1장
The Brooklyn Jurist Who Became a Cultural Icon
In a sweltering Supreme Court chamber in June 2013, an 80-year-old Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn delivered a fiery dissent that would transform her into an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her voice steady but resolute, condemned the Court's "hubris" in dismantling the Voting Rights Act-a cornerstone of civil rights legislation. This wasn't just another legal opinion; it was the culmination of a lifetime spent methodically dismantling gender discrimination, now redirected toward preserving hard-won protections. The moment sparked something unprecedented: young progressives began creating tribute art dubbing her "Notorious RBG," a nod to Brooklyn rapper Notorious B.I.G. Soon, her image appeared on everything from tattoos to Halloween costumes, cocktails bore her name, and Kate McKinnon portrayed her delivering "Gins-burns" on Saturday Night Live. How did this soft-spoken intellectual become a cultural icon? The answer lies in her extraordinary journey from a Brooklyn neighborhood to the highest court in the land-and in the revolutionary vision she carefully advanced while maintaining the appearance of a conventional, "proper" lady.
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A Child of Brooklyn: Early Influences and Education
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Brooklyn roots profoundly shaped the determined jurist she would become. Growing up Jewish in Flatbush during the 1940s, young "Kiki" Bader was remembered as quiet but involved in numerous activities-cellist, baton twirler, honor society member, and treasurer of the Go-Getters club. Despite encountering antisemitism (signs declaring "NO DOGS OR JEWS ALLOWED"), Brooklyn provided a nurturing environment where Ruth developed her love for reading at the local library, particularly enjoying Nancy Drew mysteries about "a girl who was an adventurer, who could think for herself."
Her mother, Celia Amster Bader, profoundly influenced Ruth's worldview. Born shortly after her family fled the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Celia excelled academically but sacrificed her own education to support her brother's Cornell tuition through her bookkeeping job. After marrying Nathan Bader, a fur trader who struggled during the Depression, Celia abandoned her career despite her sharp intelligence-something Ruth would later describe as a painful disappointment. Celia instilled two crucial values: always be a lady ("conduct yourself civilly, don't let emotions like anger or envy get in your way") and always be independent-unusual advice for daughters in that era.
Ruth's childhood was marked by tragedy. Her sister Marilyn died of meningitis when Ruth was just two, and her mother battled cervical cancer throughout Ruth's teenage years, creating what she later called "the smell of death" in their home. Despite this, Ruth kept her mother's illness secret, not wanting pity. She studied diligently by her mother's bedside, determined to excel academically. The day before her high school graduation-where she had won numerous honors and scholarships to Cornell-Celia died, leaving Ruth to observe how Jewish mourning traditions excluded women from the minyan, an early lesson in gender inequality. After Celia's death, Ruth discovered her mother had secretly saved $8,000 for her education, spreading it across five banks with no more than $2,000 in each account-a testament to her determination that her daughter would succeed independently.
At Cornell in 1950, Ruth mapped out every women's bathroom on campus-the architecture school's was best for studying in private. With four men to every woman, Cornell openly touted itself as a good place to find a husband, though the women were "a heck of lot smarter than the men." Ruth couldn't hide her intensity; her suitemate recalled, "You could drop a bomb over her head and she wouldn't know it." While other students played bridge after the 10 PM women's curfew (a restriction that didn't apply to male students), Ruth studied. Though her mother wanted her to be a teacher, Ruth preferred Vladimir Nabokov's European literature class and Robert Cushman's constitutional law course, which awakened her political consciousness as she witnessed McCarthy-era persecution of Cornell professors.
Working as Cushman's research assistant on an exhibition about book burning while watching censorship unfold on campus, she realized "being a lawyer was a pretty good thing...because you could do something good for your society." Though her father worried about her career choice, he relented when she met Marty Ginsburg at Cornell-"the first boy who cared that she had a brain." Initially just friends, they began dating during "a long, cold week at Cornell." Marty, confident and witty, won her with his respect for her intellect, and they decided to pursue law together.
