Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Gender Equality Advocate

Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Bader taught at Rutgers University Law School and then at Columbia University, where she became its first female tenured professor. She served as the director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union during the 1970s, and was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980. Named to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, she continued to argue for gender equality in such cases as United States v. Virginia. She died September 18, 2020 due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. She served there until she was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, selected to fill the seat vacated by Justice Byron White. President Clinton wanted a replacement with the intellect and political skills to deal with the more conservative members of the Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings were unusually friendly, despite frustration expressed by some senators over Ginsburg’s evasive answers to hypothetical situations.Several expressed concern over how she could transition from social advocate to Supreme Court Justice. In the end, she was easily confirmed by the Senate, 96-3. Ginsburg became the court's second female justice as well as the first Jewish female justice.

Fun Facts

Facts you may not know...

When Ginsburg was in school, she was a baton twirler, a cello player, and a memeber of the pep squad as well as the honor society.

Ginsburg has appeared as an extra in two of the Washington Opera's productions, including acting as herself and once she was in full costume and powdered wig.

Ginsburg once said that Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini are her three favorite opera composers.

In 1993, when President Bill Clinton announced her nomination as the first appointment to the Supreme Court, Clinton said, "Many admirers of her work say that she is to the women's movement what former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was to the movement for the rights of African-Americans."

Some Of Her Gender Equality Cases

Duren v. Missouri (1978): Jackson County had violated the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment when they requested that women be exempt from jury service.

Califano v. Goldfarb (1976): Leon Goldfarb, a widower, had applied for survivor's benefits. To be eligible for the benefits, he must have been receiving half his support from his wife when she died, but this was not a requirement for widows whose husbands had passed away. This was a violation of the Due Process Clause.

Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1974) Social Security benefits violated the Due Process Clause because their benefits that they provide that were based on the earnings of the husband or father were available to both the widow and child, but the benefits they provide based on the earnings of the wife or mother is only available to the child and not the widower.