Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion for women’s rights whose death ahead of the 2020 election allowed the Supreme Court to become more conservative, will be remembered during ceremonies Friday at the high court.
Ginsburg, who served as a justice for 27 years and was the Supreme Court’s second female member, will be remembered by some of the people who worked for her as law clerks, young lawyers who spend a year at the court working for a justice. The group includes Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s solicitor general, its top Supreme Court lawyer, as well as several judges and professors.
The ceremonies, technically a meeting of the Supreme Court Bar followed by a special session of the court, are a tradition at the high court following the death of a justice, a tradition dating back to 1822. The court will livestream the meeting on its website beginning at 1:45 p.m. EDT.
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.
As an advocate for women’s rights before becoming a judge, Ginsburg won five of the six cases she argued before the high court in the 1970s. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
