Millions of girls and women across America mourned when they got
the news of the death of the Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – she
was the second woman in U.S history to sit on the high Court. She dies of
complications from pancreatic cancer.
She was a hero for many,
an icon and a champion.
PC - BBC
Who was Ruth Bader
Ginsburg?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
became the second female justice of America's Supreme Court. She was born in
1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Bader Completed her study at Rutgers University Law
School, and after that, she went to the Columbia University.
There she became the
first woman tenured professor. She served as the director of the women's rights
project of the American Civil Liberties Union during the 1970s and then
appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980.
She was named to the U.S Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Then
she continued to argue for gender equality in such cases as the United States
v. Virginia.
Despite her excellent
skills, she struggles to find employment as a lawyer because of her gender and
the fact that she was a mother; at that time, only a tiny percentage of women
were lawyers in the United States. Only two women had ever served as federal
judges.
Then, one of her
Columbia law professors advocated on her behalf and convinced Judge Edmund
Palmieri of the U.S.A District Court for the Southern District of New York to
offer Ruth a clerkship (1959-61). As associate director of the Columbia Law
School's Project on international Procedure (1962-63), she studies Swedish
civil Procedure; her research published in a book, "Civil Procedure in
Sweden (1965), co-written with Anders Bruzelius.
In 1970 Ruth, was
professionally involved in gender equality when she was asked to introduce a
law student's panel discussion on "women's liberation."
In 1971 she published
two law review articles on the subject and taught a seminar on gender
discrimination. As a part of the course, Ruth Bader partnered with the American
Civil Liberties Union to draft briefs in two federal cases.
The first time what
brought to her attention by her husband involved a provision of the federal tax
code that denied a single man a tax deduction for serving as caregivers to
their families,
The second time she
applied an Idaho state law that expressly preferred men to women in determining
who should administer the estates of people who die without a will.
The American Supreme
Court's decision in the latter case, Reed v. Reed (1971), was the first in
which a gender-based statute was struck down based on the equal protection
clause.
During the remainder of
the 1970s, Ginsburg was a leading figure in gender-discrimination litigation.
She became the founder counsel of the American Civil Liberties' women's rights
project co-authored a law-school casebook on gender discrimination in 1972.
In 1980, Democratic U.S
Press Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, D.C.
During serving as a
judge on the D.C. Circuit, Ginsburg developed a reputation as a pragmatic
liberal with keen attention to detail.
In 1993, Democratic U.S
pres. Bill Clinton announced his nomination of Ginsburg to the Supreme Court to
replace retiring Justice Byron White. Her confirmation hearings were quick and
relatively uncontroversial. She was endorsed unanimously by the Senate
Judiciary Committee and confirmed by the full Senate on August 3 by a vote of
96-3.
Her historic Ruling
In 2015, Ginsburg sided
with the majority in two landmark Supreme Court rulings. On June 25, she was
one of the six justices to uphold a critical component of the 2010 Affordable
Care Act — often referred to as Obama care — in King
v. Burwell. The decision
allows the federal government to continue providing subsidies to Americans who
purchase health care through "exchanges," regardless of whether they
are state or federally operated.
The majority ruling,
read by Chief Justice John Roberts, was a massive victory for President Barack
Obama and made the Affordable Care Act challenging to undo. Conservative
justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia were in dissent,
with Scalia presenting a scathing dissenting opinion to the Court.
On June 26, the Supreme
Court handed down its second historic decision in as many days, with a 5–4
majority ruling in Oberg fell v. Hodges that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
Ginsburg, considered instrumental in the decision, has shown public support for
the idea in past years by officiating same-sex marriages and challenging
arguments against it during the case's early proceedings.
She was joined in the
majority by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and
Elena Kagan, with Roberts reading the dissenting opinion this time.
Her recent activates
Ruth opposed the
potential of Donald Trump's presidency in 2016; she called him a
"Faker" before apologizing for publicly commenting on the campaign.
In 2018, after the president released a list of Supreme Court candidates in
preparation for the retirement of elderly justices, the Ginsburg said she
wasn't going anywhere by hiring a full slate of clerk through 2020.
A bit about her personal
life
Ruth Joan Bader, the
second daughter of Nathan and Cecelia Bader, grew up in a low-income,
working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Ginsburg's family was Jewish.
Ginsburg's mother, a significant influence in her life, taught her the value of
independence and a good education.
Ginsburg earned her
bachelor's degree in government from Cornell University in 1954, finishing her
class first. She married law student Martin D. Ginsburg that same year. The
early years of their marriage were challenging, as their first child, Jane was
born after Martin was hired into the military in 1954. He served for two years
and, after his discharge, the couple returned to Harvard, where Ginsburg also
enrolled.
At Harvard, Ginsburg
learned to balance life as a mother and her new role as a law student. She also
encountered a very male-dominated, hostile environment, with only eight other
females in her class of more than 500. The law school's dean chided the women
for taking the places of qualified males. But Ginsburg pressed on and excelled
academically, eventually becoming the first female member of the prestigious Harvard
Law Review.
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