139 Facts About Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg 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.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder.

Later in her tenure, Ruth Bader Ginsburg received attention for passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's mother died shortly before she graduated from high school.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University and married Martin D Ginsburg, becoming a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated joint first in her class.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg then became a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field and the first female member of the law faculty at Columbia to attain tenure.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women's rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel in the 1970s.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, DC, in September 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Joan Ruth Bader was born on March 15,1933, at Beth Moses Hospital in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the second daughter of Celia and Nathan Bader, who lived in Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's father was a Jewish emigrant from Odesa, Ukraine, at that time part of the Russian Empire, and her mother was born in New York to Jewish parents who came from Krakow, Poland, at that time part of Austria-Hungary.

When Joan started school, Celia discovered that her daughter's class had several other girls named Joan, so Celia suggested the teacher call her daughter by her second name, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to avoid confusion.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not allowed to have a bat mitzvah ceremony because of Orthodox restrictions on women reading from the Torah, which upset her.

Celia wanted her daughter to get more education, which she thought would allow Ruth Bader Ginsburg to become a high school history teacher.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended James Madison High School, whose law program later dedicated a courtroom in her honor.

Ruth Bader attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Cornell with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23,1954.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the highest-ranking female student in her graduating class.

At age 21, Ruth Bader Ginsburg worked for the Social Security Administration office in Oklahoma, where she was demoted after becoming pregnant with her first child.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave birth to a daughter in 1955.

At the start of her legal career, Ruth Bader Ginsburg encountered difficulty in finding employment.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did so despite a strong recommendation from Albert Martin Sacks, who was a professor and later dean of Harvard Law School.

Later that year, Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her clerkship for Judge Palmieri, and she held the position for two years.

From 1961 to 1963, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a research associate and then an associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, working alongside director Hans Smit; she learned Swedish to co-author a book with Anders Bruzelius on civil procedure in Sweden.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg conducted extensive research for her book at Lund University in Sweden.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was inspired when she observed the changes in Sweden, where women were 20 to 25 percent of all law students; one of the judges whom Ginsburg observed for her research was eight months pregnant and still working.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a professor of law at Rutgers from 1963 to 1972, teaching mainly civil procedure and receiving tenure in 1969.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent a year as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University from 1977 to 1978.

In 1972, Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in 1973, she became the Project's general counsel.

Rather than asking the Court to end all gender discrimination at once, Ruth Bader Ginsburg charted a strategic course, taking aim at specific discriminatory statutes and building on each successive victory.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose plaintiffs carefully, at times picking male plaintiffs to demonstrate that gender discrimination was harmful to both men and women.

The laws Ruth Bader Ginsburg targeted included those that on the surface appeared beneficial to women, but in fact reinforced the notion that women needed to be dependent on men.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg attained a reputation as a skilled oral advocate, and her work led directly to the end of gender discrimination in many areas of the law.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that the statute discriminated against male survivors of workers by denying them the same protection as their female counterparts.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg continued to work on the ACLU's Women's Rights Project until her appointment to the Federal Bench in 1980.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was considering a change in career as soon as Carter was elected.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was interviewed by the Department of Justice to become Solicitor General, the position she most desired, but knew that she and the African-American candidate who was interviewed the same day had little chance of being appointed by Attorney General Griffin Bell.

At the time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a fellow at Stanford University where she was working on a written account of her work in litigation and advocacy for equal rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was at the same time working hard to promote a possible judgeship for his wife.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by President Carter on April 14,1980, to a seat on the DC Circuit vacated by Judge Harold Leventhal upon his death.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 18,1980, and received her commission later that day.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's service ended on August 9,1993, due to her elevation to the United States Supreme Court, and she was replaced by Judge David S Tatel.

At the time of her nomination, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was viewed as having been a moderate and a consensus-builder in her time on the appeals court.

Clinton was reportedly looking to increase the Court's diversity, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg did as the first Jewish justice since the 1969 resignation of Justice Abe Fortas.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the second female and the first Jewish female justice of the Supreme Court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was more forthright in discussing her views on topics about which she had previously written.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg received her commission on August 5,1993 and took her judicial oath on August 10,1993.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's name was later invoked during the confirmation process of John Roberts.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not the first nominee to avoid answering certain specific questions before Congress, and as a young attorney in 1981 Roberts had advised against Supreme Court nominees' giving specific responses.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg characterized her performance on the Court as a cautious approach to adjudication.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a proponent of the liberal dissenters speaking "with one voice" and, where practicable, presenting a unified approach to which all the dissenting justices can agree.

