RUTH BADER GINSBURG WISDOM AND MORE

[Barbara]

In a dissenting opinion, RBG wrote: "The Court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination."

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG

She was one of only nine women in a class of 500 at Harvard Law — and was also taking care of her 14-month-old baby at the time.

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG

Before women were added to the Supreme Court, there was only one bathroom on site — for men.

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

Her favorite amendment is the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,”

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

Scalia/Ginsburg is a 2015 comic opera (revised in 2017) by composer-librettist Derrick Wang about the relationship between United States Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

[Barbara]

When RBG was battling cancer, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor encouraged her to "do chemo on Friday" so she could come back to work on Monday.

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

“Ruth” is not actually Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s first name. She was born Joan Ruth Bader but her mother enrolled her in school using the name Ruth.

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

RBG was a self-proclaimed terrible driver (something her husband often teased her about)! She failed her driver’s test the first five times she took it.

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was known for her “jabots” or collars that she wore over her judicial robes. Sandra Day O’Connor and Ginsburg decided that since the traditional robes accommodate for showing a man’s shirt and tie, as women, they would wear something that put their own twist on the style.

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

In school, Ruth Bader Ginsburg played the cello, was a member of the honor society, and was a baton twirler amongst other things!

[Barbara]

Fun fact about RBG:

Ruth and her husband, Marty, were not only best friends, but had a marriage notable in its time for being based in equality and partnership. They split housework, childcare, and cooking, with Marty taking a special interest in French cuisine!

[Barbara]

Run facts about RBG:

Justice Ginsburg was the second woman and the first Jewish woman ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was appointed in 1993 when she was 60 years old. During her years on the bench, she has been a champion of gay rights, women’s rights, the poor, and many other marginalized groups.

[Barbara]

Fun facts about RBG:

Ruth Bader Ginsberg is known as a severe editor of her clerk’s writing, even correcting minor punctuation on essays and speeches that will never been spoken or published!

[Barbara]

Fun facts about RBG:

Ruth Bader Ginsberg is known as a severe editor of her clerk’s writing, even correcting minor punctuation on essays and speeches that will never been spoken or published!

[Barbara]

Fun facts about RBG:

Ginsburg wore particular collars to denote her opinion on a ruling. Her majority-opinion lace collar was a gift from a former clerk, whereas a mirrored necklace serves as her dissent collar.

[Barbara]

Fun Facts about RBG:

Ruth Bader met Martin Ginsburg when she was seventeen where they undergraduate students at Cornell University, though they were both born in Brooklyn. They married a few days after her graduation and remained married for 56 years until he passed away in 2010.

[Barbara]

Fun Facts about RBG:

As a baby little Ruth was called 'Kiki' because she wouldn't stop kicking.

[Barbara]

Fun Facts about RBG:

RBG said about her mother:

"My mother was the bravest, strongest person I have ever known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

[Barbara]

Fun anecdote about RBG:

In 1956, Ginsburg was one of just nine female students matriculating at Harvard Law School. The dean of the Law School at the time, Erwin Griswold, hosted a dinner for the women—and at the end of the meal, asked each of them to go around and share how it was they justified taking a spot that would otherwise have gone to a man. Years later—when word got back to Griswold that his former student enjoyed recounting this tale on the lecture circuit—he insisted that it had all been in good fun. (Liar liar pants on fire. 😀)

[Barbara]

Interesting anecdote about RBG:

When RBG graduated from Columbia Law School, women lawyers had a hard time getting jobs as law clerks. Ginsburg was finally able to get her foot in the door with a lower-ranking district court judge, Edmund Palmieri—and only after one of her mentors threatened to stop sending clerks his way if he turned her down.

[Barbara]

“In recent years, people have said, ‘This is the way I am.’ And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor—we’re very fond of them, or it’s our child’s best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that ‘this is who I am,’ the rest of us recognized that they are one of us.”

[Barbara]

“Ginsburg comes from the generation of women who had to be three times better than men in order to get half the recognition of the average man—this was surely her experience at Harvard and Columbia Law Schools,” - Katherine Frank

[Barbara]

"While in law school, Ginsburg experienced sexism not only from her professors but her fellow students as well. “I imagine that the hazing she got from her male classmates was even worse than the discriminatory treatment she experienced from her professors.” - Katherine Frank

[Barbara]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first person, male or female, to become a member of both the Harvard and the Columbia Law Reviews, student-run journals of legal scholarship.

[Barbara]

"Even with all her law school accolades, Ginsburg faced more discrimination when looking for a job after graduating. “I struck out on three grounds,” she said in 1993 of her trouble getting hired. “I was Jewish, a woman, and a mother. The first raised one eyebrow; the second, two; the third made me indubitably inadmissible.”

[Barbara]

In law school, Ginsburg and her female colleagues were called on in class for “comic relief” and they were even excluded from using certain sections of the library.

