It's Monday, September 21st. I'm Kila Hughes.

And I'm Gideon Reznik and this is what a day we're here for just this moment.

The air is clean. The San Andreas fault lines are peaceful. Nothing hurts and everything is beautiful.

Yeah, for a moment I forgot it was 2020 and that's the best kind of forgetting there is.

Felt like 2009 when I was young dumb.

On today's show a conversation with constitutional law professor Leah Litman about the legacy of

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and what is next for the Supreme Court, then some headlines.

It was a long weekend to say the least. On Friday night, Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87 due to

complications of pancreatic cancer. The immediate response online and elsewhere was obviously grief

mixed with fear. Justice Ginsburg had unofficially been tasked with holding our democracy together,

which I think is just proof how fragile our democracy is. Throughout our life, she was a pioneer for

gender equality and women's rights and became the second woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court

when she was appointed in 1993. Years before that, Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Project

at the ACLU where she argued in one five gender discrimination cases in front of the Supreme Court.

In the last decade on the Supreme Court, she was the senior member of the Liberal Block, often

writing powerful descents in landmark cases pertaining to voting rights, abortion, gender discrimination,

plus decisions on immigration and so much more. Not all of her opinions were always celebrated,

for example, she had a somewhat mixed record on tribal rights, but her presence on the court kept

conservative majorities from winning every decision and laid the groundwork for legislation that

would strengthen democracy and civil rights. We're going to get into all of that in our interview,

but Gideon lets quickly go over what's happened since her passing. Yeah, it is bleak. So Ginsburg

dictated a statement to her granddaughter days before she died in which she said, quote,

...