WASHINGTON – US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an iconic champion of women’s rights, has died of cancer at the age of 87, the court has said.
Ginsburg was the oldest justice and the second ever woman to sit on the Supreme Court, where she served for 27 years.
“Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement on Friday.
Ginsburg’s death raises the prospect of Republican US President Donald Trump trying to expand the court’s slender conservative majority, even before this November’s election.
In the days before her death, Ginsburg expressed her strong disapproval of such a move.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” she wrote in a statement to her granddaughter, according to National Public Radio.
President Trump is expected to nominate a conservative replacement for Ginsburg as soon as possible, White House sources said.(BBC)
