Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg became an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1993, following service as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia from 1980 to 1993.

Justice Ginsburg's legal career began with a judicial clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, after she had received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School and earned her L.L.B. from Columbia Law School. She later served as associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, eventually becoming a professor of law at Rutgers University. She then returned to Columbia where she became the first woman to hold a tenured professorship.

During her career in legal education, Justice Ginsburg became known for her work to promote gender equality and civil rights. She co founded the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, served the ACLU as general counsel and participated on its national board of directors. During that time she litigated and won a number of key cases solidifying a constitutional principle against gender-based discrimination. She assisted personally in the landmark Idaho case of Reed v Reed (1971), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that gender-based discrimination violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1999 Justice Ginsburg received the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award for her significant contributions to the advancement of gender equality and civil rights.