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The Day She Was Born
She was born on March 15th, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, and she was called Joan Ruth Bader, so she never really went by her real first name. -
When She Graduated College
On this day, Ruth graduated from college at Cornell University, with a bachelor of arts degree in government, and around this date, she also got married to her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, and her mother died of cancer. -
When She Started a Family
There is no specific date for this, but she had her first child in 1955, and Martin, her husband, also went into the military too. -
A Good and a Bad Year
In this year, Ruth started her first year at college again, this time in law school at Harvard Law School, but her husband also got diagnose with testicular cancer this year too. -
When She Finished Law School
She graduated at the very top of her class at the Columbia Law School, after going to Harvard for a few years before (she was a very smart woman), but there was a lot of discrimination against her, since she was mainly with other men at law school. -
She Struggled to Find a Good Job
Ruth started to look for work, but she was discriminated and told she could not work, until she was able to get work at smaller law firms in this year, but she was not making nearly as much money as the other men working along with her (even with her amazing years at law school). -
Ruth Starting to Find Her Success as a Person in Law
After going to Sweden for a little while to learn and write about Swedish civil procedure (to be able to correctly deal with civil lawsuits), she came back to America, and was given a job as a law professor at Rutgers University’s law school in 1963. -
Opportunities to Help Discrimination Open Up
After she worked as a teacher at Rutgers University, she was given another teaching job at Columbia Law School in this year, where she was the very first female teacher to be given the chance to work there for the rest of her years of working, a big accomplishment. Around this time, she was able argue in 6 big cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, and she enjoyed fighting for both women who were discriminated because of their gender, but also for men too, since she dealt with discrimination herself. -
She Gets Moved Up in Law Super Quick
Ruth Ginsburg decides to accept Jimmy Carter's appointment to be part of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. on June 30th, 1980, and she was able to be a part of this court of appeals for about 13 years. -
The Day She Got to Join the Supreme Court
On this date, the U.S. President at the time, Bill Clinton decided to appoint Ruth Ginsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States. -
A Big Court Case For Ruth and Women's Rights
A few years later after she started her Supreme Court justice career, in the year 1996, Ruth was continuing to fight for women’s fair rights when she made a majority opinion in the case of United States v. Virginia, saying that smart and qualified women should never be denied their admission to the Virginia Military Institute, trying to make this situation more equal between women and men. -
Ruth Getting to Really Show Her Great Qualities in the Supreme Court
In 2007, Ruth was deciding the Supreme court case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., where a female worker was being given a very low salary than men was, when they had the same job, and was not given help in solving the issue. So, Ruth used her determination for federal procedures in the court, and also her love for gender equality, and she did something called reading from the bench. where she wrote a very opposing argument. (this was a very big choice to make in the Supreme Court) -
Ruth Helps Out the Current President
Ruth helped to allow Barack Obama to pass his very first piece of legislation as president in 2009, called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Act of 2009, after she wanted to change a very bad interpretation of the law. (based off the Supreme Court case from two years earlier) -
Her Husband's Death
On this day, Ruth’s husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, died from his cancer he had been dealing with for a long while at this point. However, Ruth was so committed to her Supreme Court Supreme Court job, that she actually went back to her job the very next day after this happened. -
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Death
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, after dealing with metastatic pancreatic cancer, in Washington D.C., after also being in the U.S. Supreme Court for about 27 years.
