Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Academy of Achievement

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Female attorneys were a rarity, female judges were almost unheard of, and in many states women were routinely dismissed from jury duty. As one of the few women studying at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked to justify taking a place in the class that could be filled by a man. Despite her outstanding academic record, law firms refused to hire her, and a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would not employ her as his clerk solely because of her sex. Despite these obstacles, she became one of the nation's foremost legal scholars and a highly effective advocate for the equality of the sexes. She argued a series of historic cases before the Supreme Court, establishing the equal citizenship rights of men and women. Since 1993, she herself has sat on the nation's highest court, ruling on the issues of constitutional law that define the rights of all Americans."/> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">When Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her career as an attorney, America's courtrooms and law firms were virtually all-male preserves. Female attorneys were a rarity, female judges were almost unheard of, and in many states women were routinely dismissed from jury duty.</p> <p class="inputText">As one of the few women studying at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked to justify taking a place in the class that could be filled by a man. Despite her outstanding academic record, law firms refused to hire her, and a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would not employ her as his clerk solely because of her sex.</p> <p class="inputText">Despite these obstacles, she became one of the nation's foremost legal scholars and a highly effective advocate for the equality of the sexes. She argued a series of historic cases before the Supreme Court, establishing the equal citizenship rights of men and women. Since 1993, she herself has sat on the nation's highest court, ruling on the issues of constitutional law that define the rights of all Americans.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GINSBURG-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">When Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her career as an attorney, America's courtrooms and law firms were virtually all-male preserves. Female attorneys were a rarity, female judges were almost unheard of, and in many states women were routinely dismissed from jury duty.</p> <p class="inputText">As one of the few women studying at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked to justify taking a place in the class that could be filled by a man. Despite her outstanding academic record, law firms refused to hire her, and a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would not employ her as his clerk solely because of her sex.</p> <p class="inputText">Despite these obstacles, she became one of the nation's foremost legal scholars and a highly effective advocate for the equality of the sexes. She argued a series of historic cases before the Supreme Court, establishing the equal citizenship rights of men and women. Since 1993, she herself has sat on the nation's highest court, ruling on the issues of constitutional law that define the rights of all Americans.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GINSBURG-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/>  <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://s.w.org/"/> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20170606130136cs_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/dist/styles/main-2a51bc91cb.css"> </head> <body class="achiever-template-default single single-achiever postid-2397 ruth-bader-ginsburg sidebar-primary">  <header class="main-header bg-black"> <div class="search-container clearfix"> <div class="container"> <a class="brand" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/"> <img class="logo" 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</div> </div> </header> <div class="" role="document"> <div class="content"> <main class="main"> <div class="feature-area__container"> <header class="feature-area feature-area--has-image ratio-container ratio-container--feature"> <figure class="feature-box"> <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image feature-area__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GINSBURG-Feature-Image-2800x1120-380x152.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GINSBURG-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GINSBURG-Feature-Image-2800x1120-1400x560.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Justice, Supreme Court of the United States</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2397 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-attorney"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg_WhatItTakes_256x256-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">Even if you meet Prince Charming, be able to fend for yourself.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Pioneer of Gender Equality</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> March 15, 1933 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="inputtextfirst">Ruth Joan Bader was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother Celia was born in the United States to immigrant parents newly arrived from Austria; her father Nathan immigrated to the United States from Russia at age 13. The Baders’ first daughter died when Ruth was only two.</p> <figure id="attachment_21724" style="width: 797px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-21724 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-21724 size-full lazyload" alt="Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1933. She is two years old in this photograph. Her father was a furrier during the height of the Depression, when customers were scarce. Her mother was stricken with cancer when Ruth was a girl, and died the day before Ruth’s high-school graduation. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="797" height="1138" data-sizes="(max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838.jpg 797w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838-266x380.jpg 266w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838-532x760.jpg 532w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1933. She is two years old in this photograph. Her father was a furrier during the height of the Depression, when customers were scarce. Her mother was stricken with cancer when Ruth was a girl, and died the day before Ruth’s high school graduation. (United States Supreme Court)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtextfirst">Although Nathan Bader never attended high school, he achieved some success as a fur manufacturer, while Celia worked in the home and helped with the family business. While Mrs. Bader never pursued a career of her own, she encouraged Ruth’s scholarly and professional ambitions, taking her to the library every week to keep her supplied with books. Celia Bader suffered from poor health throughout Ruth’s teen years, dying of cancer the day before Ruth graduated from James Madison High School.</p> <figure id="attachment_21725" style="width: 770px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-21725 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-21725 size-full lazyload" alt="In 1948, at age fifteen, Ruth was the camp rabbi at Che-Na-Wah, in Minerva, New York. Here, she delivers a sermon. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="770" height="1154" data-sizes="(max-width: 770px) 100vw, 770px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811.jpg 770w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811-254x380.jpg 254w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">In 1948, at age fifteen, Ruth was the camp rabbi at Che-Na-Wah, in Minerva, New York. Here, she delivers a sermon.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">At Cornell University, Ruth Bader earned a bachelor’s degree with high honors in government and distinction in all subjects. It was also at Cornell that she met her future husband, Martin Ginsburg, on a blind date. They were married shortly after Ruth Bader’s graduation, and lived in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Ginsburg completed his military service. Following his discharge, he started legal studies at Harvard, and 14 months after the birth of their daughter, Jane, Ruth too entered Harvard Law School.</p> <figure id="attachment_21727" style="width: 831px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-21727 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-21727 lazyload" alt="The Ginsburgs had just wed when Marty was drafted into the Army. He served at Artillery Village in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where this photograph was taken. While stationed there, he worked his way through the Escoffier guide to French cooking. He would always be the chef in the family. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="831" height="1200" data-sizes="(max-width: 831px) 100vw, 831px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831.jpg 831w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831-263x380.jpg 263w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831-526x760.jpg 526w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The Ginsburgs had just wed when Marty was drafted into the Army. He served at Artillery Village in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where this photograph was taken. While stationed there, he worked his way through the Escoffier guide to French cooking. He would always be the chef in the family. (Supreme Court of the United States)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">One of only nine women in a class of more than 500, Ruth encountered resistance from some of the older faculty. The law dean asked all the women students to justify taking places at the school that could be occupied by men. While attending Harvard, Martin Ginsburg was diagnosed with testicular cancer. During his illness, Ruth attended his classes, as well as her own, and typed all his papers. Even with the added responsibility of caring for her ailing husband and their child, she won a coveted seat on the <i>Harvard Law Review</i>. Martin Ginsburg made a complete recovery, and after completing his studies at Harvard, joined a law firm in New York City. In the next few years, he became a highly regarded expert on tax law.</p> <p class="inputtext">To keep her young family together, Ruth Ginsburg transferred to Columbia University in Manhattan for her last year of law school. At Columbia too, she won a seat on the law review. Serving on both the Harvard and Columbia law reviews was an unprecedented achievement for any law student, male or female. Ginsburg graduated from Columbia tied for first place in her class.