The Supreme Court is set to hold ceremonies Friday to remember late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The death of Ginsburg, who’d been a champion of women’s rights and liberal causes, in September of 2020 less than two months before that year’s Presidential elections, opened the door for the Supreme Court’s current 6-3 conservative super-majority.
Ginsburg was a President Clinton appointee who served as a Supreme Court Justice for 27 years. She was the Court’s second female member, after Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor.
On Friday Ginsburg will be remembered by some of those who worked for her as law clerks, including current White House solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar, the Administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer. Several judges and professors are also expected to take part in the ceremonies.
The ceremonies are a tradition in the Court following the death of a Justice dating back to 1822. They involve a meeting of the Supreme Court followed by a special session.
The meeting is scheduled to be live-streamed on the Court’s website starting at 1:45pm Eastern Time. It can be viewed here.
As an attorney who advocated for women’s rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg won five of the six cases she argued before the Supreme Court. After she became a judge Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court in 1993.
The liberal Ginsburg, who died at age 87 of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, was replaced on the Court by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was among the Justices in June 2022 who ruled to overturn Roe v Wade, erasing 50 years of the Constitutional right to abortion.
Ginsburg is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, just outside Washington DC.
