Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Baders had a daughter before her, Marylin, who died of meningitis at six. Ruth was 14 months old, and the family kept calling her Kiki, the nickname Marylin had given her for being a kicky baby. Her mother Celia had finished high school at 15 and been sent to work so her brother could go to college. She took Ruth to the library, and died of cancer the day before Ruth's high school graduation. Cornell came next, and Martin Ginsburg, whom she met at 17. At 21 a Social Security office in Oklahoma demoted her for being pregnant. In 1956 she entered Harvard Law as one of nine women in a class of about 500, and the dean asked the women why they were taking the places of men.

She transferred to Columbia and tied for first in 1959, and no firm and no chambers would take her. Felix Frankfurter refused her a clerkship on the ground that she was a woman. So she taught. Rutgers hired her in 1963 and paid her less than the men because, she was told, her husband had a very good job. In 1972 she became the first woman with tenure at Columbia Law. Carter put her on the D.C. Circuit in 1980. From here the advocacy and the Court belong to BriefHistory. What follows is the marriage and the temper underneath.

Martin developed testicular cancer while they were both in law school. She went to his classes and her own, typed his papers off his dictation, and looked after a toddler, and he lived another 56 years, until June 27, 2010. The reticence she demanded of judges she broke twice in 2016. In July she said publicly that she did not want to think about a Trump presidency and joked about moving to New Zealand, then apologized for remarks she called ill advised. In October she called Colin Kaepernick's protest really dumb, and apologized again for being inappropriately dismissive and harsh. Her closest colleague on the Court was Antonin Scalia, whose votes she spent her career answering and whose company she kept at the opera.

She had colon cancer in 1999 and missed no oral arguments, pancreatic cancer in 2009, lung cancer in 2018, and a recurrence that killed her on September 18, 2020. Mourners left flowers and candles on the Court steps, and pandemic rules pushed her casket outdoors to the west portico for two days. On September 25 she lay in state at the Capitol, the first woman and the first Jew to do so, and was buried beside Martin at Arlington. What stays contested is not the doctrine but her own judgment of it: she had long faulted Roe v. Wade for cutting off a movement that might have built something sturdier, and the Court she left overturned it 21 months later.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Civil Procedure in Sweden book
  Written with the Swedish jurist Anders Bruzelius. Sweden changed how she thought about sex equality 1965
• Women's Rights Law Reporter company
  The first American law journal devoted entirely to women's rights 1970
• Brief for the appellant in Reed v. Reed case
  She listed Dorothy Kenyon and Pauli Murray as co-authors for work they had done before her 1971
• Text, Cases and Materials on Sex-Based Discrimination book
  The first law school casebook on the subject 1974
• United States v. Virginia case
  Her majority opinion ending the Virginia Military Institute's men-only admissions 1996
• My Own Words book
  A bestselling collection of her writing, from a schoolgirl editorial onward 2016

• 1950 aged ~17 Her mother dies of cancer the day before her high school graduation
• 1954 aged ~21 Graduates from Cornell and marries Martin Ginsburg A Social Security office in Oklahoma demoted her that year for being pregnant.
• 1956 aged ~23 Enters Harvard Law, one of nine women among about 500 men Martin's cancer arrived the same period. She sat both sets of classes.
• 1959 aged ~26 Graduates from Columbia tied for first, and cannot get a clerkship Felix Frankfurter refused to consider a woman.
• 1963 aged ~30 Begins teaching at Rutgers, at less than the men are paid She was one of fewer than twenty women teaching law in the country.
• 1972 aged ~39 Becomes the first woman with tenure at Columbia Law School
• June 30, 1980 aged 47 Jimmy Carter appoints her to the D.C. Circuit
• June 27, 2010 aged 77 Martin Ginsburg dies after 56 years of marriage
• September 25, 2020 aged 87 Lies in state at the Capitol The first woman and the first Jewish person to do so.

• Felix Frankfurter 1882–1965
  Supreme Court justice and Harvard professor whose jurisprudence and government service shaped twentieth-century American law. refused her a clerkship
• Pauli Murray 1910–1985
  Lawyer and activist whose legal arguments laid groundwork for Brown v. Board and LGBTQ rights. credited on her first brief
• Louis Brandeis 1856–1941
  Justice and reform lawyer who advanced privacy, free speech, and progressive regulation. preceded her on the Court
• Gloria Steinem b. 1934
  Writer and organizer who became one of the most visible leaders of second-wave feminism. ally
• Betty Friedan 1921–2006
  Author of The Feminine Mystique and founding president of the National Organization for Women. ally