</p> <figure id="attachment_21728" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-21728 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-21728 size-full lazyload" alt="Ruth and Marty play with their three-year-old daughter, Jane, in 1958. Today, she is a professor at Columbia Law School. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="1200" height="915" data-sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200.jpg 1200w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200-380x290.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200-760x580.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1958: Ruth and Marty play with three-year-old daughter, Jane. Today, Jane is a Columbia Law School professor.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">Despite this stellar academic record, she found her sex a barrier to career advancement. A firm that had employed her between terms at Harvard failed to provide a permanent position. Of the 12 firms with which she interviewed, not one offered her a job. Although Professor Albert Sachs of Harvard personally recommended her to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, the Justice declined to offer her the post of law clerk, apparently too uncomfortable with the thought of a woman in his chambers.</p> <figure id="attachment_19474" style="width: 1012px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19474 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19474 size-full lazyload" alt="Future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her daughter, Jane, seen here in the 1960s. (Courtesy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg)" width="1012" height="1103" data-sizes="(max-width: 1012px) 100vw, 1012px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1.jpg 1012w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1-349x380.jpg 349w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1-697x760.jpg 697w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Future United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her daughter, Jane, seen here in the 1960s.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">Ginsburg was eventually offered a clerkship with Judge Edmund G. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where she served from 1959 to 1961. Following this experience, she finally received several offers from major law firms, but instead returned to Columbia, to work on the law school’s Project on International Procedure. She became associate director of the project, taught herself Swedish and traveled to the University of Lund to study the Swedish legal system. In 1963, she became a professor of law at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey. While there, she completed a textbook, <i>Civil Procedure in Sweden</i> (1965), published the same year her son, James, was born. In 1970, Ginsburg co-founded <i>The Women’s Rights Law Reporter</i>, the first law journal in the United States devoted to gender equality issues. Two years later, she moved from Rutgers to Columbia University Law School, and became the first woman to receive tenure there. In 1973, she argued her first case before the United States Supreme Court. After the American Civil Liberties Union referred a number of sex discrimination complaints to her, she founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. She became the project’s general counsel, as well as serving on the national board of the ACLU. At the time, she was writing the first textbook on sex discrimination law, <i>Text, Cases, and Materials on Sex-Based Discrimination</i>, published in 1974.</p> <p class="inputtext">In these years, she also began to speak as a visiting lecturer at law schools and other institutions in the United States and Europe, including the law schools of Harvard and New York University, the Universities of Amsterdam and Strasbourg, the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, and Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.</p> <figure id="attachment_21729" style="width: 966px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-21729 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-21729 size-full lazyload" alt="This portrait was taken in the fall of 1980, during Ginsburg’s first term as a D.C. Circuit judge. Appointed by Jimmy Carter, she was expected to be a liberal firebrand, but ultimately demonstrated the caution of a common-law constitutionalist. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="966" height="1200" data-sizes="(max-width: 966px) 100vw, 966px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966.jpg 966w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966-306x380.jpg 306w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966-612x760.jpg 612w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1980: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s first term as a D.C. Circuit judge. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter, Ginsburg was expected to be a liberal firebrand, but ultimately demonstrated the caution of a common-law constitutionalist.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">Ginsburg continued to appear frequently before the Supreme Court, arguing cases of sex discrimination. One of the most important of these was <i>Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld</i> (1975). Stephen Wiesenfeld was a widower who had been denied the Social Security child support benefits that a woman would have received in the same situation. Her victory in this case was followed three years later by another in <i>Duren v. Missouri</i>. State law in Missouri had made jury duty compulsory for men but optional for women. Ginsburg argued that this devalued women’s contribution as citizens, and once again Ginsburg’s position prevailed. By this time, she had earned a national reputation as a leading advocate for the equal citizenship status of men and women.</p> <p class="inputtext"> <figure id="attachment_19464" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19464 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19464 size-full lazyload" alt="President Bill Clinton looks on as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, August 10, 1993. Her husband Martin Ginsburg holds the Bible, while Chief Justice William Rehnquist administers the oath. (Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Corbis)" width="1536" height="982" data-sizes="(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001.jpg 1536w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001-380x243.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001-760x486.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">President Bill Clinton looks on as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, August 10, 1993. Her husband, Marty, holds the Bible, while Chief Justice William Rehnquist administers the oath.</figcaption></figure></p><p>In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Martin Ginsburg followed her to Washington, where he continued to practice tax law as well as becoming a Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Their daughter, Jane Ginsburg, followed her parents into the legal profession, and became a law professor at Columbia. Their son, James, shared his mother’s love of classical music. He became a record producer and owns his own label, Cedille Records, in Chicago.</p> <p class="inputtext"> <figure id="attachment_19479" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19479 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19479 lazyload" alt="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from Awards Council member Barbra Streisand at the Academy's 1995 Summit in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia." width="2280" height="1567" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand-380x261.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand-760x522.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from Awards Council member Barbra Streisand at the Academy’s 1995 Summit in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.</figcaption></figure></p><p>After Ruth Bader Ginsburg had served 13 years on the Court of Appeals, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court of the United States. She would fill the vacancy left by retiring Justice Byron White, who had served since the Kennedy administration. Ginsburg was only the second woman to be named to the Supreme Court, following Sandra Day O’Connor, and was the first Jewish woman to serve. In her Senate confirmation hearings, Ginsburg declined to answer questions concerning her personal views on a number of controversial issues, or to discuss how she might rule in hypothetical cases. She insisted this reticence was essential to maintaining her open-mindedness and integrity as a jurist. Subsequent nominees to the Court have, for the most part, followed her example. The Senate confirmed her appointment by a vote of 96 to three.</p> <p class="inputtext"> <figure id="attachment_19481" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19481 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19481 size-full lazyload" alt="Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor (retired), Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan in the Justices’ Conference Room prior to Justice Kagan’s Investiture, October 1, 2010. (Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)" width="2280" height="1514" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan-380x252.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan-760x505.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor (retired), Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan in the Justices’ Conference Room prior to Justice Kagan’s Investiture, October 1, 2010. (U.S. Supreme Court)</figcaption></figure></p><p>On the high court, Justice Ginsburg has often been called on to rule in cases regarding the rights of women and issues of gender equality. In 1996, she joined the majority in <i>United States v. Virginia</i>, ruling that the state could not continue to operate an all-male educational institution (the Virginia Military Institute) with taxpayer dollars. She also joined in the majority opinion in <i>Stenberg v. Carhart</i> (2000), striking down a Nebraska law banning so-called “partial birth” abortions. She dissented vehemently in <i>Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire</i> (2007), in which an Alabama woman sued unsuccessfully for back pay to compensate for the years in which she had been paid substantially less than junior male colleagues performing the same job. The U.S. Congress would later address the issue of pay equity through legislation known as the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.