Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also known by her initials RBG, was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in September 2020. Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn. Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother died shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school. She then earned her bachelor’s degree at Cornell and became a wife to Martin Ginsburg and mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated tied for first in her class. Following law school, Ginsburg entered into academia. She was a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field. This was captured in the excellent 2019 film ‘On The Basis of Sex’, where she is portrayed by Felicity Jones.
Ginsburg spent a considerable part of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights, winning multiple arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. Here is another clip from the movie which refers to the landmark case thatshe fought before the Supreme Court to establish the people should not be discriminated against purely on the basis of sex.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court. Her time on the court earned her a reputation as a “cautious jurist” and a moderate. President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in June 1993, to fill the seat vacated by retiring Justice Byron White. The Senate confirmed her by a 96–3 vote in August 1993, and took her judicial oath a few days later, becoming only the second woman to hold the post.
During her time on The Court, he became famous for her dissenting opinions, of which she said “Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.” She had a special collar, or jabot, for announcing majority opinions from the bench and another for her frequent, and more celebrated, dissents.
The above clip discusses the Ledbetter v. Goodyear case in which she gave a dissenting opinion. Following the election of President Barak Obama in 2008, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for employees to win pay discrimination claims, became law. Ginsburg was credited with helping to inspire the law. Shelby County v. Holder (2013) was perhaps Ginsburg’s most famous dissent. She criticised Chief Justice John Roberts’ 5-4 ruling that struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, freeing mostly southern states from having to clear voting changes with the federal government. “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Ginsburg received attention in American popular culture for her fiery liberal dissents and refusal to step down, leading to her being dubbed “The Notorious R.B.G.”, a play on the name of rapper The Notorious B.I.G. Ginsburg has been referred to as a “pop culture icon”. Ginsburg’s profile began to rise after O’Connor’s retirement in 2006 left Ginsburg as the only serving female justice. Her dissent in Shelby County v, Holder (2013), led to the creation of the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr. The creator of the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr, then-law student Shana Knizhnik, teamed up with MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon to turn the blog into a book titled Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Released in October 2015, the book became a New York Times bestseller. In 2015, Ginsburg and Scalia, known for their shared love of opera, were fictionalized in Scalla v. Ginsburg an opera by Derrick Wang.
On her deathbed, she dictated a message that was recorded by her granddaughter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Even near her end, Justice Ginsburg was citing precedent. Here, she was specifically invoking the precedent set by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell when he decided to hold open a seat on the Supreme Court vacated after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia (who died in February of 2016) until after the election that November and the inauguration of a new president in 2017. McConnell has already indicated that he doesn’t care about that precedent. Within hours of Ginsburg’s death, he told The Washington Post that Trump’s nominee to replace Ginsburg will receive a full vote on the Senate floor. McConnell will use all his considerable power to confirm a new Supreme Court justice in record time: either before the election, if he thinks he can get away with it, or during the lame duck session after the election, should Republicans lose either the Senate or the White House. This could be a disaster for civil rights and gender equality in US for a generation.
The esteem in which she is held was demonstrated last night when huge crowds (mainly wearing masks) gathered outside the Supreme Court building to hold a vigil and to sing Amazing Grace. It was a truly inspiring tribute to ac woman who has done so much for marginalised and undrprivileged.
