WI: A SCOTUS Justice died sometime in between 9/11 and the 2002 midterm elections

What would the appointment and confirmation process be like? What would the rhetoric, media coverage, midterm campaigning, etc., be like?
 
It would partly depend on whether the vacancy was caused by the death of a liberal or conservative justice and therefore whether the replacment was likely to change the ideological balance of the Court.
 
It would partly depend on whether the vacancy was caused by the death of a liberal or conservative justice and therefore whether the replacment was likely to change the ideological balance of the Court.

And how close the death was to the elections.
 
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