Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

American lawyer and jurist (1933–2020)

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Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She was the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) and was one of three female justices serving on the Supreme Court (along with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan). She was generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court. Before becoming a judge, Ginsburg spent a considerable portion of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of women's rights as a constitutional principle. She advocated as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel in the 1970s. She was a professor at Rutgers School of Law–Newark and Columbia Law School. Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020.

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Pen Names: Notorious R.B.G. • R.B.G.

Birth Name: Joan Ruth Bader

Alternative Names: Joan Ruth Biggie • Ruth Joan Biggie Ginsburg • Joan Ruth Biggie Ginsburg • Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Notorious RBG • RBG • Ruth Bader • notorious rbg

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also expanded to include women as well as racial and ethnic minorities. I was the beneficiary of the Nixon administration’s affirmative action effort when, in 1972, I was engaged by the Columbia University law faculty as the first woman ever to hold a tenured position there.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman.

Yet, until 1971, the Court turned away every woman’s complaint that she had been denied equal protection by a state or federal law.

Ruth very much admired her mother, who encouraged Ruth to be independent and self-sufficient.

It helps sometimes to be a little deaf (in marriage and in) every workplace, including the good job I have now.

The way to stop discrimination on race is to stop discriminating on race

"Once asked how we could be friends, given our disagreemt on lots of things, Justice Scalia answered: "I attack ideas. i don´t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can´t seperate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don´t want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

Speak you mind even if your voice shakes.

be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

President Reagan made history when he appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court,

Roe isn't really about the woman's choice, is it? It's about the doctor's freedom to practice...it wasn't woman-centered, it was physician-centered.

. . .It would have been better to approach it under the equal protection clause.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world. If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

Sally Reed, having lost her only child, sought to take charge of her son’s few belongings. She applied to the probate court to be appointed administrator of Richard’s death estate. The boy’s father, Cecil Reed, later applied for the same appointment