Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, to Nathan and Celia Bader, the children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. She grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood during the Great Depression and World War II. Her mother, a formidable influence, worked in a garment factory to help pay for her brother's college education but never attended college herself. Celia Bader instilled in her daughter a love of learning and the importance of independence. Tragically, she died of cancer the day before Ruth's high school graduation in 1950.

Ruth Bader attended Cornell University on scholarship, where she met Martin D. Ginsburg, a fellow student who would become her husband and lifelong partner. They married in 1954, shortly after her graduation. The following year, Martin began Harvard Law School, and Ruth gave birth to their daughter, Jane. In 1956, Ruth enrolled at Harvard Law School herself, one of only nine women in a class of more than 500. She excelled academically and served on the Harvard Law Review, all while caring for her young daughter and her husband, who was being treated for testicular cancer. When Martin took a job in New York, Ruth transferred to Columbia Law School for her final year, graduating tied for first in her class in 1959.

Despite her exceptional credentials, Ginsburg struggled to find employment. Law firms routinely declined to hire women, and even a recommendation from a distinguished Columbia professor could not secure her a clerkship at the Supreme Court. Justice Felix Frankfurter refused to hire her because she was a woman. She eventually clerked for District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri in New York, then spent time in Sweden studying civil procedure and observing a legal system far more advanced in gender equality. The experience deepened her understanding of how law could either perpetuate or dismantle discrimination.

In the 1960s, Ginsburg taught at Rutgers Law School, becoming one of the few female law professors in the country. She hid her second pregnancy under oversized clothing, fearing she would lose her position. It was during this period that she began taking on cases involving sex discrimination, often working with the New Jersey affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1972, she co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU and became its first director. Her strategy was deliberate and strategic: she selected cases carefully, often choosing male plaintiffs to demonstrate that rigid gender roles harmed everyone, not just women.

Between 1973 and 1978, Ginsburg argued six cases before the Supreme Court, winning five. In Frontiero v. Richardson (1973), she challenged military benefits rules. In Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975), she represented a widower denied survivor benefits. In Craig v. Boren (1976), she co-authored a brief challenging an Oklahoma law that set different drinking ages for men and women. Each case chipped away at the legal framework that treated men and women differently under the law. Her work established that the Equal Protection Clause applied to sex-based classifications, fundamentally transforming American constitutional law.

Ginsburg's appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter gave her thirteen years of experience as a federal judge. She developed a reputation for careful, moderate opinions and collegiality with colleagues across the ideological spectrum. When Justice Byron White announced his retirement in 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. She was confirmed by the Senate in a 96-3 vote, a reflection of broad bipartisan respect that would become unimaginable in later decades.

On the Supreme Court, Ginsburg continued to champion gender equality and civil rights. Her majority opinion in United States v. Virginia (1996) struck down the male-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute, applying heightened scrutiny to sex-based classifications. She wrote that generalizations about the way women or men are could not justify denying opportunity to individuals who did not fit those generalizations. The opinion was a capstone to the legal revolution she had begun in the 1970s.

As the Court's composition grew more conservative, Ginsburg's role shifted. She became famous for her dissents, particularly in cases involving voting rights, employment discrimination, and reproductive rights. Her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), which narrowed the timeframe for pay discrimination claims, was so powerful it prompted Congress to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), she dissented from the decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, writing that throwing out the law's preclearance provisions was like 'throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.'

Ginsburg received numerous honors throughout her career, but her elevation to cultural icon status in her eighties was unprecedented for a sitting Supreme Court Justice. The nickname 'Notorious RBG,' a playful reference to rapper Notorious B.I.G., emerged on a Tumblr blog in 2013 after her Shelby County dissent and quickly spread. Young people, particularly young women, embraced her as a symbol of resistance and resilience. She was the subject of books, a documentary film (RBG, 2018), a biographical feature film (On the Basis of Sex, 2018), children's books, and countless Internet memes.

The broader legal community had long recognized her contributions. She received the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award in 1999, was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2002, and won the Harvard Law School Medal of Freedom. Foreign governments honored her as well: she received the LBJ Foundation's Liberty and Justice for All Award and was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. In 2020, she became the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, at age 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She had continued working through multiple bouts with cancer over two decades, attending arguments, writing opinions, and exercising with her personal trainer. Her death, coming just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, sparked intense political controversy over her replacement, but it also prompted an outpouring of grief and gratitude from millions who recognized her singular contribution to American law and society.

Her legal legacy is foundational. The framework she built in the 1970s remains the constitutional standard for analyzing sex discrimination. Her insistence on careful, incremental progress rather than sweeping pronouncements showed a deep understanding of how legal change endures. She changed not just the law but also the culture, making it possible for women to attend military academies, serve on juries in all states, own credit cards in their own names, and be free from countless other legal disabilities that once defined American life.

Beyond her jurisprudence, Ginsburg modeled a form of public service characterized by rigor, civility, and conviction. Her close friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia, despite their profound jurisprudential differences, demonstrated that intellectual disagreement need not preclude personal respect. Her devotion to her work, her insistence on excellence, and her quiet persistence in the face of discrimination inspired generations of lawyers, activists, and citizens. She proved that carefully reasoned arguments, presented with clarity and persistence, could move the law—and the nation—toward greater justice.