Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a feminist icon. She spent much of her life advocating for women’s rights and was strong-willed and determined to make a difference, leading to her being nicknamed “The Notorious R.B.G.”. She served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States for a total of 27 years from 1993 to the day she sadly died - September 18th 2020. This day marks Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and it is believed that anyone who dies on this day is “a person of great righteousness”, which certainly seems fitting for Ruth.
RBG grew up in New York and attended Cornell University where she met her husband, Martin Ginsburg. After her graduation in 1954 they moved to Oklahoma together where Ruth worked for the Social Security Administration office and was demoted for falling pregnant. She then gave birth to a daughter in 1955 and enrolled at Harvard Law School a year later as one of only nine women in a class of five hundred men. Women were denied library access and were not called on in class as well as being questioned by the Dean as to why they were on the course and taking up the place of a man. She transferred to Colombia Law School, became the first woman to be on two major law reviews and graduated top of the class with her law degree in 1959.
The start of RBG’s legal career was not easy and she was rejected from a clerkship position due to her gender despite a strong recommendation from Harvard. With help from a Columbia Law professor, Ruth secured a job as a law clerk with Judge Palmieri for two years and then went on to teach at multiple law schools, becoming the first tenured female professor at Colombia.
In 1970 RBG co-founded the Women’s Right Law Reporter and in 1972 the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, which participated in over three hundred gender discrimination cases in its first two years. She demonstrated the harm caused by gender discrimination to both men and women and was careful to use the word “gender” over “sex” so that judges would not be distracted. RBG fought and won many cases advocating for gender equality in her career before being nominated by Jimmy Carter in 1980 for a seat on the United States Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1993 she was nominated by President Bill Clinton as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, the position which she remained in until she passed away. In 2006 she was left as the only woman on the court and the following two years have been called “the time when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found her voice and used it.” She hoped that there would be a time when all nine Supreme Court Justices are female, admitting that people were shocked when she said it “but there have been nine men and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”
RBG spoke up on behalf on women, the LQBTQ+ community and other minority groups and never stopped fighting for what she knew was right. She fought cases seeking reproductive healthcare, equal pay, pregnancy benefits, disability rights and much more. In 2009, RBG said about abortion “the basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman” and she has continuously voiced her pro-choice views, stating that “the state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality”. She also famously said the words “women belong in all places where decisions are being made” and explained her own strategy by encouraging others to “fight for the things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
In 2002 Ruth Bader Ginsburg made it into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, she was named one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in 2009, was one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year in 2012 and she was one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2015. RBG has also been awarded honorary Doctors of Law by Willamette, Princeton and Harvard University. Two films have been made about her and she has become the face of political feminism.
RBG fought for justice while fighting her own battle with cancer after her diagnosis in 1999. Even on her deathbed, Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not stop fighting, as she revealed: “my most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
May her memory be a revolution.