Ruth Bader Ginsburg
On the basis of Sex, On the basis of Women’s Rights, On the basis of the United States of America. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was and will forever remain a true American heroine.
“She was a masterful jurist, a champion for women and a became an icon for all of America. She will be sorely missed and now, what happens?”
— Patrick Donovan
By Patrick Donovan – Author/Screenwriter
US Navy Disabled Veteran – 1980 – 1991
Seattle, WA (The Hollywood Times) 09/18/2020
(SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA) – Ruth Bader Ginsburg; born Joan Ruth Bader, March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020), also known by her initials RBG, was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton and was generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court. Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court after Sandra Day O’Connor. Following O’Connor’s retirement in 2006 and until Sonia Sotomayor joined the Court in 2009, she was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with her dissents, which were noted by legal observers and in popular culture. Ginsburg authored notable majority opinions, including United States v. Virginia (1996), Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), and Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000).
Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother died shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school. She then earned her bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, and became a wife to Martin D. Ginsburg and mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated tied for first in her class. Following law school, Ginsburg entered into academia. She was a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.
Ginsburg spent a considerable part of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights, winning multiple arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court. Ginsburg received attention in American popular culture for her fiery liberal dissents and refusal to step down, leading to her being dubbed “The Notorious R.B.G.”, a play on the name of rapper “The Notorious B.I.G.”
Joan Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the second daughter of Celia (née Amster) and Nathan Bader, who lived in the Flatbush neighborhood. Her father was a Jewish emigrant from Odessa, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire, and her mother was born in New York to Austrian Jewish parents.
The Baders’ older daughter Marylin died of meningitis at age six, when Ruth was 14 months old. The family called Joan Ruth “Kiki”, a nickname Marylin had given her for being “a kicky baby”. When “Kiki” started school, Celia discovered that her daughter’s class had several other girls named Joan, so Celia suggested that the teacher call her daughter “Ruth” to avoid confusion. Although not devout, the Bader family belonged to East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue, where Ruth learned tenets of the Jewish faith and gained familiarity with the Hebrew language. At age 13, Ruth acted as the “camp rabbi” at a Jewish summer program at Camp Che-Na-Wah in Minerva, New York.
Celia took an active role in her daughter’s education, often taking her to the library. Celia had been a good student in her youth, graduating from high school at age 15, yet she could not further her own education because her family instead chose to send her brother to college. Celia wanted her daughter to get more education, which she thought would allow Ruth to become a high school history teacher. Ruth attended James Madison High School, whose law program later dedicated a courtroom in her honor. Celia struggled with cancer throughout Ruth’s high school years and died the day before Ruth’s high school graduation.
Bader attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi. While at Cornell, she met Martin D. Ginsburg at age 17. She graduated from Cornell with a bachelor of arts degree in government on June 23, 1954. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the highest-ranking female student in her graduating class. Bader married Ginsburg a month after her graduation from Cornell. She and Martin moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was stationed as a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps officer in the Army Reserve after his call-up to active duty.
At age 21, she worked for the Social Security Administration office in Oklahoma, where she was demoted after becoming pregnant with her first child. She gave birth to a daughter in 1955.
In the fall of 1956, Ginsburg enrolled at Harvard Law School, where she was one of only nine women in a class of about 500 men. The Dean of Harvard Law reportedly invited all of the female law students to dinner at his family home and asked the female law students, including Ginsburg, “Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?” When her husband took a job in New York City, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School and became the first woman to be on two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review. In 1959, she earned her law degree at Columbia and tied for first in her class.
At the start of her legal career, Ginsburg encountered difficulty in finding employment. In 1960, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter rejected Ginsburg for a clerkship position due to her gender. She was rejected despite a strong recommendation from Albert Martin Sacks, who was a professor and later dean of Harvard Law School.
Columbia Law Professor Gerald Gunther also pushed for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to hire Ginsburg as a law clerk, threatening to never recommend another Columbia student to Palmieri if he did not give Ginsburg the opportunity and guaranteeing to provide the judge with a replacement clerk should Ginsburg not succeed. Later that year, Ginsburg began her clerkship for Judge Palmieri, and she held the position for two years.
She died at her home in Washington, D.C., on September 18, 2020, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer, at age 87.
Thoughts by Pat: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to me was a true hero. She is the embodiment of what it was to “be” an American. Her best friend was the late Justice Antonin Scalia. What made their friendship special is that they were opposite poles of a magnet. Their families spent New Years Eve every year together, they rode elephants in India together and they had a mutual respect for each other that transcended politics.
Justice Ginsburg is how we should be with each other as she and Justice Scalia were. A far left liberal and a far right conservative. They found a way to communicate, to work and live together not only at the court but in life. She was how we should all be. She is the model for all citizens of this great nation needs to be.
We sometimes forget that just because we are Republican or Democrat, Red or Blue, Black or White, Brown or whatever color you are, it doesn’t matter. We need to sit down, talk civilly and respect each other’s opinion, beliefs, motives, desires, wants and needs. When it comes right down to it, we all have jobs, families and we all desire the same thing: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
What we’re faced with now, 46 days before an election with the fastest confirmation of a new justice taking 47 days and the average, 70, what will Mitch McConnell and President Donald J Trump do? Do they have enough Republican votes in the senate to make it happen or will the Democrats FIGHT like never before forcing Mitch McConnell to do what he did to President Obama and Merrick Garland making the country wait 10 mos for the new President to decide. We THE PEOPLE have a voice and our voice is CLEAR! Put back into Mitch McConnell’s face, what he did to us and force him to wait until a new President is elected. But you see, the Republican’s do not fight fair. The Republican’s want it their way or the highway, not the people’s way.
Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their ailing country before it’s too late. CALL your congresswomen and congressmen and senators and TELL THEM TO WAIT! Tell them do EXACTLY what they did to President Obama and if they are THAT confident that Trump will win, then they have nothing to fear. But without the voice “OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE and BY THE PEOPLE”, then we will surely lose.
Justice Ginsburg did exactly that and she made her voice clear and resounding especially in her many dissentions in the court. She fought hard to do things that she was told, “NO” and then barreled through with power, grace, and a force that needed to be reckoned with. Ruth Bader Ginsburg shall be forever embedded in the history of America as one the most inspiring female pioneers that will live for generations to come.