‘A pioneer and champion for progress and gender equality’
JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBERG PRAISED AS ‘A TITAN’ BY ASIAN AMERICAN LEADERS
DEMOCRATIC vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris and the former chairperson of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, have led tributes to US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last Friday (18) aged 87.
Affectionately known as the Notorious RBG, Ginsburg was the oldest of nine Supreme Court judges. She died after battling pancreatic cancer, the court announced, “surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, DC”.
Ginsburg is set to lie in repose for public viewing at the Supreme Court on Wednesday (23) and Thursday (24), and will lie in state on Friday (25) in the national statuary hall of the US Capitol, where an invitationonly ceremony is planned. She will be buried next week in a private ceremony in Arlington, near Washington DC.
Senator Harris, a running mate Biden, was last Sunday (20) in the capital where crowds gathered outside the court to pay homage to the progressive icon.
“RBG was one of my pioneers, an icon, a fighter. She was a woman in every way,” she said.
The previous day, she had tweeted, “Justice Ginsburg was a titan – a relentless defender of justice and a legal mind for the ages.
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“Justice Ginsburg was a relentless defender of justice in our country. She also remained, throughout her life, a proud daughter of Brooklyn, with immigrant roots and a fire lit from an early age as a champion for progress and equality.
“Tonight we mourn, we honor, and we pray for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her family. But we also recommit to fight for her legacy.”
Harris, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which will oversee the confirmation hearings of the new justice, added: “The stakes of this election couldn't be higher. Millions of Americans are counting on us to win and protect the Supreme Court – for their health, for their families, and for their rights.” Also paying tribute was Indian American Nooyi, the former chairwoman and CEO of PepsiCo, who told Forbes: “Women don't belong on pedestals. They don't belong on the sidelines or behind the accomplishments of others. They belong in the ring – fighting.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg dedicated her life's work to this belief, and generations of women past, present, and future are stronger for it. “We lost a genuine heroine, and we shouldn't skirt over how much it hurts. But as we mourn, we must also make sure that our gloves are ready,
so that we can put them back on and fight to keep her legacy alive.”
Coming just days before an election in which US president Donald Trump lags his Democratic rival Biden in the polls, the vacancy offers the Republican party a chance to lock in a conservative majority at the court for decades to come.
Trump said on Monday (21) that he will announce his nominee for the empty court seat at the end of the week, kickstarting a political fight set to upend the already nailbiting US election.
“I will announce it either Friday or Saturday and then the work begins, but hopefully it won't be too much work,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News.
Biden said she was “an American hero, a giant of legal doctrine, and a relentless voice in the pursuit of that highest American ideal: Equal Justice Under Law.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1933, Ginsburg was a law-school star when women didn't study the subject, and a law professor with a powerful impact on the establishment of rights for women and minorities.
Rising from a working-class family in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, Ginsburg overcame hostility toward women in the male-dominated worlds of law school and the legal profession to become just the second woman ever to serve on the ninemember Supreme Court.
Between 1972 and 1978, as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, she argued six cases before the Supreme Court, each time using the US constitution's guarantee of equal rights to chip away at the edifice of sexual discrimination until it completely collapsed.
She was a fierce advocate for women's rights, winning major gender-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court.
In one case she represented a widower who, because he was a man, had been denied survivor benefits from his wife to care for their child. She chose her cases in ways that would attract the sympathy of even the most conservative justices, to educate them about the issues of discrimination.
After being appointed to the top US judicial body by
Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1993, the diminutive dynamo became the court's leading liberal voice.
Her small stature – she stood 5', 1" tall (155 cm) – and her frailty in later years belied an outsize persona and clout.
Ginsburg was a reliable vote in favour of issues including defending abortion rights, expanding gay rights, preserving the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, and advancing the rights of racial minorities, the poor as well as the disenfranchised.
She broadened the equal rights fight to include the LGBT community and also favored environmental protection.
During her final years on the court, Ginsburg became something of a pop icon for American liberals, the subject of the 2018 feature film On the Basis of Sex, the 2018 Academy Award-nominated documentary RBG and sketches on the popular TV show Saturday Night Live – even inspiring an action figure.
Fans called her the ‘Notorious RBG,' inspired by the late American rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks,” Ginsburg said in the documentary, summing up her lifelong work toward gender equality.