After Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a fiery dissent in Shelby Counter v. Holder, a case decided in June 2013 that invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, then-NYU law student Shana Knizhnik was inspired to launch a Tumblr blog called The Notorious R.B.G. The site depicted a fierce image of the diminutive justice in the style of famed rapper The Notorious B.I.G. — and the famous meme was born.
More than five years later, that image has helped turn Ginsburg into a bona fide pop culture icon — an unusual designation for any octogenarian, let alone an 85-year-old justice on the nation’s highest court.
The Notorious RBG meme has been so successful, Khizhnik tells TIME, because of “this humorous juxtaposition and contrast between the ’90s hip-hop icon that was B.I.G. and this octogenarian Jewish grandmother, which certainly doesn’t evoke images of bravado.”
“But at the same time, her work has spoken truth to power and she’s really done an amazing amount — even before she was a Supreme Court justice,” Khizhnik says.
Now, the meme takes on special significance as Ginsburg recuperates from cancer surgery, which caused her to miss Supreme Court arguments for the first time ever in early January. On Dec. 21, she had two cancerous growths removed from her left lung, which doctors discovered after she fractured ribs during a fall in her office on Nov. 7. Ginsburg was previously treated for cancer in 1999 and 2009, but never missed court sessions as a result. On Jan. 11, the Supreme Court announced that Ginsburg had no remaining signs of cancer and would soon return to work.
Her latest health battles coincide with her continued popularity. She was the subject of two movies last year: the documentary RBG, released last May, and the Felicity Jones-fronted biopic On the Basis of Sex, which was released in December. She’s also long been parodied by Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live (Ginsburg has said she approves of McKinnon’s portrayal.) The meme has also resulted in two books: Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, written by Khizhnik and journalist Irin Carmon in 2015, and The R.B.G Workout, a detailed breakdown of the justice’s intense workout written by her personal trainer, Bryant Johnson, in 2017.
Meanwhile, her fan base on the left largely regards her as a hero. Some devotees plastered the Notorious RBG image on posters at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. Justice Rebeca Martinez, who serves on Texas’ Fourth Court of Appeals, tells TIME she organized a screening for RBG in Austin attended by guests dressed up like Ginsburg. Pennsylvania-based lawyer Amy Wallace says she adorned her house with art featuring the justice — and even got a tattoo of Ginsburg in April 2017.
And the meme continues to endure.
“Sometimes memes are flash in the pans — here today and gone tomorrow,” says Ryan Milner, an associate professor of communication at the College of Charleston, who studies memes. “[This meme] has worked for a long time — especially as we’ve moved from the Obama administration to the Trump Administration and the court has gotten more conservative.”
But with her health in question and the Supreme Court shifting, many wonder how long Ginsburg will remain on the bench and what will become of her legacy. For her fans, Ginsburg has become a hero in the fight for equal rights for all and a trailblazer for women. But for others, she has become a symbol of a supposed apolitical court becoming increasingly polarized.
A feminist trailblazer
Ginsburg is often credited as one of the primary legal architects of equal rights protection for women. As an attorney, she successfully argued several landmark equal rights cases in front of the Supreme Court, including a case that guaranteed men and women in the military equal access to a dependent’s allowance, and another case that allowed widowers to receive the same Social Security survivors’ benefits as widows.
President Bill Clinton appointed Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993, and the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 96-3. She was only the second woman appointed to the court, following Sandra Day O’Connor’s 1981 appointment by then-President Ronald Reagan. As an associate justice, Ginsburg wrote landmark decisions in several cases, including one that allowed women to attend the Virginia Military Institute for the first time.
Her dissents have also made an impact. When Lilly Ledbetter‘s pay discrimination case made its way to the Supreme Court, an all-male majority ruled in 2007 that Ledbetter’s case was invalid because she didn’t file a lawsuit against her company within an 180-day period. Ginsburg said the Court “does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,” and encouraged Congress to find a remedy. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law.
Off-duty, her strict workout regimen with Johnson — whom she started working with in 1999 after her first bout with cancer — has also contributed to her “notorious” persona. Johnson calls Ginsburg a “super diva,” and says she’ll often show up to their training sessions on an hour’s sleep.
“I remember the justice had given me a couple of books about her, but I never really read them because the justice didn’t hire me to be a fanboy,” he says. “It wasn’t until I saw the documentary that I realized why she has this cult following … Women have so many rights because of all that she’s done quietly, behind the scenes — like a ninja.”
