Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1993, has died at the age of 87. The Supreme Court announced her death on Friday, the result of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. In their statement, the Court said the late justice passed away at home, surrounded by family. “Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,†said Chief Justice John Roberts. “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.â€
Before being nominated for the Court by then-President Bill Clinton, becoming the second woman ever to take the bench, Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, which took on hundreds of sex discrimination cases, six of which she argued herself against the Court, in addition to becoming the first female tenured professor at Columbia Law School.
Over the course of her 27-year-tenure as a justice, Ginsburg rose to the level of feminist and pop culture icon, earning the nickname Notorious RBG. Her legacy was further secured by the Oscar-nominated 2018 documentary RBG from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and the 2018 scripted drama On The Basis of Sex, based on Ginsburg’s early work as a litigator, starring Felicity Jones. Meanwhile, Kate McKinnon delivered “Gins-burns†as the justice on Saturday Night Live as recently as this spring. Ginsburg, whose husband Martin passed away in 2010, is survived by her children Jane and James.