By Elizabeth Fitch, Staff Writer
“The most looked-up-to person in Washington stands just 5-foot-1… The diminutive justice, who has barely cracked 100 pounds on the scale for most of her adult life, is a giant to liberals.”[1] She may even challenge you to a push up contest.[2] “I do 10, and then I breathe, and then I do 10 more.”[3] Easy, says the 86-year-old legal genius.[4] All jokes aside, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is arguably one of the fiercest, most gracefully rebellious women of our time. “A badass in every sense of the word, Ginsburg has for decades defied the rules and chose, instead to make her own, leading to her historic appointment to the nation’s highest court.”[5]
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1933.[6] She received her B.A. from Cornell University, got married shortly after graduation, and had her first child.[7] Just 14 months after the birth of her daughter, Ginsburg went on to attend Harvard Law School, where she was one of nine female students in a class of 500.[8] When applying, each of those nine female students was required to justify why they should be offered a seat that would have otherwise been taken by a male.[9] When her husband got a job at a prestigious law firm in New York City, she transferred to Colombia Law School to keep her family together.[10] Despite earning a seat on both the Harvard and Colombia Law Reviews, personal recommendations from Harvard Law professors, and graduating first in her class at Colombia, Ruth was met with numerous employment rejections upon graduation.[11] Men were simply “too uncomfortable with the thought of a woman in [their] chambers.”[12] Not only was she a woman, but she was also Jewish.[13] To challenge her further, she had a family.[14] At a time when female sterilization to permanently prevent women from becoming pregnant was practiced and near encouraged for female professionals, it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg against the world.[15]
Personal experiences with sex discrimination inspired Ruth to study women’s rights and issues of gender equality, particularly in the workplace, more closely.[16] In 1972 she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project.[17] She and Brenda Feigen, co-founder, sought out an unused area in the American Civil Liberties Union office, where they hung the sign: “WOMEN WORKING,” and started revolutionizing America.[18] A mere one year later, Ruth argued her first case in front of the Supreme Court of the United States: Frontiero v. Richardson.[19] She advocated for the application of strict scrutiny to gender discrimination;[20] she challenged the United States Constitution with ease.[21] “I’ve never heard an oral argument as unbelievably cogent as hers… Not a single Justice asked a single question; I think they were mesmerized by her,” Feigen remembers.[22] Ruth, unfortunately, however, was one vote short of a majority.[23]
In the years following, Ginsburg’s voice did not go unnoticed. As a Justice on the United States Supreme Court, she joined majority opinions ruling that states could not operate all-male educational institutions with tax-payer dollars, opinions invalidating laws banning “partial birth” abortions, and opinions that struck down laws making pregnant women ineligible for unemployment benefits.[24] All decisions that were immeasurable successes for women’s rights in 1975. She was a vital contributor to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, an amendment to Title VII that established that pregnancy discrimination in the workplace is unlawful sex discrimination.[25] Ginsburg heatedly dissented in opinions where woman sued unsuccessfully for compensation for the years in which they had been paid substantially less than male colleagues.[26] She was, quite literally, making history with every decision she authored.
This work has earned Ginsburg the recognition as one of the most respected, and most beloved, jurists of our time.[27] She has most recently been named the recipient of the 2019 Berggruen Prize, one given annually to a thinker whose ideas “have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world.”[28] She has been celebrated for being a “constant voice for justice, equal and accessible to all.”[29] In very Ruth-Bader-Ginsburg-like-fashion, she intends to give her $1 Million-dollar prize directly to charity.[30] “Few in our era have done more to bring vital philosophical ideas to fruition in practical affairs than Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” philosopher Kwame Appiah states. “She has been both a visionary and a strategic leader in securing equality, fairness, and the rule of law not only in the realm of theory, but in social institutions and the lives of individuals.”[32] And don’t forget, she will beat you in a push up contest.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/05/01/rbg-documentary-shows-how-ruth-bader-ginsburg-became-pop-icon/562930002/
[2] https://fortune.com/2016/09/22/ruth-bader-ginsburg-pushups/
[5] https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/05/01/rbg-documentary-shows-how-ruth-bader-ginsburg-became-pop-icon/562930002/
[6] https://www.supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-court/the-current-court/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg/
[7] https://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/
[9] https://shona.ie/who-is-the-notorious-rbg/
[10] https://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/
[15] https://www.aclu.org/other/history-aclu-womens-rights-project
[19] https://www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff
[20] https://www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff
[21] https://www.aclu.org/other/history-aclu-womens-rights-project
[22] https://www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff
[24] https://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/
[25] https://www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff
[26] https://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/
[27] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/arts/ruth-bader-ginsburg-berggruen-prize.html
[29] https://www.berggruen.org/prize/
[30] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ruth-bader-ginsburg-receive-1-million-berggruen-prize-philosophy-culture-n1070621
[31] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/arts/ruth-bader-ginsburg-berggruen-prize.html