But despite her larger-than-life persona, the real Ginsburg is reserved and hard-working, according to people who have worked with her in the past. Elizabeth Langer, a former attorney who worked on the Ginsburg-founded Women’s Rights Law Reporter journal at Rutgers, describes her as “very reserved and very diligent.” Kate Andrias, a law professor at the University of Michigan who clerked for Ginsburg in the 2006 term, says that she was an “exceedingly demanding” boss, but she also cared about her staff — mentoring them, taking them to the opera and bringing in cakes for birthdays made by her husband Marty, who died in 2010.
“There’s a fairly stark contrast between the meticulous, careful and reserved person that I worked for and this pop culture icon,” Andrias says. “But, at the same time, when we were working for her, we could see her quiet wit and commitment to justice.”
Ginsburg seems amused by her late-in-life fame. She said in 2014 that she owns “quite a large supply” of Notorious RBG shirts. She often likes to compare herself to the Notorious B.I.G. by noting they were both born in Brooklyn. In an interview at New York Law School in February 2018, she marveled at her status as a pop culture icon, saying: “I am soon to be 85, and everybody wants to take their picture with me.”
‘It really helps to polarize the court’
But Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, warns that Ginsburg’s popularity ultimately may be harmful to the court, which has become increasingly polarized. Hasen compares Ginsburg to the late justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative members of the court and one of Ginsburg’s closest friends. Much like Ginsburg on the left, Scalia became a hero for those on the right.
“It’s problematic when justices are considered to be celebrities. It really helps to polarize the court, and it plays into the notion that each side has its own stars to root for and against,” Hasen says. “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating a hero, but it’s a bit of a problem when the person is still sitting on the highest court. Maybe the stardom is what gave her the freedom to criticize then-candidate Donald Trump.”
Because Supreme Court justices are supposed to be apolitical and guided only by law, Ginsburg faced criticism for calling then-candidate Trump a “faker” in July 2016. Trump said Ginsburg should resign, and legal experts argued that she may be pressured to recuse herself from cases involving Trump. She later expressed regrets for her remarks, saying that justices should avoid commenting on political candidates.
But though Ginsburg’s comments on Trump energized Democrats who see her as a hero, others have noted that her own views aren’t as always as liberal as they seem. After her Supreme Court nomination, abortion rights activists worried about her past comments about landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, which Ginsburg called too broad and argued that the case should have been framed as an equal rights issue rather than a privacy one. (Ginsburg has repeatedly spoken and voted in favor of protecting abortion rights.) On the Supreme Court, she has occasionally been criticized for her votes on cases involving the use of force by police, including siding with the majority on a 2015 case that granted immunity to a police officer accused of using deadly force.
When Ginsburg described NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality as “dumb and disrespectful” in 2016, some argued that it may be time to retire her “Notorious RBG” persona altogether. (Ginsburg later said her comments were “inappropriately dismissive and harsh.”)
“It’s interesting to see what happens when reality doesn’t live up to the meme,” Milner says. “Sometimes there’s going to be a contrast when icons’ persona aren’t totally based on who they really are.”
‘Her legacy isn’t over’
Despite the cracks in her pop culture persona, many women say it’s hard to deny the significance Ginsburg has had for women.
After giving birth to her daughter, Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School as one of only a handful of female students. She didn’t receive a single job offer after law school, even though she was at the top of her class. When one of her professors recommended her for a clerkship with then-Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, she was turned down because he reportedly wasn’t ready to hire a woman.
“A lot of us have similar stories — I do,” Langer said. “Her career path is a remarkable path for women to follow… And her legacy isn’t over. She has years to go.”
The women who spoke to TIME for this story all say that they have their law careers thanks to Ginsburg — both for her work shaping equal rights as an attorney and a trailblazer in her own career.
“I know that without her efforts, I wouldn’t be in this seat. I grew up in this world — especially as a young woman of color — where the roles of women and men were divided,” Martinez, the Texas justice, says. “Justice Ginsburg knew that changing the culture meant changing the laws.”
The ever-present speculation about when Ginsburg will hang up her robe hit a fever pitch after Justice Anthony Kennedy retired last year, allowing Trump to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to take his seat and appearing to tilt the court even further to the right. But Ginsburg has repeatedly said that she’ll do the job as long as she’s able — and has hired clerks through 2020. In July 2018, she predicted she has at least five more years on the court.
“She’s always been underestimated,” Knizhnik says, “and she keeps proving people wrong.”
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