3장
Harvard Law and the Barriers of Discrimination
At Harvard Law School in 1956, Ruth was one of only nine women in her class of over 500. Dean Erwin Griswold infamously asked the women students, "How do you justify taking a place that would otherwise have gone to a man?" Despite this hostile environment, Ruth excelled academically while caring for her young daughter Jane and supporting her husband Marty through testicular cancer treatment. She attended his classes, took notes, typed his papers, and still managed to make the prestigious Harvard Law Review-all while maintaining her own academic excellence.
When Marty graduated despite his illness, the family moved to New York for his job as a tax attorney. RBG, needing to complete her final year of law school, approached Dean Griswold about receiving her Harvard degree while taking classes at Columbia. Despite the family's hardship circumstances, Griswold refused. At Columbia, RBG didn't even dare ask if they would grant her a degree-she simply showed up. Though women faced discrimination there too (one professor told a female student "Women feel, men think"), RBG's reputation preceded her. She made Law Review a second time and graduated tied for first in her class.
Despite her outstanding academic achievements, RBG faced relentless gender discrimination in the job market. In 1959, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter refused to hire her as a clerk despite her recommendation from Professor Al Sacks, claiming she had "a couple of kids" and that his demanding work environment involved cursing-mostly fabricated excuses. Though RBG had faced similar discrimination before (Judge Learned Hand wouldn't hire women because of his coarse language, and law firms limited female hires), Columbia professor Gerald Gunther was determined to place her. He essentially blackmailed Federal Judge Edmund Palmieri into hiring Ruth by threatening to withhold future clerk recommendations if he refused.
Ruth excelled, working weekends and taking work home, with Palmieri later calling her one of his best clerks ever. When corporate law firms finally showed interest, Ruth chose a different path-accepting Hans Smit's invitation to co-author a book on Swedish civil procedure. This opportunity gave thirty-year-old Ruth her first experience living alone while Jane was in first grade. In Sweden, she witnessed a society where women were entering the workforce in large numbers and challenging traditional gender roles. Eva Moberg's 1961 essay arguing that "both men and women have one main role: that of being human beings" deeply influenced Ruth. Her time in Sweden transformed her perspective on gender equality and built her self-confidence, though it would be years before she fully realized how profoundly this experience had changed her life.
4장
The Architect of Gender Equality Jurisprudence
At Rutgers Law School in the 1960s, RBG faced blatant gender discrimination when Dean Heckel justified her lower salary because she "had a husband who earns a good salary," even paying bachelors more. She quietly persevered, commuting daily from Manhattan and publishing technical legal articles. Her life changed dramatically in 1965 when she discovered she was pregnant with James. Hiding her pregnancy under her mother-in-law's larger clothes until securing her next contract, she gave birth in September and promptly returned to teaching.
The world was changing-more women entered law school as men went to Vietnam, Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique sold millions, and the Civil Rights Act banned sex discrimination. When female students asked her to teach a women's law class in 1970, RBG read every federal decision on women's status in just a month. The experience transformed her from quiet acceptance to activism, leading her to help female professors file a successful federal pay discrimination lawsuit against Rutgers.
In 1971, RBG's advocacy expanded from small grievances like a female letter carrier's hat regulations to constitutional challenges. She recognized that fighting discrimination case-by-case was inefficient-systemic change was needed. While some feminists pushed for the Equal Rights Amendment, RBG wondered if the Constitution's existing language could protect women's equality. When Marty showed her the Moritz case, involving a bachelor denied tax deductions for caring for his elderly mother because the benefit was only for women and widowers, she immediately saw its potential. Though seemingly minor, the case could establish precedent against gender-based discrimination.
RBG contacted Mel Wulf at the ACLU for support, cleverly positioning herself to work on Reed v. Reed, a higher-profile case challenging an Idaho law preferring men as estate administrators. The Reed case carried enormous stakes, as the Supreme Court had consistently upheld gender discrimination, including in the 1961 Hoyt case that allowed Florida to make jury service optional for women because they were "the center of home and family life."
RBG built on the groundbreaking work of Pauli Murray, a Black female lawyer who had been arguing since 1961 that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause should free women from legal constraints. When submitting her Reed brief, which unusually cited Simone de Beauvoir, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, RBG added Murray and Dorothy Kenyon's names as co-authors. When colleague Burt Neuborne objected that this violated professional canons, RBG simply replied, "I don't care. They deserve recognition."
In her Reed brief, RBG argued that sex-based classifications should be considered "suspect" like race-based ones, requiring close judicial scrutiny. She asserted that distinguishing individuals based on "unalterable identifying traits" over which they have no control was presumptively impermissible. The brief noted that women, like other marginalized groups, lacked political representation to remedy discriminatory treatment. It acknowledged that previous Supreme Court decisions had "contributed to the separate and unequal status of women" but observed that "the national conscience has been awakened" to women's inferior status. RBG concluded that "the pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage."
5장
Strategic Brilliance: The Women's Rights Project
On January 17, 1973, a nervous Ruth Bader Ginsburg stood before nine male Supreme Court justices in Frontiero v. Richardson, asking them to recognize that the Constitution banned sex discrimination. Wearing her mother's jewelry like "a soldier suiting up for battle," she argued on behalf of Air Force Lieutenant Sharron Frontiero, whose husband was denied benefits automatically granted to wives of male officers. Though initially shaky, Ruth found her footing when she realized these men were her captive audience and she knew far more about gender discrimination than they did.
Drawing on her decade of teaching experience, she boldly argued that treating women differently under law implied "a judgment of inferiority" and helped "keep woman in her place." She urged the Court to apply "strict scrutiny" to sex-based classifications, just as they did with race, concluding with Sarah Grimke's powerful words: "I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks." Remarkably, she spoke uninterrupted for ten minutes-a rarity at the Supreme Court.
The ACLU Women's Rights Project began modestly, with Playboy Foundation funding and RBG's law students helping with research. After winning Reed v. Reed, RBG proposed the WRP to the ACLU board with ambitious plans to tackle discrimination through public education, legal reform, and strategic litigation. She used Solicitor General Erwin Griswold's "Appendix E" (a list of laws treating men and women differently) as a roadmap for potential cases. RBG advocated for incremental change, often telling colleagues, "Don't ask them to go too far too fast, or you'll lose what you might have won." Her strategic patience sometimes frustrated more radical feminists, but her methodical approach proved effective in gradually reshaping the law.
Columbia Law School hired RBG as its first tenured female professor in 1972, though some colleagues suspected she was hired only due to pressure to employ women. Despite being described as "brilliant" but "reserved" by students, RBG quickly became an advocate for women at Columbia. She helped file a class-action lawsuit for female employees facing discrimination in pay and benefits, and successfully intervened when the university attempted to lay off female maids while retaining male janitors.
At the WRP office-marked by a yellow "Women Working" sign that RBG loved-attorneys brought their babies to work while fighting for reproductive freedom. RBG saw Captain Susan Struck's case as an opportunity to establish that reproductive freedom was essential to equality. Struck, an Air Force nurse who became pregnant in Vietnam, refused both abortion and resignation, the military's only options for pregnant servicewomen. RBG recognized the hypocrisy of a country that banned abortion except when convenient for the military, and took Struck's case to argue that reproductive freedom was fundamentally about equality, not just privacy as argued in Roe v. Wade.
In her Struck brief, RBG argued that the Air Force regulation mandating discharge of pregnant officers reflected "arbitrary notions of a woman's place" and violated constitutional due process by operating on stereotypical assumptions rather than individual capacities. She highlighted the discriminatory nature of singling out pregnancy-"a physical condition unique to women involving a normally brief period of disability"-for immediate discharge when no other temporary disability affecting either men or women received similar treatment.
6장
Challenging Gender Roles Through Male Plaintiffs
RBG's fondness for representing male plaintiffs like Stephen Wiesenfeld, a widower denied "mother's benefits" after his wife died in childbirth, reflected her core belief that sexism harmed everyone. Her brief argued that laws devaluing women's economic contributions simultaneously discounted men's parental status. When she won Wiesenfeld's case, the normally stoic RBG ran through Columbia's halls kissing students who had worked with her.
