Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Civil Libertarian, Feminist, Joins Supreme Court
Appointed by President Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman to serve on the Court. She had previously been a Justice on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to which she appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
As director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project in the 1970s, she played a major role in several landmark women’s rights cases before the Court, including Reed v. Reed, decided on November 22, 1971, and Frontiero v. Richardson, decided on May 14, 1973.
Ginsburg modeled her litigation program after Thurgood Marshall’s program that lead to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring racially segregated public schools unconstitutional. Marshall’s strategy involved not immediately challenging segregated public schools because he believed that neither the Supreme Court nor the public was ready for dramatic change. Instead, he challenged smaller segregation issues such as segregation in state law schools, for the purpose of building a body of case law that would later support a challenge to segregated public schools. As we know, the strategy worked. And it worked for Ginsburg in the area of women’s rights.
Following the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor and the appointment of Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court shifted further in a conservative direction. In response, Ginsburg became more outspoken in her dissents and in public comments, particularly on women’s issues. In one interview in June 2014, for example, she said the Court had a “blind spot” on women’s issues.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, while still a member of the Supreme Court.
Read the great biography of RBG: Jane Sherron De Hart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life (2018)
Don’t miss: Linda Hirshman, Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World (2015)
Learn more about the ACLU and the history of women’s rights: https://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/aclu-history-protecting-womens-equality
See the movie about the life of Justice Ginsburg: RBG.
Watch an interview with Ginsburg:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKaTjFlfzs
Read Ginsburg’s Supreme Court biography: http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx
Learn more about Justice Ginsburg: http://www.biography.com/people/ruth-bader-ginsburg-9312041
And more: http://notoriousrbg.tumblr.com/