This summer, my friend and I went to see a documentary about Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It was very good and I found it tremendously moving. The news of her being hospitalized after a fall last week brought her again front-of-mind. Today’s post is a little-bit less about RBG the documentary and more about RBG the hero for women’s rights.
The older I get, the less that I take for granted the rights that we women have. The fact that the 19th Amendment was only ratified in 1920 is astonishing enough, but I really had no idea how recently so many of the rights that I take for granted were established. And how much we as women owe to Ruth Bader Ginsburg for securing these rights for us.
The documentary took us through her life, starting with her childhood with a devoted mother who was very invested in her daughter’s education. Ruth Bader went to Cornell where she met Martin Ginsburg and after she graduated they got married. She was accepted to law school and it was socially acceptable that she went only because she was already married. She first attended Harvard (with Marty), but completed her degree at Columbia because he had graduated and was hired by a firm in NYC. RBG graduated first in her class from Columbia.
She was the first woman on both the Harvard and the Columbia Law Review. In spite of her outstanding credentials, in her words, “Not a law firm in New York would employ me…I struck out on three grounds: I was Jewish, a woman, and a mother.”
These were considered acceptable reasons for denying someone employment in those days. At least part of the reason that those reasons are no longer acceptable is thanks to her work. Ironic, no?
RGB became a professor of law at Rutgers in 1963 and co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in 1971. In that capacity, she brought six gender-discrimination cases to the Supreme Court. These cases were strategically selected to systematically establish a framework of anti-gender discrimination legal precedent. In the seminal case, Reed v. Reed (1971), RBG wrote the plaintiff’s brief. The Supreme Court ruling in that case extended the protections of the 14th Amendment to include women. Ok, so what? Ok, so the 14th Amendment was the outcome of the Civil War, yes? Basically, it says that all citizens are entitled to equal protection under the law, right? Ok, so UNTIL 1971 THIS PROTECTION WAS UNIFORMLY INTERPRETED BY THE COURTS TO NOT EXTEND TO WOMEN. Is it just me or is that a big deal?
She was appointed to the Washington DC circuit court in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. What surprised me when watching the movie was that she wasn’t appointed to Supreme Court until the 1990’s! She was the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court. Ever. In 1993. Are you kidding!?! No, that is for real.
Not a one-dimensional legal justice crusader, RBG is an interestingly, multi-dimensional woman (aren’t we all?). Fun facts about her include: her love of opera; that she shared that hobby with her good friend and philosophical opposite, Antonin Scalia; the collection of collars that she wears with her judicial robes, in particular, the Dissent Collar (here is a good image that I found online); and her hard-core workout routine (you too can have a body like RBG!).
I was happy to learn that RBG is back at work. Should we credit her workout routine?