</p> <p class="inputtext"> <figure id="attachment_19465" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19465 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19465 size-full lazyload" alt="President Barack Obama hugs Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor look on, prior to his deliverance of the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., January 25, 2011. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais-Pool/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1518" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">President Barack Obama hugs Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor look on, prior to his deliverance of the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., January 25, 2011. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></p><p>Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. requested that his oath of office be administered to him by Justice Ginsburg when he was sworn in for his second term as Vice President. Ginsburg dissented in <i>Bush v. Gore</i> (2000), the case that ended the Florida recount and effectively decided the 2000 presidential election. Although she is usually identified as a member of the Court’s liberal wing, Ginsburg has enjoyed good relationships with more conservative members of the Court, including her only female predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor, and her longtime friend and fellow opera lover, the late Antonin Scalia.</p> <p class="inputtext"> <figure id="attachment_19472" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19472 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19472 lazyload" alt="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for a photo in her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. before an interview with the Associated Press. Ginsburg said during the interview that it was easy to foresee that Southern states would push ahead with tougher voter identification laws and other measures once the U.S. Supreme Court freed them from strict federal oversight of their elections. July 24, 2013. (AP)" width="2280" height="1710" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711-380x285.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711-760x570.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for a photo in her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. before an interview with the Associated Press. Ginsburg said during the interview that it was easy to foresee that Southern states would push ahead with tougher voter identification laws and other measures once the U.S. Supreme Court freed them from strict federal oversight of their elections. July 24, 2013. (AP)</figcaption></figure></p><p>During her years of service, Justice Ginsburg has been faced with daunting personal challenges. In 1999, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, all without missing a day of service on the bench. Ten years later, she was diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer, and was back in court within 12 days of her successful operation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg appears to have recovered completely from these episodes, but her husband Martin succumbed to cancer four days after their 56th wedding anniversary in 2010.</p> <figure id="attachment_38572" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-38572 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-38572 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">May 25, 2017: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg embraces mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves after a performance at an American Academy of Achievement dinner to honor the legacy of history-making Alabama federal judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. The dinner was held in the East Conference Room of the United States Supreme Court in Washington.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">Following Justice O’Connor’s retirement, and subsequent replacement by Samuel Alito, Justice Ginsburg became for a time the only female member of the Supreme Court. In recent years she has been pleased to welcome not one but two new female members of the Court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Despite frequent rumors of her retirement, she shows no signs of flagging in her commitment to her duties. Through all the challenges and losses she has overcome, Justice Ginsburg has remained steadfast, as an impassioned educator and advocate, and as a thorough and impartial jurist.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1995 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.attorney">Attorney</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> March 15, 1933 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">When Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her career as an attorney, America’s courtrooms and law firms were virtually all-male preserves. Female attorneys were a rarity, female judges were almost unheard of, and in many states women were routinely dismissed from jury duty.</p> <p class="inputText">As one of the few women studying at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked to justify taking a place in the class that could be filled by a man. Despite her outstanding academic record, law firms refused to hire her, and a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would not employ her as his clerk solely because of her sex.</p> <p class="inputText">Despite these obstacles, she became one of the nation’s foremost legal scholars and a highly effective advocate for the equality of the sexes. She argued a series of historic cases before the Supreme Court, establishing the equal citizenship rights of men and women. Since 1993, she herself has sat on the nation’s highest court, ruling on the issues of constitutional law that define the rights of all Americans.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/YCH32n7drMc?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=0&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_35_23_07.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_35_23_07.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Pioneer of Gender Equality</h2> <div class="sans-2">Washington, D.C.</div> <div class="sans-2">July 14, 2016</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>(Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was interviewed twice by the American Academy of Achievement at the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. — on August 17, 2010 and July 14, 2016. The following transcript draws on both video interviews.)</strong></p> <p><strong>Justice Ginsburg, when did you decide to become a lawyer?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Oh, it was sometime I guess around the end of my second year — maybe the beginning of my third year — at Cornell.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/iGowjxLJZxQ?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_04_43_03.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_04_43_03.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I had a great professor for constitutional law, Professor Robert E. Cushman. The ’50s were not a great time for the United States. There was an enormous Red Scare in the country stirred up by Senator Joe McCarthy, who saw a communist in every corner. Professor Cushman wanted me to understand that the United States was straying from its most basic values, that is the right to think, speak and write freely without big brother government telling you what’s the right way to think or the right way to speak or write. So I was working as Professor Cushman’s research assistant, and he had me follow the news to see who were the latest people in the entertainment industry who were blacklisted, and then to read transcripts of hearings before the House on American Activities Committee or the Senate Internal Security Committee. And from those transcripts I saw that there were lawyers standing up for these people, reminding our Congress that we have a First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech, and we have a Fifth Amendment guarantee against self-incrimination. So I thought that that was a pretty good thing to do, that a lawyer could have a professional career, could have a paid job, and volunteer services in bad times to help make things a little better. That’s when I had the idea that I would like to be a lawyer.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_21726" style="width: 960px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-21726 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-21726 lazyload" alt="Ruth as a senior at Cornell in December, 1953. There, she met Marty Ginsburg, and they married just after she graduated, in 1954. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="960" height="1200" data-sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960.jpg 960w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960-304x380.jpg 304w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960-608x760.jpg 608w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1953: Ruth as a senior at Cornell. There, she met Marty Ginsburg, and they married after she graduated in 1954.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>In the early ’70s, you and your husband, Martin Ginsburg, handled your first big sex discrimination case. And it was a case that he actually brought to you.</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/M-Lo0LxrHAA?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=0&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_05_24_05.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_05_24_05.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>It was a tax case. Marty came into the bedroom where I worked and said, “Ruth, I think you should read this decision.” And my response was, “Marty, you know that I don’t read tax cases.” He said, “Read this one.” I did. It was the story of a man who was never married. He took care of his then-93-year-old mother. And he took what the Internal Revenue Code allowed as a babysitter’s deduction, which you could take for the care of an elderly infirm relative of any age. So he took this $600 deduction, and he was audited by the IRS, and they said you can’t take that deduction. He said, “Oh, I’ve been told that there’s an elder care just like there’s a baby care.” The people who qualified for the deduction were any woman or a widowed or divorced man. Charles E. Moritz was a never-married man. He took his case to the tax court pro se. He represented himself and he filed a brief, which was a model. No lawyer would have done such a thing, but it was just right. He said, “If I had been a dutiful daughter, I would get this deduction. I’m a dutiful son. This makes no sense.” And the tax court judge in his opinion said, “I glean that the taxpayer is making a Constitutional argument,” but the next words were to the effect, “Everyone knows that the Internal Revenue Code is immune from Constitutional attack.” So as soon as I read that decision, I said, “Marty, let’s take it.” And that’s how Charles E. Moritz became our client.