Ruth Bader Ginsburg example essay topic

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born Joan Ruth Bader, on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents, Nathan Bader and Celia Am ster Bader were Jews ih Americans whose families had immigrated to the United States. Celia was from central Europe and her parents moved to the United States before she was born and Nathan's from Russia his parents moved when he was thirteen. Ruth's older sister Marilyn died at the age of eight, so Ruth grew up as an only child, in the flatbush section of Brooklyn. Her father worked first as a furrier and later, as a haberdasher. Ruth's mother Celia, played a major role in her daughter's life.

Celia took Ruth on frequent trips to the library and saved money to enable her daughter to attend college one day. Celia taught Ruth the value of independence and good education. Ruth used her mother's advice and worked diligently in school. Ruth attended P.S. 238 elementary school. As an adolescent Ruth Bader distinguished herself as a scholar. She graduated first in her class at P.S. 238 and there at age twelve or thirteen wrote an editorial, "Landmarks of Constitutional Freedom"; for the student newspaper.

She was also confirmed with honors at the East Mid wood Jewish Center in Brooklyn. Ruth Bader then went to James Madison High School. Bader's Classmates remembered her as competitive and popular. Ruth kept a secret from her classmates while attending high school; her mother Celia suffered from stomach cancer.

Celia Bader passed away a day before her daughter's graduation ceremony. Ruth did not attend a "Forum for Honor" to which she was in for graduating sixth in her class. Celia Bader left Ruth a large sum of eight thousand dollars for her college tuition. Ruth, however did not need it, because she earned enough scholarships by that time to support herself and gave most of it to her father. Ruth Bader continued to fulfill her mother's hopes in college at Cornell University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated first among the women in her class with high honors in Governemtn and distinction in all subjects, College of Arts and Sci neces Class Marshall. During her years at Cornell she met Martin Ginsburg, whom she married following her graduation in 1954.

Together they wanted to pursue a career in law. Their first child Jane Carol, was born in 1955 a year after their marriage. Rather Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School a year behind her husband, following two years at Fort Still, Oklahoma, where he served in the Army. Ruth's aptitude for the law was sufficient for Harvard Law School and she found herself caring for an infant and attending Harvard for the next two years. Harvard wasn't very welcoming to the nine women in its class of 1959, providing no room for them in its main dormitories. Even this marginal feminine presence at the law school irritated its dean, Erwin Griswold, whom Ginsburg recalls asking how the women felt about occupying seats that could have been taken by deserving men...

Despite the condition, Ginsburg excelled in her classes and won a spot on the Harvard Law Review. During the second year Ruth Ginsburg was at Harvard, her husband Martin Ginsburg was diagnosed with a rare cancer. While he underwent massive surgery and extensive radiation treatments for a condition doctors told him few had ever survived, Ruth Ginsburg covered her husband's classes as well as her own, copying notes for him and typing his third year paper. Her husband recovered and was able to complete his course work and graduated on time. When he accepted a job as an associate with a New York City law firm, Ruth transferred to Columbia Law School so that the family could remain together. She served on the Columbia Law Review.

She became the first woman to have ever been in both reviews at two different colleges. She also tied for first place in her graduation class in 1959. While living in New York with her husband and daughter she did not find any work. Although she had superior academic credentials she could not even obtain a clerkship interview with a Supreme Court Justice because she was a Jewish Woman.

One district court judge in New York by the name os Edmund L. Palmeri, finally hired Ginsburg as a law clerk. She worked their for two years. After working for the Honorable Edmund L. Palmeri, she became a Research Associate and then a Research Associate Director at the Columbia Law School Project on Internatio l Procedure. As the prime part of her work for the project, she coauthored a book on judicial procedure in Sweden. After almost daily tutoring in Swedish for several months, she traveled to Sweden to observe Swedish courts in operation. In 1963, She became the second woman to join the law faculty of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

She also worked during this time to advance several feminist causes. She became pregnant with her second child, James and hid it from her employer's because she was worried about losing her job. While working at Rutgers, she battled for maternity leave rights for schoolteachers in New Jersey. She wore clothes from her supportive mother -in -law so no one would notice that she was pregnant. She had James in 1965 and still continued to work at Rutgers. In the 1960's she began to take sex discrimination cases for the American Civil Union Ginsburg believed the such stereotyping, although ostensibly benign, demeaned women and unfairly limited their opportunities.

In her view, the equal protection principle stated in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits discrimination based on race, should be gender-based discrimination as well. But in the 1960's, Ginsburg found that promoting this viewpoint was an uphill battle. Gisnburg recognized that a cautious, incremental approach would be the surest method of achieving enduring change in the law. Ginsburg launched her campaign by joining forces with the ACLU's national office. She helped to write the ACLU's brief in a key Supreme Court sex discrimination case, Reed vs. Reed, which struck down a state law that preferred men over women as administrators of descendents' estates.

However, because the court reached its decision without explicit adopting a heightened standard of review, the ruling did not guarantee similar results in other cases her object was to convince the court that gender-based stereotyping harmed not only women, but all of society. In 1972, Ginsburg left Rutgers to teach at Columbia Law School, where she became the first tenured woman law professor. Between 1972 and 1978 Ginsburg argued six cases and won five of them. In Craig V. Born in 1976, the court finally accepted Ginsburg's view that gender-based legal distinctions deserved heightened scrutiny. Her distinguished teaching career and ACLU achievements won her a national reputation and prompted President Jimmy Carter to appoint her to the U.S. court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in 1980. Martin Ginsburg moved with his wife to Washington D.C. leaving his New York tax practice and chari at Columbia Law School to become a professor at Georgetown University law Center.

On the court of appeals she was known for her scholarly, balanced opinions as a moderate liberal, Ginsburg sided with both liberal and conservative Wings of the court. Despite her long record as a champion of women's rights she has occasionally disappointed some of her former allies in the liberal advocacy groups. In her thirteen years on the appeals court she wrote over 300 opinions that dealt with abortion rights, gay rights, and affirmative action; she voted more often with her Republican colleagues rather than the Democrat -appointed judges. Some of her cases were Frontiero V. Richardson, Duren V. Missouri and Weinberger V. Weidenfeld.

Frontiero V. Richardson was in 1973, this regarded the laws about dependent housing allowances in the military should be applied equally to servicemen and servicewomen. Duren V. Missouri was about the Missouri laws that made jury duty optional for women but not for men showed that the state placed higher value on the citizenship of men over women. Weinberg V. Weis enfield in 1975, which held unconstitutional a social security policy under which only women could collect their spouse's social security benefits. In the spring of 1993, Justice Byron White resigned his position on the Supreme Court. President Bill Clinton had the opportunity to become the first democratic president tin twenty six years to make a supreme court appointment.

Clinton appointed Ruth Ginsburg, callin her "the Thurgood Marshall of gender equality law". he concluded that she possessed the requisite intellectual and emotional stature for the job. The Senate voted 97-3 to confirm Ginsburg's nomination, and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. Ginsburg is known as a ruthless editor with a keen eye for detail. Her soft voice and reserved manner hide great perceptiveness and a warm interest in people. She is an opera devotee who had apperead in full person costume-complete with wig and fan- as an extra in a Washington Opera Production. Ruth Bader Ginsburg worked hard to become a successful judge and to be where she is at today.

Her courage and willingness to fight for women causes is well looked at today. She is a well educated women who shows great pride in who she is and is well deserved for the postion she withholds in the Supreme Court. She is an example of a strong women who should be looked at as someone with integrity, She struggled throughout the years of her life to achieve a position that many women in her days wished they can achieve and that she should great honor for.