WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death ahead of the 2020 election led to a conservative shift on the Supreme Court, was remembered Friday during ceremonies at the high court as a legendary champion for women’s rights.
Speaking just two days after what would have been the justice’s 90th birthday, Chief Justice John Roberts called her a “woman of conviction, courage and quiet compassion.”
“Small in stature, she stands as a giant in the history of this court,” Roberts said during a ceremonial session of the court attended by its nine current members as well as former justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.
Ginsburg’s death just over six weeks before the 2020 election was immensely consequential. It allowed then-President Donald Trump to fill the liberal justice’s seat on the court with a conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the bench. Barrett was among the justices who voted last year to overturn Roe v. Wade and do away with constitutional protections for abortion, protections Ginsburg had backed as a justice.
Ginsburg served as a justice for 27 years and was the Supreme Court’s second female member, but as an advocate for women’s rights she had “already used the law to change our country profoundly for the better as an advocate prior to becoming a member of this court,” the chief justice said.
Speaking during ceremonies in the courtroom, Attorney General Merrick Garland called Ginsburg the “chief tactician in the campaign for equal rights for women.” He noted that beginning in 1971 she filed more than 20 Supreme Court briefs related to women’s rights. She argued six cases before the court, winning five. It was a time when there were few women lawyers, and even fewer women arguing before the highest court.
Garland remembered being at the Supreme Court as a law clerk, a young lawyer who works for a justice for a year, when Ginsburg argued. The clerks had been told by their justices that she was “the best advocate we would hear” all year, he said, and “she did not disappoint.”
“Justice Ginsburg was brilliant, courageous and principled. She believed deeply in the capacity of the law to fulfill our country’s fundamental promise of equality,” Garland said.
Ginsburg was also remembered Friday by some of the men and women who were her law clerks. That included Biden administration Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme…