THE NOTORIOUS RBG
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's extraordinary life and accomplishments
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the most well-known public officials of our time. Despite her small stature, she held an immense amount of power. Her main focus through her 87 years of life was fighting for equity and equal rights for minorities and women.
She began her journey as a professor at Rutgers University Law School in 1963. After ten years, she became a teacher at Columbia University. She directed the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1970s. President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the US Court of Appeals for D.C., and in 1993, she was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice by President Bill Clinton. When she was originally nominated, Ginsburg was seen as a moderate judge who could increase diversity. After some slight controversy during her approval process, the Senate approved her in a landslide 96-3 vote.
In her personal pursuits, Ginsburg encountered sexism on a regular basis. She broke and persevered against sexist rules not only in the courtroom, but also in her personal life. After breaking countless barriers, she was the first woman to join both the Columbia and Harvard Law Review as well as the first woman to be a tenured professor of Columbia University. The ACLU Women’s Rights Project, a leader of the women’s rights movement, was co-founded and led by Ginsburg. RBG, one of only four female Supreme Court Justices, was also the first Supreme Court Justice to officiate a same-sex marriage.
In the Supreme Court, a majority opinion is the opinion held by at least 5 of the 9 judges in any single case. This opinion becomes the mandate and decision of the case itself, making it a very important piece of the judiciary system. In her 27 years as a justice, some of her greatest accomplishments were in writing or reading the majority opinion of a case she heavily debated.
She wrote the 7-1 majority opinion for the landmark case United States v. Virginia, in which the Virginia Military Institute, open exclusively to men, was sued by the United States for violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment. In a groundbreaking decision for women's education in the United States, The Court decided that VMI could not prohibit women from applying to and attending the school. It mandated that colleges cannot discriminate against women, which was a major step in achieving equality and equity in the education system.
Ginsburg also delivered the majority opinion in Olmstead v. L.C., which forced the states to give equal opportunity and access to those with mental disabilities. In this case, two mentally ill women were denied certain rights given in the Americans with Disabilities Act. They were held in isolation wards and were not being moved to communally integrated settings, in conflict with the regulations outlined in the Act. The hospital argued that "financial constraint" prevented them from moving the women into communal wards, but Ginsburg, along with 5 other Supreme Court Justices, decided that financial constraint isn't a good enough reason for states to deny patients their legally entitled treatment. This case was one of the most important steps in the fight for equal rights among disabled people, a fight which is still continuing to this day.
In addition to delivering the opinion for cases, she also took a stand by dissenting against the Court majority in multiple cases which she believed to violate constitutionality or justice. One such case was from the presidential election of 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush. When the contentious election's case came to the Court, she believed that the vote needed to be recounted, as Bush had won by only a 0.5% margin. In this case, she broke years of Court precedent of dissenting by omitting the word "respectfully" from the traditional phrase "I respectfully dissent." While this change may seem insignificant, it caused major uproar among those who felt that the judicial tradition should have been upheld. Despite the controversy, Ginsburg strongly believed that the president of a nation should not be decided until the country was entirely sure they had counted the votes correctly.
All in all, RBG wrote the majority opinion for over 200 Supreme Court cases. Ginsburg was amazingly successful in the court and in her personal pursuits. In addition to her successes, her main appeal to the younger generation was her quick wit, intelligence, perseverance, and morals. She was one of the only Supreme Court Justices to have a strong social media presence, mostly due to her vast amount of young fans. She became a judicial legend, eventually earning the nickname “The Notorious RBG.”
Countless young people saw Ginsburg as a vision of hope, someone who was willing to do anything to fight for what was right. She never let someone else’s power influence her or her decisions. She was a fighter, an activist, a hero, and a leader.
This is Alicia's second year at Edgewood and first year on the Edge staff. She loves writing, debating, and bettering Brevard. She hopes to educate and entertain the members of her community.