![]() ![]() She dissented forcefully from the court’s decision in 2007 to uphold a nationwide ban on an abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. Her time as a justice was marked by triumphs for equality for women, as in her opinion for the court ordering the Virginia Military Institute to accept women or give up its state funding. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not need a seat on the Supreme Court to earn her place in the American history books,” President Bill Clinton said in 1993 when he announced her appointment. In the 1970s, she argued six key cases before the court when she was an architect of the women’s rights movement. She could take some credit for equality of the sexes in the law. In time she was joined by two other Jews, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, and two other women, Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.īoth developments were perhaps unthinkable when Ginsburg graduated from law school in 1959 and faced the triple bogey of looking for work as a woman, a mother and a Jew.įorty years later, she noted that religion had become irrelevant in the selection of high-court justices and that gender was heading in the same direction, though when asked how many women would be enough for the high court, Ginsburg replied without hesitation, “Nine.” ![]() ![]() She was the court’s second woman and its sixth Jewish justice. Ginsburg had special affection for Brandeis, the first Jew named to the high court. Her stature on the court and the death of her husband in 2010 probably contributed to Ginsburg’s decision to remain on the bench beyond the goal she initially set for herself, to match Justice Louis Brandeis’ 22 years on the court and his retirement at the age of 82. In her final years on the court, Ginsburg was the unquestioned leader of the liberal justices, as outspoken in dissent as she was cautious in earlier years.Ĭriticizing the court’s conservative majority for getting rid of a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 2013, Ginsburg wrote that it was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” In 2018, Ginsburg was the subject of a documentary and a feature film “On the Basis of Sex,” in which the actor Felicity Jones portrayed her. “In the word the current generation uses, it’s awesome,” Ginsburg said in 2016, shortly before she turned 83. There was nothing “notorious” about this woman of rectitude who wore a variety of lace collars on the bench and often appeared in public in elegant gloves.īut when her law clerks and grandchildren explained the connection to another Brooklynite, the rapper The Notorious B.I.G., her skepticism turned to delight. Late in her court tenure, she became a social media icon, the Notorious RBG, a name coined by a law student who admired Ginsburg’s dissent in a case cutting back on a key civil rights law. Ginsburg died Friday of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer at her home in Washington at 87, the court said. She never missed any time in court before the age of 85, and then only following surgery in December 2018 for lung cancer. She made few concessions to age and recurrent health problems, working regularly with a personal trainer. She once confessed to dozing during a State of the Union.īut it was a mistake to equate her gait and gaze with frailty, for Ginsburg showed over and over a steely resilience in the face of personal loss and serious health problems that made the diminutive New Yorker a towering women’s rights champion and forceful presence at the court over 27 years. She once acknowledged that she did occasionally nod off. When court was in session, she often had her head down, sometimes leading visitors to think she was asleep. WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg moved slowly.
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