Introduction
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US Supreme Court Justice.
Modern feminist hero.
Unlikely pop icon.
That’s right – in this bedtime biography, we’re exploring the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
From her inauspicious childhood in Brooklyn to capturing the public imagination with her scathing dissents on the bench, we’ll chronicle one woman’s lifelong fight to give American women and men equal rights.
It’s a tale of dedication and perseverance, to be sure – but also one of empowerment, empathy, and love.
So cozy up, and prepare to be inspired!
Chapter 1
Joan Ruth Bader was born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood on March 15, 1933.
It was a difficult time – an era when discrimination against Jews was common, even among ethnic minorities who’d also recently arrived in the United States.
Still, Brooklyn was a fun place to grow up.
Ruth was known during childhood by her nickname Kiki, and she loved to read.
When Kiki was old enough, her mother would drop her off at the library once a week so she could pick out five books.
Kiki would read in the library while her mother had her hair done, with the smell of Chinese food wafting up from the restaurant below.
First, it was Greek and Norse mythology that piqued her interest, but she soon turned to Nancy Drew mystery novels.
She admired Nancy as an independent woman with a knack for adventure.
Independence was important to Kiki.
Her mother, Celia Amster Bader, instilled that in her from a young age.
Celia was a first-generation American – one of seven children whose parents had fled the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Though she had graduated with top grades from high school, she didn’t go on to college.
Instead, she worked as a bookkeeper; part of her income was funneled toward her brother’s college tuition at Cornell.
When Celia married Nathan Bader, a fur trader, she was expected to stop working and be a loving wife.
But when it came to her daughter, she instilled a love for learning.
Celia hoped that Kiki, at least, would one day attend university.
To help this happen, she quietly saved up $8,000 for her daughter’s education.
In high school, Kiki was in the honor society, played the cello, twirled the baton, and attended summer camp in the Adirondacks.
But life wasn’t all peaches and cream.
Her sister Marilyn died of meningitis at the age of six, and Celia was diagnosed with cervical cancer when Kiki was 13.
Not wanting her friends to feel sorry for her, Kiki kept these facts about her family a secret.
She also knew that she could make her mother happy by focusing on her studies.
The work paid off, and Kiki was accepted into Cornell with multiple scholarships.
Celia never saw her daughter attend college; she passed away the night before Kiki’s high school graduation ceremony.
But despite her early death, Celia remained an important inspiration throughout Kiki’s life.
In addition to instilling in her the importance of independence, Celia taught her daughter how to be a lady – in her book, that meant “holding fast to your convictions and self-respect” but never letting yourself be overcome by pointless emotions like anger or envy.
These lessons would go on to inform Kiki’s path every step of the way.
When young Ruth Bader arrived at Cornell in Ithaca, New York in 1950, the university had a ratio of four men to every woman.
She found that even though many of her female peers at Cornell were smarter than their male counterparts, they often feigned ignorance.
Instead of a career, they were after what was known as an “MRS.
degree” – in other words, finding a husband.
Ruth was different.
She was in the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority but avoided parties; instead, she’d smuggle books into the bathroom to study while her peers celebrated.
She chose to major in government, studying constitutional law.
She also began to observe things about the United States she hadn’t noticed before – like the fact that the Army was segregated until the end of World War II.
She puzzled about this unfair policy and witnessed other injustices during the Red Scare – the widespread fear of communism at the start of the Cold War.
It all led Ruth to the realization that she wanted to be a lawyer.
It was not only a good career option, but also a way to help society.
Her father expressed reservations.
He wondered if she would be able to support herself in a career that wasn’t easy for women.
But he was soon appeased when Ruth found herself a husband.
Ruth met Martin D.
Ginsburg through friends.
Outgoing and self-assured, Marty was known as the life of the party – a foil to Ruth’s more shy and reserved nature.
They were both dating other people at the time, but he soon fell for her.
“I have no doubt that in our case I liked her first,” he later remembered.
Ruth eventually developed feelings for him too.
For one, Marty was smarter than her boyfriend at Columbia Law School.
But not only that, he was also the first boy she’d met who cared that she was smart.
Marty won Ruth over by showing her how much he respected her and her career ambitions.
He wanted them to be partners, both romantically and professionally – or, as he put it, “to be in the same discipline so there would be something you could talk about, bounce ideas off of, know what each other was doing.
