U.S. Supreme Court Nomination
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to nominate Ginsburg to the United States Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Lewis F. Powell. Ginsburg was chosen after a Senate controlled by Democrats had rejected the nomination of Judge Robert Bork after a bruising confirmation battle.
Ginsburg's nomination would collapse for entirely different reasons from Bork's rejection, as he almost immediately came under some fire when NPR's Nina Totenberg revealed that Ginsburg had used marijuana "on a few occasions" during his student days in the 1960s and while an Assistant Professor at Harvard in the 1970s. It was Ginsburg's continued use of marijuana after graduation and as a professor that made his actions more serious in the minds of many Senators and members of the public.
Due to these allegations, Ginsburg withdrew his name from consideration, and remained on the federal appellate bench, where he is still a Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, serving as the DC Circuit's chief judge for most of the 2000s. Anthony Kennedy was then nominated and confirmed as the 107th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Read more about this topic: Douglas H. Ginsburg
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