Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion of Women, Dead at 87
Ruth Bader Ginsburg—Supreme Court justice, feminist, towering intellectual, pop culture icon—died on Friday, September 18. She was 87 years old.
Ginsburg was the second woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court, after being appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. She was also the first Jewish woman to serve on the court. As a justice, Ginsburg was celebrated for her powerful arguments, brilliant writing, and passionate defense of the defenseless. She wrote court opinions and dissents on notable cases, including ones concerning gender discrimination, the rights of people with mental illness, and voting rights, long before she attained status in popular culture as a diminutive icon of fairness and decency.
The Supreme Court shared that her death was due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer. She had previously survived colon cancer. In all, her struggles with cancer lasted over 20 years. Nevertheless, she was known, into her ’80s, for her intense fitness routines. When she was hospitalized, which was not infrequent in the last decades of her career, she sometimes worked from her hospital bed.
The justice—known to her fans as the Notorious RBG, or just RBG—served as a symbol that strength and might are not determined by size, or gender, or anything much other than grit. One of the few women in her law school class, she faced outright gender discrimination when looking for jobs after graduating, turning her focus to women’s rights. Frequently belittled by authority figures, rejected for jobs despite her qualifications, and intentionally underpaid, she went on to co-found the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU. Her career as both a lawyer and, ultimately, a Supreme Court justice were characterized by her strong defense of women’s rights.
Known as a moderate judge early in her career, she became a hero to Democrats not long after she ascended to the highest bench. Her style was characterized by incisive questions and later, fiery dissents, written in the strongest of language, objecting to rulings by the court that she found unjust. She was a fierce supporter of equal pay, access to abortion, and same sex marriage. “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made,” she said. She liked to tell people: “When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, ‘When there are nine.’ ”
In a statement Ginsburg dictated to her granddaughter, Clara Spera, in the week before her death, she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” The vacancy on the court is likely to inspire a massive power struggle between Democrats and Republicans.
In her personal life, Ginsburg was a lover of opera, a friend to her fellow justices (notably, even the ones who were her political opposites), a mother and a grandmother, and a talented accessorizer. Her devotion to fairly interpreting the Constitution meant that she never experienced retirement but that we benefited from her work every day.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a legend among women and among Americans. We will think of her when we raise our hands in crowded classrooms, when we advocate for ourselves in job negotiations, when we lift up the silenced and ignored in our communities, and when we fill out our ballots.
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