VMI proposed a separate institute for women, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg found this solution reminiscent of the effort by Texas decades earlier to preserve the University of Texas Law School for Whites by establishing a separate school for Blacks.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg found the result absurd, pointing out that women often do not know they are being paid less, and therefore it was unfair to expect them to act at the time of each paycheck.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg focused her ire on the way Congress reached its findings and with their veracity.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg asserted the legislation was not aimed at protecting women's health, as Texas had said, but rather to impede women's access to abortions.

On May 31,2005, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in Cutter v Wilkinson that facilities utilizing federal funds cannot deny prisoners accommodations necessary for the practice of their religious beliefs.

In doing so, Ruth Bader Ginsburg held that RLUIPA was a valid accommodation permitted by the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

On June 28,2010, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in Christian Legal Society v Martinez relating to a campus policy of acceptance of all students, regardless of status or belief, in becoming an officially recognized student group.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled that a religious-based group stood at odds with an "all-comers" campus policy by singling out a religious group for exclusion in a manner at odds with the "limited public forum" of the campus.

On June 27,2002, Ginsburg dissented in Board of Education v Earls which permitted schools to enact mandatory drug testing on students partaking in extracurricular activities.

In doing so, Ginsburg contrasted the case with Vernonia School District v Acton which had permitted drug testing due to 'special needs' of athlete participation, acknowledging her prior agreement with the verdict but stating that such an opinion "cannot be read to endorse invasive and suspicionless drug testing of all students".

In contrast to Roberts's emphasis on suppression as a means to deter police misconduct, Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a more robust view on the use of suppression as a remedy for a violation of a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg viewed suppression as a way to prevent the government from profiting from mistakes, and therefore as a remedy to preserve judicial integrity and respect civil rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg rejected Roberts's assertion that suppression would not deter mistakes, contending making police pay a high price for mistakes would encourage them to take greater care.

On January 26,2009, Ginsburg wrote for a unanimous court in Arizona v Johnson that a police officer may pat down an individual at a traffic stop provided reasonable suspicion by the officer the individual was armed and dangerous.

Additionally, Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that comments made by the officer unrelated to the traffic stop "do not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg additionally contended that such an action would only be permissible by the officer provided the officer had "independently supported reasonable suspicion" that a separate crime had occurred at the time of the initial traffic violation and that the action taken would not add additional time to the traffic stop.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg advocated the use of foreign law and norms to shape US law in judicial opinions, a view rejected by some of her conservative colleagues.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg supported using foreign interpretations of law for persuasive value and possible wisdom, not as binding precedent.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed the view that consulting international law is a well-ingrained tradition in American law, counting John Henry Wigmore and President John Adams as internationalists.

In 2013, Ginsburg dissented in Shelby County v Holder, in which the Court held unconstitutional the part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring federal preclearance before changing voting practices.

Besides Grutter, Ginsburg wrote in favor of affirmative action in her dissent in Gratz v Bollinger, in which the Court ruled an affirmative action policy unconstitutional because it was not narrowly tailored to the state's interest in diversity.

In 1997, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in Strate v A-1 Contractors against tribal jurisdiction over tribal-owned land in a reservation.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reasoned that the state right-of-way on which the crash occurred rendered the tribal-owned land equivalent to non-Indian land.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg then considered the rule set in Montana v United States, which allows tribes to regulate the activities of nonmembers who have a relationship with the tribe.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the driver's employer did have a relationship with the tribe, but she reasoned that the tribe could not regulate their activities because the victim had no relationship to the tribe.

Later in 2005, Ginsburg cited the doctrine of discovery in the majority opinion of City of Sherrill v Oneida Indian Nation of New York and concluded that the Oneida Indian Nation could not revive its ancient sovereignty over its historic land.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reasoned that "the longstanding, distinctly non-Indian character of the area and its inhabitants" and "the regulatory authority constantly exercised by New York State and its counties and towns" justified the ruling.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg invoked, sua sponte, the doctrine of laches, reasoning that the Oneidas took a "long delay in seeking judicial relief".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reasoned that the dispossession of the Oneidas' land was "ancient".

Less than a year after Sherrill, Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered a starkly contrasting approach to Native American law.

In December 2005, Ginsburg dissented in Wagnon v Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, arguing that a state tax on fuel sold to Potawatomi retailers would impermissibly nullify the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation's own tax authority.

In 2020, Ginsburg joined the ruling of McGirt v Oklahoma, which affirmed Native American jurisdictions over reservations in much of Oklahoma.

In 2000, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in Friends of the Earth, Inc v Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.

When John Paul Stevens retired in 2010, Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the oldest justice on the court at age 77.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed a wish to emulate Justice Louis Brandeis's service of nearly 23years, which she achieved in April 2016.

