Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Mar 4

Supreme Court Justice

The well-known notorious RBG didn’t gain notoriety until she was well into her 80s, but why? Because, for most of her career, she quietly and methodically played by the rules while challenging the status quo. Later in her life, as she began to see some of her work overturned and values threatened, she became more vocal and visible, reading her dissents from the supreme court bench. The internet turned her into a superstar.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was only the second woman ever to serve as a Justice of the US Supreme Court. She went to Harvard Law school where she faced discrimination as one of very few women in the program later graduating from Columbia Law school. Being denied opportunities for legal work after college and receiving less pay didn’t deter Ruth from following her dreams. She became the first female professor to achieve tenure at Columbia University and successfully argued many cases that brought greater gender equality to both men and women.

A staunch advocate for women’s rights and human rights, she argued for many years, consistently smashing the glass ceiling. In 1996, she wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, ensuring that qualified women be admitted to the Virginia Military Institute.

Powerful Quotes by a Powerful Woman

“A gender line ... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

“You can disagree without being disagreeable.”

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

“Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.”

“Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.”

“When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?’ and my answer is: ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”

“Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”

“If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me.”