” Days after Ruth graduated from Cornell in 1954, she married Marty in his family’s living room.
There were 18 guests in attendance, symbolizing the Jewish number for life.
Their partnership would become a love story for the ages.
Chapter 2
Both Marty and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or RBG, as she was now known, were accepted into Harvard Law School.
But before RBG could enroll, the couple had to spend two years at Fort Sills US Army base in Oklahoma while Marty taught at its artillery school.
In Oklahoma, RBG took the civil service exam in order to work for the government.
One day, on a trip to the Social Security office, she mentioned in passing that she was pregnant.
She didn’t realize it, but being pregnant meant that she was immediately dropped to the lowest ranking position in the government – and she was forbidden from attending any job training that might’ve resulted in a promotion.
It wasn’t just in Oklahoma that RBG faced discrimination.
When she began studying at Harvard Law School in 1956, she was one of only nine women in a class of around 500 men.
She was unable to do basic things like borrow books from the university’s Lamont Library because women weren’t allowed to enter.
At the same time, she had a baby to take care of – her daughter, Jane.
But RBG quelled any doubts that she could handle law school as a new mother.
She excelled in her studies and made the Law Review, a legal journal published by senior students and faculty – something even Marty hadn’t achieved.
In RBG’s second year at Harvard Law School, Marty was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Having lost her mother to cancer, the young law student wasn’t going to let the disease determine the fate of another person she loved.
RBG did everything in her power to see that Marty wouldn’t fall behind in his studies.
She retrieved notes from his classmates, typing them up with the help of a friend, and helped Marty dictate his papers until he dozed off around 2:00 a.
m.
She would then get to her own work – and learned to get by on just two hours of sleep.
Thanks to RBG, Marty graduated and was hired as a tax attorney in New York City.
With his health still tenuous, RBG refused to split up their family.
She decided to finish her studies at Columbia Law School, where she continued to excel.
Once again, she made the Law Review; she also tied for first place in her graduating class.
After graduation, RBG briefly worked as a clerk for a federal judge in New York.
Then, in 1961, she received an intriguing offer from her friend and mentor Hans Smit.
He asked if she wanted to coauthor a book about Sweden’s judicial system.
Only thing is, she’d have to move to Sweden for two years.
It sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
So Marty agreed to hold down the fort with Jane, and RBG took the opportunity to test her independence, abroad and alone for the first time in her life.
In Sweden, RBG observed how women in the workforce had begun to speak up against unfair demands.
They argued that their prescribed gender roles meant they were now being asked to hold two jobs: a career and raising their children.
Why weren’t men expected to help out with the latter?
After all, cleaning a child, making its food, and “trying to bring it up to be a good and harmonious person” had no biological connection to having a child.
It was a period of transformative thinking for RBG.
In between watching Ingmar Bergman movies without subtitles and delving into the Swedish legal system, she started to realize that another world was possible for women – one in which they could fight back against inequality.
Back in the United States, RBG began to teach at Columbia to improve her public speaking skills.
In 1963, she accepted an offer from Rutgers University’s School of Law to teach civil procedure, becoming the second woman ever to get tenure there.
She then found out that she was pregnant with her second child.
This time, RBG wasn’t going to let her pregnancy affect her employment, so she kept it a secret until after she had her contract renewed.
She now knew that the law in most states mandated that employers could fire a woman for being pregnant.
This was perfectly in line with most gendered laws at the time.
But RBG was living on the cusp of huge social change.
In the 1970s, women began to wake up to the discrimination they faced and rejected their prescribed domestic roles.
Echoing the civil rights movement in the 1960s, they started taking to the streets to demand equal rights as citizens.
RBG was characteristically one to keep her head down and pick her battles.
It wasn’t her style to go out and protest during the women’s movement in the 1970s.
Instead, she began a quieter resistance – using her skills as a lawyer.
Inspired by her students’ involvement in the movement, RBG offered a course about gender in law.
And as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, she began looking into letters of complaint written by women.
In 1971, RBG volunteered to write the brief for Reed v.
Reed.
In this court case, she needed to challenge the assumption that women were less capable of administering estates than men.
It was a tough sell.
RBG realized that her only chance of winning was to educate the judges about how women were, at the time, effectively second-class citizens.
