Memorial services begin for Justice Ginsburg, first at Supreme Court, then Capitol Rotunda

Memorials services begin Wednesday for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a private, then public viewing at the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill.

The events begin in the morning inside the court’s Great Hall with Ginburg’s former colleagues, family and close friends paying tribute. Ginsburg died Friday from complications from cancer. She was 87.

Following the private ceremony, Ginsburg’s casket will be moved to the top of the court building’s front steps so that the public can pay respects, amid coronavirus health-safety precautions.

The public viewing will continue Thursday. The casket will then be taken across the street to Statuary Hall in the Capitol building's Rotunda for viewings Friday.

On Wednesday, in observance of past practice at the tradition-laden court, Supreme Court police will carry the casket up the court steps, which will be lined by former Ginsburg law clerks serving as honorary pallbearers.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the other justices will be in the Great Hall when the casket arrives and is placed on the Lincoln Catafalque, the platform on which President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested in the Capitol rotunda in 1865. A 2016 portrait of Ginsburg by artist Constance P. Beaty will be displayed nearby, according to the Associated Press. 

Ginsburg will lie in state at the Capitol, becoming the first woman to do so and only the second Supreme Court justice after William Howard Taft. Taft had also been president. Rosa Parks, a private citizen as opposed to a government official, is the only woman who has lain in honor at the Capitol, the wire service also reports.