U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at 87 of metastatic pancreatic cancer, according to the court. She was the oldest sitting member.
Chief Justice John Roberts mourned Ginsburg’s passing. “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,” Roberts said in a statement.
Ginsburg had announced in July that she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lesions on her liver, the latest of her several battles with cancer.
Born Joan Ruth Bader on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, she was the youngest of two children to Nathan and Celia Bader. It was when Ginsburg was in kindergarten that she decided to go by her middle name Ruth, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Ginsburg grew up in a low-income, working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, where her father worked as a merchant and her mother worked at a clothing factory. Her older sister, Marilyn, died of meningitis when Ginsburg was only a baby.
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