Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lies in State in Capitol

Ceremonies honoring the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg moved to the U.S. Capitol, where she became the first woman and the first Jewish person to lie in state.

Justice Ginsburg, the de facto leader of the court’s liberal wing, succumbed last Friday to metastatic pancreatic cancer at the age of 87, creating a vacancy late in a presidential election year. Many Republicans want to fill the vacancy by Election Day, which is just 39 days away.

The pioneering jurist was honored in an invitation-only ceremony that was intended to remember both her decades on the bench and her commitment to expanding women’s rights. Denyce Graves sang at the ceremony, a nod to Justice Ginsburg’s passionate love of opera that became a bridge over an ideological divide with late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.