Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Joan Ruth Bader was born March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Eastern European Jewish descent; her father worked as a furrier and her mother held various jobs to support the family during the Depression. She graduated from James Madison High School, earned her B.A. at Cornell University (where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa), and attended Harvard Law School before transferring to Columbia Law School, where she graduated first in her class in 1959. After law school Ginsburg clerked for U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri (1959–1961) and held academic and research posts, including associate director of Columbia’s Project on International Procedure. Facing gender-based employment barriers as a young lawyer and balancing family responsibilities (she married Martin Ginsburg and had two children), she turned to academia and became a professor at Rutgers Law School (1963–1972) and then the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School in 1972. In 1972 Ginsburg helped found the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and later served as its general counsel, using strategic litigation to establish precedents against sex discrimination; she argued six gender‑equality cases before the Supreme Court in the 1970s, winning five. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where she served for 13 years and built a reputation as a thoughtful jurist. Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Ginsburg was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 1993, becoming the second woman and the first Jewish woman to serve on the Court. Over 27 years on the bench she authored landmark opinions (including the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia) and powerful dissents (notably in Ledbetter v. Goodyear) that influenced constitutional law on gender, civil liberties, and equal protection. She became a cultural icon for her jurisprudence and public profile, and she served until her death on September 18, 2020.