She wrote about how laws disabling women from political or economic activity were viewed as protective – while the very same laws applied to ethnic or racial minorities were seen as unlawful.
RBG won the case.
But she knew that her work for women’s rights was just beginning.
In 1972, RBG cofounded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.
The project’s mission had three core points: to educate the public about sex discrimination, to change the law to give women equal rights as citizens, and to support people to bring their cases to court.
But it wasn’t only women that RBG fought for.
In a stroke of genius, RBG turned the tables and represented Stephen Wiesenfeld, a widower who had been denied Social Security benefits to support his child on the basis that he was a man.
For RBG, the 1975 Weinberger v.
Wiesenfeld win was a momentous event.
The case demonstrated that being discriminated against on the basis of gender was, in her words, “bad for men, it’s bad for children – not just women.
” It was the beginning of a long-term strategy she developed to appeal to her – mostly male – colleagues.
Chapter 3
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter nominated RBG to the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
During her time as a judge there, RBG became widely known as a moderate who focused on finding compromises wherever possible.
She found the work relatively boring.
But the position was a prestigious one – it was the surest path to becoming a Supreme Court justice.
First, though, RBG would have to wait.
It’s 1993, and President Bill Clinton is looking to appoint a nominee for the Supreme Court.
He and his team have a list of the strongest candidates.
It’s long and exhaustive.
And “Ruth Bader Ginsburg” is not near the top of it.
At this point, Marty decides to step in and work a little magic.
Having become a successful New York tax lawyer in his own right, Marty uses his network to make Clinton aware of his brilliant, but humble, wife.
Luck then strikes.
Clinton’s top pick, Mario Cuomo, backs out before the President has even made his offer – and RBG is brought in for an interview.
Minutes into her interview, the President sees RBG’s potential and nominates her to be the new justice.
The Senate confirms her with a 96 to 3 vote.
She becomes the second female in the history of the US to sit on the Supreme Court.
At her nomination ceremony, RBG gives a stirring thank-you to her mother.
She says: “Celia Amster Bader, the bravest and strongest person I have known .
.
.
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.
” In her early days as a Supreme Court justice, RBG didn’t make sweeping demands.
Her mission was to find a consensus with her fellow judges and move the court forward.
She knew this was the best way to ensure progress.
She also knew that the only way to convince her fellow justices of the equal stature of women was by keeping her cool throughout the process.
But her calm demeanor wasn’t only successful in the courtroom; it also created the foundation of her five-plus decades of marriage.
Marty and RBG had a lifelong relationship based on mutual respect.
Just as RBG had left Harvard to support her husband’s career, he too left his career in New York when she was appointed to the DC Circuit.
“It’s not sacrifice,” Marty once remarked, “it’s family.
” His support for her career didn’t end there.
When RBG crashed her car, Marty began driving her to the courthouse every day until she was appointed a driver.
He kept her on track during grueling work days by reminding her to sleep and made her gourmet dinners like Pork Loin Braised In Milk – her favorite.
By her own admission, RBG was a terrible cook; her own children forbade her from entering the kitchen.
Marty’s respect and support for his wife only expanded when her career grew bigger than his own.
For RBG, Marty was truly her “life partner,” which is how she’d introduce him.
By the late-2000s, Marty’s health was failing, and in 2010, he finally succumbed to metastatic cancer.
But his love for Ruth remained right to the end.
Before his last trip to the hospital, Marty left a handwritten note for her by the bed.
“My dearest Ruth,” it began.
“You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago.
What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!
!
Chapter 4
In 2012, Glamour magazine hosted its annual Women of the Year awards, and RBG was in attendance.
As usual, each guest was given a gift bag containing all the things you might expect: cosmetics, creams, fashion accessories.
They also contained an item of jewelry that would soon become iconic across America.
It wasn't a particularly luxurious piece – just a simple collar from Banana Republic made of glass beads on velvet – but RBG gave it a special meaning.
When she had this necklace on, everyone knew what card she was about to pull.
This was RBG’s designated dissent necklace.
She wore it every time she was going to offer a dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court.
RBG hadn’t always been a dissenter.
In fact, she’d previously only ever argued when she deemed it completely necessary.
But as politics changed, she increasingly used her voice to maintain the balance of the court.
