‘I’m sitting here struggling for words and my friend nailed it: “She was our Princess Leia.”’ With those words, Dr Esther Choo, Yale Medical School graduate, holder of an Ivy League English diploma and possessor of 168,000 Twitter followers, memorialized the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A century ago, a citizen of Justice Ginsburg’s stature might have inspired references to the Bible, classical history or the great figures of America’s founding.