Thousands of people are expected to pay their respects outside the US supreme court on Wednesday to the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the women’s rights champion, leader of the court’s liberal bloc and feminist icon who died last Friday evening.
Even with the court closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic and Washington already consumed with talk of Ginsburg’s replacement, the justice’s former colleagues, family, close friends and the public will have the chance Wednesday and Thursday to pass by the casket of the second woman to serve on the supreme court.
The sad occasion is expected to bring together the remaining eight justices for the first time since the building was closed in March and they resorted to meetings by telephone and online.
Politics are unlikely to be absent, as her death so close to the presidential election has thrown America into partisan turmoil, with the Republicans determined to rush a replacement through even before the election on 3 November, as Democrats cry hypocrisy and treachery after the Republican-led Senate blocked a nominee of Barack Obama’s several months out from the 2016 election, claiming it was too close to the vote.
Ginsburg will lie in repose for two days at the court where she served for 27 years and, before that, argued six cases for gender equality in the 1970s.
Following a private ceremony Wednesday in the court’s Great Hall, her casket will be moved outside the building to the top of the court’s front steps so that public mourners can pay their respects in line with public health guidance for the pandemic.
Since her death Friday evening, people have been leaving flowers, notes, placards and all manner of Ginsburg paraphernalia outside the court in tribute to the woman who became nicknamed in popular culture in her final years as the “Notorious RBG”.
Court workers cleared away the items and cleaned the court plaza and sidewalk in advance of Wednesday’s ceremony.
Following past practice at the tradition-laden court, Ginsburg’s casket is expected to arrive just before 9.30am local time on Wednesday, the court said.
Supreme court police will carry it up the court steps, which will be lined by former Ginsburg law clerks serving as honorary pallbearers.
Chief justice John Roberts and the other justices will be in the Great Hall when the casket arrives and is placed on the Lincoln Catafalque, the platform on which Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested in the Capitol rotunda in 1865.
A 2016 portrait of Ginsburg by artist Constance Beaty will be displayed nearby.
It’s unclear whether Donald Trump would visit the court before he leaves town on Wednesday afternoon, though he did pay respects when justice John Paul Stevens died last year and Barack Obama visited the court after renowned conservative justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016.
The entrance to the courtroom, along with Ginsburg’s chair and place on the bench next to Roberts, have been draped in black, a longstanding court custom.
These visual signs of mourning, which in years past have reinforced the sense of loss, will largely go unseen this year.
The court begins its new term 5 October, but the justices will not be in the courtroom and instead will hear arguments by phone.
After the private ceremony inside the court, Ginsburg’s casket will be on public view from 11am to 10pm on Wednesday and 9am to 10pm on Thursday.
On Friday, Ginsburg will lie in state at the Capitol, the first woman to do so and only the second supreme court justice after William Howard Taft, who had also been president.
Rosa Parks, a private citizen as opposed to a government official, is the only woman who has lain in honor at the Capitol.
Ginsburg will be buried beside her husband, Martin, in a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery next week. Martin Ginsburg died in 2010.
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