During the presidential election in 2000, RBG was one of four judges to dissent in Bush v.
Gore.
The result of the election hung on the Supreme Court’s decision.
The majority opinion on the court basically handed the Presidency to George W.
Bush.
Bush remained in power for eight years.
In that time, he appointed two conservative justices.
These newcomers shifted the leaning of the court to the right.
Suddenly, RBG was one of the most liberal justices in the room.
This meant that, more and more, she needed to raise her voice in dissent.
For example, RBG firmly believed that a woman’s right to control her reproductive life was essential to her equal participation in society and the economy.
On April 18, 2007, she fired a fierce dissent in Gonzales v.
Carhart.
In this case, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold restrictions on partial birth abortion.
RBG disagreed, and in her statement she was critical of her fellow justices’ intentions.
In the end she summarized that the court “pretends that its decision protects women.
” And she didn’t stop there.
A month later, in the case Ledbetter v.
Goodyear, RBG dissented the court’s decision that ruled against pay discrimination based on gender.
In June 2013, Shelby County v.
Holder ruled to dismantle a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act was a landmark piece of legislation from 1965 that prohibited racial discrimination in voting.
After the majority opinion was announced, RBG delivered a fiery dissent.
She pointed out that the Voting Rights Act had been effective and that the ruling was, in her words, like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
” She hoped that the public might hear about the case and stand up in favor of the provision.
Throughout history, one of the main reasons to dissent was the hope that the public outside of the court would listen.
And thanks to the internet, when it came to RBG’s dissents, they did.
By this point, RBG was 80 years old.
Many said that her career was over.
Instead, something unbelievable happened.
Inspired by her impassioned dissents, liberal millennials made RBG an internet sensation.
A Facebook post referred to the 5-foot-tall judge as “Notorious R.
B.
G.
” – a tongue-in-cheek comparison to the late 300-pound American rapper Notorious B.
I.
G.
Soon after, a Tumblr page by the same name was created in honor of the judge, and the rest is history.
The Notorious RBG Tumblr tribute went viral.
Virtually overnight, RBG became an unlikely pop icon.
Even her own son, James, was surprised; he joked that “I would not have thought of her as hip.
” Among the many popular RBG memes that circulated was a picture of her sporting a crown while wearing her dissent necklace, coupled with the slogan “Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth.
” Over the following months, a woman who had once been considered austere in her politics became the voice of women of every generation.
Every time she delivered a dissent, a new wave of internet posts would follow.
She inspired RBG tattoos, a recurring character on Saturday Night Live, and even Halloween costumes.
Although her wit remained characteristically dry, RBG found humor in her impersonators and embraced her new role as a public figure.
In 2010 RBG became the most senior of the court’s liberals, a role she embraced.
After all, she’d never been one to let age hold her back.
One summer, when she was pushing 60, RBG went whitewater rafting with some friends.
Upon suggestion that she should sit in the back of the boat so her light frame wouldn’t go flying if they hit a rock, she coolly replied: “I don’t sit in the back.
” When she reached her seventies, her only concession was giving up water skiing.
After a cancer diagnosis in 1999, she’d begun to use fitness as a way to stay on her best mental game.
Like her dissent necklace, RBG’s workouts became infamous.
For nearly two decades, she met with her personal trainer twice a week to do a series of stretches, squats, pushups, and strength exercises.
He called her TAN – Tough As Nails.
RBG preferred working out in the evenings, to classical music, and once even left a White House dinner for her date at the gym.
She once said that nothing surprised her about growing older, but that she’d learned “to seek ever more the joys of being alive.
” One of those joys was opera, which often made her weep.
Another was her work in the fight against gender discrimination.
“In my life,” she remarked, “what I find most satisfying is that I was part of a movement that made life better” – for everyone.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg continued to fight for equality on America’s highest court until her death on September 18, 2020 at the age of 87.
In a year marked by global tragedy and uncertainty, she was a steadfast beacon of light and reason until the end.
RBG didn’t need any bells and whistles; she was radical just by being herself.
When asked what she thought about being an inspiration to so many, she replied: “I just try to do the good job I can to the best of my ability, and I really don’t think about whether I’m inspirational.
I just do the best I can.
You’ve reached the end of this Bedtime Biography.
The End
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