Though some allies questioned her focus on male plaintiffs, RBG firmly believed that "for women to be equal, men had to be free." She represented men harmed by discriminatory laws in landmark "widower cases" like Kahn v. Shevin, Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, and Califano v. Goldfarb. She won Wiesenfeld and Goldfarb but lost Kahn-her only Supreme Court defeat. She also fought pregnancy discrimination cases, arguing that disadvantaging pregnant women denied equal treatment under law. In Cox v. Stanton, she challenged forced sterilization of black women in North Carolina.
RBG won jury cases ensuring women's equal participation in this "prime obligation of citizenship." Even the "embarrassing" beer case (Craig v. Boren) became a landmark establishing intermediate scrutiny for sex-based laws. Throughout, she demonstrated that "gender discrimination is a two-edged sword" harming both women and men.
After Roe v. Wade, RBG criticized Justice Blackmun's opinion for its doctor-centric approach and sweeping nature that violated her preferred incremental strategy for changing minds. When the Court upheld bans on federal funding for abortion and refused to recognize pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination, RBG mobilized quickly, gathering a coalition that successfully pushed for the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, overturning the Supreme Court's "stinky" decisions within just two years.
By 1978, with women comprising 30% of law students, RBG could proudly declare that "all-male retreats are on the wane" and predicted women would soon join judges' conference tables-a prediction that would prove correct when President Carter appointed her to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980.
7장
From Judge to Justice: The Path to the Supreme Court
In the 1970s, RBG was rejected for a federal district court position for lacking securities experience, though she preferred appellate work anyway. When Jimmy Carter became president in 1977, only one woman served as an appeals court judge. His administration sought to change this, with feminist lawyers forming organizations to vet candidates. As RBG applied to both the Second Circuit and D.C. Circuit, she worried her feminist past might count against her. Her application emphasized her work ethic rather than her strategic brilliance.
After initial rejection from the Second Circuit, women lawyers rallied behind her. Though Representative John Ashbrook complained about her "militant feminist interpretations," with Nina Totenberg's public support, her nomination moved forward despite Republican resistance. The Senate confirmed her unanimously on June 18, 1980, with only Strom Thurmond voting against her in committee.
After her swearing-in, her beloved professor Gerald Gunther predicted she would be "genuinely open-minded and detached" on the bench-a claim that drew skepticism from both parties who saw her as an ACLU radical. Gunther bet five dollars she'd be seen as "the most independent, thoughtful, modest judge" within years. He won that bet when the Washington Post later described her as a solid centrist.
RBG joined the D.C. Circuit just before Carter's presidency ended, soon finding herself among Reagan and Bush appointees like Scalia, Starr, Bork, and Thomas. Despite her new title, old indignities persisted-people still assumed Marty was "Judge Ginsburg" at social gatherings. She embraced compromise and collegiality, believing an appeals court judge should follow precedent rather than change it. By 1993, her moderate reputation was solidified when she criticized Roe v. Wade's sweeping approach in her Madison Lecture, arguing incremental change would have been more effective-a position that angered many feminist allies.
The press struggled to categorize her when Clinton nominated her for the Supreme Court. How could she be both feminist and have voted with conservative judge Robert Bork 85% of the time on panels? BusinessWeek reassured readers she harbored "no animosity towards Corporate America," while Alan Dershowitz cherry-picked anonymous reviews calling her "picky," "impatient," and "schoolmarmish." He dismissed her women's rights work as merely "voguish" compared to Thurgood Marshall's legacy.
Despite White House fears about her ACLU past, she refused to distance herself from the organization during confirmation prep. The hearings proved surprisingly smooth-she spoke of her family, showed her grandson's handmade book, and addressed abortion rights directly: "The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity... When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices." Only three senators voted against her.
