President Donald Trump (R) will nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court. Barrett is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Barrett would replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died earlier this month of complications from pancreatic cancer. Ginsburg was part of the court’s ‘progressive wing’ and an advocate of the living constitution school of jurisprudence. Barrett is a ‘conservative’ jurist of either the originalist or textualist school. If confirmed, she would likely shift the ideological balance of the court from centrist or narrowly conservative to a more solid conservative majority.

Barrett worked as a law clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. She has taught at the George Washington University School of Law and the Notre Dame Law School. At Notre Dame, she has won numerous awards and her scholarship has focused primarily on constitutional law. Barrett was nominated to the U.S. Count of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with a bipartisan 55-43 vote.

Republican leaders claimed in 2016 that it was inappropriate to act on a Supreme Court nomination in a presidential election year, but they have since reversed their positions, citing either the treatment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh by Democrats during his confirmation hearings, or the alignment of the presidency and majority party in the Senate (a nuance that, curiously, was never mentioned in 2016). It appears very likely that the Senate will take up Barrett’s nomination and hold a vote before the November election.

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court has died. She was 87. Ginsburg, who has had numerous recent health scares, died of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton (D) in 1993. She was part of the court’s ‘progressive wing’ and an advocate of the ‘living constitution’ school of jurisprudence. She was a fierce advocate for women’s rights and numerous progressive causes. In recent years, Ginsburg has become a pop-culture phenomenon and has been popularly dubbed “The Notorious R.B.G.”

She is survived by her two children and four grandchildren.

Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Ginsburg’s death, coming only forty-six days before the 2020 presidential election, is likely to lead to a political firestorm. Already, parallels are being drawn with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In 2016, the Republican-led Senate refused to act upon President Barack Obama’s (D) nomination of Merrick Garland. Republican leaders at the time argued that it was inappropriate to act on a Supreme Court nomination in a presidential election year. Ultimately, President Donald Trump (R) nominated Neil Gorsuch to the court and he was confirmed by the Senate. Some Republicans, in a curious bit of historical revisionism, are already claiming that their refusal to act on the Garland nomination in 2016—citing the so-called “Biden Rule” or “McConnell Rule”—only applies when different parties control the White House and the Senate.