Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, due to complications from cancer.
She was a left-leaning Associate Justice on the Supreme Court for nearly three decades and a pop culture icon.
Here's how she became one of the most important legal influences of her time.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, due to complications from cancer. She was 87.
The Supreme Court confirmed her death in a statement at the time, in which Chief Justice John Roberts described Ginsburg as a "jurist of historic nature" and he and his colleagues at the Supreme Court "have lost a cherished colleague."
"Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her — a tireless and resolute champion of justice," Roberts continued.
She spent decades as a trailblazer in gender equality law before she became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court — and a pop culture icon.
She was on the nation's highest court for nearly 30 years, ever since she took her oath on August 10, 1993.
Here's how the daughter of an immigrant in the fur business became one of the most important legal influences of her time.
Joan Ruth Bader was born in 1933 in Brooklyn.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
She became known by her middle name because there were too many "Joans" in her elementary school.
The law dean reportedly invited the nine female students in the class to dinner and asked, "How do you justify taking a spot from a qualified man?"
Jose Luis Magana/AP
Ginsburg said she gave "the answer he expected": "My husband is a second-year law student, and it's important for a woman to understand her husband's work."
Meanwhile, Ginsburg had won a seat on the Harvard Law Review.
Steven Senne/AP
She was also caring for her young baby and for Martin after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer — even attending his classes and writing his papers.
She accepted a courtship with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and, after two years, began working at Columbia Law's Project on International Procedure.
At that time, gender issues were seen as unimportant, and studying them could hamper a woman's career.
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"The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished," Ginsburg told The New York Times in 2015. "It was considered frivolous."
And, through her know-how in gender equality law, she founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and began arguing cases on discrimination before the US Supreme Court.
One landmark case Ginsburg argued before the Supreme Court involved a county in Missouri that allowed women to opt out of jury duty on request.
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That meant women comprised less than 15% of jurors in that county. Ginsburg argued that this violated the Sixth Amendment, and also implied that this meant that women jurors were less valuable than male opinions. Her arguments led to a vote in her favor by 8-1.
Some of Ginsburg's landmark opinions as a justice included her opinion written on the insider trading case of United States v. O'Hagan and male-only admissions at the Virginia Military Institute.
By 2014, at which point she was in her early 80s, Ginsburg had become a pop culture icon — taking on the nickname Notorious R.B.G.A young child dressed up as R.B.G.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
"People really find her politics powerful," Shana Knizhnik, the creator of the Notorious RGB blog, said.Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in March.
Allison Shelley/Getty
"She's standing up to the conservative majority, who also happen to be men," Knizhnik continued. "She is an image of feminist rebellion, while still being a demure, quiet person in real life."
Ginsburg's policies aren't the only thing her devotees admire her for — they even try to follow her workouts, which are one hour long and involve push-ups, planks, and squats.
Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer. She was 87.Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in October 2019.
Erin Clark for The Boston Globe via Getty
Ginsburg had several types of cancer over the last 20 years. She had been hospitalized several times in 2020 and was undergoing treatment for metastatic pancreas cancer.
She was public about her medical condition, though Supreme Court justices are not required to share details about their health.
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