Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died at the age of 87. The Supreme Court announced her death on Friday, citing the cause as complications from cancer.
Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and she was best known as a champion of women’s rights in the 1970s and throughout her 27 years on the nation’s highest court. She was first diagnosed with cancer in 1999 and underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatment. She was rediagnosed with cancer in 2009 and 2018.
In a statement in July, Ginsburg gave an update on her health writing, “My most recent scan on July 7 indicated significant reduction of the liver lesions and no new disease. I am tolerating chemotherapy well and am encouraged by the success of my current treatment. I will continue bi-weekly chemotherapy to keep my cancer at bay, and am able to maintain an active daily routine. Throughout, I have kept up with opinion writing and all other Court work. I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam. I remain fully able to do that.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sits in her chambers at the Supreme Court on Aug. 7, 2002 in Washington, DC.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in 1993 in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Cornell University for her undergraduate degree and studied law at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School. She started her law career with a clerkship for Judge Edmund Louis Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and later took a job as a professor was at Rutgers Law School.
Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in 1972, and she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976. She won five. These cases varied in subject, from arguing that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should be extended to women, to arguing against laws that set different minimum drinking ages for men and women.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist administers the oath of office to newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as U.S. President Bill Clinton looks on, on Aug. 10, 1993.
In 1993 she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court, where she became known for her sharp, liberal dissents and earned the nickname “The Notorious R.B.G.” While on the bench, she has supported abortion rights, striking down partial-birth laws and laws regulating abortion providers. She also continued her fight against gender discrimination, famously calling for legislation to undo the ruling of Ledbetter v. Goodyear in her dissent — a call that was answered in 2009 with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act under President Barack Obama.
Ginsburg has been the subject of two popular films in recent years. On the Basis of Sex was a 2018 biographical legal drama in which Felicity Jones played Ginsburg during the early and pivotal years of her law career. The second film, RBG was a 2018 documentary following a much broader scope of Ginsburg’s life.
According to NPR, Ginsburg dictated a statement to her granddaughter, Clara Spera, just days before her death saying, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
