GINSBURG REMEMBERED AS A ‘FIGHTER’
Mourners gather at Supreme Court to pay their respects
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. eulogized Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “rock star” whose legal victories as a crusading lawyer for women’s rights and her decisions over 27 years on the Supreme Court moved the nation closer to the goal of “equal justice under law.”
“Among the words that describe Ruth: Tough. Brave. A fighter. Awinner,” a red-eyed Roberts said during a ceremony in the Supreme Court’s Great
Hall. “But also: Thoughtful. Careful. Compassionate. Honest.”
Dozens of black-clad former clerks lined the steps of the marble building as Supreme Court police officers delivered Ginsburg’s coffin to the Great Hall, where justices traditionally have been remembered.
The brief ceremony presented a snapshot of 2020 at the court. All eight justices — plus retired Justice Anthony Kennedy and Maureen Scalia, the widow of Ginsburg’s friend and fellow Justice Antonin Scalia — wore masks.
The justices dispersed to home offices inmarch when the coronavirus pandemic closed the court, and when
they returned Wednesday they stood apart from one another. Justice Clarence Thomas was to Roberts’s right, and Justice Stephen Breyer, 82 and now the second-longest-serving justice after Thomas, took Ginsburg’s usual spot at the chief justice’s left.
A few family members and close friends gathered for words from Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, whose husband, Ari, is among 159 former clerks who served Ginsburg in her more than 40 years as a justice and an appeals court judge.
Roberts said the loss of the 87-year-old jurist, who died Friday of complications fromcancer, was most heavy on her family, which includes daughter Jane and son James.
“But the court was her family, too,” Roberts said. “This building was her home, too. . . . Ruth is gone, and we grieve.”
Roberts touched on the justice’s famous love of opera.
“It has been said that Ruth wanted to be an opera virtuoso but became a rock star instead,” Roberts said, adding, “She found her stage right behind me in our courtroom.”
As a lawyer in the 1970s, Ginsburg argued six cases in the Supreme Court, helping to chip away and eventually topple the legal wall of gender inequality. Roberts noted that she wrote 483 opinions and dissents in her tenure, a legacy that will “steer the court for decades.”
The chief justice, aman a generation younger than Ginsburg who attended Harvard Law School with her daughter, said the justice’s life was “one of the versions of the American Dream.”
Ginsburg’s father was an immigrant, and she used to say her mother was conceived in the Old World and born in the New World. She had worked as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn.
“Ruth used to ask, ‘What is the difference between a bookkeeper in Brooklyn and a Supreme Court justice?’” Roberts said. “Her answer: ‘One generation.’”
After the ceremony inside the court, Ginsburg’s flag-draped coffin was moved to the court’s portico, where it will remain for two days of public viewing.
The White House said President Donald Trump will visit today. On Friday, Ginsburg will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman to receive the honor.
There, political maneuvering to replace Ginsburg is well under way; Trump has said he will nominate a woman to take her place, while Democrats call it unfair to make such a replacement when voting in the presidential election already has begun.
But it was somber and quiet in front of the Supreme Court, often the scene of loud demonstrations when the justices are hearing a particularly controversial issue.
While in the recent past, justices have lain in repose for one day, the extraordinary services planned for Ginsburg recognize the importance of only the second woman to serve on the high court and one who, in her 80s, became something of a cultural icon.
Her coffin was placed on the Lincoln catafalque, built for President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin in 1865, and surrounded by an arrangement of the justice’s favorite flowers, including white hydrangea, freesia and white tea roses.
By 11:30 a.m., hundreds of people — families and couples and groups of friends of all ages— stood in line, wearing hats and masks and RBG shirts, waiting for their chance at a brief stroll in front of the coffin.
The entire block of East Capitol Street between 1st and 2nd streets, which was cordoned off with metal gates for the winding line, was packed. The line of people spilled onto the sidewalk down 2nd Street, stretching all the way to the far corner of the back parking lot of the Library of Congress.
Some had been waiting for hours. By dawn Wednesday, a dozen people were already waiting. Four of them had spent the night outside the court, dozing on camping chairs.
“She’s touched every aspect of our lives,” said Mary Migues-jordan, a 55-yearold attorney from Maryland who was the first in line beside her wife, Vicki. They arrived at 9:45 Tuesday night. “People keep asking me if I’m OK, because they know how much she means to me.”
Behind them, the line grew as the sun rose, with lawyers, college students, a Coast Guard officer and a counselor settling in on the sidewalk. They came from as far as Vermont and Louisiana, flying and driving all night to be here for this moment.
“When I was a younger man, I waited out all night for concert tickets,” said Doug Smith, 53, who had arrived from Pennsylvania at 10 p.m. with his daughter. “And this woman is a definition of a rock star. So yeah, waiting out all night for her? I can do that.”
“The impact she’s had on my wife and my daughters, there’s just no way to envision what their lives would be like without the work of Justice Ginsburg,” he said. “I could not not be here. I had to come down and pay my respects.”
Judi Lecompte, 62, watched the Supremecourt from across the street with her 11-year old granddaughter, Gianna, who days ago said she did not know who Ginsburg was. That was enough to motivate Lecompte to be here, and make sure her granddaughter came too.
As they waited, Lecompte explained to her granddaughter how Ginsburg graduated at the top of her class and still had trouble finding a job at a law firm, how she began her career at a time when wives were expected to take care of the children and cook for their husbands.
“Justice Ginsburg’s husband said no, you want to become a lawyer? Go become a lawyer,” Lecompte told her granddaughter. “And he stood beside her every step of the way.”
While Gianna was learning about Ginsburg for the first time, 10-year-old Averie Hyde was near the front of the line, soon to be one of the first to say goodbye to the justice. She and her mother, 33-year-old Cathleen Hyde, were wearing matching lace collar shirts.
They booked their flights from Baton Rouge, La., the day after Ginsburg’s death, hoping there would be a memorial service in the District of Columbia this week.
“She was just cool,” Averie said, wearing a rainbow LGBTQ pride hat. Her mom hoped saying goodbye to Ginsburg would give them both a sense of peace and closure.
“It’s kind of the last opportunity to pay that respect,” she said. “I just hope it can be an opportunity for that, to make it about her and not the politics.”
The viewing resumes today at 8:30 a.m.