“Fight for the things that you care about,
but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg -
Throughout the sixties, the U.S. fought in the Vietnam War on both the land and sea in some of history’s most treacherous conditions. On April 8, 1967, a 23-year-old woman from Louisville, Kentucky, named Susan Struck joined the war effort as a nurse--an occupation she’d be forced to leave only three years later due to the U.S. military at the time not allowing pregnant women to stay in the ranks. She eventually had to give up her child to come back to the military but was soon discharged. She then considered joining the Air Force, a short-lived dream due to the U.S. not allowing women into the Air Force (1). So there she was: no child, no job, and no idea what would come next. Then, a relentless young lawyer came into her life, the Notorious RBG.
Academically Brilliant
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born Joan Ruth Bader on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Nathan, was a fur merchant who emigrated from Russia due to Jewish discrimination. Her mother, Celia, was the child of immigrants who had fled Europe in 1901 due to multiple massacres of Jewish people. RBG’s mother was a significant influence on her life, as she introduced her to the world of language and books. “She wanted me to do well in school,” RBG stated in an interview, “so I would sit in her bedroom and do my homework, concentrating on that work” (3).
It was the hard work instilled in her by her mother that led RBG to excel in school. Not only was she the valedictorian for her eighth-grade graduation, but she also contributed to the school newspaper in high school and received honors throughout the first phase of her educational career. Unfortunately, when RBG was chosen to speak at her high school graduation, she could not attend. Her mother’s funeral took place only a day before, and she stayed at home to comfort both herself and her father (2, 3). Her mother’s passing was not the only hardship RBG faced when she was growing up. “For my parents,” she stated in an interview with Jeffrey Rosen, “having a 6-year-old who died of meningitis was a tragedy they could not overcome. There was [no help for her]. To watch a child suffer and die is something that stays with parents forever” (3).
RBG later attended Cornell University to pursue a degree in government after receiving a New York State Scholarship. She also worked as a research assistant for Professor Robert E. Cushman (2). While at Cornell, she met a man named Marty Ginsburg, with whom she shared many ideological interests. Just nine days after graduating from Cornell, the pair were married, and Martin enlisted in the army. This led the couple to be stationed in Oklahoma City. In the city, RBG, while pregnant, applied for a social security job… a job that told her that she would be given much less pay than the average worker due to her being pregnant. After her husband did two years of service, the couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to both enroll in Harvard Law School (2).
Unsurprisingly, RBG was accepted into Harvard Law School, where she excelled, as well. While at Harvard, RBG joined the Harvard Law Review editorial team--the first woman to do so--and her daughter was born. This gave the law student enrolled at the world’s most prestigious school a lot on her plate, and her plate kept getting served as Martin was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1958, a diagnosis he would thankfully overcome. Still, the reality of gender inequality in America became increasingly apparent during her time at Harvard as there were only eight female students in the class of 500 (5). RBG transferred from Harvard to Columbia Law School in New York City after Martin accepted a law firm job in New York City. Unsurprisingly, RBG continued to do well at Columbia Law School and graduated at the top of her class in 1959 (4).
Sharing Her Knowledge, the Best She Could
Despite her impressive educational history--attending three prestigious schools and graduating from two by the time she was 26, RBG, like many women both yesterday and today, found it challenging to find a job in her field. It wasn’t until a Harvard Law professor stepped in that she obtained a clerkship with Judge Edmund Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (4). Once the clerkship ended, RBG returned to Columbia University.
She worked as a research associate and eventually the associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. After Columbia University, she became one of two female law professors at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where she was once again paid less than her colleagues due to circumstances she had no real control over. Due to Martin having a high-paying job, RBG received less than her male colleagues (2). RBG was soon faced with another challenge; when her students asked her to lead a seminar about women and the law, RBG found it near impossible to do so based on how little the topic had been researched at the time (6). In 1970, RBG founded what is now the “oldest legal periodical in the United States focusing exclusively on the field of women’s rights law”--the Women’s Rights Law Reporter. The journal, in a way, gave her students the seminar they had wanted as it covered legislative developments, litigation strategies, and the legal profession as well as how they each affected women (8).
