Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said of Ginsburg: "Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature. We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her—a tireless and resolute champion of justice."

President Bill Clinton, who nominated Ginsburg to the high court in 1993, described her as the Thurgood Marshall of the women's rights movement. In recent years, Ginsburg also had earned the moniker "Notorious RBG" on social media for her frank comments during numerous public appearances and for pointed dissents that criticized the high court's conservative members for eroding civil liberties.

In a 2014 interview with The National Law Journal, Ginsburg, reflecting on race riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and other race-related disturbances, said recent rulings from the conservative majority on the court had done little to help "a real racial problem" in America.

The high court was "once a leader in the world" in rooting out racial discrimination, Ginsburg said in that interview. "What's amazing is how things have changed."

Her death opens a new front on the battle over the Supreme Court, giving President Donald Trump a new vacancy to fill. Ginsburg drew criticism in the summer of 2016 when she questioned the merits of Trump's candidacy for the White House.

In a 2017 appearance at an event in Chicago, she spoke at length about her career on the Supreme Court and her desire for Congress to get over the "nonsense" of judicial nominations where the voting is on party lines.

Ginsburg seemed to relish her late-in-life celebrity with a much younger generation in particular and used it to warn them of how quickly hard-earned battles against discrimination could be eroded.

She was the subject of a documentary called "RBG" and a movie titled "On the Basis of Sex," both in 2018, as well as numerous books about her for children and adults. During her many public appearances in recent years, she often said gleefully, "everyone wants to take a picture of me."

Her diminutive stature, deliberate speech and even-tempered writing style belied a will that her colleague, Justice Stephen Breyer, once described as "so strong" when Ginsburg took her high court seat the day after cancer took the life of her husband of 56 years, noted tax law scholar Martin Ginsburg, in June 2010.

Throughout her bouts with cancer, Ginsburg maintained an exercise routine and a heavy work schedule at the high court. In November 2014, Ginsburg also underwent a heart catheterization procedure after a blockage was detected in her right coronary artery.

Her bout with cancer changed her perspective on life, Ginsburg said in a 2001 talk. "There is nothing like a cancer bout to make one relish the joys of being alive," she said. "Each thing I do comes with a heightened appreciation that I am able to do it."

Ginsburg had long resisted calls from some on the left to retire during the Obama administration, a move that would have given the president a chance to fill a third seat on the court. "It really has to be, 'Am I equipped to do the job?'" Ginsburg told Reuters in 2013.

Ginsburg's Early Years

Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn in 1933. Her father was a furrier during the Great Depression and her mother, a major influence in her early life, worked in a garment factory. In 1954, Ginsburg graduated at the top of her class at Cornell University, where she met and married Martin Ginsburg.

She put her education on hold for two years while caring for their first child and while her husband spent two years in the military. In 1956, she enrolled in Harvard Law School, one of nine females in a class of 900. That first year, she also cared for her husband who was diagnosed with, and recovered from, testicular cancer. She became the first female member of Harvard Law Review despite facing gender-based discrimination that included criticism for taking a man's spot in the law school.

When her husband graduated from Harvard Law and moved to New York City for a law firm position, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School for her final year. Despite graduating first in her class in 1959, she had difficulty finding clerkships and jobs in law firms because of her gender. She accepted a teaching position at Rutgers University Law School in 1963 and left in 1972 to teach at Columbia. She was the first female professor to earn tenure.

Ginsburg became the first director of the ACLU's women's rights project in the early 1970s. She argued six cases, losing one, before the Supreme Court, and filed 16 amicus briefs in gender cases litigated by others—all steadily advancing the development of the law on gender discrimination to the benefit of men and women.

"How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle," Ginsburg wrote in the 2016 book "My Own Words." "Feminists, caring men among them, had sought just that for generations. Until the late 1960s, however, society was not prepared to heed their plea."

President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where she served from 1981 until 1993. President Clinton named her then to replace Justice Byron White on the Supreme Court.

The Senate confirmed Ginsburg 96-3.

On the High Court

Ginsburg was considered a moderate on the D.C. Circuit. On the Supreme Court, as the court's majority grew increasingly conservative, she would become the most liberal of the justices on the left—more so after departure of Justice John Paul Stevens in 2010.

Neither the style nor the substance of Ginsburg's judging changed over the years. Her strong belief in collegiality tempered her opinion writing and she never raised her voice in anger during arguments or when reading a strong dissent from the bench. It was also reflected in the seemingly incongruous "best friend" relationship with her polar opposite, the late Justice Antonin Scalia who, she said, "makes me laugh." She was the court's fastest writer of opinions, often authoring the first decision of the term.

Ginsburg was not as embracingly warm in public as Justice Sonia Sotomayor, but the outer office of her chambers suggested welcome and comfort. Art from around the world adorned the walls and a comfortable sofa offered respite. A closet housed the jabots that she wore with her black robes, including special ones for when she was reading majority or dissenting opinions from the bench.

In the inner chamber where she worked, the opera music that she loved played in the background. Bookshelves also contained framed photos of family and friends. In several places could be seen the framed Hebrew directive: "Zedek, Zedek, tirdof"—"Justice, Justice shalt thou pursue."

Every spring, Ginsburg hosted a musical recital inside the court that drew such renowned performers as the pianist Lang Lang and opera star Renee Fleming.

On the court, Ginsburg may be remembered most for her writings on women's rights, including her opinion for the majority in United States v. Virginia in 1996, which said the state-run Virginia Military Institute's all-male admissions policy was unconstitutional, and her 2007 dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber, a dispute over gender pay disparity. Congress responded to her call for it to take action by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 to overturn the decision. Ginsburg also was a civil procedure scholar and woe to the lawyer who came before her with a case having a standing or other procedural flaw.