8장
A Marriage of True Equals
RBG's marriage to Marty was an extraordinary partnership of equals that defied the stereotypes of their generation. When asked how they managed such a remarkable relationship, she simply answered that Marty himself was extraordinary, and he saw the same in her. "He thought that I must be pretty good," she often said, "because why would he decide that he wanted to spend his life with me?"
Though they lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side and sent their children to elite schools, they pioneered what Stephen Wiesenfeld called an "alternative family lifestyle" where she wasn't relegated to second-class status. Marty, with his irreverent humor and unwavering support, brought out sides of her no one else saw-even playfully chasing her around her chambers with scissors. He described himself as "having stood very low in his class and played on the golf team," while proudly telling everyone she made Law Review at Harvard when he hadn't.
At her confirmation hearings, she introduced Marty as her "life's partner," a phrase she'd been using since the 1970s. Each day, he carried her briefcase into the Senate hearing room and arranged her papers. When the New York Times reported on his unusually active role in her nomination, Marty simply said, "I have been supportive of my wife since the beginning of time, and she has been supportive of me. It's not sacrifice; it's family."
Their relationship was one of mutual accommodation-when he pursued partnership at a New York firm, she was the primary caretaker at home. Later in Washington, he drove her to court daily until her Supreme Court appointment provided a driver. He pulled her away from work for dinner, starting calls at 7:30 until she relented by 9:00. Most importantly, he always made her feel more capable than she believed herself to be, from her earliest uncertain briefs to confidently saying, "It's a hard job, but I can do it at least as well as those guys."
Their division of labor began taking shape during their time at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where Marty's military duties required "undivided attention four hours every week," giving them time to "learn about each other and begin to build a life." The cooking arrangement started after she presented what she called a tuna casserole. Marty squinted at the lumpy mass and asked, "What is it?" Then he taught himself to cook, starting with their wedding gift-an Escoffier cookbook. Though she continued reluctant kitchen duty for years with "seven things I could make," their daughter Jane decided when she was fourteen that "Mommy should be phased out of the kitchen altogether." As Jane put it, their family division became: "Mommy does the thinking and Daddy does the cooking."
Parenting presented challenges beyond pregnancy discrimination. "What is very hard for most women is what happens when children are born," RBG noted, dreaming of a world where "every child has two loving parents who share in raising the child." Marty actively participated in Jane's early care in Oklahoma, playing classical music and taking 2 AM feedings. But in New York, traditional roles reasserted themselves as Marty built his career. Though both agreed to be home by seven for dinner, RBG shouldered most childcare responsibilities, especially after James was born.
9장
The Dissenter: Finding Her Voice on the Supreme Court
As a justice, RBG finally entered the conference room where nine men once decided the cases she'd argued decades earlier. Her biggest victory came with United States v. Virginia, challenging VMI's male-only admission policy. The vote was 7-1, with Justice Thomas recusing himself and only Scalia dissenting. In her majority opinion, she could finally articulate what she'd been fighting for since the 1970s: that gender classifications cannot "create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women." She wrote that "inherent differences" between sexes "remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration" or "artificial constraints on opportunity."
In her VMI opinion, she traced how understanding of equal protection had evolved since 1971's Reed v. Reed-the first time the Court ruled in favor of a woman denied equal protection. She established that government cannot deny women "full citizenship stature" simply because they are women. While not equating gender classifications with those based on race, she clarified that the justification must be "exceedingly persuasive," not relying on "overbroad generalizations about different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females."
In 2005, RBG experienced profound professional loss when her friend Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement to care for her husband with Alzheimer's, followed by Chief Justice Rehnquist's death from cancer. With President George W. Bush appointing John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the court took a decisive step to the right. RBG found herself once again in an all-male environment, lamenting to Mike Wallace that despite her prediction of seeing more women on the court, "Sadly they are not here." Being the sole woman brought back painful memories of law school isolation-women had become "a one-at-a-time curiosity" again. In a rare moment of vulnerability, she described her position on the bench as "lonely."
