Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Today’s Justice of the Day is: RUTH BADER GINSBURG. Justice Ginsburg was born on this day, March 15, in 1933.
Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, the state from which she would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. She came from a working class, immigrant neighborhood in New York City, but her aptitude as a student led her to earn an A.B. from Cornell University in 1954, attend Harvard Law School, and graduate from Cornell Law School with an LL.B. in 1959.
Immediately upon graduation from law school, Justice Ginsburg began a two year stint as a Legal Secretary to Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; some of her professors had tried to secure a clerkship for her with Justice Felix Frankfurter in the 1960 term, but he declined (a decision that is largely attributed to his discomfort with having a woman as a Law Clerk). In 1961, she joined the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, first as a Research Associate (from 1961 to 1962), then as Associate Director (from 1962 to 1963). Justice Ginsburg subsequently began a series of professorships that would last until her appointment as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President James E. Carter in 1980. She was a Professor at Rutgers Law School (from 1963 to 1972) and then Columbia Law School (from 1972 to 1980), the latter of which coincided with her work at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she served as counsel to the group’s Women’s Rights Project (from 1972 to 1980), general counsel (from 1973 to 1980), and a member of its National Board of Directors (from 1974 to 1980). Over the course of her work for the ACLU, Justice Ginsburg earned a reputation as a distinguished litigator before the court on which she would later serve as an Associate Justice. She was also a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977 to 1978. Justice Ginsburg ultimately remained on the DC Circuit from the time of her appointment until her elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Ginsburg was nominated by President William J. Clinton on June 22, 1993, to a seat vacated by Justice Byron White. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 3, and received her commission two days later. Justice Ginsburg took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on August 10, and has served on the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts. She is an actively serving Justice today, and is the fifth most senior Member of the current SCUS.
Justice Ginsburg is perhaps the most well-known of her colleagues on the bench, thanks to her wide popularity among progressives and status as something of a cultural icon. She is widely recognized as the most liberal Member of the SCUS today and the unofficial leader of the Court’s Democratic-appointees. Due in large part to the Court’s long-standing conservative tilt, Justice Ginsburg has authored very few of the most controversial, well-known opinions to have been handed down during her tenure. She has nonetheless made a name for herself as a particularly vocal advocate for the rights of women, as seen in the opinion of the Court she authored in United States v. Virginia (1996), wherein she and the majority found that states could not satisfy the Equal Protections Clause by establishing women-only institutions alongside ones which exclude them. Justice Ginsburg is perhaps best known in legal circles for her rousing dissents against the Republican-appointed majority’s most ideologically-excessive decisions, such as in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014).