Might want to explain that one as not everybody will know what goes there.
RBG = Ruth Bader Ginsburg, long time justice on the US supreme court and nominally aligned with the democrats. Alignment and reality is a tricky thing -- you make it to the supreme court and you are probably pretty good at this law lark so tend to not always keep to the party line, see if nothing else the voting record of Brett Kavanaugh (who Trump appointed), and it is for life/until you choose to retire so are generally above the petty whims of the party even if professional conduct and impartiality in it is not your thing.
In dying she then vacated her position and thus the president gets to appoint another (with some yes/no from other parts of government but it is usually a forgone conclusion).
There are various unofficial codes of conduct on when they can be appointed vis a vis last years in office but they are generally unofficial (Obama faced a similar problem) so eh. If he gets back in though then free reign.
Anyway with this vacancy then the balance of judges on the supreme court will be shifted to the Republican appointed ones, and if he plays the game even vaguely well he will probably find some nice veteran 50 or so year old to go in and at current makeup if they all live to push 80 then that means for the next few decades the US supreme court (something of a big deal*) will be more than half republican appointees (usually heard in a phrase like "lose the supreme court for a generation").
*what they do depends upon your side in an argument most of the time (see supreme court is not supposed to make law type stuff with gay marriage a few years back, even if it was not actually what was done there, and in reality they can also seek out and change quite a bit, or undo previous rulings**). They are however the last court of appeals, they decide a lot of important rulings in interesting legal cases, uncover aspects of law, and their rulings make and break companies, avenues of law and much more besides. At this point in time a lot of the stuff they do is very fiddly and specific (100 odd years back things were still being hammered out so you tend to find rulings from them and don't hear so much about new ones more than a few months after they were delivered).
**one of the big ones people look at is Roe v Wade. The ruling that legalised abortion throughout the US. If the supreme court repeals that then it will be back to state level, which presumably means overnight much of the US south will either ban it or make it incredibly hard to get (even more so than it already is). At the same time Ginsburg was also viewed as one of the bigger anti gun types which means various challenges to that might be easier heard, and her stuff on intellectual property was always an interesting interpretation whenever I read things (often agreed with the majority but the reasoning provided for it differed at times). Indeed most would probably play to the judges themselves and their particular whims and argument styles they like rather than simple who appointed whom, to say nothing of if you are on there for decades then the party that appointed you might look very different by then.
What young Lacius then presumably fears from those voting other is a spoiler effect either in general, at electoral college level, or within states which then feed the electoral college (different states do all sorts of different things here including winner take all for a few of them). I am not sure progressivism (assuming you care to be tarred with such a brush) is inherently tied to voting for the US Democrats, though there is a strong correlation.
RBG = Ruth Bader Ginsburg, long time justice on the US supreme court and nominally aligned with the democrats. Alignment and reality is a tricky thing -- you make it to the supreme court and you are probably pretty good at this law lark so tend to not always keep to the party line, see if nothing else the voting record of Brett Kavanaugh (who Trump appointed), and it is for life/until you choose to retire so are generally above the petty whims of the party even if professional conduct and impartiality in it is not your thing.
In dying she then vacated her position and thus the president gets to appoint another (with some yes/no from other parts of government but it is usually a forgone conclusion).
There are various unofficial codes of conduct on when they can be appointed vis a vis last years in office but they are generally unofficial (Obama faced a similar problem) so eh. If he gets back in though then free reign.
Anyway with this vacancy then the balance of judges on the supreme court will be shifted to the Republican appointed ones, and if he plays the game even vaguely well he will probably find some nice veteran 50 or so year old to go in and at current makeup if they all live to push 80 then that means for the next few decades the US supreme court (something of a big deal*) will be more than half republican appointees (usually heard in a phrase like "lose the supreme court for a generation").
*what they do depends upon your side in an argument most of the time (see supreme court is not supposed to make law type stuff with gay marriage a few years back, even if it was not actually what was done there, and in reality they can also seek out and change quite a bit, or undo previous rulings**). They are however the last court of appeals, they decide a lot of important rulings in interesting legal cases, uncover aspects of law, and their rulings make and break companies, avenues of law and much more besides. At this point in time a lot of the stuff they do is very fiddly and specific (100 odd years back things were still being hammered out so you tend to find rulings from them and don't hear so much about new ones more than a few months after they were delivered).
**one of the big ones people look at is Roe v Wade. The ruling that legalised abortion throughout the US. If the supreme court repeals that then it will be back to state level, which presumably means overnight much of the US south will either ban it or make it incredibly hard to get (even more so than it already is). At the same time Ginsburg was also viewed as one of the bigger anti gun types which means various challenges to that might be easier heard, and her stuff on intellectual property was always an interesting interpretation whenever I read things (often agreed with the majority but the reasoning provided for it differed at times). Indeed most would probably play to the judges themselves and their particular whims and argument styles they like rather than simple who appointed whom, to say nothing of if you are on there for decades then the party that appointed you might look very different by then.
What young Lacius then presumably fears from those voting other is a spoiler effect either in general, at electoral college level, or within states which then feed the electoral college (different states do all sorts of different things here including winner take all for a few of them). I am not sure progressivism (assuming you care to be tarred with such a brush) is inherently tied to voting for the US Democrats, though there is a strong correlation.