America’s Greatest Resume
She also became part of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1970, where she had planned on representing Susan Struck in the case Struck v. Secretary of Defense to combat the military’s discriminatory policies. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court never heard the case as the military adjusted its policy before it could occur (8). Although it wasn’t the most exciting ending, RBG’s willingness to take on the Secretary of Defense proved how willing she was to fight for gender equality. The U.S. Supreme Court had not seen the last of her.
Between 1973 and 1976, RBG argued six cases before the U.S. Supreme Court: Frontiero v. Richardson, a case where the USSC ruled “a law classifying benefits based on gender violated the Constitution,” Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, a case that ruled “regardless of the gender of the parent… the purpose of [social security is] to enable the surviving spouse to properly care for the children,” Califano v. Goldfarb, a case that rejected the “‘archaic and overbroad’ generalizations that a wife is more likely to be dependent on her husband than a husband on his wife” and a ruling that made the societal and governmental treatment of widows equal (9, 10, 11).
RBG won five out of the six cases, and one can genuinely see how remarkable the cases were. While, of course, she was an advocate for women’s rights, she strategically chose her plaintiffs’ genders to demonstrate how gender discrimination harms men and women (2).
In 1980, Jimmy Carter, who would later refer to RBG as “a beacon of justice,” appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals, a top-tier U.S. court with the power to “review all final judgments, decisions, resolutions, orders or awards of Regional Trial Courts and quasi-judicial agencies” (12,13). During later Senate confirmation hearings, Senator Edward Kennedy questioned RBG as to whether her history of advocating for gender equality would make her less inclined to fight for racial equality to which RBG responded by describing what she saw growing up and how it affected her:
I am alert to discrimination. I grew up during World War II in a Jewish family. I have memories as a child, even before the war, of being in a car with my parents and passing a place in [Pennsylvania with a] sign out in front that read: ‘No dogs or Jews allowed.’ Signs of that kind existed in this country during my childhood. One couldn’t help but be sensitive to discrimination living as a Jew in America at the time of World War II. (14)
RBG proceeded to serve thirteen years on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and while she was already in a prominent position that many lawyers only wish they could reach, she had nowhere to go but forward.
The United States Supreme Court
In 1980, after Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White resigned, President Bill Clinton needed to decide who would take his place--a decision that took three months (2). “We looked at forty candidates,” Clinton said in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper,“but I was really interested in Ruth Ginsburg, and Hillary had talked to me a lot about her work… and I had the conversion of a lifetime with her, and I knew after we talked for ten minutes I should appoint her” (15). Clinton also explained to Tapper that RBG was “disarmingly straightforward” with him on topics like American history and the Constitution and that just a few minutes into the conversation, it felt like he was talking to an old friend (15). The Senate approved RBG with little trouble--96-3--on August 10, 1993 (2).
The 1996 case, the United States v. Virginia, brought RBG to her Susan Struck roots. The last all-male college was the Virginia Military Institute, a school that received criticism for going against the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, the amendment that held the Equal Protection Clause, which states that “the governing body state must treat an individual in the same manner as others in similar conditions and circumstances” (16, 17). The state of Virginia argued that VMI was an all-male school because women simply weren’t capable of handling the training program. RBG was not a fan of this argument, stating that “generalizations about ‘the way women are,’ estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women” (18).
In the Olmstead v. Lois Curtis case of 1999, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, who had received treatments after admitting themselves to a Georgia hospital psychiatric ward, were held in isolation for years after being cleared. This was against the integration mandate, which allows mentally disable people to live equally in their communities. RBG wrote that the “unjustified isolation” of the two women “[perpetuated] assumptions that persons so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life,” which became the majority opinion, an opinion that more than half the justices agree on (18).
RBG advocated for racial equality in cases like 2007’s Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company which assisted a woman who was being paid underpaid due to her race and gender. 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges case, the groundbreaking case allowing same-sex marriage in all 50 states, was heavily supported by RBG. When other justices pointed to a previous case that did not allow same-sex marriage, in the end, RBG argued that “Marriage was a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female,” and arguing with those who said that same-sex marriage should not be allowed because they could not procreate by asking why a 70-year-old couple who could not procreate was allowed to marry based on those terms (20, 18). In 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case that saw some states advocating to make abortion more difficult to achieve, RBG spoke bluntly, stating, “When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners… at great risk to their health and safety” (21, 18).
