Watch LIVE: Mourners pay respects to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at U.S. Supreme Court
WASHINGTON, DC -- Three days of public mourning for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, regarded as a champion of equality and women's rights, began Wednesday when her casket arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court for a dramatic procession up the court steps lined by more than a hundred of her former law clerks.
Her casket was placed on the Lincoln Catafalque, once used for President Abraham Lincoln, before a private ceremony inside the court's Great Hall attended by family, friends and her fellow justices at which Chief Justice John Roberts spoke.
Roberts remembered his colleague as tough and brave, a fighter and a winner. He said she was also careful, compassionate and honest. He spoke of her undying devotion to the law and to her family.
Roberts said Ginsburg’s opinions and her famous dissents will steer the court for decades. He said they are written with the “unaffected grace of precision.”
“The voice in court and in our conference room was soft. But when she spoke, people listened,” Roberts said.
Then, in an unprecedented move because of the pandemic, her casket was brought outside and placed under the court's portico so the public could pay their respects.
There has been an outpouring of public support at the court since word of the 87-year-old Ginsburg's death came Friday night, and with warm, sunny weather in Washington on Wednesday, large crowds were turning out.
Many mourners had first started to gather earlier Wednesday morning near the court steps where there had been a makeshift memorial of flowers and messages in remembrance of the impact she has had on people's lives in her almost 30 years as an icon on the nation's high court.
Ginsburg will lie in repose at the court through Thursday and the White House announced that President Donald Trump would go to the court Thursday to pay his respects.
On Friday, Ginsburg will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman in history to do so.
Nearby in the Capitol, a bitter political battle continued over her replacement.
She will be interred next week next to her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.
