Born Joan Ruth Bader, 1933, King’s County, Brooklyn, New York

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since her appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has built a judicial reputation renowned for upholding gender equality, workers’ rights and the separation of church and state. The second-ever female Justice, she has read nineteen dissenting opinions from the bench to date. In 2013, following her dissenting opinion in Shelby County vs. Holder, a voting rights case, two law students started the Tumblr meme Notorious RBG, riffing on the moniker of her fellow Brooklynite wordsmith, The Notorious B.I.G. It stuck.

Ruth’s mother died of cancer the day before her high school graduation in 1950. She went to Cornell University where she distinguished herself, and there met Martin D. Ginsburg, the love of her life. They spent two years at Fort Sill, Oklahoma when Marty was stationed in the Army during which time their daughter Jane was born. Marty’s active duty caused Ruth to defer her entrance into Harvard Law School, and Marty’s second year of study there. During his final year/her second, Marty took ill with cancer. Thanks to Ruth’s diligence in transcribing notes for his classes while attending her own, Marty was able to finish his degree in 1958, and was offered a job at a firm in New York City, where he became a top tax law expert. Determined to stay together as a family, when Harvard refused to award Ruth a degree with third year credits that would be earned at Columbia, she formally transferred and earned her degree from Columbia in 1959, tied for first in her class. No law firm for which she interviewed would hire a her – female, Jewish, and a mother – but in 1963 she again distinguished herself by beginning her career as a professor of law at Rutgers University, shortly after which time son James was born. In 1972 she became the first tenured female professor of law at Columbia University.  

Marty and Ruth argued one pro bono case together: it was a case exposing gender discrimination in the US tax code, opening the door to overturn hundreds of statutes that discriminated on the basis of sex, creating a platform for Ruth as an appellate advocate. In 1972 she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, and became the organization’s general counsel in 1973. She argued six cases before the Supreme Court in the years following, winning five of them. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and Marty left his job to follow her to Washington (where he became a distinguished professor at Georgetown University).

In 2009 Forbes named RBG to The 100 Most Powerful Women list. She survived colon cancer and pancreatic cancer and never yet missed a day on the bench. She weight-trains twice weekly, and has appeared on stage in supernumerary roles and in a cameo role as the Duchess of Krankenthorp in Donizetti’s La fille du Regiment at the Washington National Opera. Ruth passed away September 18, 2020 at the age of 87. She died of complications of pancreatic cancer. Ginsberg was honored in a ceremony in Statuary Hall, and she became the first woman to lie in state at the Capitol, September 25, 2020.