Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, undergoes surgery for early stage pancreatic cancer on Thursday at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

She is expected to remain there for seven to ten days.

Justice Ginsburg had no symptoms prior to the incidental discovery of the lesion during a routine annual checkup in late January at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the court said in a statement.

But a CAT scan revealed a small tumor, approximately one centimeter across, in the center of the pancreas.

Ginsburg, by President Bill Clinton in 1993, is the only woman on the nation's highest Supreme Court.

Medicine Cancer