, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell did not allow President Barack Obama's nominee Merrick Garland to proceed.
"Well you had Hillary Clinton saying elections have consequences; fill the seat, Joe Biden saying it," Lewis said. "Almost every democrat at the time, obviously President Obama at the time thought he had the prerogative. He nominated somebody. But the big difference was, there was opposing parties. The senate in those days was Republican as it is now, but the presidency was held by a Democrat. Today, it is totally different because the people, the will of the people have decided you wanted a Republican president and a GOP majority in the senate was expanded in 2018."
When asked what happens to the "will of the people" if Joe Biden were to be elected come November, Lewis said:
"You serve until the next congress, until the next presidency takes the oath of office."
Senator Smith, however, called that hypocrisy.
"This is a rule that was established by the Republicans that you should not push forward a nomination in an election year," she said. "Now ,let's be clear, this is a very different circumstance. In 2016, Merrick Garland was appointed with 10 months left in Obama's term, but they said no. No appointment, no nomination, not even a hearing."
When asked about getting her reaction to the Republicans' accusations that the Democrats were threatening to fill the seat and pack the court, Smith replied:
"The onus is on them to do the right thing. To do the right thing, they are the ones who actually have almost absolute control over how and when this gets brought up. They need to take responsibility for that and I urge my Republican colleagues who are independent thinkers, who answer to their constituents and their own sense of right and wrong to do the right thing--and not to be led by Mitch McConnell in this moment."
Justice Ginsburg will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, becoming the first woman in history to be so honored.
She will be buried next week at Arlington National Cemetery.