Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer, the Supreme Court said. The court’s oldest sitting justice was 87.
The court said she died Friday evening in her home in Washington.
Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. Ginsburg spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court’s liberal wing and became something of a rock star to her admirers.
Young women especially seemed to embrace the court’s Jewish grandmother, affectionately calling her the Notorious RBG, for her defense of the rights of women and minorities, and the strength and resilience she displayed in the face of personal loss and health crises.
In July, after a recent hospitalization, Ginsburg said her cancer had returned. At the time, a biopsy revealed lesions on her liver. She had gone through five total bouts of the disease.
“I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam," she said in a July 2020 statement. "I remain fully able to do that.”
Ginsburg married her husband, Martin, in 1954, the year she graduated from Cornell University. She attended Harvard University’s law school but transferred to Columbia when her husband took a law job there. Martin Ginsburg went on to become a prominent tax attorney and law professor. Martin Ginsburg died in 2010. She is survived by two children, Jane and James, and several grandchildren.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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