Ruth Bader Ginsburg: disappearance of an American heroine and feminist icon

It was one of the last progressive ramparts within the highest American judicial body.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, has died at the age of 87.

The judge, who has become an icon on the left - and described by the press as "American heroine" - died of pancreatic cancer on Friday.

Shortly before her death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or "RBG" as she had been nicknamed, had herself confided her last wishes to her granddaughter, Clara Spera, according to NPR radio.

“My dearest wish is not to be replaced until a new president is sworn in,” she told him a few days before her death.

For decades, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had indeed been committed to causes quite opposite to those of Donald Trump and part of his camp.

Long before her appointment to the Supreme Court, the judge notably distinguished herself in her fight for equality between men and women.

"A force creating consensus"

A struggle with a well-established strategy: during her career as a lawyer, she has long defended women victims of discrimination, especially in the world of work.

But not only: before the Supreme Court, in 1975, she notably defended the rights of a widower of an American soldier, who had been deprived of a pension after the death of his wife, and who had to take care of alone of their child.

The goal?

Underline the absurdity of gendered conceptions of parenthood, stressing that parenting responsibilities fell to both fathers and mothers within the family framework.

It was this ability to balance debate that brought this prestigious Columbia University graduate (also past Harvard and Cornell) across the court in 1993. “I believe in the years to come. , it will be able to be a force creating consensus at the Supreme Court, in the same way it did at the Court of Appeal, ”then defended Democratic President Bill Clinton, who had chosen her .

At the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg continued her advocacy work, slowly but surely, in the face of a Supreme Court often dominated by a male and conservative camp.

In 1996, she convinced the court to force the Virginia Military Institute, a military school, to admit women, something it prohibited in its regulations, believing that women could not attain such remarkable physical conditions as men.

"Generalizations about 'the way women are', judgments about what is appropriate for women, no longer justify denying opportunities to women whose talents and abilities place them above of the standard, ”she said when delivering the verdict.

A "little woman" facing the greats of the Court

In the 2000s, on the other hand, the workload became heavier to bear, for this skinny little woman with fragile health (she overcame colon cancer in 1999, pancreatic cancer in 2009, and had discovered two lung tumors in 2018).

“The image the audience had when they entered the courtroom was eight men of a certain height, and this little woman, sitting on the side.

It was not a good image for the public, ”she recalled in an interview with the New Republic site.

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Faced with a Supreme Court increasingly making decisions that she said were going in the wrong direction, Ruth Bader Ginsburg turned to the press, and the public, to express her views directly.

A decision calling into question a very specific medical abortion procedure called into question?

She judges it based on dated and “anti-abortion” conceptions.

The Supreme Court rejects the complaint of an employee considering herself the victim of wage discrimination against the men of her company?

She speaks again, and even influences the course of the law: in 2009, Barack Obama signed the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act", named after the complainant, which endorsed equal pay between men and women in United States.

"How fortunate I was to be alive and be a lawyer, when, for the first time in the history of the United States, it became possible to successfully advocate before legislatures and courts. , in favor of equality of citizenship for women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle ”, she marveled in her book“ My Own Words ”, published in 2016.

Pop culture figure

Ruth Bader Ginsburg also strongly marked the world of culture, especially after 2015, when the logo "Notorious RBG" (a reference to the rapper Notorious BIG) featuring her with her large glasses, her famous collar and adorned with a crown, s is popularized on social media and on many t-shirts and other accessories.

A logo then reproduced in a documentary entitled "RBG", broadcast in 2018. A few months later, the film "Une femme d'exception", retraced her career as a student and then as a lawyer, years during which she began to forge her feminist convictions.

Works that establish the “RBG” phenomenon in “pop culture”, especially among younger audiences.

No no no no noooo 😭😭😭 RIP Queen, you fought until your very last breath 💔 #NotoriousRBG pic.twitter.com/eLf7DMIhee

- Liz (@elizabethluis) September 18, 2020

Hundreds of people have already come to pay their respects by laying flowers and candles in front of the headquarters of the Supreme Court in Washington.

In an eventful context, a few months before the next presidential election in the United States, the disappearance of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is shocking - and triggers an effect of electroshock.

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But the tribute risks being quickly swept aside by political concerns.

While Joe Biden has previously made it known that "voters must choose the president, and the president must then nominate a Senate judge," Donald Trump, who has already made up a preselection of conservative judges, should try to replace the icon before the next election.

If it succeeds, the Supreme Court would therefore lose a major place in the camp of the Liberals, which would be held by only three votes out of the nine at its head.

Enough to undermine the long work and the committed legacy of this great feminist figure.