Several times during the presidency of Barack Obama, progressive attorneys and activists called for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire so that Obama could appoint a like-minded successor, particularly while the Democratic Party held control of the US Senate.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reaffirmed her wish to remain a justice as long as she was mentally sharp enough to perform her duties.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined that Republicans would use the judicial filibuster to prevent Obama from appointing a jurist like herself.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that she had a new model to emulate in her former colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired at the age of 90 after nearly 35 years on the bench.

Hirshman even suggested that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have wanted to remain on the court long enough so that Justice Antonin Scalia would be replaced by a liberal; with five liberal justices then Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have been the senior liberal in the majority and able to assign all the liberal decisions.

At his request, Ruth Bader Ginsburg administered the oath of office to Vice President Al Gore for a second term during the second inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20,1997.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the third woman to administer an inaugural oath of office.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is believed to have been the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex wedding, performing the August 31,2013, ceremony of Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser and John Roberts, a government economist.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed the issue being settled led same-sex couples to ask her to officiate as there was no longer the fear of compromising rulings on the issue.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did so, and due to her objection, Supreme Court bar members have since been given other choices of how to inscribe the year on their certificates.

In January 2012, Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to Egypt for four days of discussions with judges, law school faculty, law school students, and legal experts.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the US was fortunate to have a constitution authored by "very wise" men but said that in the 1780s, no women were able to participate directly in the process, and slavery still existed in the US.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg joked that she might consider moving to New Zealand.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg later apologized for commenting on the presumptive Republican nominee, calling her remarks "ill advised".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg later apologized for her criticism calling her earlier comments "inappropriately dismissive and harsh" and noting she had not been familiar with the incident and should have declined to respond to the question.

In 2017, Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave the keynote address to a Georgetown University symposium on governmental reform.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a non-observant Jew, attributing this to gender inequality in Jewish prayer ritual and relating it to her mother's death.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a collection of lace jabots from around the world.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in 2014 she had a particular jabot she wore when issuing her dissents as well as another she wore when issuing majority opinions, which was a gift from her law clerks.

In 1999, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was diagnosed with colon cancer, the first of her five bouts with cancer.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was physically weakened by the cancer treatment, and she began working with a personal trainer.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw her physical fitness improve after her first bout with cancer; she was able to complete twenty push-ups in a session before her 80th birthday.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a tumor that was discovered at an early stage.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from a New York City hospital on February 13,2009, and returned to the bench when the Supreme Court went back into session on February 23,2009.

On November 8,2018, Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell in her office at the Supreme Court, fracturing three ribs, for which she was hospitalized.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to the Supreme Court on February 15,2019, to participate in a private conference with other justices in her first appearance at the Court since her cancer surgery in December 2018.

Months later in August 2019, the Supreme Court announced that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had recently completed three weeks of focused radiation treatment to ablate a tumor found in her pancreas over the summer.

However, by May 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was receiving treatment for a recurrence of cancer.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reiterated her position that she "would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam", adding that she remained fully able to do so.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died from complications of pancreatic cancer on September 18,2020, at age 87.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, and according to Rabbi Richard Jacobs, "One of the themes of Rosh Hashanah suggest that very righteous people would die at the very end of the year because they were needed until the very end".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first woman and first Jew to lie in state therein.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death opened a vacancy on the Supreme Court about six weeks before the 2020 presidential election, initiating controversies regarding the nomination and confirmation of her successor.

In 2002, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was named one of 100 Most Powerful Women, one of Glamour magazine's Women of the Year 2012, and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.

In 2018 Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the inaugural recipient of the Genesis Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the recipient of the 2019 $1million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, which is awarded annually by the US think tank the Berggruen Institute.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg donated the entirety of the prize money to charitable and non-profit organizations, including the Malala Fund, Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel, the American Bar Foundation, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Washington Concert Opera.

The name was given because the neck plate of the Ilomantis ginsburgae bears a resemblance to a jabot, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg was known for wearing.

The researchers noted that the name was a nod to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fight for gender equality.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg presented the first award in February 2020 to arts patron and philanthropist Agnes Gund.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's family distanced itself from the award and asked for her name to be removed from it.

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal, established by the World Jurist Association, was first presented in 2021.

In March 2023, a special memorial session of the Supreme Court honored Ginburg Also in 2023, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was featured on a USPS Forever stamp.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been referred to as a "pop culture icon" and an "American cultural icon".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's profile began to rise after O'Connor's retirement in 2006 left Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the only serving female justice.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg appears in both a comic opera and a workout book.

Filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen created a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, titled RBG, for CNN Films, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave her blessing for the cameo, as well as to have the mini-figurine produced as part of the Lego toy sets following the film's release in February 2019.

In 2018, Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which featured her following her regular workout routine accompanied by Stephen Colbert joking with her and attempting to perform the same routine.