She may have been small in stature, but she cast a giant figure across the American landscape. 

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last week at age 87, and her work as an attorney and her opinions from the bench have left a lasting legacy on American life. 

Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, following Sandra Day O’Connor. Long before that, she had been an advocate for women’s rights and gender equality. When asked when there will be enough women on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg famously replied, “When there are nine.”

Her own path to the U.S. Supreme Court took her from Cornell University as an undergrad first to Harvard Law School, where she was one of a handful of women admitted. And by that time, she was also a mother. Eventually, Ginsburg earned her degree from Columbia, and made both the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. 

She became a cultural hero, a status that bemused her. A law student dubbed her “the Notorious R.B.G.,” a play on the name of the later rap star The Notorious B.I.G., who like Ginsburg hailed from Brooklyn. Ginsburg was often portrayed on Saturday Night Live and her life and work were the basis of the film “On the Basis of Sex.”

She was always close friends with the late Antonin Scalia. The two had very different views of the law and of interpreting it. However, their philosophical and intellectual differences did not come between them outside the courtroom. The two became fast friends while serving on the D.C. Circuit for the federal Court of Appeals, Ginsburg having been nominated to that bench by President Jimmy Carter. Their friendship endured their time on the bench together there and through their time on the nation’s highest court, until Scalia’s passing in 2016. The two shared a love of opera, and Ginsburg even took the stage — in non-singing roles — in some productions. 

Ginsburg will be laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. Prior to that, she will lie in repose at the US. Capitol. She will be the first woman to be accommodated that honor. 

From her arguments before the court to her writings from the bench, and to her influence on untold number of women,  Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy will long outlast her tenure of Supreme Court justice.