President Clinton Nominates Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Supreme Court
President Bill Clinton on this day nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a seat on the Supreme Court.
At the time, she was a judge on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to which she had been appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. When she joined the Supreme Court, she became the second woman ever to serve on the Court, joining Sandra Day O’Connor.
In the 1970s, Ginsburg had been director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, where she was instrumental in bringing the first important women’s rights cases before the Court. See, for example, Reed v. Reed, decided on November 22, 1971, and Frontiero v. Richardson, decided on May 14, 1973.
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. Justice Ginsburg’s speeches are available on her official Supreme Court web site.
Ginsburg was still serving on the Court when she died on September 18, 2020.
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)
See the movie on Ginsburg: RBG (2018)
Watch an interview with Ginsburg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukGH4uv7XFM
Learn more about Justice Ginsburg: http://www.biography.com/people/ruth-bader-ginsburg-9312041
And more: http://notoriousrbg.tumblr.com/