Women Who Changed History

You asked and I delivered. Here is the legendary Ruth’s story, as some of you requested.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A mother and judge who shifted the legal perspective on gender

 

 

 

Ruth Ginsburg was born into a Jewish family born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 1933, and grew up attending synagogue and participating in Jewish rituals. She was known for her brilliant mind and obtained outstanding grades at school, where she thrived.

 

When she went off to college Ruth, had no inspiration to be a lawyer because women couldn’t make a living practicing law at the time, but teaching was a sector where women were accepted and provided a solid salary. Therefore, she was going to be a high school history teacher because she has always been interested in history.

Ruth was received a full scholarship to Cornell University, where she met her future husband Martin David Ginsburg. Ruth was strongly influenced by her husband Martin who went on to become a widely renowned tax attorney, as well as professors she met in Cornell, including author Vladimir Nabokov, who inspired her to write, and constitutional lawyer Robert Cushman, who encouraged her to pursue a legal profession.

 

Bader started her law profession in 1959, when gender discrimination was still rampant in the United States. Finding a husband and running a household were frequently the extent of women’s obligations. Women were frequently denied an education. Furthermore, it was against the law for them to work in a variety of jobs, and were paid significantly less than men who performed the same labor. Women were viewed as fragile creatures who need care from their own goals.

Ruth moved to live in Oklahoma when her husband was drafted into the US Army.  Jane, their first child, was born later. After that, they moved to Harvard Law School, where Martin resumed his studies and Ruth began hers.

Ruth played the role of caretaker for Jane as well as Martin, after he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer, while she finished her classes and served on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, making her the first woman to hold this position. Ruth won first place in her class and was a member of the Columbia Law Review when she graduated in 1959.

Ruth battled to get work as a layer although her outstanding qualifications due to her being a female at that time and also being a mother. Women represent a minority of American lawyers, and only two have worked as federal judges.

When she was hired as an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Law in 1963, the dean of college urged her to accept a small wage due to her partner’s well-paying employment. Ginsburg began wearing larger clothes after she became pregnant with her second child, out of worry that her contract would not be extended.

When Ginsburg was requested to present and moderate a law student panel debate on the theme of “women's liberation” in 1970, she got officially interested in the issue of gender equality.

❝ Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception. ❞

Ginsburg's rise to prominence in gender discrimination lawsuits began in the 1970s. In 1972, she became founding counsel of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project after co-authoring a law school casebook on gender discrimination. She was the first tenured female faculty member at Columbia Law School in the same year. Ginsburg produced a variety of Supreme Court papers on gender discrimination, as well as dozens of law review papers. Also, she stood even before Supreme Court six cases, winning five of them.

On June 14, 1993 Ruth’s life changed forever, when Democratic President Bill Clinton presented Ginsburg's selection to the Supreme Court. Her confirmation procedure was relatively swift and unarguable. On August 3, the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly recommended her for confirmation, and the entire Senate voted 96–3 to confirm her.

Ginsburg made a name for herself on the Supreme Court for her vigorous engagement in oral arguments and her custom of wearing collars, with her judicial gowns, most of which had symbolic value.

 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court's second female justice, died of cancer, leaving a legacy and clearing the path for numerous women to continue her feminist battles.

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