Candles flickered in the crisp night on the solemn footsteps of the nation’s highest court. Parents, with their slumbering little ones in tow, gently laid bouquets of flowers next to condolence messages in a spontaneous vigil of hundreds of mourners on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. “Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,” lamented Chief Justice John Roberts of his cherished colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Born in Brooklyn, New York at the tail of the Great Depression to middle class Jewish immigrant parents in a time when common stereotypes robbed women of opportunities, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would grow up to challenge prejudices to become one of the leading women’s rights lawyers, the second woman to be seated on the Supreme Court and one of their most prominent judges.
Her frail, diminutive physique, hidden behind her signatured large glasses, starkly contrasted her gusto and unwavering strength. In an interview with NPR, Ginsburg professed, “I think I was born under a very bright star.” Despite the numerous adversities faced throughout her life, she stood brazenly like the New York Stock Exchange Fearless Girl, which aptly commemorated her life by donning a white lace collar the weekend of her passing on September 18.
Ginsburg’s first major tribulation came at the death of her mother, the day before her high school graduation. Cecelia Bader was a stellar student, until she was forced to drop out of school to help pay for her brother’s college education. “It was that shattering loss [her mom’s death], Ginsburg said many years later, that instilled in her the determination to live a life her mother could have only dreamed about,” according to the New York Times. With a full scholarship after graduating as valedictorian of her high school, she attended Cornell University, where she met and fell in love with “Marty” Ginsburg, who she recalls, the first boy she met who “cared that [she] actually had a brain.” The couple wed shortly upon graduation and moved to Oklahoma where Marty spent two years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Despite graduating with high distinction, Ruth Ginsburg struggled to find a job, finally settling in as a Social Security Administration claims examiner but eventually demoted to clerk-typist upon the discovery by her employer of her pregnancy.
The Ginsburgs eventually returned to the East Coast to attend Harvard Law School, where Ruth Ginsburg was questioned by the dean as to why she was taking up an enrollment slot that “should go to a man,” having been only one of nine women in a class of approximately 500. With Marty’s sudden testicular cancer diagnosis, she juggled the challenges of multiple roles — as mother to a toddler, caretaker to an ailing spouse, and law student in a demanding institution. Ruth Ginsburg recalled late nights she spent helping Marty take notes and typing his dictated senior thesis. It was sometimes not until 2AM that she would “Take out the books and start reading what [she] needed to read to be prepared for classes the next day.”
The couple relocated once more for Marty’s job in New York, where Ruth Ginsburg switched schools and finished her law degree, graduating at the top of her class at Columbia University. Even with high achievements and stellar recommendations from her professors, her job prospect at a law firm remained meager as she was not only a woman, but now also a mother.
Ginsburg reflected on her legal career, recounting what Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once said to her: “Suppose we had come of age at a time when women lawyers were welcomed at the bar…Today, we would be some retired partners from some large law firms. But because that route was not opened to us, we had to find another way. And we both end up in the United States Supreme Court.” With every door that was closed to Ginsburg, she worked tirelessly to find another which in the end, not only made her a trailblazer for women’s rights, but also an activist and central decision-maker for permanent changes affecting an entire nation.
After serving a clerkship for Judge Louis Palmieri, Ginsburg learned Swedish and co-authored a book with Anders Bruzelius about civil procedure in Sweden, which vastly influenced her views, being that Sweden was ahead of many other nations in terms of gender equality. This inspired Ginsburg to pave the way for changes in America. She was a tenured professor at both Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School. She later launched the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project, and became a successful advocate, taking on cases, mainly about gender equality. Her advocacy for women’s rights was strategic, where at times, she would prefer to take cases with male plaintiffs to highlight how gender discrimination was detrimental to both men and women.
By the time Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Cinton in 1993, she had earned the reputation of being a centrist liberal from her 13 years serving in U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Her opinions were not always what the public would expect a leading ACLU activist to be, with the New York Times claiming that she “sided with conservatives, praised judicial restraint, and slammed Roe v. Wade for going too far too fast.” Despite some initial reluctance of support from women’s rights groups during Clinton’s nomination, Ruth Bader Ginsburg remained steadfast in her support of women’s equality through her 27 years as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. With the retirement of Justice O’Connor, the first female judge to sit on the highest court, Ginsburg became ever more fervent in her dissents, and especially passionate with cases relating to women’s rights.
In 2013, when Justice Ginsburg wrote a fiery dissent when the Court “struck down a key part of the voting rights act,” students in law school “decided to lay her words to a beat,” the New York Times claims. After which, Ginsburg’s public image transformed to the “Notorious RBG”, a nickname that Ginsburg embraced, as she became somewhat of a pop-icon with two movies, a Time magazine cover, merchandising, and even Saturday Night Live skits. Ginsburg was anything but conventional. Even in her 70’s, she continued to ride horses and parasail. She took light-hearted jabs at her own self, admitting that she dozed off during the 2015 State of the Union Address. Though a liberal, her closest colleague and friend on the bench was the late Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the more conservative judges of the Supreme Court. Their friendship even inspired a composer to write an opera about them.
After two decades of bravely battling different ailments, including colon cancer, lung cancer, and liver lesions, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas on September 18. She was 87.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” Ginsburg dictated to her granddaughter, Clara Spera, just days before her passing.
Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConell, who had delayed consideration of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee for an entire year in 2015, is now backtracking on his words and pushing to immediately fill the empty Supreme Court seat with President Donald Trump’s nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. With an already conservative leaning U.S. Supreme Court, Ginsburg’s absence will further skew the imbalance. Despite being a conservative, Chief Justice Roberts had served as the tie breaker and sided with the liberal judges in the past year on some crucial issues. But even his aberrant left-leaning votes would not impact the final outcome in a court with a 6 to 3 conservative majority. The Republican domination of all three branches of the government could possibly put Obamacare, certain laws relating to abortion rights, and other liberal policital establishments in danger.
But for now, Americans silence somberly as we fly our country’s flag at half-staff to remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We pay tribute to a woman with an unparalleled legacy, who was indeed born under a very bright star.
Article by Huan Changvu of Cabin John Middle School
Photo by May Pham of Walter Johnson High School