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19470" style="width: 1973px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19470 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19470 size-full lazyload" alt="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives in the East Room of the White House in Washington, 2010. (AP Images/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)" width="1973" height="2545" data-sizes="(max-width: 1973px) 100vw, 1973px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502.jpg 1973w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502-295x380.jpg 295w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502-589x760.jpg 589w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives in the East Room of the White House in Washington, 2010.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Your husband once said that this case became the mother brief for you. There were thousands of laws then — in state and federal law — that had preferences for men or women. The government said it would ruin every kind of law imaginable if you won. What were you thinking?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/jEQ0UAfTKsE?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=0&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_12_23_19.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_12_23_19.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I call the Moritz brief the grandparent brief. First, I understood the likely reception to my argument that it’s gender-based discrimination, what was then called sex-based discrimination: “What are you talking about? Women have the best of all possible worlds. Think of jury duty. Yes, we don’t put them on the jury rolls, but if they want to serve, they can go to the clerk’s office and sign up and we will add them. So they don’t have to serve. Women are on a pedestal. They are sheltered. They are protected. And men have to go out into the large cold world and earn a living.” The laws, the statutes, both state and federal, reflected that difference. A good name for it is the separate spheres mentality.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/P7ihREBHE5E?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_29_27_28.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_29_27_28.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>This sphere of earning bread, supporting the family, that was the man’s world. And the women’s world, women were to take care of the house and raise the children, that dichotomy. And the laws were shaped to fit that. That’s why any woman could get the deduction in Charles E. Moritz’s case, because women, it was well known, could take care of incapacitated relatives no matter what the age. But men — in fact that was one of the arguments the government made in Moritz, that he hadn’t proved that he was capable of taking care of his mother so that the babysitter was a substitute for himself. Women would not have to prove that because everybody knows that women could take care of elderly parents. So, what we needed to show was that the image of women being on a pedestal, there was something wrong with that picture and that in fact, as Justice Brennan put it years later, the pedestal all too often turned out to be a cage. The woman couldn’t get out. She was locked in. So it was to try to promote the understanding that these so-called protective laws more often than not ended up restricting what women could do, sparing men’s jobs from women’s competition. So, how to say that in a polite way to get across the picture, that was a challenge.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19480" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19480 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19480 size-full lazyload" alt="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, January 2005. (UPI Photo/Shawn Thew/File)" width="2280" height="2993" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg-289x380.jpg 289w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg-579x760.jpg 579w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, January 2005. (UPI Photo/Shawn Thew/File)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>After a long struggle you became a distinguished attorney and legal scholar. When did you decide you wanted to be a judge?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Po_cjEXaxwM?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_46_00_03.Still013-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_46_00_03.Still013-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The question is often asked to me by the school groups that visit the Court, “Did you always want to be a Supreme Court Justice?” Or more modestly, “Did you always want to be a judge?” And I laugh because in the days that I went to law school, only one woman in the history of the United States had ever been a federal appeals court judge. She was Florence Allen, Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She stepped down in 1959, the year I graduated from law school, and then there were none again. So if you were a realist as a woman, you knew that chances for a federal judgeship were slim to none. I never thought about becoming a judge until Jimmy Carter became president. And Jimmy Carter did something wonderful. He looked around at the federal judiciary and he observed, “They all look like me.” They were all white men of a certain age. But he added, “That’s not the way the great United States looks. I want my judges to reflect the greatness of the people of the United States in all their diversity. So I will appoint members of minority groups and women — not as one-at-a-time curiosities like Florence Allen — but in numbers. So then for the first time I thought, “Yes, I would like to be a judge.” Now, I had spent ten years litigating gender discrimination cases. I had been a teacher, law teacher, for 17 years. I thought it might be kind of nice to be part of the decision-making process. Before 1977 no woman who was a realist ever aspired to a federal judgeship. And then what Carter did, he appointed I think over 25 women to federal trial courts, to the federal district court bench, and then 11 of us to the courts of appeals, and I was one of the lucky 11.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p><strong>Do you remember getting the call telling you that President Clinton wanted to interview you for a Supreme Court vacancy? There was a fashion issue..</strong>.</p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Oh, because I had just come in from — I was in Vermont for a wedding. And the White House Counsel, Bernie Nussbaum, said, “Come meet the President. Don’t worry if you’re in your travel clothes. He will be coming in off the golf course.” So when I came to the White House, and the president walked in, he was not in his golf clothes, he was in his Sunday best. He had just come back from church. So I was kind of embarrassed by the way I looked.</p> <p><strong>It didn’t seem to harm anything.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: But it worked out just fine. Yes.</p> <figure id="attachment_19471" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19471 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19471 lazyload" alt="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks to the American Bar Association House of Delegates after receiving the ABA Medal in San Francisco, August 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)" width="2280" height="3460" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385-250x380.jpg 250w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385-501x760.jpg 501w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2010: Justice Ginsburg speaks to the American Bar Association House of Delegates after receiving the ABA Medal.</figcaption></figure></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>After Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Court, you were the only woman for several years. You dissented more frequently. Finally there was the day that the Court heard the case of Savanna Redding. In your very understated way, you blew a gasket. What was it about that case that made you so mad?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/kGjhiKlCNqo?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_06_42_09.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_06_42_09.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Savanna Redding was a 13-year-old girl. She was in the eighth grade, and she was suspected of having given pills to a classmate. The pills turned out to be Advil, but Savanna was taken to the girl’s bathroom and strip-searched. And then when the strip search was over and they found no pills, she was made to sit in a chair outside the principal’s office for two hours until they called her mother and said, “Pick her up.” Her mother was infuriated. And she sued the school district for humiliating her daughter that way. And the question was, “Had the school district violated her civil rights?” The Court answered yes to that question. But the next question is, “Should there be damages, because the principal should have known that this behavior was unlawful?” and the Court said no damages. The principal is cloaked with immunity because we have never had a case like this before so he didn’t know. He didn’t know that what was done was unlawful. And that’s when I said, “Anyone who reads the Fourth Amendment protecting us against unreasonable searches and seizures, humiliating that 13-year-old girl in that way was the most unreasonable search.” There were jokes about the boys in the locker room, and the boys unclothed in front of each other, and nobody thought anything of it. And I think I said from the bench that 13 is a vulnerable age for a girl, and a 13-year-old girl is not like a 13-year-old boy. This is overwhelming humiliation for her. And I think when I said something to that effect, then the jokes stopped. There were no more jokes about the boys in the locker room. I suppose my colleagues thought of their daughters, thought of their wives, and realized then that the point I was making was well-taken.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19469" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19469 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19469 size-full lazyload" alt="Justice Ginsburg, photographed in her Supreme Court chambers, 2010. (AP Images/Alex Brandon)" width="2280" height="1570" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995-380x262.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995-760x523.