| Follow up to yesterday evening’s surprise announcement of her death. |
Ginsburg was appointed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton and in recent years served as the most senior member of the court's liberal wing consistently delivering progressive votes on the most divisive social issues of the day, including abortion rights, same-sex marriage, voting rights, immigration, health care and affirmative action.
Along the way, she developed a rock star type status and was dubbed the "Notorious R.B.G." In speaking events across the country before liberal audiences, she was greeted with standing ovations as she spoke about her view of the law, her famed exercise routine and her often fiery dissents.
"Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature," said Chief Justice John Roberts. "We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her -- a tireless and resolute champion of justice."
Ginsburg died surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, D.C., the court said. A private interment service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery.
Ginsburg had suffered from five bouts of cancer, most recently a recurrence in early 2020 when a biopsy revealed lesions on her liver. In a statement she said that chemotherapy was yielding "positive results" and that she was able to maintain an active daily routine.
"I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam," she said in a statement in July 2020. " I remain fully able to do that."
She told an audience in 2019 that she liked to keep busy even when she was fighting cancer. "I found each time that when I'm active, I'm much better than if I'm just lying about and feeling sorry for myself," she said in New York at the Yale Club at an event hosted by Moment Magazine. Ginsburg told another audience that she thought she would serve until she was 90 years old.
Tiny in stature, she could write opinions that roared disapproval when she thought the majority had gone astray.
Before the election of President Donald Trump, Ginsburg told CNN that he "is a faker" and noted that he had "gotten away with not turning over his tax returns." She later said she regretted making the comments and Trump suggested she should recuse herself in cases concerning him. She never did.
In 2011, by contrast, President Barack Obama singled out Ginsburg at a White House ceremony. "She's one of my favorites," he said, "I've got a soft spot for Justice Ginsburg."
The vacancy gives Trump the opportunity to further solidify the conservative majority on the court and fill the seat of a woman who broke through the glass ceiling at a time when few women attended law school with a different justice who could steer the court to the right on social issues.
Ginsburg was well-known for the work she did before taking the bench, when she served as an advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union and became the architect of a legal strategy to bring cases to the courts that would ensure that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection applied to gender.
"I had the good fortune to be alive and a lawyer in the late 1960s when, for the first time in the history of the United States, it became possible to urge before courts, successfully, that society would benefit enormously if women were regarded as persons equal in stature to men,'" she said in a commencement speech in 2002.
No one was more surprised than Ginsburg of the rock star status she gained with young women in her late 70s and early 80s. She was amused by the swag that appeared praising her work, including a "You Can't have the Truth, Without Ruth" T-shirt as well as coffee mugs and bobbleheads. Some young women went as far as getting tattoos bearing her likeness. A Tumblr dubbed her the "Notorious R.B.G." in reference to a rap star known as "Notorious B.I.G." The name stuck. One artist set Ginsburg's dissent in a religious liberty case to music.
| Courtesy of Ebbomoger Speaking for Boskone4589: Justice Ginsberg’s Wikipedia page. |