Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Born	Joan Ruth Bader 15 3, 1933
Birthplace	New York City, U.S.
Died	Template:Death date and age Washington, D.C., U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Jurist, lawyer, academic
Known for	Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; advocacy for gender equality and women's rights
Education	Columbia Law School (LL.B.)
Spouse(s)	Martin D. Ginsburg (m. 1954–2010; his death)
Children	2
Awards	ABA Women Trailblazers in the Law honoree

Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg (March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. Nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring Justice Byron White, Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the nation's highest court, after Sandra Day O'Connor, and the first Jewish woman to hold the position. Before her appointment to the Supreme Court, she spent more than a decade as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to which she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. In the years before her judicial career, Ginsburg built a formidable reputation as a legal advocate for gender equality and women's rights, arguing numerous landmark cases before the Supreme Court as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. On the bench, she authored majority opinions in significant cases including United States v. Virginia (1996) and Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), and later became known for forceful dissenting opinions that articulated liberal interpretations of the law. Following her death at age 87 from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer, she was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Early Life

Joan Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York City, the second daughter of Nathan Bader and Celia Amster Bader. Her father was a furrier who had emigrated from Ukraine, and her mother was a native New Yorker of Austrian Jewish descent. Ginsburg had one older sister, Marilyn, who died of meningitis at the age of six, when Ruth was just over a year old. Ginsburg grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended public schools there.

Ginsburg's mother, Celia, was a significant influence on her early intellectual development. Though Celia Bader had not attended college herself—having worked to fund her brother's education—she placed great emphasis on learning and independence for her daughter. She regularly took the young Ruth to the local library and instilled in her a love of reading and academic achievement. Tragically, Celia Bader was diagnosed with cancer during Ruth's high school years and died the day before her daughter's high school graduation. The loss profoundly affected Ginsburg, who later cited her mother as the most important influence on her life and career.

Ginsburg graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn. Despite the grief of losing her mother, she had distinguished herself academically and was poised for collegiate study. Her early experiences in Brooklyn—shaped by personal loss, the immigrant experience of her family, and the encouragement of her mother—formed a foundation for her later commitment to principles of equality and fairness under the law.

Education

Ginsburg enrolled at Cornell University, where she earned her bachelor's degree. At Cornell, she met Martin D. Ginsburg, whom she married in 1954. After their marriage, and following Martin's military service, Ruth Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School, where she was one of only a handful of women in her class. At Harvard, she faced an environment that was not always welcoming to female students; the dean famously asked the women in the class to justify taking seats that could have gone to men.

Despite these challenges, Ginsburg excelled academically and served on the Harvard Law Review. When her husband Martin accepted a position at a law firm in New York City after his own graduation from Harvard Law School, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School for her final year. At Columbia, she continued her exceptional academic performance and graduated joint first in her class. Even with these credentials, Ginsburg found it difficult to secure employment upon graduation, as many law firms and judges were reluctant to hire a woman—a reality that would shape her later career as an advocate for gender equality.

Career

Early Legal Career and Academia

Following her graduation from Columbia Law School, Ginsburg served as a law clerk for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Despite her outstanding academic record, she struggled to find positions at New York law firms, many of which did not hire women at the time. This personal experience of gender-based discrimination in the legal profession left a lasting impression and informed her subsequent work.

In the early 1960s, Ginsburg joined the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, through which she learned Swedish and co-authored a book with Swedish jurist Anders Bruzelius. Her research in Sweden exposed her to a legal culture that was considerably more advanced in its approach to gender equality, and this experience profoundly influenced her thinking about the relationship between law and sex discrimination.

Ginsburg subsequently joined the faculty of Rutgers Law School, where she became one of the few female law professors in the country, teaching civil procedure among other subjects. She later returned to Columbia Law School as a professor, becoming the first woman to earn tenure on the Columbia law faculty. During her years in academia, Ginsburg developed expertise in comparative law and civil procedure, while also becoming increasingly involved in legal efforts to challenge sex-based discrimination.

