Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The second female Supreme Court Justice
Image from LIFE Magazine
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993 and is a current member of the court. She is the second woman to serve.
Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in a low-income, working class neighborhood. Ruth’s mother, a major influence in her life, taught her the value of independence and education. Ginsburg worked diligently and excelled in her studies. Her mother struggled with cancer throughout Ruth’s high school years, and died the day before Ruth’s graduation. She attended Cornell University, graduating first in her class in 1954. Later she attended Harvard Law School where she was one of only eight women in a class of 500. She excelled academically, eventually becoming the first female member of the Harvard Law Review.
After clerking for U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri (1959-61), she taught at Rutgers University Law School (1963-72) and at Columbia (1972-80), where she became the school’s first female, tenured professor. During the 1970s, she also served as the Director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, for which she argued six landmark cases on gender equality before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bader believed that the law was gender-blind and all groups were entitled to equal rights. One of the five cases she won before the Supreme Court involved a portion of the Social Security Act that favored women over men because it granted certain benefits to widows but not widowers.
Further details on her career can be found at the U.S. Supreme Court website.