Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg As a Deciding Vote on the Supreme Court

On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on theSupreme Court of the United States, passed away at the age of eighty-seven, vacating a seat onthe High Court that she had held for twenty-seven years. Over more than a quarter-century on theCourt, Justice Ginsburg encountered nearly every major flashpoint of modern American legaldebate, including many issues on which the sitting Justices were closely divided. Many recent retrospectives of Justice...
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On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on theSupreme Court of the United States, passed away at the age of eighty-seven, vacating a seat onthe High Court that she had held for twenty-seven years. Over more than a quarter-century on theCourt, Justice Ginsburg encountered nearly every major flashpoint of modern American legaldebate, including many issues on which the sitting Justices were closely divided. Many recent retrospectives of Justice Ginsburg's career have highlighted her dissenting opinions in cases where she and other Justices in the more liberal wing of the Court were at odds with a more conservative majority. But focusing on Justice Ginsburg's dissents may paint an incomplete picture of her influence on the outcome of Supreme Court cases and the effect that her replacement could have upon the trajectory of the Court's jurisprudence. Justice Ginsburg frequently authored or joined majority opinions for the Court, and she was a deciding vote for the majority position in numerous closely divided cases. While Justice Ginsburg was less likely to be a deciding vote than Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired from the bench in 2018 after having been the pivotal vote in 186 cases during the Roberts Court era, she was still a deciding vote in 112 cases from the date of Chief Justice Roberts's elevation to the Court to the date of her passing. This report includes several tables relating to cases where Justice Ginsburg cast a deciding vote in the Roberts Court era. The tables compile cases involving constitutional questions, issues governed by statute (including not only questions of statutory interpretation but also agency actions taken pursuant to statutory authority, as well as judicial and executive branch rules and actions concerning procedural matters governed by statute), and other matters.