Ruth Bader Ginsburg RIP

The worst possible news.
This is a huge loss for the U.S. justice system and for us all.
Such a valiant and remarkable woman, a great role model. So sad!

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court’s Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87
The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg’s pointed and powerful dissenting opinions earned her late-life rock stardom.
(NYT) Justice Ginsburg’s pointed and powerful dissenting opinions, usually speaking for all four, attracted growing attention as the court turned further to the right. A law student, Shana Knizhnik, anointed her the Notorious R.B.G., a play on the name of the Notorious B.I.G., a famous rapper who was Brooklyn-born, like the justice. Soon the name, and Justice Ginsburg’s image — her expression serene yet severe, a frilly lace collar adorning her black judicial robe, her eyes framed by oversize glasses and a gold crown perched at a rakish angle on her head — became an internet sensation.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87
(NPR) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas.
The court, in a statement, said Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, D.C., surrounded by family. She was 87.
“Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “We 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.”

Beryl Wajsman‘s eloquent tribute: GINSBURG’S GONE: ‘THE LAST OF THE JUST’
United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died tonight. It is hard to divorce the fact of her death from the time of her death. We may have witnessed the passing of the ‘last of the just.’ And that is not just a dramatic use of words.
She died almost to the moment that the Jewish New Year began. The ten days that start tonight and run through the Day of Atonement, are called the Days of Awe. Jewish mystical and metaphysical traditions teach that the most just and righteous souls are called to their rest as they near the end of their physical existence on the eve of these days as a mark of tribute. …
France’s Nobel-nominated author André Schwartz-Bart called his greatest work ‘The Last of the Just’ about just such a person. In it, he quotes the following mystical teaching. “And it is known that some just souls remain forever so inconsolable at human suffering, that God Himself cannot warm them.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was inconsolable to human suffering. Yet she channeled that inconsolability into a righteous anger determined to obtain justice for those who could not do so for themselves. She fought for all the lost causes because she knew they were the only ones worth fighting for. She expanded liberty and equality. And in so doing she made all our lives better by ‘gentling the condition.’ That, in the end, is the central determinant of the just and the righteous. They have compassion. Simple human decency. And they have courage. That’s all it really takes. When will others learn how easy it is to be righteous? Let us hope Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not the last of the just.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Lace Collar Wasn’t an Accessory, It Was a Gauntlet
Also, a signature. And a symbol, with all sorts of meanings woven into each choice.
In 2014, the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the pioneering legal mind and advocate for equal treatment of the sexes who died on Friday, did something that probably none of her male colleagues were ever asked to do: she gave a tour of her office closet. Opening the imposing wood doors of her wardrobe, the Justice revealed, on one side, the long black robes of the court, and on the other — taking up more than half the hanger space — her extensive collection of elaborate collars. She had them, she said, “from all over the world.” She had them for every occasion, and for every kind of opinion of the court.

‘A Titan of Justice’: Leaders React to Ginsburg’s Death
“Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said.
Hillary Clinton, who was the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and whose husband, former President Bill Clinton, nominated the justice to the court, said on Twitter that Justice Ginsburg had “paved the way for so many women, including me.”
“There will never be another like her,” she added. “Thank you RBG.”
Mr. Clinton called her “one of the most extraordinary justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court.”
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life and landmark opinions moved us closer to a more perfect union,” he wrote on Twitter. “And her powerful dissents reminded us that we walk away from our Constitution’s promise at our peril.”
Former President Jimmy Carter called Justice Ginsburg a “powerful legal mind and a staunch advocate for gender equality” and said she was a “beacon of justice during her long and remarkable career.”
Mr. Schumer wrote: “Tonight, we mourn the passing of a giant in American history, a champion for justice, a trailblazer for women. She would want us all to fight as hard as we can to preserve her legacy.”
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a former Democratic presidential candidate, said that Justice Ginsburg had been “an extraordinary champion of justice and equal rights, and will be remembered as one of the great justices in modern American history.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar, a former prosecutor, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former presidential Democratic candidate, said of the justice on Twitter: “An icon. A hero. A woman way ahead of her time.”
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who also mounted a presidential campaign, called Justice Ginsburg “a titan of justice” whose “jurisprudence expanded the rights of all Americans, shaping our lives for the better.”
Former President George W. Bush, a Republican, said in a statement that the justice had “loved our country.”
“She dedicated many of her 87 remarkable years to the pursuit of justice and equality, and she inspired more than one generation of women and girls,” he said.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina and close ally of President Trump, called the justice “a trailblazer who possessed tremendous passion for her causes.”
And Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, called the justice “a credit to the Court.”
“I disagreed with many of her decisions,” he wrote on Twitter, “but they were all well reasoned and well argued.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the flags at the U.S. Capitol to be flown at half-staff.

Barack Obama: My Statement on the Passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
…for nearly three decades, as the second woman ever to sit on the highest court in the land, she was a warrior for gender equality — someone who believed that equal justice under law only had meaning if it applied to every single American.
Over a long career on both sides of the bench — as a relentless litigator and an incisive jurist — 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.
Justice Ginsburg inspired the generations who followed her, from the tiniest trick-or-treaters to law students burning the midnight oil to the most powerful leaders in the land. Michelle and I admired her greatly, we’re profoundly thankful for the legacy she left this country, and we offer our gratitude and our condolences to her children and grandchildren tonight.