In the new year, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp in honor of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court as “an icon of American culture.” Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg, born on March 15, 1933, was an American lawyer and judge. She served the United States Supreme Court from 1993 until she died in 2020 as an associate justice.
The design, revealed on Monday, is a portrait painted based on a photograph of Ginsburg in her distinctive black robe with her trademark, an elaborate white collar called a jabot.
“After beginning her career as an activist lawyer fighting gender discrimination, Justice Ginsburg became a respected jurist whose important majority opinions advancing equality and strong dissents on socially controversial rulings made her a passionate proponent of equal justice,” the USPS said in its official statement.
Officials did not provide a precise date, but the newly announced first-class “forever” stamp of the liberal icon will go on sale in 2023. On January 22, 2023, the price of a first-class stamp will increase to 63 cents from its current 60 cents.
President Bill Clinton selected Ginsburg to replace retiring justice Byron White; she was seen as a moderate consensus-builder at the time. She finally joined the Court’s liberal wing as the Court moved to the right over time. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman after Sandra Day O’Connor to serve on the Supreme Court.
She devoted most of her legal career to advocating for gender equality and women’s rights, prevailing in numerous Supreme Court battles. Ginsburg garnered recognition in American popular culture for her fiery dissents in significant cases, widely viewed as exemplifying normatively liberal legal perspectives. She earned the moniker “The Notorious R.B.G.”
Despite two bouts with cancer and the public requests of liberal legal experts, she chose not to retire in 2013 when Democrats might have appointed her replacement. Ginsburg succumbed to complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87 in 2020.
Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, filled the vacancy left by her death 39 days later.
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History named a species of praying mantis, Ilomantis ginsburgae, after Ginsburg. The name was given because the Ilomantis ginsburgae’s neck plate resembles a jabot, which Ginsburg was known to wear.
On March 31, 2022, the U.S. Navy announced that one of its John Lewis-class replenishment oilers would be named the USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg.