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Supreme Court Justice and champion of women’s rights, Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18th due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer. She was 87.
The news of Notorious RBG’s death shook the legal world, where the beloved liberal enjoyed the status of a legendary legal visionary due to her fight for equal rights and her searing intelligence. She was the first female tenured professor at Columbia Law School and the second woman to serve as a justice in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Law schools across the nation are paying tribute to the late justice holding vigils and panel discussion, and at least one has named a faculty chair in her honor.
A collection of hand-written notes, candles, flowers, and posters, have accumulated in the makeshift memorial created by students and admirers at the Harvard Law School where the late justice was a law student from 1956 through 1958 and became the first female member of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
“Justice Ginsburg personified the best of what it meant to be a judge. She brought a deep intellectual and personal integrity to everything she did,” said John F. Manning ’85, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. “Her powerful and unyielding commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice under law place her among the great justices in the annals of the Court. She was also one of the most impactful lawyers of the twentieth century, whose historic work advocating against gender discrimination and for equal rights for all opened doors for countless people and transformed our society. She was an inspiring and courageous human being. We have lost a giant.”
Brooklyn Law School announced on Sunday the creation of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Chair honoring the late justice, who was born in Brooklyn. Susan Herman, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union since 2008 is the inaugural Ruth Bader Ginsburg Professor of Law.
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“RBG has been an inspiration and role model to me, another girl born in Brooklyn who followed her in the ACLU and in law teaching,” Herman told LAW.com. “She taught the world that no path should be closed to anyone on the basis of sex and so many other lessons in law and equality I hope to carry on.”
Columbia Law School, where the late justice graduated in 1959 and was a member of the faculty from 1972 to 1980 is hosting an online session Monday evening for members of the law school community to honor her legacy.
“We are heartbroken by the news that Justice Ginsburg has died,” said Gillian Lester, Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law. “Since 1958, when she arrived at Columbia Law School for her 3L year, Justice Ginsburg made an indelible impact at every turn—first as a star student, then as a trailblazing and dauntless professor and advocate, and finally as a devoted alumna. In Columbia Law School’s long and venerable history, I am hard-pressed to think of an individual who more singularly elevated our collective aspirations.”
Georgetown University Law Center is also holding an online 90-minute remembrance for the late justice at 7 p.m. Monday.
