Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a judge who became a pop icon and maintained a conservative advance on the US Supreme Court, has died.

Ginsberg’s death will spark a political battle over who will succeed him, putting the future of the Supreme Court on the agenda for the November presidential race.

Since taking office, Donald Trump has appointed two justices to the Supreme Court, and the current lineup appeared to have a conservative 5-4 majority in most cases.

With the death, Ginsburg supporters worry about the possibility of a conservative successor or successor.

RGB, as it became popularly known, became a reference for American liberals and also a pop icon.

His story was portrayed in books and movies and his image appears on T-shirts and coffee mugs. At Halloween parties, children, adults and even animals dress up like her.

Short stature, serious demeanor, and long pauses in speech became trademarks of the judge.

“I think people of all ages are delighted to see a woman in public life who has shown that, even at 85, she can be unwavering in her commitment to equality and justice,” said Irin Carmon, a from the authors of Notorious RBG, book on the life of the judge. “We don’t have many figures like her.”

How did a legal personality become so popular outside the courts?

Joan Ruth Bader was born in the Flatbush district of Brooklyn, New York, in 1933 to Jewish immigrant parents.

After graduating from Cornell University in 1954, she married Marty Ginsburg and, shortly after, had their first child.

While pregnant, she was “demoted” at work, in a welfare office. The fact that her salary was reduced at the time, discrimination against pregnant women was still legal in the 1950s, led her to hide her second pregnancy years later.

In 1956, she became one of nine women enrolled in Harvard Law School, where, in an episode that would later become famous, the dean taunted the students by asking them to justify the fact that they “took the place.” it would be for the men in the institution.

Later, Ginsburg transferred the course to Columbia Law School in New York and became the first woman to work on law reviews at both universities.

She graduated from law and despite being the best in her class, she struggled to get a job.

“No law firm in New York would hire me,” he once said. “I was a Jew, a woman and a mother.”

She ended up becoming a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1963, where she taught some of the first classes on women and law, and was a co-founder of the women’s rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1973, she became a general counsel for that organization, which began a productive period of work on gender discrimination cases, six of which brought her before the United States Supreme Court.

He won five of the cases he defended at the time, including that of a man claiming his late wife’s pension after giving birth. It was also around this time that he worked on the case of an Air Force captain who had become pregnant and had been told to choose between aborting the baby or losing her job.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

He earned a reputation as a centrist, with positions sometimes closer to conservatives, for example when he refused to hear the discrimination case of a soldier who said he was released from the Navy for being gay.

President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court in 1993 after a lengthy selection process.

Ginsburg became the second woman nominated to the highest court in the United States.

One of the most important cases in which he participated in court was the so-called United States versus Virginia, which overturned the policy of admitting only men to the Virginia Military Institute.

Explaining her decision, Ginsburg argued that no law or policy should deny women “full citizenship, the same opportunity to aspire to, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and abilities.”

As the Court became more conservative, Ginsburg moved more and more to the left, becoming famous for his fierce differences of opinion with the rest of the justices.

It was a position that made him so well known that a young law student named Shana Knizhnik created a Tumblr account dedicated to Ginsburg called Notorious RBG, a reference to the late rapper The Notorious BIG.

The account reintroduced Ginsburg to a new generation of young feminists and became so popular that Knizhnik and Carmon, a co-author of the blog, turned it into a book of the same name, which became a best seller.

“I think this is something that has really pleased the judge in recent years,” said Schiff Berman, who was working for Ginsburg at the time.

“For her, it is very exciting to feel that her legacy can inspire a new generation of women, especially the young,” she adds.

The internet focused on various aspects of Ginsburg’s life, professional or not.

The judge’s intense workout routine was one of those themes: In one setting on her TV show, comedian Stephen Colbert even walked her into the gym and trained with her.

RBG was also renowned for its style, from its penchant for lace gloves to its elaborate frills, the collars he wore over the tunics, including his famous “divergence collar”, which he wore in some of the cases where he disagreed with the majority.

However, the judge was not immune to criticism or mistakes.

During the 2016 election, he called then-candidate Donald Trump “fake” and said he couldn’t even imagine a world in which he was president of the United States.

“He says whatever comes to mind right now, he’s really self-centered,” Ginsburg told CNN.

His statements were criticized by both the right and the left, who argued that such comments could compromise his impartiality and authority in court.

RBG ended up apologizing.

During President Barack Obama’s two terms, some experts questioned whether it was time for Ginsburg to step down at the time, with a Democrat in power, allowing another liberal judge to enter court.

She received the appeals with some irritation.

“Many people have asked me, ‘When are you going to quit?’

RBG has had health problems for the past decade: In 2018, he broke his ribs, and in 2014, he underwent heart surgery. Her first diagnosis of pancreatic cancer came in 2009. Still, she never missed a day of arguments in court.

“She always comes back with more determination and stamina. She has been in this job for at least half a century and it is not done yet,” she said in 2018, when Judge Irin Carmon broke her rib.

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