Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, born Joan Ruth Bader, was born in March 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. She earned an undergraduate degree in government from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She was 17 when she met Martin D. Ginsburg at Cornell. They married a month after her graduation and moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was stationed as an ROTC officer in the Army Reserve. She worked for the Social Security Administration in Oklahoma. Two years later, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, where she was one of only nine women in a class of about 500 men. She later transferred to Columbia Law School where she earned her law degree and tied for first in her class. She clerked at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
She worked at Columbia Law School for two years, also doing research at Lund University in Sweden. She became a professor at Rutgers Law School, at Columbia, and a fellow at Stanford University. Ginsburg became a strong advocate for women’s rights, and co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. She engaged in the practice of law.
Ginsburg was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was confirmed by the Senate and received her commission in June 1980. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She was confirmed by a 96-3 vote of the Senate, and took her judicial oath in August 1993.
She is a widow of Martin D. Ginsburg. She is the mother of two and grandmother of four. She is Jewish.
In the News…
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal statute that forbids encouraging illegal aliens to remain in the United States unlawfully in a decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Their decision voided an earlier ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which had said that a federal anti-harboring statute was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment by restricting free speech. Last week’s ruling by the nation’s highest court upholds the law.
The Supreme Court not only vacated the appeals court’s decision, it also criticized the judges for “drastically” straying from judicial norms. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the high court’s opinion.
“The appeals panel departed so drastically from the principle of party presentation as to constitute an abuse of discretion,” she wrote. The opinion later stated that “a court is not hidebound by the precise arguments of counsel, but the Ninth Circuit’s radical transformation of this case goes well beyond the pale.”
The decision ends a court battle that has lasted roughly ten years.
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Justice Ginsburg today? You can let her know at:
The Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Supreme Court of the United States
1 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20543
