Behind the life and legacy of RBG
A towering women맥스카지노s rights champion and forceful presence at the court over 27 years died Friday.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made few concessions to age and recurrent health problems, working regularly with a personal trainer. She never missed any time in court before the age of 85, and then only following surgery in December 2018 for lung cancer.
Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer at her home in Washington at 87, the court said.
Late in her court tenure, she became a social media icon, the Notorious RBG, a name coined by a law student who admired Ginsburg맥스카지노s dissent in a case cutting back on a key civil rights law.
The justice was at first taken aback. There was nothing 맥스카지노notorious맥스카지노 about this woman of rectitude who wore a variety of lace collars on the bench and often appeared in public in elegant gloves.
But when her law clerks and grandchildren explained the connection to another Brooklynite, the rapper The Notorious B.I.G., her skepticism turned to delight. 맥스카지노In the word the current generation uses, it맥스카지노s awesome,맥스카지노 Ginsburg said in 2016, shortly before she turned 83.
In 2018, Ginsburg was the subject of a documentary and a feature film 맥스카지노On the Basis of Sex,맥스카지노 in which the actor Felicity Jones portrayed her.
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.
Criticizing the court맥스카지노s conservative majority for getting rid of a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 2013, Ginsburg wrote that it was like 맥스카지노throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.맥스카지노
Her stature on the court and the death of her husband in 2010 probably contributed to Ginsburg맥스카지노s decision to remain on the bench beyond the goal she initially set for herself, to match Justice Louis Brandeis맥스카지노 22 years on the court and his retirement at the age of 82.
Ginsburg had special affection for Brandeis, the first Jew named to the high court. She was the court맥스카지노s second woman and its sixth Jewish justice. In time she was joined by two other Jews, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, and two other women, Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
Both 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.
Forty 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, 맥스카지노Nine.맥스카지노
She could take some credit for equality of the sexes in the law. In the 1970s, she argued six key cases before the court when she was an architect of the women맥스카지노s rights movement. She won five.
맥스카지노Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not need a seat on the Supreme Court to earn her place in the American history books,맥스카지노 President Bill Clinton said in 1993 when he announced her appointment. 맥스카지노She has already done that.맥스카지노
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.
There were setbacks, too. She dissented forcefully from the court맥스카지노s decision in 2007 to uphold a nationwide ban on an abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. The 맥스카지노alarming맥스카지노 ruling, Ginsburg said, 맥스카지노cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court 맥스카지노 and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women맥스카지노s lives.맥스카지노
Ginsburg once said that she had not entered the law as a champion of equal rights. 맥스카지노I thought I could do a lawyer맥스카지노s job better than any other,맥스카지노 she wrote. 맥스카지노I have no talent in the arts, but I do write fairly well and analyze problems clearly.맥스카지노
Besides civil rights, Ginsburg took an interest in capital punishment, voting repeatedly to limit its use. During her tenure, the court declared it unconstitutional for states to execute the intellectually disabled and killers younger than 18.
She voted most often with the other liberal-leaning justices, fellow Clinton appointee Breyer and two Republican appointees, John Paul Stevens and David Souter, then later with President Barack Obama맥스카지노s two appointees, Sotomayor and Kagan.
In the most divisive of cases, Ginsburg was often at odds with the court맥스카지노s more conservative members. Yet she was personally closest on the court to Justice Antonin Scalia, her ideological opposite.
She once explained that she took Scalia맥스카지노s sometimes biting dissents as a challenge to be met. 맥스카지노How am I going to answer this in a way that맥스카지노s a real putdown?맥스카지노 she said. Scalia died in 2016.
As for her own dissents, Ginsburg said that some were aimed at swaying the opinions of her fellow judges while others were 맥스카지노an appeal to the intelligence of another day맥스카지노 in the hopes that they would provide guidance to future courts.
맥스카지노Hope springs eternal,맥스카지노 she said in 2007, 맥스카지노and when I am writing a dissent, I맥스카지노m always hoping for that fifth or sixth vote 맥스카지노 even though I맥스카지노m disappointed more often than not.맥스카지노
Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn in 1933, the second daughter in a middle-class family. Her older sister, who gave her the lifelong nickname 맥스카지노Kiki,맥스카지노 died at age 6, so Ginsburg grew up in Brooklyn맥스카지노s Flatbush section as an only child. Her dream, she has said, was to be an opera singer.
Her mother, Celia Bader, died of cancer the night before Ginsburg, then 17, was to graduate from high school. Celia Bader never attended college but worked as a bookkeeper. In a public television documentary about Jewish Americans, Ginsburg said, 맥스카지노What맥스카지노s the difference between a bookkeeper in New York맥스카지노s Garment District and a U.S. Supreme Court justice? One generation.맥스카지노
She first gained fame as a litigator for the Women맥스카지노s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. She had worked on the legal team that persuaded the high court to rule for the first time ever in 1970 that a state had violated the Constitution by denying women equal treatment.
At argument sessions in the ornate courtroom, Ginsburg was known for digging deep into case records and for being a stickler for following the rules.
Appearing at a law school forum in 2008, she noted with relief that there was no retirement age for U.S. judges. 맥스카지노We hold our offices during good behavior,맥스카지노 Ginsburg said, citing language from the Constitution. 맥스카지노So all of my colleagues behave very well.맥스카지노
She married her husband, Martin, in 1954, the year she graduated from Cornell University. She attended Harvard University맥스카지노s law school but transferred to Columbia University when her husband took a law job in New York.
Ginsburg had graduated at the top of her Columbia Law School class but could not find a law firm willing to hire her. She later said she맥스카지노d had more than her share of 맥스카지노mazel맥스카지노 맥스카지노 the Hebrew word for luck 맥스카지노 to help her along in life.
맥스카지노Suppose there had been a Wall Street firm interested in hiring me? What would I be today?맥스카지노 she intoned in 2007. 맥스카지노A retired partner.맥스카지노
Martin Ginsburg went on to become a prominent tax attorney and law professor at Georgetown University. Ginsburg was a law professor at Rutgers University and Columbia, then later a federal appeals court judge for 13 years. Theirs was an equal partnership in which Martin Ginsburg was the undisputed master of the kitchen, often baking cakes for the justices맥스카지노 birthdays.
In 1999, Ginsburg had surgery for colon cancer and received radiation and chemotherapy. She had surgery again in 2009 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and in December 2018 to remove cancerous growths on her left lung.
In 2019, doctors treated Ginsburg with radiation for a tumor on her pancreas. She maintained an active schedule even during the three weeks of radiation. When she revealed a recurrence of her cancer in July 2020, this time with lesions on her liver that were treated with chemotherapy every two weeks, Ginsburg said she remained 맥스카지노fully able맥스카지노 to continue as a justice.
She is survived by two children, Jane and James, and several grandchildren.
Her determination was perhaps most evident on the day the court met for the final time in June 2010. Her husband had died a day earlier, and her children told her their father would want her to go to work. The justices filed into the courtroom that Monday, and Ginsburg was there.