Crossword Dictionary

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, née Joan Ruth Bader, (March 15, 1933- September 18, 2020) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 to 2020.

Although she graduated at the top of her class at Columbia Law School in 1959, she was turned down for numerous jobs because of her gender. From 1972 to 1980 she taught at Columbia, where she became the first tenured female professor. As director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, she argued six landmark cases on gender equality before the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1993 she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court as only its second female justice. On the Court, Ginsburg became known for her active participation in oral arguments and her habit of wearing jabots, or collars, with her judicial robes, some of which expressed a symbolic meaning. Although Ginsburg tended to vote with other liberal justices on the Court, she got along well with most of the conservative justices who had been appointed before her.

In part because of her increasing outspokenness, Ginsburg became a progressive and feminist folk hero. Inspired by some of her dissents, a law student at New York University created a blog entitled “Notorious R.B.G.”—a play on “Notorious B.I.G.,” the stage name of the American rapper Christopher Wallace—which became a popular nickname for Ginsburg among her admirers.

Some liberals, citing Ginsburg’s advanced age and concerns about her health and apparent frailty, argued that she should retire in order to allow Obama to nominate a liberal replacement. Others pointed to her vigorous exercise routine and the fact that she had never missed an oral argument to urge that she should remain on the Court for as long as possible. Ginsburg expressed her intention to continue for as long as she was able to perform her job “full steam.” She remained on the Court as its oldest justice, publicly mindful of John Paul Stevens’s service until the age of 90.