RUTH BADER GINSBURG

Autobiography on Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Autobiography on Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ginsburg was born on March 15, 1933, in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother stressed the importance of education and played a formative role in Ruth's upbringing. Tragically, Ginsburg's mother died the day before her daughter's high school graduation ceremony.

The future justice attended college at Cornell University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and met her future husband, Martin Ginsburg. Martin entered Harvard Law School but was drafted into the army. After his discharge, the Ginsburgs returned to Harvard, where Ruth also enrolled in law school, a year behind her husband(Yates, 2008).

Ginsburg entered Harvard at a time when few women were admitted to law school. She and her fellow female students faced a hostile educational environment and at one point were asked by the dean how it felt to take seats that otherwise could have been held by deserving men. Despite the difficulties she confronted, Ginsburg excelled academically and made law review. During Ginsburg's second year, misfortune struck when her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer that required major surgery and extensive radiation treatment. Portunately, he recovered, and graduated on schedule. When her husband went to work for a New York City law firm, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated at the top of her class and again made law review, becoming the first woman to be selected for law review at two universities(Yates, 2008).

Despite Ginsburg's high grades and strong academic background, no major law firm would hire her. Eventually, she obtained a position as a law clerk position with a federal district court judge. After completing her clerkship, Ginsburg worked for Columbia University on a comparative civil law project, coau-thoring a book on Swedish judicial procedure.

Law Career

In 1963, Ginsburg was hired as a faculty member at Rutgers University. While teaching at Rutgers, Ginsburg began assisting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in sex discrimination litigation. In one case, she worked with women schoolteachers who were required to quit their jobs when they became pregnant; they sought the right to maternity leave. In 1972, Ginsburg joined the faculty as a professor at Columbia University, where she became the first woman to be granted tenure by the law school. While teaching at Columbia, Ginsburg also served as general counsel for the ACLU and in 1972 was named the head of its Women's Rights Project.

During Ginsburg's association with the ACLU, she was involved in some of the most important sex discrimination litigation in Supreme Court history. In Ginsburg's first major case, she assisted in writing the ACLU's amicus brief in the case of Reed v. Reed (1971), in which the Supreme Court struck down an Idaho statute granting an automatic preference for men over women in the administration of decedents' estates.

In the 1970s, Ginsburg argued major sex discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, five of which she won. In Frontière v. Richardson (1973), Ginsburg successfully challenged the government's discriminatory practices ...