The United States Supreme Court
When considering inspirational civil and women’s rights advocates, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s name is often referenced. While she stood firmly for Democratic/liberal views, she did not make herself a long list of enemies. An example of this can be seen through RBG’s friendship with fellow supreme court justice Antonin Scalia--someone who she shared little to no ideological similarities with but at the same time, someone who she spent every New Year’s Eve with since the 1980s, went souvenir shopping with, shared a love for opera with, and even rode an elephant with (22). RBG stood by her beliefs, but she also understood the importance of bipartisan collaboration.
Her long history of advocating for others undoubtedly led her to achieve her current pop culture icon status. One fan even created a Tumblr page titled “Notorious RBG” which would later be turned into the book Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She made a workout video with comedian Stephen Colbert, and, overall, many have been drawn to her story as a beacon of light. RBG fought until the end and passed away near the end of 2020, a year that saw more strives for racial justice than most Americans have ever seen in their lifetimes. While she may be gone, her advocacy for equal rights across gender, race, and sexuality will continue to live on and make the lives of those hurting a little brighter (23).
“It was my great good fortune to have the opportunity to participate in the long effort to place equal citizenship stature for women on the basic human-rights agenda. In that regard, I was scarcely an innovator. For generations, brave women and enlightened men in diverse nations pursued that goal, but they did so when society was not yet prepared to listen.
Helping to explain what was wrong about the “closed-door era” was enormously satisfying.”
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Reflection
Perhaps the craziest thing about RBG is the fact that she was 87-year-old when she passed away in September 2020. Throughout the writing of this article, it was hard for me to think about the older version of RBG--she was already sixty years old when she finally made it to the U.S. Supreme Court--mainly because of the things she fought for, which is both a happy and sad thing. It is happy because it proves age is only a number and that you can still be young at heart, but sad because we often automatically associate the advocacy and hard-fought battles for basic human rights with a younger generation. We forget that the young people in one generation may have to fight well into adulthood and sometimes even hand off their fight to the next generation to truly solve persistent issues.
It was only six years ago that gay marriage was legalized in all fifty states… six years. I’d be able to give it a tiny bit of a pass if RBG was fighting for these things throughout the multiple Supreme Court cases she was a part of if she was around in the Jeffersonian era. 2.45% of America’s history. 2.45% of the two-hundred-fifty year period since America first won its independence, 2.45% of the time people--straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, and all the rest arrived in America. There is a multitude of pomp and circumstance surrounding RBG, and she deserves it! However, with every bit of pomp and circumstance comes the feeling that we can do better…that we need to do better. It is both a blessing and a tragedy that RBG is famous and will go down in history as perhaps the best known Supreme Court Justice of all time (I mean, c’mon. What other Supreme Court Justice has their own “Pop!” figure?).
I don’t remember when it was or where it was I first heard about RBG, but I will never forget the young woman I had the pleasure of talking to just days after her death. I was working at a grocery store at the time, and I saw a woman wearing an RBG face mask. I don’t remember the exact conversation we had but I remember the feeling I got--the feeling that after I had complimented the mask, she was excited to talk about RBG, excited enough that she probably talked about RBG with her friends and family. Perhaps she even had a little one at home that she has or will tell about RBG’s determination and progress during a time when America is more divided than ever and hate for differences is so widely seen.
I’m glad I was on this earth at the same time RBG was. I’m glad I was able to know her from afar before she passed away. I hope I can inspire people just like RBG did, and I hope I can continue her legacy--alongside all the other people she inspired--despite the fact that we may not transform America into a more perfect union by making everybody equal in our life even as we continue the fight RBG had such a passion for. History remembers strong voices. History remembers the voices that inspire us. History remembers the people that people hear about from other people. History will remember RBG.
Sources & Links
This Woman’s Little-Known 1972 Case Could Have Reframed Abortion History | Elle
Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg | Rutgers the State University of New Jersey
Carter on Ginsburg: ‘A beacon of justice’ | Atlanta. News. Now
Clinton describes ‘conversation of a lifetime’ with Ginsburg | CNN Politics
Equal Protection | Legal Information Institute | Cornell Law School
8 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Supreme Court Rulings to Know About | teenVogue
From ‘SNL’ To Workout Videos, How RBG Became a Pop Culture icon | NPR
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