Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Biography

U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born on 15 March 1933 in Brooklyn, New York.

In Ruth Bader Ginsburg's interview at Duke University's School of Law, she said:

"My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S."

She was born Ruth Bader and, in 1954, she married Martin D. Ginsburg. After studying at Cornell University, Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended Harvard Law School (1956-58), and Columbia Law School in 1959. After which she became Clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, United States District Court, Southern District of New York and was admitted to the New York Bar.

Ginsburg held several law teaching posts before she was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1975. She was a general counsel until 1980 when she was nominated by President Carter to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has written extensively about sex-based discrimination and was Founder and Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union: Women's Rights Project from 1972 to 1980 when she took office at the Court of Appeals.

In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by President Clinton as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and took office on August 10.

In January 2007, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that she disliked being "all alone on the court". Nearly a year after the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, Ginsburg was still the only woman on the Supreme court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a big fan of the opera and in 2003 she took a cameo role in Die Fledermaus starring Placido Domingo. Previously she had been an extra in Washington Opera's 1994 rendition of Ariadne auf Naxos.

In February 2009, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery for early stage pancreatic cancer.

When Justice John Paul Stevens left in 2010, Justice Ginsburg became the leader of the Supreme court’s four-member liberal wing.

In 2013, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aged 80, told The New York Times that she wanted to stay on the Supreme Court: "as long as I can do the job full steam, and that, at my age, is not predictable."

She died of cancer in September 2020, aged 87.