Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Current Court Information:
Supreme Court of the United States
Title:   Associate Justice
Service:
Appointed by:   Bill Clinton
Approval vote:   97-3
Active:   8/5/1993-Current
Preceded by:   Byron White
Past post:   District of Columbia Court of Appeals
Past term:   1980-1993
Personal History
Born:   3/15/1933
Home State:   Brooklyn, NY
Bachelors:   Cornell University
Law School:   Columbia Law

Contents

Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15, 1933, Brooklyn, New York) is an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on June 22, 1993, and received her commission to serve on August 5, 1993. She is the second woman and the first Jewish woman to serve on the Supreme Court. In 2008, Forbes Magazine rated her as the 72nd most powerful woman in the world, down from 20th in 2007. Prior to her appointment with the Supreme Court, Ginsburg served as a federal judge for 13 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In practice, she spent a considerable portion of her career as an advocate for the equal citizenship status of women and men as a constitutional principle. She engaged in advocacy as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, and in the 1970s, was a member of the ACLU's Board and one of its General Counsel. She served as a professor at Rutgers University School of Law and Columbia Law School.[1] [2] [3][2][4]

Personal life

Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, the second daughter of Nathan and Celia Bader. Her family were active members of the East Midwood Jewish Center, where she, at age thirteen, acted as the "camp rabbi" at a Jewish summer program at Camp Che-Na-Wah in Minerva, NY. Ginsburg attended James Madison High School, whose law program later dedicated a courtroom in her honor. She later married Martin Ginsburg.[2][3]

Ginsburg has been suffering ill health, undergoing cancer surgery in February of 2009 and a brief hospital stay in September of 2009 after falling ill in her offices. She also spent a night in the hospital in October of 2009 after collapsing in an airplane. [5][6][7]

Education

Ginsburg received her B.A. from Cornell University. In 1954 she enrolled at Harvard Law School. When her husband took a job in New York City she transferred to Columbia Law School and became the first woman to be on both the Harvard and Columbia law reviews. She earned her LL. B degree at Columbia, tied for first in her class.[2][3]

Legal career

In 1959 Ginsburg began clerking for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. From 1961 to 1963 she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, learning Swedish to co-author a book on judicial procedure in Sweden. Ginsburg conducted extensive research for her book in Sweden at the University of Lund.

She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark from 1963 to 1972. In 1970, she co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal in the United States to focus exclusively on women's rights. From 1972 until 1980, she taught at Columbia, where she became the first tenured woman and co-authored the first law school case book on sex discrimination.

In 1977 she became a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. As the chief litigator of the ACLU's women's rights project, she argued several cases in front of the Supreme Court and attained a reputation as a skilled oral advocate.[2]

Judicial career

Ginsburg was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Carter on April 14, 1980, and received her commission on June 18, 1980. She was filling the seat left vacant by the death of Harold Leventhal. [1]

President Bill Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on June 22, 1993. During her confirmation hearings in the Senate, she refused to answer questions regarding her personal views on most issues or how she would adjudicate certain hypothetical situations as a Supreme Court Justice. Ginsburg refused to discuss her beliefs about the limits and proper role of jurisprudence, saying "Were I to rehearse here what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I would act injudiciously." She did answer questions relating to some issues, affirming her belief in a constitutional right to privacy, and explaining at some length her personal philosophy and thoughts regarding gender equality. The U.S. Senate confirmed her by a 96 to 3 vote and she took her seat on August 10, 1993.[2]

Notable rulings

Some notable cases in which Ginsburg wrote an opinion:

"Ginsburg Precedent"

More than a decade passed between the time Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer were appointed and the time another justice left the court. In that time, both Congress and the White House had switched to Republican control. When Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in the summer of 2005 (with William Rehnquist's death a few months later), both sides began to squabble about just how many questions President George W. Bush's nominees would be expected to answer. The debate heated up when hearings for John Roberts began in September 2005. Republicans used an argument that they called the "Ginsburg Precedent", which centered on Ginsburg's confirmation hearings. In those hearings, she did not answer some questions involving matters such as abortion, gay rights, separation of church and state, rights of the disabled, and so on. Only one witness was allowed to testify "against" Ginsburg at her confirmation hearings, and the hearings lasted only four days.

In a September 28, 2005, speech at Wake Forest University, Ginsburg said that Chief Justice Roberts refusing to answer questions on some cases was "unquestionably right." However, as the following sentence in the speech made clear, this statement did not affirm the existence of a "precedent" which the Judiciary Committee was obliged to follow; it was merely a statement the nominee could, at his discretion, refuse to answer questions about how he might rule.

Democrats had argued against Roberts' refusal to answer certain questions, saying that Ginsburg had made her views very clear, even if she did not comment on all specific matters, and that due to her lengthy tenure as a judge, many of her legal opinions were already available for review. Democrats also pointed out that Republican Senator Orrin Hatch had recommended Ginsburg to then-President Clinton, which suggested Clinton worked in a bipartisan manner. Hatch also recommended Roberts.

During the John Roberts confirmation hearings, Democratic Senator Joe Biden, Hatch, and Roberts himself brought up Ginsburg's hearings several times as they argued over how many questions she answered and how many Roberts was expected to answer. The precedent was again cited several times during the confirmation hearings for Justice Samuel Alito.

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ginsburg Biography from the Federal Judicial Center.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Wikipedia: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Oyez U.S. Supreme Court Media: Ruth Bader Ginsburg biography
  4. ↑ Forbes The 100 Most Powerful Women: 2007 rankings
  5. ↑ Associated Press "Ginsburg briefly hospitalized, released Thurs.", October 15, 2009
  6. ↑ The Washington Post News Digest "Ginsburg Hospitalized For Reaction to Drugs", October 16, 2009
  7. ↑ Associated Press "Justice Ginsburg hospitalized overnight, released", October 15, 2009

This page was taken and modified from Wikipedia's article on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Copyright Notice can be found here.

Federal judicial offices
Preceded by:
Harold Leventhal 		DC Circuit Court of Appeals
1980–1993 		Succeeded by:
David Tatel
Preceded by:
Byron White 		Supreme Court
1993–present 		Succeeded by:
NA
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