Advocacy for Gender Equality and the ACLU

Ginsburg's most transformative work before ascending to the judiciary came through her association with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In the 1970s, she served as a volunteer attorney for the ACLU and became a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel. She co-founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project, through which she developed a deliberate litigation strategy aimed at dismantling laws that discriminated on the basis of sex.

Ginsburg's approach to constitutional litigation was notable for its incrementalism and strategic sophistication. Rather than seeking sweeping rulings from the courts all at once, she methodically selected cases that would build, step by step, a body of precedent establishing that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited sex-based classifications in law. She argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court and won five of them. Her strategy often involved choosing male plaintiffs to demonstrate that sex-based legal distinctions harmed both men and women, a tactic that proved effective in persuading male justices to recognize the constitutional infirmity of such classifications.

Through her ACLU work, Ginsburg was instrumental in shaping the legal framework that courts use to evaluate sex discrimination claims. Her efforts have been compared to those of Thurgood Marshall in the area of racial discrimination, as both lawyers pursued strategic litigation campaigns designed to transform constitutional law through carefully chosen test cases.

U.S. Court of Appeals

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one of the most influential appellate courts in the federal system. She succeeded Judge Harold Leventhal and served on the D.C. Circuit for thirteen years, from June 30, 1980, to August 9, 1993. During her tenure on the appeals court, Ginsburg developed a reputation as a careful, methodical jurist who was viewed as moderate in her judicial philosophy. She authored numerous opinions and was considered a consensus-builder who worked well with colleagues across the ideological spectrum.

Her record on the D.C. Circuit attracted the attention of the Clinton administration when a vacancy arose on the Supreme Court. Ginsburg's moderate reputation, combined with her distinguished record of legal scholarship and her groundbreaking advocacy work, made her an appealing nominee who could attract bipartisan support in the Senate confirmation process.

Supreme Court Tenure

President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court on June 14, 1993, to fill the seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Byron White. The Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 96 to 3, and she took her seat on August 10, 1993. At the time of her nomination, she was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder, consistent with the judicial temperament she had displayed on the D.C. Circuit.

During her twenty-seven-year tenure on the Court, Ginsburg authored majority opinions in several landmark cases. In United States v. Virginia (1996), she wrote for a 7–1 majority that the male-only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion established a heightened standard for evaluating sex-based classifications and represented a significant extension of the equal protection principles Ginsburg had championed as a litigator.

In Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), Ginsburg authored the majority opinion holding that the unjustified institutional isolation of persons with disabilities constituted discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The decision had far-reaching implications for disability rights and deinstitutionalization policy in the United States. She also wrote the majority opinion in Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000), an important environmental law case concerning citizen standing to sue under the Clean Water Act, and in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (2005).

Dissents and Later Tenure

Following the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, Ginsburg became the sole female justice on the Supreme Court, a distinction she held until the appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009. During this period, Ginsburg became more forceful and public in her dissenting opinions, which articulated liberal perspectives on contested legal questions.

One of her most notable dissents came in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), in which the Court's majority ruled that the statute of limitations for pay discrimination claims ran from the date of the initial discriminatory pay decision, not from the date of the most recent paycheck affected by that decision. Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench—a rare practice signaling strong disagreement—and called upon Congress to correct the decision legislatively. Congress responded by enacting the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, signed into law by President Barack Obama as the first piece of legislation of his administration.

Ginsburg's willingness to deliver pointed public dissents in cases involving civil rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, and other issues made her an increasingly prominent public figure. Her dissents were characterized by precise legal reasoning and frequently included calls for legislative or democratic action to address what she viewed as the Court majority's errors.

Personal Life

Ruth Bader married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954, shortly after her graduation from Cornell University. Martin Ginsburg became a prominent tax attorney and later a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. The couple had two children. Their partnership was widely noted for its mutual support: Martin Ginsburg was an accomplished cook who managed the household kitchen, and he was described as one of Ruth's most steadfast advocates throughout her legal career.

