The hashtag #RIPRBG has been trending since it was announced that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also known as RBG, died yesterday at the age of 87 in Washington, from complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. Tributes are now pouring in to pay homage to the senior liberal member of the court, a beacon of justice and resistance.
Born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Ginsburg went to Cornell University where she met her future husband Martin Ginsburg. She became a mother before starting law school at Harvard where she was one of nine women in a class of 500 men. As a young woman she went through some hard times, but proved indefatigable: while studying and taking care of her daughter Jane, she also visited her husband who was in hospital after having been diagnosed with cancer and organised his classmates' notes for him to make sure he didn't miss his own work.
When Martin recovered and got a job as a tax lawyer in New York, Ruth transferred to Columbia University. She graduated as one of the top students, but, since no law firm would hire her because she was a woman, she became a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she taught some of the first women and law classes, co-founding the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
She started focusing on gender discrimination and in particular on discrimination against women in the US, and became advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women's rights. Ginsburg proved that gender discrimination was a violation of the constitution's equal protection clause.
In Frontiero V Richardson (1973), Ginsburg argued on behalf of a female Air Force lieutenant denied a housing benefit for her husband that her male colleagues received for their wives. She also worked on cases involving men, like Weinberger V Wiesenfeld (1975), about a young widower who was denied benefits after his wife died in childbirth.
One of her most important cases remains the United States V Virginia (1996) in which she challenged the exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute. She won the case and, since then, the institute has been open to women as well.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and, in August 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
She was the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) in the Supreme Court (only four women have ever been confirmed to the court - Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were both appointed by Barack Obama). Her late husband Marty (he died in 2010) was instrumental in her career since he always supported her choices and championed her appointment at the Supreme Court.
Ginsburg set an example, showing that you can fight for different causes and can do so politely, without being arrogant and aggressive. Throughout the years Ginsburg has indeed charmed also her opponents: in the 2018 "RBG" documentary rightwing senator Orrin Hatch is shown at Ginsburg's confirmation hearings, as he tells her "Frankly, I admire you and you earned the right to be on the supreme court."
She also struck an unlikely friendship with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with whom she shared a passion for the opera, despite their different positions on legal grounds.
Ginsburg believed the most important case tackled by the supreme court was the landmark 2015 ruling that legalised same-sex marriage across all states.
Her strength, fights for justice and passion turned her into a beacon of resistance and an inspiration for many people, especially for a younger generation: young law student Shana Knizhnik created a Tumblr account dedicated to Justice Ginsburg called "Notorious RBG", after the rapper Notorius B.I.G., that Knizhnik and her co-author Irin Carmon then transformed into a book. Ginsburg seemed to like the moniker since, as she stated in interviews, she shared with the rapper quite a few things, first and foremost she was born like him in Brooklyn.
Ginsburg was portrayed by actress Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live and her pop culture icon fame rose, inspiring gadgets, mugs, T-shirts (a favourite of Ginsburg who often gives them to friends as well), action figures, tattoos, children's books and Halloween costumes, among other things.
At the end of last year the National Museum of American Jewish History dedicated to Ginburg the first-ever museum retrospective, "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" , that traced her career and looked up at her legacy via photographs, documents, historical artifacts and contemporary art, but also through the Notorious RBG memes and fan art, such as T-shirts, Giphy stickers and cell phone wallpapers.
Ginsburg appeared this year in the documentary "RBG" (2018) directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, while the early years of her career as a law professor and then with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are recounted in the film "On the Basis of Sex", directed by Mimi Leder and starring Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader and Armie Hammer as Marty Ginsburg (with costumes by Isis Mussenden).
In "RBG" Justice Ginsburg explained the genesis of her jabots that have turned into feminist symbols. As she stated in the documentary, "The standard robe is made for a man because it has a place for the shirt to show and the tie, so Sandra Day O'Connor thought it would be appropriate if we included in our robe something typical of a woman."
The collars were therefore for Justice Ginsburg a statement as they indicated that you don't need to dress like a man to be in this job, you just need to be yourself and be confident.
Ginsburg's favourite collar remained a simple beaded jabot, but in "RBG" she opened her wardrobe and showed many varieties of collars she owned (will they get a dedicated exhibition or be part of a fashion display one day?). At times Justice Ginsburg would also get collars from fans and supporters, like the one she was gifted by the University of Hawaii, made with French lace and decorated with beads from the beach.
She was also known for the special meanings attached to the collars: a collar that was given to her as a gift from the law clerks of court was used to announce majority of opinion, while a black one decorated with large rhinestones was usually donned to show dissent (she wore it during the Hobby Lobby contraception case; the collar has even been recreated in miniature for necklaces and has been turned into a popular pin). For her official Supreme Court portrait in 2018, Ginsburg opted instead for a striking collar of gold feathers sent to her by a fan.
Ginsburg was indefatigable throughout her life: diagnosed with cancer of the colon in 1999 and 10 years later of the pancreas, she was operated, completed her treatment and went back to work. She broke three ribs in a fall in November 2018 and before Christmas of the same year she underwent surgery after malignant nodules were found in her left lung. She continued to work remotely from hospital in 2020, keeping her focus on women's preventive health, abortion, the death penalty and voting rights. She is survived by her children, Jane and James.
Yesterday people gathered on the steps of the US supreme court in Washington to pay tribute to Ginsburg,
Hillary Clinton, who looked up to her as a young woman and chose to study, practice and teach law, stated she was "devastated". Former President Barack Obama stated on his site that she was a "warrior for gender equality", a "relentless litigator and an incisive jurist," adding, "Justice Ginsburg helped us see that discrimination on the basis of sex isn't about an abstract ideal of equality; that it doesn't only harm women; that it has real consequences for all of us. It’s about who we are - and who we can be."
What may happen after Ginsburg's death is scary: U.S. President Donald Trump could indeed replace her with a conservative justice (his latest list of Supreme Court nominees unveiled a few days ago was more political and included three U.S. very conservative Republicans - Arkansas' Tom Cotton, Texas' Ted Cruz and Missouri's Josh Hawley) and the court would shift to the right, a decision that would have dire consequences on a variety of issues, including abortion and LGBTQ rights (since taking office Trump appointed two justices to the court - Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and the latter was confirmed despite allegations of sexual misconduct). Republicans have a small voting majority and, while some Republican senators like Ted Cruz are suggesting they should move fast, Obama asked Republicans to abide by the precedent they set in 2016 and delay the process till after the elections. Former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden agrees as well and suggests that the next president should be elected before Justice Ginsburg's replacement is chosen.
In 2016 Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, coming up with the principle that the Senate shouldn't fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell explained in a statement that Trump's nominee would get a vote in the Senate and, while he didn't explain when, he highlighted he will ignore his own suggestion from 2016, when he stated that confirming a president's supreme court nominee months before a presidential election was inappropriate.
The press reported that, before dying, Ginsburg told her granddaughter this week: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." While we can only hope that her wish will be honoured, we can be confident that her legacy will continue to inspire generations to come.
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