SUPREME DISSENT

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE | HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST

Ruth Bader Ginsburg studied law at Harvard when females were not welcome in the classroom or the legal profession. A seat occupied by a woman was thought to be a wasted seat.

After Harvard, Ginsburg enrolled in Columbia Law where she graduated with a law degree and tied for first in her class. Despite stellar credentials, law firms didn’t want women among them, and she struggled to find employment. When she began work as a professor at Rutgers, Ruth was informed her salary would be less than her male counterparts.

Diminutive, reserved, sober and unbending in her opinions, Ruth was strong as steel. She became determined to abolish gender inequality and decided if the good old boys wouldn’t give her a job, she’d teach the next generation to think differently and change the system. She was determined to prove gender discrimination was harmful to both women and men. Ruth earned an enviable reputation, arguing in six gender discrimination cases and won five.

Ginsburg co-founded the first law journal to focus exclusively on women’s rights and co-authored a book on sex discrimination, the first law school casebook that was ever written. Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Ruth was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Justice Ginsburg, in her eighth decade of life, developed an ardent following and an admiring student coined the term “Notorious R.B.G.” after the late rapper. Ginsburg’s greatest success was in teaching people of all ages, colors, genders and creeds to think more deeply about social justice.