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, photographed in her U.S. Supreme Court chambers, 2010. (AP Images/Alex Brandon)</figcaption></figure></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p><strong>I want to talk to you for a moment about your husband, Marty. How long were you married?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: We were married for 56 years when he died. Yes.</p> <p><strong>He was a master chef, a master tax lawyer and law professor, and your biggest booster. You’ve said that, from the very beginning, he was not just in your corner — it was something more than that.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Marty was always my biggest booster. He was a remarkable man. He was so sure of his own ability that he never regarded me as any kind of threat. On the contrary, I suppose he thought, “Well, if I decided I want to spend my life with her, she must be pretty good!” So he was at every stage of my life my strongest supporter.</p> <figure id="attachment_19478" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19478 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19478 size-full lazyload" alt="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows the many different collars (jabots) she wears with her robes, in her chambers at the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., June 17, 2016. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace.jpg 2280w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows the many different collars (jabots) she wears with her robes, in her chambers at the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., June 17, 2016. (Reuters)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>The day after he died in 2010, you were on the bench. It was close to the end of the term and you were announcing an important decision that you’d written. You didn’t have to be there. Somebody could have announced the decision for you.</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/LDIKXSMgAUg?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_08_15_00.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_08_15_00.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Chief Justice could have announced the decision. But I remembered — my pancreatic cancer surgery — I was home and recuperating for about two weeks while the Court was not sitting, and then the Court went back to sit. I told Marty, “I can’t do this. I won’t be able to sit still for two hours listening to arguments.” And he said, “Yes, you will.” And it was because of the strength that he gave me that I showed up in court that morning, and I think miraculously I was able to sit still. So I thought, “What would Marty want me to do?” and that’s why I came to the Court and read the summary of my decision from the bench.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_21730" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-21730 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-21730 size-full lazyload" alt="The Ginsburgs on vacation with their children, James and Jane, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in December, 1980. Marty had become a law professor at Georgetown. “I didn’t know that it was unusual for both parents to have careers,” James recalled. (Supreme Court of the United States)" width="1200" height="801" data-sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" data-srcset="/web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200.jpg 1200w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200-380x254.jpg 380w, /web/20170606130136im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Marty and Ruth Ginsburg on vacation with their children, James and Jane, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in December 1980. Marty had become a law professor at Georgetown. “I didn’t know that it was unusual for both parents to have careers,” James recalled. Marty died from cancer on June 27, 2010. (Supreme Court of the United States)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Marty wrote you a note a few days — maybe a week — before he died. He was terribly ill. It’s a wonderful letter from a husband. We thought you might read it for us.</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20170606130136if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/66l1IrcNmhY?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_08_14_09.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Ruth-Bader-2010-HD-Sound-Corrected.00_08_14_09.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I found this letter in the drawer of the stand next to Marty’s bed in the hospital, when we knew it was the end, and I was taking him home so that he could die at home rather than in the hospital. I was just checking to see that we had everything he brought with him. And on a yellow pad there was a letter to me. And it reads: “My dearest Ruth, you are the only person I have loved in my life — setting aside a bit, parents and kids and their kids — and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago.” He was wrong about 56. It was nearly 60 years. We were married for 56 years. “What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world. I will be in Johns Hopkins Medical Center until Friday, June 25, I believe, and between then and now, I shall think hard on my remaining health and life and consider, on balance, the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life, because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms. I hope you will support where I come out, but I understand you may not. I will not love you any less.” And just signed “Marty.”</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You’ve spent your life in the law. Were there lawyers in your family?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: There were no lawyers in my family. My father came to the United States from Russia when he was 13, and apart from night school to learn English, he had no formal schooling. My mother was the sixth child to be born in her large family, and the first one born in the U.S.A. She was born four months after her parents arrived.</p> <p><strong>From where?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: From Austria. And she was a very good student; she graduated high school at age 15 and then went immediately to work so that she could help support the eldest son, who was going to Cornell University. In those families, the eldest son was the one on whom the most attention was lavished, and no one thought about sending girls to higher education.</p> <p><strong>Did she work while you were growing up?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: No, because, I think my mother would have thrived had she worked. But when she was married, it was considered a disgrace to a man that his wife worked. It would mean that he was unable to support her. So she stopped working when she married, but she was always helpful to my father in his work. In fact, when she died — she died when I was 17, just before I was to graduate from high school — when she died his business went downhill, because she was a very important part of keeping it afloat.</p> <p><strong>What was his business?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: He was a manufacturer of furs.</p> <p><strong>What kind of student were you? You went to public schools, we understand.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I went to P.S. 238 in Brooklyn and to James Madison High School in Brooklyn. I was a good student, in some part to please my mother. I wanted to bring home a report card that she would find satisfactory.</p> <p><strong>What was your mother like?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: My mother was a voracious reader. And one gift that she gave me was loving to read. My favorite memory was sitting on her lap, she would read books to me. We had a daily — a weekly excursion to the public library. And she would leave me in the library in the children’s section, have her hair done, and then pick me up when I had my three or four books for the week.</p> <p><strong>You spoke about her on the day you were nominated to the Court in the Rose Garden. What do you think she would make of you?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I think she would be surprised — and no end pleased. My mother was born in an era when it was a disgrace for a married woman to work, if her husband could support her. And so my mother ,who started working when she was 15 — she graduated high school at 15 — went immediately to work, so she could help the family while the eldest son went off to Cornell. He was the only one in the family that had a college education. So then she did not work once she married. I think she wished that she had been able to continue.</p> <p><strong>Do you remember enjoying particular books when you were growing up?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I think that most girls who grew up when I did were very fond of the Nancy Drew series. Not because they were well written, they weren’t, but because this was a girl who was an adventurer, who could think for herself, who was the dominant person in her relationship with her young boyfriend. So the Nancy Drew series made girls feel good, that they could be achievers and they didn’t have to take a back seat or be wallflowers. So the Nancy Drew series was important to me. When I was even younger, I loved mythology. I loved Greek mythology and Norse mythology.</p> <p><strong>So then you go off to Cornell. What was that like?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Cornell in the early ’50s was considered a great school for girls because there were four men to every woman. It was a strict quota system. That meant the women were ever so much smarter than the boys. But it wasn’t the thing to do to show how smart you were. It was much better that you gave the impression that you weren’t working at all, that you were a party girl. So I did my studying in various bathrooms on the campus. Then when I went back to the dormitory, I didn’t have homework to do.</p> <p><strong>You had some wonderful professors, and you’ve talked about your literature professor in particular, who is a pretty famous guy.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Nabokov. Yes.</p> <p><strong>Vladimir Nabokov?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes. Vladimir, the author of <em>Lolita</em> and many other things. He was a man who was in love with the sound of words, and he would read aloud from the books that were assigned, and showed us how a writer could paint pictures with words and how important having the right word in the right place would be. He gave an example of why he liked writing in the English language. I’m not sure that his first language was Russian. It may have been French. But the example that he gave was if you’re speaking French and you want to refer to a white horse so you say <em>cheval blanc</em>, first you see the horse and “horse” stimulates “brown” in your mind. Then you have to readjust it with “white.” But in English, “white” comes before “horse,” so you see the white horse immediately. That was the kind of thing that was important to Nabokov. He was a marvelous teacher, wonderfully amusing.