THE First Minister has paid tribute to Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death at the age of 87.

The towering women’s rights champion, who was the court’s second female justice, died as a result of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Her death comes just six weeks before the US election and is likely to trigger a fierce battle over whether President Trump should nominate her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the result of the November vote is known.

Mitch McConnell, the US Senate majority leader, said representatives will vote on Trump’s choice to replace Ginsburg even though it is an election year.

READ MORE: Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at the age of 87

Former president Barack Obama was among those paying tribute to Ginsburg.

He said: "Over a long career on both sides of the bench - as a relentless litigator and an incisive jurist - justice Ginsburg helped us see that discrimination on the basis of sex isn't about an abstract ideal of equality; that it doesn't only harm women; that it has real consequences for all of us. It's about who we are - and who we can be."

Nicola Sturgeon retweeted Obama’s tribute to Ginsburg, and posted separately: “Such sad news. And what a loss for the USA of a brilliantly clever woman - an icon of justice and women’s rights.”

Ginsburg, a mother of two, argued six key cases before the court in the 1970s when she was an architect of the women's rights movement. She won five.

On the court, her most significant majority opinions were the 1996 ruling that ordered the Virginia Military Institute to accept women or give up its state funding, and the 2015 decision that upheld independent commissions some states use to draw congressional districts.

Besides civil rights, Ginsburg took an interest in capital punishment, voting repeatedly to limit its use. During her tenure, the court declared it unconstitutional for states to execute the intellectually disabled and killers younger than 18.