YOU'R HONORED RBG’s final trip to Supreme Court
Chief Justice John Roberts remembered Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “rock star” on Wednesday before a private ceremony for the feminist icon and liberal stalwart who served 27 years on the Supreme Court until her death on Friday.
“It has been said that Ruth wanted to be an opera virtuoso but became a rock star instead. But she chose the law. Subjected to discrimination in law school and the job market because she was a woman, Ruth would grow to become the leading advocate fighting such discrimination in court,” Roberts said during the ceremony in the Great Hall attended by family and friends and the remaining eight justices.
“She was not an opera star, but she found her stage right behind me in our courtroom,” Roberts added of the jurist many knew by her rap-inspired nickname, “Notorious RBG.”
Roberts said Ginsburg’s passing “weighed heavily on her family but the court was her family, too. This building was her home, too.”
“Of course, she will live on and what she did to improve the law and the lives of all of us, and yet still, Ruth is gone. And we grieve,” he said.
Roberts said the late justice helped to move the nation “closer to equal justice under law.”
“Later, she became a star on the bench, where she sat for 27 years. Her 483 majority concurring and dissenting opinions will steer the court for decades,” he said.
“They are written with the unaffected grace of precision. Her voice in court and in our conference room was soft. But when she spoke, people listened. Among the words that best describe Ruth: brave, a fighter, a winner but also thoughtful, careful, compassionate, honest. When it came to opera, insightful, passionate; when it came to sports, clueless,” he quipped.
He also talked about the 87-yearold Ginsburg’s struggles with serious illness and said she faced those challenges with “candid assessment and fierce determination.”
“In doing so, she encouraged others who have their own battles with illness, including employees here in the court,” he said. “And she emerged victorious, time and again, against all odds. But finally the odds won out. And now Ruth has left us.”
Scores of Ginsburg’s former law clerks, serving as honorary pallbearers, stood on the steps of the Supreme Court to receive her flagdraped casket as she returned for the last time to the building, where she will lie in repose through Thursday so the public can pay their respects.
Heather Setzler told The Associated Press that she left Raleigh, NC, at 1 a.m. to travel to Washington so she could be at the court. “There was just something about her. She was so diminutive yet turned out to be such a giant,” said Setzler, a physician’s assistant, who wore a face mask adorned with small portraits of Ginsburg.
President Trump is expected to pay his respects on Thursday, according to the White House.
On Friday, Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, will lie in state in the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol.
A formal ceremony will also be held Friday, but it is being restricted to invited guests because of the coronavirus pandemic.
She will be interred next to her husband, Martin, at Arlington National
Cemetery during a private ceremony next week.
Roberts and the other justices were on hand in the Great Hall when Ginsburg’s casket arrived at the court and was carried up the steps by Supreme Court police.
A 2016 portrait of the beloved jurist was also on display.
Her death has sparked a ferocious fight over her replacement in an election year.
Trump said he will announce his nominee at the White House on Saturday, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to bring a vote to the floor.
Democrats are incensed because McConnell, for 11 months, did not allow a vote in 2016 on Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, saying that he wanted to wait until after the election.
‘Of course she will live on and what she did to improve the law and the lives of all of us, and yet still, Ruth is gone. And we grieve.’
— Chief Justice John Roberts (left)