The passing of feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) has left us with feelings of overwhelming fear and sadness. Known affectionately by her millennial fanbase as “Notorious RBG,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought tirelessly to advocate for marginalized and underrepresented members of the U.S. population. She gave a voice to the voiceless. In particular, her liberal-leanings made her somewhat of a gladiator fighting for female empowerment, gender equality and the opposition of sex discrimination (to name a few).
In 1957, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of nine female students at Harvard Law School. These women were discriminated against in class, and even asked to defend their reasoning for applying for a seat at Harvard Law since they were seen as taking a seat away from a man by choosing to attend. She cleverly answered this question by acting as if she was pursuing law in order to be more empathetic towards her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg (Marty), who was also studying law.
Ginsburg graduated as valedictorian after transferring to Columbia, while also taking care of her newborn daughter and husband (who had cancer). Even after graduating at the top of her class, she was not offered any jobs at New York law firms. Instead, she had to pursue a different career path within law—she became a professor at Rutgers Law School in 1963 and taught a course on gender-discrimination in law. Ginsburg later switched to teaching at Columbia in 1972 and became the first female professor who was tenured there.
When her husband, a tax-court lawyer, came across client Charles Moritz, both Ruth and Marty worked the case together, leading to a historic win in 1972, which became the constitutional template for the gender equality revolution in America. Following this significant win, in the 1970s, Ginsburg was selected to lead the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, through which she was able to begin demolishing archaic ideas about the so-called “limitations” of women. Ginsburg later accepted President Carter’s appointment to the D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals in 1980, where she served on the court for thirteen years until she was President Clinton’s nominee to the Supreme Court in 1993. From there, she continued to blaze a trail that will stay unforgotten throughout history.
When she was asked for her opinion on how many justices on the U.S. Supreme Court should be female in order for there to be enough representation on the bench, RBG confidently said, “when there are nine.” She couldn’t understand why people were so surprised at the thought of all nine justices being women when there’d previously exclusively been nine men, and nobody seemed to question that.
Whether or not we realize it, Justice Ginsburg was a revolutionary mind. Some of her most notable work for women’s rights include writing that it’s unconstitutional to bar women from attending state-funded schools and colleges, getting rid of the idea that there needs to be a male co-signer if a woman wants to open her own bank account or sign a mortgage, working towards getting rid of the gender-based pay gap, working to protect pregnant women in the workplace, stating that women should serve on juries and was one of the key votes in legalizing same-sex marriage. In addition to leaving her legal mark on the world, Ginsburg has also been a role model for women everywhere. She showed us how cool it is to be hard-working, dedicated and confident female leaders.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will forever be remembered and revered for being a warrior for gender equality. She persevered in the face of both discrimination and illness and has changed the world with her verdicts. May her memory be for a blessing.