Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993-2020. She was the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) and the first Jewish female justice. Ginsburg was also the first woman to have lain in state at the Capitol.

Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1933. She received her B.A. in government from Cornell University in 1954. She began law school at Harvard Law School and was the first woman to serve on the editorial staff of the Harvard Law Review. She completed law school at Columbia Law School in 1959, serving on the law review and graduating in a tie for first place in her class.

From 1960-1961, Ginsburg served as a clerk for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. From 1961 -1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. From 1963-1972, she was a professor of law at Rutgers, earning tenure in 1969. In 1970, Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal in the U.S. to focus exclusively on women's rights. From 1972-1980, she taught at Columbia, where she became the first woman to be hired with tenure at that institution. In 1972, she co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. She served as their general counsel from 1973-1980 and on their national board of directors from 1974-1980. In 1977, she became a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Ginsburg was appointed a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980, and served there until joining the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993.

Ginsburg died on Sept. 18, 2020.

Sources:

About the Reporter. Women's Rights Law Reporter. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved on July 21, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20080708192947/http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~wrlr/index.html.

CNN (2020, July 19). Ruth Bader Ginsburg Fast Facts. Retrieved on July 21, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/us/ruth-bader-ginsburg-fast-facts/index.html.

Houck, A. M. (2020, April 16). Ruth Bader Ginsburg: United States Jurist. In Britannica. Retrieved on July 21, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruth-Bader-Ginsburg.

Supreme Court of the United States. (n.d.). Current members. Retrieved on July 21, 2020, from https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx.

History, Art, and Archives of the United States House of Representatives. (n.d.). Individuals Who Have Lain in State or in Honor. Retrieved on September 25, 2020, from https://history.house.gov/Institution/Lie-In-State/Lie-In-State-Honor/.