Joan Ruth Bader was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, NY, to a Polish-Ukranian Jewish family living in the Flatbush neighborhood. Spurred by her mother’s eager hopes that her daughter would go further with her education than she herself had, Ruth was an avid student and entered Cornell University at age 17. There she met her future husband, Martin Ginsburg, and went on to be the highest-ranking graduate of the Class of 1954. After their graduation, the Ginsburgs relocated to Oklahoma, where Martin was stationed in the U.S. Army Reserves. There, Ruth worked for the Social Security Administration but was demoted when her supervisors learned she was pregnant with her first child. 

In 1956, Ginsburg enrolled in Harvard Law School, where the gender gap was starkly evident. Only one of nine women in a class of 500, Ginsburg and her female classmates were reportedly asked by the Dean of the School why they were at Harvard Law, taking the place of men. Ginsburg would wind up transferring to Columbia Law School following her husband’s move to a new job, and would become the first woman to serve on two major law reviews (Harvard Law Review and Cornell Law Review). 

Like O’Connor, Ginsburg struggled to find paid positions in the legal profession following her graduation in 1959. Despite tying for first in her class, she was rejected for a clerkship under Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter because of her gender. Instead, she clerked under Edmund L. Palmieri, U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. After two years in that position, Ginsburg began her shift back to academia, working at the Columbia Law School Project as an associate director. In 1963, she accepted a position as a professor at Rutgers Law School on the condition that she would be willing to accept a lower salary than her male counterparts. The School’s reasoning was that her husband was well paid in his job. Ginsburg earned tenure in 1969 and continued at Rutgers until 1972. 

That same year, Ginsburg shifted away from academia as she helped to establish the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1973, she assumed the role of the Project’s General Counsel, which included arguing gender discrimination cases in front of the Supreme Court, winning five out of the six cases she presented. 

Ginsburg continued her work in advocacy for the next seven years, contributing substantially to the way women were treated by the law. In 1980, Ginsburg was nominated to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Jimmy Carter. In that role, she was known for being a moderate jurist and often sided with her future Supreme Court colleague Antonin Scalia. 

In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, based on recommendations from his Attorney General, Janet Reno, and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. Ginsburg would be the second female and first Jewish justice and was expected by many to be a moderate influence on the court. 

After her confirmation by the Senate (a 96-3 vote), Ginsburg took her place on the Court alongside Sandra Day O’Connor. Ginsburg’s tenure was characterized by her cautious approach to evaluating cases. She soon became a key player in the Court’s liberal wing and became that bloc’s most senior member after the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens in 2010. 

Chief Justice William Rehnquist swearing in Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court while President Bill Clinton and her husband, Martin Ginsburg, look on, 8/10/1993. (National Archives Identifier 3144719)