Remembering RBG: A Look Back at the Life and Legacy of a Legend, a Year After Her Passing.

• Author: Fernald, Courtney
• Position: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's influence and accomplishments

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and a pioneer of women's rights, died on September 18, 2020. Though small in stature, her impact on American jurisprudence is enormous. No one article can do her career and accomplishments justice, but with a little over a year after her passing, this article celebrates and reflects on the mark she left on the law. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1933, to Nathan and Celia Bader. Her older sister, Marilyn, died from meningitis when Ginsburg was only two, leaving Ginsburg an only child. (1) She grew up in a family with modest means. Her father, Nathan, moved to the United States from Russia at the age of 13. (2) Her mother, Celia, was the first American-born in a family of Austrian Jewish immigrants, and she passed onto Ginsburg a love of reading. (3) While Celia was unable to attend college herself--she worked in Manhattan's garment district to allow her brother to attend Cornell University--she dreamed of more for her daughter. She saved a portion of the money she received from her husband every week for a secret college fund for Ginsburg. (4) Tragically, she was unable to see her dreams for Ginsburg come to fruition. During Ginsburg's freshman year at James Madison High School, Celia was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She died the day before Ginsburg's high school graduation at the age of 48. (5)

Fulfilling her mother's dreams, Ginsburg attended Cornell University on scholarship. There, she met her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg

(Marty). She described Marty as "the only young man I dated who cared that I had a brain." (6) It was during their time together at Cornell that they both decided to pursue law degrees. In Marty's words, the idea was "to be in the same discipline so there would be something you could talk about, bounce ideas off, [and] know what each other was doing." (7) Ginsburg married Marty after her graduation from Cornell in the spring of 1954. Following Ginsburg's graduation and Marty's first year at Harvard Law School, Ginsburg and Marty reported to Fort Still, Oklahoma, where Marty began a two-year career as an artillery training officer. (8) Ginsburg worked first as a law firm secretary and then as a Social Security claims adjuster. When she became pregnant with her first child, Jane, she was disheartened to learn that her job would no longer give her raises or promotions. (9)

Following their time in Oklahoma, Ginsburg started law school at Harvard in 1956, becoming one of only nine women in a class of roughly 500 men. (10) Of the experience, Ginsburg recalled: "You felt that every eye was on you. Every time you answered a question, you felt you were answering for your entire sex." (11) Despite this, Ginsburg excelled, managing to secure a coveted spot on the Harvard Law Review. While at Harvard Law School, Marty fell ill with testicular cancer. Thus, in addition to raising their daughter, Jane, caring for Marty, and excelling in her own classes, Ginsburg assisted Marty with his classes, arranging for the best note-takers to take notes for him and typing up the notes herself at night. Upon graduation, Marty secured a job in New York City, and Ginsburg transferred to Columbia, where she graduated first in her class.

Even with impeccable academic credentials, Ginsburg could not secure a job with a major New York law firm following graduation. She attributes this to the "three strikes" against her: She was Jewish, female, and a mother. (12) Clerkships, too, were hard to obtain for women; after submitting several applications for clerkships with the Second Circuit, Ginsburg finally obtained a clerkship with a judge at the Southern District of New York through the assistance of Gerald Gunther, a Columbia faculty member in charge of helping students obtain post-graduation clerkships. (13) In order to secure a clerkship for Ginsburg with Judge Edmund Louis Palmieri, Gunther had lined up a young male graduate working with a New York City law firm to replace Ginsburg if she did not work out to Judge Palmieri's satisfaction. (14) Ginsburg, however, quickly erased any of Judge Palmieri's doubts with her work.

With Ginsburg's sterling academic record at a top law school, Ginsburg should have been a prime candidate to secure a prestigious clerkship at the U.S. Supreme Court. Supreme Court justices, though, were also reluctant to hire women. When Professor (later Dean) Albert Sacks of Harvard Law School inquired about a clerkship for Ginsburg with Justice Felix Frankfurter, Frankfurter informed Sacks that he was not ready to hire a female clerk. (15) Thus, after her two-year clerkship with Judge Palmieri concluded, Ginsburg chose to return to Columbia to work on a project on international civil procedure. (16) Thereafter, she accepted a job as a professor at Rutgers Law School. While Ginsburg would have preferred to get hands-on experience at a law firm before moving into academia, she worried that she would not get another opportunity to enter the academic field if she declined the Rutgers job. (17) Accordingly, she began her teaching career at Rutgers in 1963, becoming one of less than two dozen women teaching on the tenure track of American law schools. (18)

During her time at Rutgers Law School, Ginsburg became pregnant with her second child, James. This time, Ginsburg kept the pregnancy a secret, fearing it would cause Rutgers to cancel her year-to-year contract. (19) It wasn't until her contract was renewed that she told her fellow faculty members. The next academic year, Ginsburg was promoted from assistant to associate professor, and she was awarded tenure in the fall of 1969. (20) Ginsburg attributes her time at Rutgers, and the women she met there, with her entry into the field of gender equality law...