</p> <p><strong>At Cornell, you met Marty Ginsburg. At first you were just friends, but you realized pretty soon that he was different than the other boys.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes. I many times said that Marty Ginsburg was the first boy I met who cared that I had a brain.</p> <p><strong>And he liked that you had a brain. </strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: He was extraordinary in that respect. Yes.</p> <p><strong>When you married Marty, you got a second mother, his mother. She gave you some important advice that you say has served you well through life.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg:: My mother-in-law’s advice, which she gave me on the day of our wedding — we were married in Marty’s home, and his mother took me into the bedroom, her bedroom and said, “Dear, I’d like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage.” “Yes. What is the secret?” “It helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” And I found that advice — it stood me in very good stead not only in a wonderful marriage that lasted well over half a century, but in every workplace I’ve served, dealing with my faculty colleagues when I was a law teacher, and even now with my colleagues on the Supreme Court. When an unkind word is said, a thoughtless word, best to tune out.</p> <p><strong>The two of you ended up at Harvard Law School. You were one of nine women in your first year at Harvard. And you weren’t exactly greeted with open arms, were you?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg:: The nine of us were greeted by the dean, Dean Erwin, at a dinner he held in his home. He invited the nine women, and each of us had a faculty escort. My escort was Herbert Wexler, later my colleague at Columbia. He was a man who looked more like God than anyone I’d ever seen. I was totally taken with him but intimidated because he was so brilliant. Anyway, we had a meal. It was not a memorable meal. And there was no wine because the dean was a teetotaler. And then he had the chairs in his living room arranged in a semicircle and asked each of us in turn to say what we were doing at the Harvard Law School occupying a seat that could be held by a man. And most of us were embarrassed by the question, but years later when the dean became a friend, I realized what he was trying to do. The dean was not known for his sense of humor. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1950-’51, was the first year the law school admitted women. There were still doubting Thomases on the faculty. And the dean wanted to be armed with stories from the women themselves about what they would do with a law degree. So that’s why he asked the question. Of course, the women in my class didn’t exactly comprehend that at the time, but one of them gave him a perfect answer. Mine was far from perfect. But this was Flora Schnall. She had a distinguished career as a lawyer. She said, “Dean Griswold, there are nine of us. Well, really Ruth Ginsburg doesn’t count for this purpose. So there are eight, and there are over 500 of them. What better place to find a man?” And the dean, I think, was horrified by that answer, but she was the only one who treated it in the way it should have been treated.</p> <p>For the most part, my professors treated the women in the class fairly. There was no such thing as “Ladies’ Day” in any of my classes. “Ladies’ Day” was notorious in law schools. It was the day when only women were called on and the rest of the year they were ignored. I did not have that experience, but I did have this experience: The nine of us were divided into four sections, so that meant most of us were in a room with just one other woman. If we were called on, we worried that if we failed, if we didn’t give the right answer, we would be failing not just for ourselves, but for all women. It is somewhat similar to people saying, when a car takes a wrong turn, “What would you expect? It’s a woman driver.” So we were on our toes. We were always well prepared. Years later, when women were beginning to come to law school in numbers in the 1970s, I was then teaching at Columbia, and one of my colleagues said that he really longed for the good old days when there were few women in the class, because he said if things were going slowly and you needed a crisp right answer, you called on the woman. She was always prepared. She would give you the right answer and then the class could move along. “But nowadays,” he said, “there’s no difference. The women are as unprepared as the men.”</p> <p><strong>At Harvard you and Marty had a three-year-old daughter.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Jane was 14 months when I started.</p> <p><strong>So you have a daughter. You were eventually on law review. You’re juggling schedules, and he’s diagnosed with testicular cancer, which at the time was a very serious thing. We have much better ways of treating that now. </strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Daily radiation that seemed to go on forever. The doctor said four weeks, and then four weeks were over, and there was a fifth week and a sixth week. It was the only thing they had. It was massive radiation. It wasn’t pinpointed the way it is today.</p> <p><strong>How did you get through this time? He was very sick. You were taking care of him. You were typing his papers. You were getting notes from his classes. You were taking care of Jane. How did the two of you get through this period?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: We never thought about the possibility or never talked about the possibility that he might not survive. We were concentrating on getting him through the third year. And by the way, Marty went to classes for only two weeks, the last two weeks of the semester. In that semester he got the highest grades that he ever got in law school because he had the best tutors. And Harvard was known as a competitive place. My experience was the opposite. His classmates, my classmates rallied around the two of us and prepared individual tutorials to help prepare him for the exams. How did I get through it? Well, I was able to get by with very little sleep. Because of the radiation, Marty couldn’t ingest anything until midnight. And so between midnight and two he had dinner, my bad hamburger usually. And then he would dictate to me his senior paper, and then he’d go back to sleep. And it was about 2:00 when I’d take out the books and start reading what I needed to read to be prepared for classes the next day.</p> <p><strong>Was this the beginning of the schedule you keep now, when you work all night and don’t get up until noon unless you’re on the bench?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes, except in those days I was much younger so I could get up early in the morning in time to make my first class, which sometimes was 8:00.</p> <p><strong>A famous Justice of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter, was asked to consider hiring you as one of his law clerks. You had amazing qualifications, having been on the law reviews of both Columbia and Harvard. You were recommended by a Harvard professor. And you tied for first place in your graduating class at Columbia. What was Justice Frankfurter’s reaction?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Justice Frankfurter, like his colleagues, was just not prepared to hire a woman. Now these were pre-Title VII days, so there was nothing unlawful about discriminating against women. And gentlemen of a certain age at that time felt that they would be discomfited by a woman in chambers, that they might have to watch what they say, they might have to censor their speech. It was surprising that Frankfurter had that typical, in those days, reaction, because he was the first justice to hire an African American as a law clerk some years before. But as I said, like many other federal judges of the time, he just wasn’t prepared to hire a woman.</p> <p><strong>The famous Judge Learned Hand told you why he wouldn’t hire you.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Judge Learned Hand was a brilliant jurist, and I wanted to clerk for him more than anything, even more than for a Supreme Court Justice. And my judge, Judge Palmieri, he lived around the corner from Judge Hand and would drive Judge Hand into work and back. And whenever I was finished early enough, I would join them on that ride. I’d sit in the back of the car. And this great man would say anything that came into his head. He sang songs at the top of his lungs. He used words that I never heard. And I asked him, “Judge Hand, I don’t seem to inhibit your speech when you’re in the car. Why won’t you consider me as a law clerk?” And he said, “Young lady, I am not looking at you.” For a man of that time, of that age, you didn’t use bad language in front of a lady.</p> <p>When I applied for law firm jobs, Columbia had an excellent placement office, but sign-up sheets would go up and many would say “men only.” I had, as I have sometimes explained, three strikes that put me out when it came to employment as a lawyer. One is I am Jewish and the law firms were just beginning to stop discriminating on the basis of religion. That affected Catholics as well as Jews. They were opening up to all people without regard to religion. And some, a precious few, were ready to try a woman, but none were willing to take a chance on a mother, and my daughter was four years old when I graduated from law school. So of course I was disappointed, but it wasn’t unexpected.</p> <p><strong>You’ve said that Simone de Beauvoir’s book <em>The Second Sex</em> made a great impression on you.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I read Simone de Beauvoir’s <em>The Second Sex</em> the first time I was in Sweden. And I was observing a society that was more advanced than we were in recognizing women’s talent and capacities. At that time, 1962, women were less than three percent of the law students in the United States. They were already 20 percent in Sweden. There was a woman writing a column in the Stockholm daily paper to this effect: why should the woman have two jobs and the man only one? In Sweden it was already not only accepted but expected that there would be two-earner families. Inflation was high, and if you wanted to do well by your children, you needed two incomes. But she was expected to have dinner on the table at seven, buy the children’s new shoes, take them for the medical checkups and the rest. And this columnist, whose name was Eva Moberg, her question was, “Shouldn’t he do more than take out the garbage?” And there were many, many people talking about that. So I was listening to these conversations at the same time as I was reading <em>The Second Sex</em>, which is an eye opener.