We are mourning the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who for 27 years sat on the United States Supreme Court. Her impact in writing, affirming and advocating primarily the rights of women in a fractious and increasingly conservative judicial arena gave her various monikers, the Notorious B.E.G. is one that I have found to be the most illuminating and endearing, an unlikely “street” moniker for a scholar, a jurist and a lady in every respect.
I will leave you to read about her illustrious career and struggle with cancer in other places. This is a note of commemoration for a public hero of which we have far too few in this decade of our America.
The holder of not only ideas, Justice Ginsburg fashioned the trajectory of theory against which to make judgments at the High Court level to hold people accountable as well as to retread laws and review actions which bound women’s interests against their own fundamental rights. She consistently applied the measuring rod: what does this mean for and in the lives of women?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a sentry at the judicial gate. Sometimes it was a lonely vigil, but she stood at attention in her solitary role, ever vigilant, on duty until the last light left her eyes.
Muriel Tillinghast,
Co-Chair Lucy’s Children*
(Named for the Australopithecus “Lucy” discovered in 1974 by the Johanson Team in Ethiopia, East Africa)
