Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Biography

Joan Ruth Bader was born March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother Celia, who died of cancer the day before Ruth's high school graduation, instilled in her a love of reading and a fierce commitment to independence. Ruth graduated from Cornell, married Martin Ginsburg, and began Harvard Law School in 1956 — one of only nine women in a class of 500. She transferred to Columbia Law School when Martin took a job in New York and graduated first in her class in 1959. Despite her credentials, she was rejected by every law firm she applied to. A federal judge she clerked for refused to hire her because she was a woman.

These personal experiences of discrimination shaped her legal career. She became a professor at Rutgers and Columbia Law Schools, and in the early 1970s co-founded the ACLU Women's Rights Project, where she argued six landmark gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court — winning five. Her strategy was deliberate and brilliant: she often argued cases involving male plaintiffs discriminated against by gender-based laws, recognizing that judges could more easily see gender discrimination when the victim was a man. She was appointed to the DC Circuit by Carter in 1980 and to the Supreme Court by Clinton in 1993, where she served until her death at 87 in September 2020. Her dissents, particularly in Bush v. Gore and Ledbetter v. Goodyear, became cultural touchstones.

Core Philosophy

Change comes incrementally through persuasion, not confrontation. Ginsburg's legal strategy — both as an advocate and as a justice — was built on incremental progress. Rather than seeking sweeping rulings that courts might reject, she sought narrow decisions that built precedent step by step. She argued that the law's job was to catch up to society's moral evolution — and that the best way to move it was to show, case by case, that existing distinctions were arbitrary and harmful.

Dissent is a form of hope. In her most famous dissents — including her 35-page dissent in Shelby County v. Holder (gutting the Voting Rights Act), and her dissent in Bush v. Gore — Ginsburg wrote not for the majority of that moment but for the court of the future. "A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day." She understood that today's minority opinion can become tomorrow's majority precedent.

Famous Quotes

Notable Achievements

• Won 5 of 6 landmark gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court as ACLU Women's Rights Project director
• Appointed second female US Supreme Court Justice by President Clinton in 1993
• Authored majority opinions in United States v. Virginia (1996) — ending male-only admissions at VMI
• Her dissents in Ledbetter v. Goodyear directly led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2009)
• Became cultural icon "RBG" — subject of documentary, biopic, operas, and countless works
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015)
• Received honorary degrees from 30+ universities worldwide
• Worked through pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer while continuing to serve on the bench

Lessons for the CLO Suite