The life of Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was an American jurist who was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton and was generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court. Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure Ginsburg wrote notable majority opinions, including United States v Virginia (1996), Olmstead v L C (1999), and Friends of the Earth, Inc. v Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000). Between O'Connor's retirement in 2006 and appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, she was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with her dissents.

Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother died shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school. She earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University and married Martin D Ginsburg, becoming a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated joint first in her class. After law school, Ginsburg entered academia. She was a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.

Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women's rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel in the 1970s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court. Ginsburg received attention in American popular culture for her fiery liberal dissents. She was playfully and notably dubbed "The Notorious R B G" by a law student, a reference to the late Brooklyn-born rapper The Notorious B I G, and she later embraced the moniker.

Ginsburg died at her home in Washington D C, on September 18, 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer.