Half-Staff Notice: Death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg
In accordance with the US Flag Code, 4 U.S. Code § 7. Position and manner of display (m), the Flag of the United States and all subordinate government agencies shall be placed at half-staff from the day of death until the day of interment of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, unless modified by the President or the governor of a state.
The American Legion recommends for a flag which cannot be lowered, such as on a staff in an office or church, or a gaff from a porch or boat, that a black ribbon the width of one stripe and the length of the flag be affixed to the peak. For flags displayed flat, they recommend a black bow in the centre of the flag, or three black bows across the top.
She was the second woman appointed to the High Court, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, after being appointed to the DC Court of Appeals by President Jimmy Carter.
After law school, she became the first female tenured professor in the history of Columbia University Law School. She started at the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. She was the first Supreme Court pick by Democrats in over twenty-five years.
At the ACLU, Ginsburg became a leading practitioner before the Supreme Court, planning and arguing sex-discrimination cases that cumulatively established for the first time that discrimination against women was banned by the Constitution’s equal-protection clause. She argued six women’s rights cases before the High Court, winning five.
She sometimes represented men to advance the cause of women’s equal rights. In an early case, she successfully represented a female Air Force 1st Lieutenant who was denied housing and medical benefits automatically given to wives of military men. In another case, she successfully represented a man who was denied Social Security Survivor’s benefits after his wife died in childbirth, leaving him to raise an infant. She wrote the 7-1 decision ending male-only admissions at the state-funded Virginia Military Institute.
She was preceded in death by her husband Martin, who passed away in 2010, and her parents. She is survived by her two children Jane and James.