Who was Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

 

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.