Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Source:

Biography of Ruth:

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York.

- Died on September 18, 2020 due to complications of metastatic

pancreas cancer

- Graduated from Cornell (1954) (Earned high honors in Government and

distinction in all subjects.) then went to Harvard, in Harvard was one of

only 9 women in a class of 500 students, she often faced gender

discrimination and was asked to explain how she felt about taking a spot

in the program instead of a man.

- In 1958 transferred to Columbia for her final year

- In 1959 graduated from Columbia with law degree, top of her class

- Even her exceptional academic record was not enough to shield her from

the gender-based discrimination women faced in the workplace in the

1960s. She had difficulties finding a job until a favorite Columbia

professor explicitly refused to recommend any other graduates before

U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri hired Ginsburg as a clerk.

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Contributions to Feminism

• Became the first female professor at Columbia to earn tenure in 1972

• directed the influential Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties

Union during the 1970s.

o This was a jury selection system that discriminated against women on the

grounds that "women are at the center of home and family life."

o Reflected dominant social values at the time

• She served on the court for thirteen years until 1993, when Bill Clinton nominated

her to the Supreme Court of the United States.

• In 1996, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in the United States vs. Virginia,

defending qualified women and saying they could not be denied admission to

Virginia Military Institute.

• Her style in advocating as a judge matches her style from her time at the ACLU: slow

but steady and calculated. Instead of creating sweeping limitations on gender

discrimination, she attacked specific areas of discrimination and violations of

women’s rights one at a time, so as to send a message to the legislatures on what

they can and cannot do.

• Ginsburg worked with President Obama to pass the very first piece of legislation he

signed, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009

o a way to make it easier for employees to sue for pay discrimination because

of things like gender, race, or religion

• She is very relevant to our class as Ginsburg proved time and again that she was a

force to be reckoned with, she never backed down from a challenge and challenged

the societal norms of a highly patriarchal and misogynistic system.

o As well as being a mother, Ginsburg consistently advocated on behalf of

women and other minorities, while maintaining status as top of her class in

university, and a highly respected Supreme Court Judge