</p> <p><strong>Why is it an eye opener?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Because of the irrational differences. She shows the differences between the way women are treated, the way men are treated, and it doesn’t inevitably have to be that way. There were some societies that she commented on where the woman is the queen bee.</p> <p><strong>So you ended up eventually as a professor at Rutgers Law School, where you actually hid your own pregnancy.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: That was a wonderful thing that happened because Marty was told after all that radiation that it would be impossible for us to have a second child. So that was very good news. But there was no amniocentesis at the time, and we didn’t know what James would turn out to be. But in any event, at that time it was my second year at Rutgers. I had a year-to-year contract. And I was pretty sure that if I told them I was pregnant, I wouldn’t get a contract for the next year. So I wore my mother-in-law’s clothes. It was just right. She was one size larger. And I got through the spring semester. When I had the new contract in hand, I told my colleagues when I came back in the fall, there would be one more in our family. So they stopped thinking that I was gaining a lot of weight.</p> <p><strong>You have said that, in a sense, you yourself were a product of affirmative action in being hired by Columbia in the early 1960s. Were they looking to diversify their faculty?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes. The Women’s Movement came alive in the United States in the late ‘60s, and the government in those days was heavily into affirmative action. People don’t remember that affirmative action became a major item during Nixon’s administration, and it started in the construction trades, which were highly exclusionary. There was a good deal of nepotism, so you got a starting job as an apprentice if your father or your uncle was a member of the union.</p> <p>And it was Nixon’s Secretary of Labor who thought that the best way to break that exclusion was to have people who have contracts with government — and many people do — pledge to do two things. One was to set goals and timetables, the assumption was, now let’s assume there would be no discrimination, about how many members of a minority group might be expected. So you set that number as the goal and a timetable for when you would achieve it. And this was not something that was absolute. If there was a good reason why you couldn’t comply, so be it.</p> <p>But it was necessary for people who held government contracts at least to make an effort. And most colleges and universities had government money of some sort. There was a very active office for civil rights in the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare. And the head of that office was a man named Stan Pottinger. He was visiting colleges and universities all over America to encourage them to fulfill their affirmative action obligations, and also to remind them that if they didn’t, there was a possibility that their contracts might be suspended or even terminated. So in the year 1972 Columbia named two people to the faculty. One was an African American man and one was a woman, the first ever hired in a tenured post.</p> <p><strong>And that was you?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes.</p> <p><strong>How is it, going back to your alma mater, going back to Columbia?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I go to Columbia regularly. I have a very close tie to Columbia because my daughter is on the Columbia Law School faculty, and a former law clerk is the dean. David Schizer is the Dean of the Columbia Law School. His mother was a classmate of mine at Columbia. So I have strong connections to the Columbia Law School.</p> <p><strong>And he was a law clerk of yours?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes. David Schizer, who is now the Dean of Columbia Law School. My second year on the Supreme Court — so it would have been 1994 to ’95 — he was my very excellent law clerk.</p> <p><strong>When you became the first tenured woman on the faculty of Columbia Law School, did you feel some resentment from fellow faculty members, or by then was it more accepted?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I had a great deal of support from my faculty colleagues. None of them were resentful. Most of them were so secure about themselves and the excellence of the Columbia faculty, their idea was that if Columbia decided to engage me to be a tenured professor, then I must be really good. And even if I were doing things that they didn’t, that they would disagree with, they were backing me up. One example: I was named the law school’s representative on the university senate. Women who were teaching in the university had a suspicion that they were not getting equal pay, so the start to finding out if that suspicion was right was finding out just what salaries the university was paying. And the administration’s answer was that’s secret information, all kinds of jealousies would result if we published them. And of course, you couldn’t find out if Columbia was meeting its equal pay obligations without that information, which we eventually got, and the suspicions proved right.</p> <p><strong>That you were paid less than your male colleagues.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I wasn’t, because coming on in 1972 they made certain that I would be treated as well as my male peers. But women who had worked at the university for years, who came on in the days when it was accepted to pay women less.</p> <p><strong>And these were faculty members?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Faculty or top administrators. The hardest thing for my colleagues to accept was when we — and by we, I mean the ACLU women’s rights project, which I helped to found — challenged the TIAA CREF program, and the retirement program used by most colleges and universities, because they rigidly separated the policy beneficiaries by sex. So they used mortality tables for men, for women. And the women would get less when they retired than a man with equivalent salary and time in service. The reason was that on average it’s fair, because women on average live longer than men. And my view was, “Yes, that’s certainly true on average, but there are some men who live long and some women who die early.” And the whole notion is that you don’t lump together women simply because they are women, and that TIAA CREF should merge their mortality tables. Well, the immediate response was, “Horrors! We just couldn’t do that! Then all the men would desert the plan and get private insurance.” Well, TIAA CREF was such a good deal that when they did finally merge the tables, nobody left. But that was the most worrisome thing to my faculty colleagues. Even so, they supported a class action that was brought with 100 named plaintiffs on behalf of women teachers and administrators at Columbia, charging that maintaining separate mortality tables essentially denied women equal pay, and was in violation of our foremost anti-discrimination law: Title VII.</p> <p><strong>Justice Ginsburg, may we ask what you are most proud of having accomplished so far in your career?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I was fortunate to be born at the right time and to be in the right place when the Women’s Movement came alive. So many things were wrong with the way life was ordered in the ’70s. In many states, women didn’t serve on juries, to take just one example, and there were so many jobs that were off limits to women. People began to realize there was something wrong about that, and women should be free to aspire and achieve just as men are. So I had legal education, and I could use that education to help move this movement for change, for allowing women to realize their full potential, help move that along. So it was that ten years of my life that I devoted to litigating cases about — I don’t say women’s rights — I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women. I was tremendously fortunate to be able to participate in that movement for change.</p> <p><strong>You eventually went to Columbia, where you formed the ACLU Women’s Project, and you brought a whole series of cases. You often liked to have male clients. Why was that?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsberg: Like Charles E. Moritz, like Stephen Wiesenfeld. Stephen Wiesenfeld’s case was even more compelling than Charles E. Moritz. Stephen Wiesenfeld’s wife died in childbirth. She had been a school teacher. She earned slightly more than he did. When she died, Stephen went to the Social Security office. He thought that if he worked part-time up to the ceiling that Social Security allowed you to earn, the Social Security benefits plus what he could earn on top of that, he could just about make it and take care of his child and not go to work full-time until the child was in school a full day. So he went to the Social Security office and asked for what he was told were child-in-care benefits. And he was told, “We’re very sorry, Mr. Wiesenfeld. Those are mother’s benefits. They’re not available to fathers.” So he was the person who immediately felt the effect of the law. But where did that discrimination begin? It began with the woman as wage earner. Women paid the same Social Security tax that men paid, but it didn’t net for their family the same protection. Same tax but unequal protection. So we could say Stephen Wiesenfeld is feeling the effect of this discrimination, but it began with his wife, the wage earner, who was not treated as a full wage earner. She was a woman wage earner, and that meant she was secondary, she was earning pin money, no Social Security benefits for her family when she dies.</p> <p>So the woman was discriminated against as wage earner, the male as parent, and that conformed to what was the basic separation that the man was the breadwinner, the woman was responsible for care of the home and children. So again, we never challenged how life was for most people. We said stereotypes, while there are stereotypes that are true in general, but there were many people who don’t fit the mold. And the whole object in the 1970s — through first public education — then attempt to change the laws by going to the state legislatures and Congress, and finally the courts were there as a last resort.</p> <p>The idea I think was best expressed in a song that <em>Ms.</em> magazine published, and I think it was Marlo Thomas who was involved. The song is <em>Free to be You and Me</em>, and that was the idea. That male or female, you should be free to follow your star, to develop your talent, and you shouldn’t be held back by artificial barriers.