RBG had joined the Court optimistic about abortion rights after Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe's core. But her hope that science would make abortion law "largely irrelevant" proved naive as restrictions multiplied. When the Court struck down Nebraska's "partial-birth abortion" ban in Stenberg v. Carhart with RBG in the majority, it seemed a victory. But after O'Connor's departure, Kennedy's majority opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) upheld a similar federal ban, suggesting women might "regret their choice" and needed protection from themselves.
This paternalistic reasoning deeply offended RBG, who dissented forcefully, reminding the Court that women's "ability to realize their full potential...is intimately connected to their ability to control their reproductive lives." The opinion, she felt, reverted to outdated notions of women as incapable of making their own decisions. In her powerful dissent, RBG emphasized that abortion cases weren't about abstract privacy but "a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature." She criticized the Court's invocation of an "antiabortion shibboleth" about women regretting abortions, for which it "concededly has no reliable evidence."
10장
The Cultural Icon Who Refused to Retire
RBG's distinctive style stands out in Washington's conformist culture, with every detail carefully chosen to tell a story. Her iconic lacy collars (jabots) began as a political statement about women on the bench-since traditional robes were designed for men with shirt and tie showing, she and Sandra Day O'Connor adapted them with feminine accessories. RBG's collection includes specific jabots for different occasions: a glass-beaded velvet bib from Banana Republic for dissents, a gold-trimmed charm collar for majority opinions, and others acquired from places like Cape Town and the Metropolitan Opera gift shop.
Beyond her collars, RBG favors regal brocades and embroidered silks with statement jewelry, rarely dressing casually even in extreme weather. During a snowstorm, she wore a straight skirt and high heels, requiring a driver to lift her into a jeep (she later wrote him a recommendation letter for law school). She's conservative about dress-offering her granddaughter Clara a shawl for low-cut shirts and being horrified by Clara's nose piercing ("that thing on your face"). She wears lace gloves at public functions, knee-high leather boots in winter, carries the Constitution in her handbag, and favors Ferragamo shoes.
RBG weeps at the opera, deeply moved by performances in a way that reveals her sentimental side. She laments her lack of singing talent-"If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva," she confesses, noting her grade school teachers rated her "a sparrow, not a robin." Her passion for opera began at age eleven when she watched conductor Dean Dixon lead La Gioconda, and she remembers how Dixon, an African American, was never called "maestro" despite his talent.
RBG refuses to slow down, even when others suggest she should. After her 2009 pancreatic cancer diagnosis, she appeared on the bench just three weeks after surgery, determined to show the public "the Supreme Court isn't all male" and that she was "alive and well, contrary to that senator who said I'd be dead within nine months." Her earlier bout with colorectal cancer had already given her a renewed appreciation for life: "Each thing I do comes with a heightened appreciation that I am able to do it."
Despite persistent retirement pressure-particularly during Obama's presidency-RBG has her own metric for when to step down: "When I forget the names of cases that I once could recite at the drop of a hat." Without Marty urging her to rest, she works longer hours, though her daughter Jane helps by preparing meals she leaves in the freezer. RBG acknowledges she's learned to "seek ever more the joys of being alive" while doing what she believes Marty would have wanted.
During the landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges same-sex marriage case, RBG offered a powerful rebuttal to arguments based on traditional marriage, noting: "There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn't egalitarian." She pointed out that marriage had evolved from treating women as property-a tradition that wouldn't have recognized her own marriage.
RBG continues her work despite ongoing threats to what she's fought for, particularly reproductive freedom. "We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country," she observes, noting that bans primarily "hurt women who lack the means to go someplace else." Returning to Columbia Law School in 2012, where she once fought as the only tenured female professor, she noted with satisfaction, "I passed a door this morning that said 'Lactation room.' How the world has changed."
Though she avoids discussing legacy as too final, RBG reflects on her satisfaction in making life better: "I think gender discrimination is bad for everyone, it's bad for men, it's bad for children... Think of how the Constitution begins. 'We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union.' But we're still striving for that more perfect union. And one of the perfections is for the 'we the people' to include an ever enlarged group." This expansion remains her unfinished life's work.