In 2013, she became the first justice to preside over a same-sex marriage.

When the Roberts Court divided 5-4 along ideological lines, Ginsburg was the senior justice in dissent with the authority to assign the main dissenting opinion to herself or another colleague. In that role, she wrote the chief dissents, among others, to the court's decisions in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder (2013), striking down a critical section of the Voting Rights Act, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), freeing corporations with religious owners from the contraceptive insurance requirement of the Affordable Care Act.

In 2015, Ginsburg joined Breyer's dissent in Glossip v. Gross in which they called on the court to reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty.

Refusing Retirement Calls

When some academics and others urged her to retire so that President Barack Obama could appoint a like-minded replacement before he left office, Ginsburg said she would remain as long as she could do the job. In September 2014, she told Elle magazine, "If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court. … So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they're misguided."

Ginsburg's frankness drew harsh criticism when she spoke about then-candidate Donald Trump. In a series of media interviews, she answered questions about Trump, saying, among other comments, "I can't imagine what the country would be" with Trump as president. And, "He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment." She subsequently issued a statement saying: "On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them."

In her National Law Journal interview, Ginsburg said she learned as a D.C. circuit judge not to second-guess her prior decisions. "Don't worry about things that are done; go on to the next case, and give it your all," she said. "Marty used to say the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle; it's the pendulum."

And that is why, despite what she called even the "bleak parts" of the picture of women's progress—women and children comprising the majority of those in poverty; women's earnings trailing men's with comparable training and education; workplace sexual harassment; and domestic violence—she said: "I am optimistic, however, that movement toward enlistment of the talent of all who compose 'We, the people,' will continue."

When asked in a 2015 interview with MSNBC how she would like to be remembered, Ginsburg said:

"Someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has. To do something, as my colleague David Souter would say, outside myself. 'Cause I've gotten much more satisfaction for the things that I've done for which I was not paid."

Ginsburg and her late husband had two children: Jane Ginsburg, a professor at Columbia Law School, and James Ginsburg, head of a Chicago-based classical music recording company. Besides her two children, she is survived by four grandchildren.

A private interment service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery.

Key Majority Opinions

• United States v. Virginia (1996)

"A prime part of the history of our Constitution, historian Richard Morris recounted, is the story of the extension of constitutional rights and protections to people once ignored or excluded. VMI's story continued as our comprehension of 'We the People' expanded. There is no reason to believe that the admission of women capable of all the activities required of VMI cadets would destroy the Institute rather than enhance its capacity to serve the "more perfect union."

• Olmstead v. LC (1999)

"States are required to provide community-based treatment for persons with mental disabilities when the state's treatment professionals determine that such placement is appropriate, the affected persons do not oppose such treatment, and the placement can be reasonably accommodated, taking into account the resources available to the state and the needs of others with mental disabilities."

• Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (2000)

"A defendant's voluntary cessation of allegedly unlawful conduct ordinarily does not suffice to moot a case. Congress has found that civil penalties in the Clean Water Act cases do more than promote immediate compliance … they also deter future violations."

• Kimbrough v. United States (2007)

"We hold that, under Booker, the cocaine Guidelines, like all other Guidelines, are advisory only, and that the Court of Appeals erred in holding the crack/powder disparity effectively mandatory."

• Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010)

"Compliance with Hastings' all-comers policy, we conclude, is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access to the student-organization forum. In requiring CLS—in common with all other student organizations—to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations. CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy. The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization's expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be. But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity."

• Yates v. United States (2015)

"A fish is no doubt an object that is tangible; fish can be seen, caught, and handled, and a catch, as this case illustrates, is vulnerable to destruction. But it would cut §1519 loose from its financial-fraud mooring to hold that it encompasses any and all objects, whatever their size or significance, destroyed with obstructive intent. A tangible object captured by §1519, we hold, must be one used to record or preserve information."

• Daimler AG v. Bauman (2014)

"The question presented is whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes the district court from exercising jurisdiction over Daimler in this case, given the absence of any California connection to the atrocities, perpetrators, or victims described in the complaint. Exercises of personal jurisdiction so exorbitant, we hold, are barred by due process constraints on the assertion of adjudicatory authority."

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com (2020)

"A term styled "generic.com" is a generic name for a class of goods or services only if the term has that meaning to consumers. Consumers, according to lower court determinations un- contested here by the PTO, do not perceive the term 'Booking.com' to signify online hotel-reservation services as a class. In circumstances like those this case presents, a 'generic.com' term is not generic and can be eligible for federal trademark registration."

Ginsburg's 6 Arguments Before the U.S. Supreme Court

>>Duren v. Missouri: Jackson County's automatic exemption of women on request from jury violated the Sixth and 14th amendment guarantees to a trial by a jury chosen from a fair cross section of the community.

>>Kahn v. Shevin: A Florida law that only provides property tax exemptions to widows does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

>>Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld: Gender-based discrimination in the award of benefits to surviving spouses and their children violates the Fifth Amendment due process clause.

>>Edwards v. Healy: Per curiam opinion vacating the judgment of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana and remanding to that court to consider whether in the light of recent changes in the state constitutional, statutory and other rules applicable to the case, the cause—a challenge to the state's exclusion of women from juries unless they filed a written declaration of their desire to serve—became moot.

>>Califano v. Goldfarb: Social Security requirement that to be eligible for benefits under 42 U.S.C. Section 402, a widower must have been receiving half his support from his wife at her time of death, but this requirement, which was not imposed on widows whose husbands had recently passed away, was unconstitutional.