(I'll bet those teachers and administrators would have red faces now.) 😡

[Barbara]

“In the fifties, the traditional law firms were just beginning to turn around on hiring Jews. … But to be a woman, a Jew, and a mother to boot, that combination was a bit much.”

[Barbara]

RBG was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law. She also became involved with the American Civil Liberties Union and she was central to the founding of their Women’s Rights Project in 1971.

[Barbara]

RBG had an extensive collection of collars for her robes. She had them from all over the world, for every occasion, and for every kind of opinion of the court.

[Barbara]

RBG accepted President Bill Clinton's nomination to the Supreme Court on August 10, 1993. She became the second woman, and first Jewish woman, to serve on the Supreme Court.

[Barbara]

RBG liked fashion and in addition to her collars, she was also known for her fishnet gloves, embroidered jackets, and a pair of glittering silver heels.

[Barbara]

RBG's favorite Supreme Court justice was Justice John Marshall

He led the Marbury vs. Madison case, which confirms the ability of the Supreme Court to limit Congressional power by declaring legislation unconstitutional. "There's something nice about being able to dissent," Ginsburg said.

[Barbara]

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a child, she practiced the piano tirelessly and she read voraciously.

[Barbara]

As a kid, Ruth would sometimes climb on the roof of the garage; and sometimes she would throw rocks at mean kids from the neighborhood.

[Barbara]

RBG's mother Celia wanted Ruth to get a good education so she pushed Ruth to excel in school. For the rest of her life, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would cite her mother as her greatest inspiration.

[Barbara]

RBG met her husband Martin Ginsburg at Cornell University. "He was gregarious, silly, and loved to entertain people—a perfect foil to the shy and hardworking Ruth."

[Barbara]

"Throughout her career, even Ginsburg's critics had to admit that she had a special way with words. She credits this, in part, to one of her professors at Cornell: Legendary novelist Vladimir Nabokov."

[Barbara]

Ruth and her husband Martin spent over 50 happy years together. Martin gave a simple answer when asked how they made it work: "My wife doesn't give me any advice about cooking and I don't give her any advice about the law." 🙂

[Barbara]

In a reversal of roles that's almost too perfect, RBG's husband Martin was an amazing chef, and any of Ginsburg's law clerks could expect a homemade cake from him on their birthdays.

[Barbara]

RBG was the first woman ever to be on two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review.

[Barbara]

"One of the many men who rejected Ginsburg for work was the famous jurist Learned Hand (yes, that's his real name). So, why did this famed jurist decide that the top-of-her-class Ginsburg wasn't fit to work for him? He swore a lot, and he figured if he had a gal around, he'd have to reign in his potty mouth." LOL 😃

[Barbara]

"After years of blatant discrimination, RBG founded the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU and she got to work. Within a year of becoming the Project's general council, the organization had embarked on over 300 gender discrimination cases. She eventually took six of those cases to the Supreme Court and won five.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg had arrived, and she was just getting started."

[Barbara]

"In her days at the ACLU, a lot of Ginsburg's plaintiffs were actually men. She'd dealt with plenty of chauvinists in her day, and Ginsburg knew exactly how to make change: Make the men in charge realize that discrimination affected them too."

[Barbara]

RBG took a case to the Supreme Court to get Stephen Wiesenfeld widower's benefits. Later RBG helped get Wiesenfeld's son into Columbia and and even officiated at his wedding.

[Barbara]

"In 2006, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired, Ginsburg suddenly felt the weight of being the Supreme Court's only woman—but rather than waver, she thrived. When she disagreed with majority decisions, Ginsburg began to make her voice clear, passionately reading her dissent from the bench. The Notorious RBG was born."

[Barbara]

"No one can win every battle, and Ginsburg knows that better than most. In 2007, Ledbetter v. Goodyear came to the Supreme Court. Goodyear had been paying Lilly Ledbetter less than her male coworkers, but she didn't find out until years later. She tried to sue, but the Supreme Court ruled that the statute of limitations had run out."

[Barbara]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first Supreme Court Justice to officiate a same-sex wedding. On August 31, 2013, she married Michael Kaiser, the president of the Kennedy Center, and his husband John Roberts.

[Barbara]

RBG wore a black jabot with gold embroidery when issuing dissents, and a crocheted yellow and cream jabot when issuing majority opinions.

[Barbara]

"The Supreme Court has a Justices-only gym where RBG spent many hours after her cancer treatment ended. The fight left her extremely physically frail, so she started working with an ex-Special Forces trainer named Bryant Johnson. Soon enough, Ginsburg was back and—literally—stronger than ever."

[Barbara]

RBG was against restriction of voting rights.
"After Shelby County v. Holder, a case that made it easier for states to restrict voting rights, Ginsburg was particularly on her game. Her fiery dissent was a fierce condemnation of the decision—and it inspired one of the final aspects of her legacy."