Martin D. Ginsburg died of cancer on June 27, 2010, after fifty-six years of marriage.

Ginsburg herself faced serious health challenges during her years on the Supreme Court. She was treated for colon cancer in 1999 and pancreatic cancer in 2009, and she experienced additional cancer recurrences later in her life. Despite her health difficulties, she maintained an active schedule on the Court and was rarely absent from oral arguments. She was known for her rigorous work ethic, including her habit of working late into the night.

Despite two bouts with cancer and public calls from some liberal legal scholars urging her to retire while President Barack Obama and a Democratic-controlled Senate could appoint and confirm a successor, Ginsburg declined to step down in 2013 or 2014.

Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, D.C., on September 18, 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Recognition

Throughout her career and particularly during her later years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg received extensive public recognition and became a figure of unusual cultural prominence for a jurist. She was popularly known by the nickname "Notorious R.B.G."—a play on the name of rapper The Notorious B.I.G.—which originated with a Tumblr blog created by a law student in 2013 and quickly became a cultural phenomenon. The nickname reflected Ginsburg's growing status as an icon, particularly among younger Americans and supporters of gender equality and civil liberties.

In September 2025, the American Bar Association Women Trailblazers in the Law Project announced the release of an oral history documenting Ginsburg's career and contributions to the legal profession.

In 2025, Rutgers Law School established the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Women's Rights and Gender Justice Clinic, bringing what the school described as "an intentional gender justice lens" to the institution's legacy of clinical legal education, honoring Ginsburg's own years on the Rutgers faculty.

New York State, in partnership with the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation and the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Memorial Commission, announced in September 2025 a competition seeking designs for a memorial to Ginsburg to be located in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Governor Kathy Hochul announced the launch of the artist competition and site selection for the memorial at Pier 1 in Brooklyn, near the borough where Ginsburg was born and raised.

In November 2025, the City of Los Angeles opened a Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorial at the Van Nuys Civic Center, with a ceremony attended by local officials.

Legacy

Ginsburg's legacy extends across multiple dimensions of American law and public life. As a litigator in the 1970s, her work with the ACLU Women's Rights Project fundamentally reshaped the legal framework governing sex discrimination under the U.S. Constitution. The cases she argued established the principle that the Equal Protection Clause subjects sex-based legal classifications to heightened judicial scrutiny, a standard that remains central to American constitutional law.

On the Supreme Court, her majority opinion in United States v. Virginia (1996) strengthened the constitutional standard for evaluating sex-based classifications and affirmed the principle that the government cannot exclude individuals from public institutions on the basis of sex without an "exceedingly persuasive justification." The decision is considered one of the most significant equal protection rulings of the late twentieth century.

Ginsburg's influence also manifested through her dissenting opinions, several of which prompted legislative responses. The Ledbetter dissent, in particular, demonstrated the capacity of a Supreme Court dissent to catalyze political action, resulting in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Her approach to dissent—careful, direct, and addressed not only to her colleagues on the bench but to the broader public and to Congress—offered a model for the role of judicial dissent in American constitutional governance.

Her cultural impact extended beyond the legal profession. The "Notorious R.B.G." phenomenon reflected a broader public engagement with the Supreme Court and constitutional issues, particularly on matters of gender equality, that was unusual in American civic life. She became the subject of a documentary film, a biographical feature film, and numerous books, and her image appeared on a wide range of merchandise and popular media.

The establishment of memorials in New York and Los Angeles, the naming of legal clinics in her honor at Rutgers Law School, and the ongoing recognition by the American Bar Association testify to the enduring significance of her contributions to American law and society.

The vacancy created by Ginsburg's death in September 2020 was filled by President Donald Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed by the Senate on October 26, 2020. The appointment shifted the ideological composition of the Court, a development that underscored the political significance of Ginsburg's seat and the consequentiality of her decision not to retire during the Obama administration.