The Times: Ruth Bader Ginsburg obituary

Pioneering US Supreme Court justice who championed gender equality and achieved celebrity status as the Notorious RBG

Bader Ginsburg at a Women’s History Month event in Washington DC in 2015

ALLISON SHELLEY/GETTY IMAGES

Whenever Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell ill, liberal America held its breath. To many it was Bader Ginsburg, the 107th justice of the Supreme Court and something of a judicial celebrity, who was the voice of reason in a nation divided on ideological grounds, with her cautious words and constant attempts to build a consensus no matter who was involved.

On abortion she declared that “the government has no business making that choice for a woman”; on the death penalty she declined to answer questions during her confirmation hearings lest she should need to vote on the matter in the future; on gender equality she was credited with helping to inspire legislation on fair pay; and on the right to bear arms she argued that the Second Amendment applied to a time when states needed to keep militias to preserve the new nation and therefore in modern times “its function has become obsolete”.

Yet her views were often more nuanced than the headlines would suggest. In the case of Roe v Wade, which legalised abortion in the US, she was critical of the Supreme Court’s decision, delivered on the basis of privacy rather than sex discrimination, claiming that it “presented an incomplete justification for [the court’s] ruling” and stored up trouble for the future. Unlike many of her more parochial colleagues, Bader Ginsburg was happy to consider foreign interpretations of law, both for their persuasive value and their wisdom.

Whether on pay or opportunities, Bader Ginsburg would use the words of the US constitution to challenge gender roles that had been enshrined in law, and she applied the same standards to the military as she did to civilian employers. In one of her most significant cases involving the army she struck down a men-only admissions policy at Virginia Military Institute, writing in the majority ruling that no law or policy should deny women “full citizenship stature — equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities”.

As public discourse grew increasingly ill tempered in the 21st century, Bader Ginsburg was something of a lone voice in her calls for moderation, urging those who disagreed with court judgments to resist describing them as “outrageous”, “inexplicable” or “Orwellian”. Yet she could be unsparing in her own dissents. When the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v Holder (2013) that America had changed so much for the better that states and counties no longer needed federal clearance before changing local voting laws, a move introduced in 1965 to prevent voter suppression, she famously denounced her colleagues’ judgment as “like throwing out your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”.

Full article: Ruth Bader Ginsburg obituary