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Ohio's State Solicitor Recalls Ginsburg/Scalia Friendship He Saw In Person

By Karen Kasler

Published September 21, 2020 at 9:35 PM EDT

Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, April 17, 2014. [Levan Ramishvili / flickr] — Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, April 17, 2014.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were known as close friends, though they were ideological opposites.

Ginsburg died Friday of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Her close friend Justice Antonin Scalia was the most recent sitting justice to die, in February 2016. His death set off a battle between Senate Democrats pressing for President Barack Obama’s choice to replace Scalia to get a hearing, and majority Republicans who contended that the president elected in November should be the one to choose Scalia’s replacement. Those arguments are being revived with the passing of Justice Ginsburg.

Ohio’s state solicitor Ben Flowers works in the Attorney General’s office representing the state before the U.S. Supreme Court, courts of appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court.

Flowers clerked for Scalia for a year in 2015 and saw first-hand how highly the two justices thought of each other.

“Their respect for one another really was something that left an impression on me in the year I spent clerking for Justice Scalia because you saw an example of two people at the very, very pinnacle of their careers who could learn so much and wanted to learn so much by interacting with those who disagreed with them," Flowers said.

Flowers said Ginsburg leaves behind a legacy of work that was well underway before she came to the bench, especially her work for women's rights in the 1970s.

“Justice Scalia at one point referred to her as the Thurgood Marshall of the women's rights movement. And that's a very apt description," Flowers said. "She was an advocate for the equal treatment of women from early on and really a pioneer in that field long before she took the bench."

Ginsburg became a Supreme Court Justice in 1993. Flowers noted Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas had served with Ginsburg for decades, so for them, "I think it would be a tremendous loss, not only of a respected colleague, but of a friend."