</p> <p><strong>You said that some laws that would seem, on the surface, to help women, in a way discriminate, because it implies that women need more help than men.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: That women need to be protected. That was true. Our legislation said women couldn’t work more than eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. And that might have been fine in the days of sweatshops when some employers required women to work six days a week, 12 hours a day. But over the years, especially with unions protecting workers, the workday shrunk from 12 hours to ten hours to eight. And then if an employer wanted more hours, the employer would have to pay time-and-a-half or double time for those additional hours. So the hours laws that started out to protect women from sweatshop conditions ended up protecting men’s jobs from women’s competition. If an employer has two choices, a woman who cannot be engaged to work overtime and a man who is willing to do that, he would pick the man. So the protections over time came to be not protections, but barriers for women.</p> <p>To take another simple example, women couldn’t be engaged to work at night. No night work. Well, if a woman is a waitress, the most lucrative tips — at banquets and such — come in the evening, not at lunchtime. So women came to realize that these old-style protections were not genuine protections for women, but they helped to keep things the way they were where there was this sharp divide between what women do and what men do, and the notion was to break down those stereotypes. So if a man wants to go to a nursing school, then that’s okay, that’s fine. And if a woman wants to be an engineer, a doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, that’s fine too. And now it’s not at all extraordinary for a woman to be any of those things.</p> <p><strong>You argued six cases before the Supreme Court and you won five of them. You wrote briefs in dozens more. What were you trying to achieve in the Oklahoma case <em>Craig v. Boren</em>?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The “near-beer” case, Craig against Boren. Well, when we started out, there were two levels of review of cases that relied on the equal protection principle. One level was the highest. It was labeled strict scrutiny. It was reserved for discrimination on the basis of race. Everyone knew that racial discrimination was odious, should not be permitted. So a racial classification that adversely affected the minority race got this high level of review, was looked at very suspiciously. Everything else, the test was “rational basis,” which some people say, “Rational basis, all you have to do to get a law accepted by the Supreme Court is pass the lunatic test. If it isn’t lunatic, then it’s okay. Then Congress has the authority to do that.”</p> <p>We needed to ratchet up that level. And incidentally, I looked at all of the Supreme Court cases involving equal protection and was able to get out some phrases here and there that suggested a higher level of review, something more than the lunatic test. So our object was to ratchet up the review standard for gender-based discrimination. It was interesting that in the turning point case, <em>Reed v. Reed</em>, the Court didn’t even mention that it was doing something new, that the law in question, yes, it would have passed the rational basis test, but they held it was no good. This was a law of the State of Idaho that said as between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent’s estate, males must be preferred to females. Simple as that. And the rival contenders in that case were Sally Reed and Cecil Reed. They had a teenage son. They were divorced. When the boy was what the law calls “of tender years,” when he was young, the mother had custody. When the boy reached his teens, the father said, “Now he needs to be prepared for a man’s world so I should be the custodian.” Sally didn’t like that idea at all, but she objected in vain. Sadly she turned out to be right. The boy, living with his father, became terribly depressed and one day took out one of his father’s many guns and committed suicide. So Sally wanted to be appointed administrator to his estate. She couldn’t. Why? Males must be preferred to females. Why would we have such a law? Because in the ancient days in the 19<sup>th </sup>century, before the Married Women’s Property Acts were passed, women — if they married — couldn’t sue and be sued, they couldn’t make contracts in their own name, they couldn’t hold property in their own name. So if you had a choice between two people to be the administrator of the decedent’s estate, of course you’d pick the competent person, one who can make contracts, the one who can hold property, the one who can sue and be sued. That’s why there were such laws on the books.</p> <p><strong>When you were litigating all these cases, running the ACLU project, arguing cases in the Supreme Court, your son was getting in trouble all the time at school.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: My son was a lively child. I called him lively. His teachers called him hyperactive. And I would get calls at least once a month to please come down to the school to meet with the room teacher or the school psychologist or the principal to hear about my son’s latest escapade. And one day I was at my office in Columbia, very tired because I had stayed up all night writing a brief. And I got the call. This time I said, “This child has two parents. Please alternate calls. And this time it’s his father’s turn.” So Marty went down to the school. He left his law office, met with three stone faces who disclosed my son’s latest offense. What did he do? He stole the elevator. It was a hand-held elevator that the elevator operator — in those days people were still smoking — the operator went out to have a cigarette, and one of my son’s classmates dared him to take a group of kindergarteners up to the top floor in the elevator, which he did. So Marty’s response on being told that your son stole the elevator was, “How far could he take it?” So I don’t know whether it was Marty’s wonderful sense of humor or the reluctance of the school to call a father away from his work, but then we got the calls barely once a semester, although there was no quick change in James’s behavior. People were much more reluctant to take a man away from his work than a woman.</p> <p><strong>You give a great deal of credit for the abortion decision and the affirmative action decision this term, and a couple of decisions last term, to one of the more conservative members of the court, Justice Kennedy. The abortion decision you said was particularly difficult for him.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: It was very difficult for him, but I think he sensed that what was going on with those restrictions, they were severe restrictions that it was a sham to say they protected women’s health. What they did was make access to abortion almost impossible for many poor women — or access to a safe abortion — thus driving them to back-alley abortionists the way it was in the not-so-good old days. So I thought that the Court recognizing that that kind of legislation simply would not pass constitutional review was very important. I think both the affirmative action decision and the whole women’s health case, the access to abortion, they kind of quieted the turmoil that was going on. How was the Court going to rule? This way or that way? I think, for the nonce, we will not have any major cases in either field because the Court spoke. I think both decisions were excellent, very well-reasoned, and will be accepted.</p> <p><strong><span style="font-size: 1rem;">When you joined Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, you were the second woman. She was the first. And even though she was a Reagan appointee and you were a Clinton appointee, you had a bond right away.</span></strong></p> <p><span style="font-size: 1rem;">Ruth Bader Ginsburg: She was almost like a big sister to me. Sandra Day O’Connor is a truly great woman. When I came onboard she told me just what I needed to know to be able to manage those first weeks. She didn’t douse me with a whole bunch of stuff that I couldn’t possibly retain. At so many stages of my life she gave me good counsel. When I had colorectal cancer, Sandra had had breast cancer. She had massive surgery. She was in court hearing argument nine days after her surgery. So her advice to me was, “Ruth, you’re having chemotherapy. Schedule it for Friday so then by Monday you’ll be over it. You’ll be over the bad effects.” That’s how she was. Anything that came her way, she would deal with it. She would just do it.</span></p> <p><strong>Justice O’Connor did a very generous thing for you, relatively early in your tenure, when the Court heard the VMI case testing whether the Virginia Military Institute could exclude women.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Virginia Military Institute is a fine school. It offers an incredible opportunity, but it limited that opportunity to men. There were women who were ready, willing, and able to go through that arduous training. What they wanted more than anything else was the kind of old-boy network. The VMI alums are very loyal. They try to help the graduates on their way. And I think only about 15 percent of VMI graduates end up with military careers. The rest are in business and commerce. So it was an important opportunity that was not open to women, and there was nothing comparable for them. I wanted to write the decision. And by the way, the name of the case is revealing. It was “United States against Virginia.” It was the United States Government that was suing the state of Virginia, saying, “State of Virginia, you can’t offer an educational opportunity to one sex only.” I was rather low on the totem pole. In fact, I did get the assignment because Justice O’Connor said Ruth should write this case. I think she had considerable seniority then, and so she would have been the logical person to get the assignment, but she said I should write it.</p> <p><strong style="font-size: 1rem;"><strong>Another one of your friends, not just on the Supreme Court but on the Court of Appeals before that, was Justice Scalia. He was the sole dissenter in that case<em>,</em> but you’ve said that he did you a favor in that case.</strong></strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: He came into my chambers with what he said was the penultimate draft of his dissent in the VMI case. He said he wasn’t quite ready to circulate it to the Court. It needed more polishing. But the term was getting on toward the end and he wanted to give me as much time as he possibly could to answer his dissent. I was about to go off to my circuit judicial conference. I took the opinion draft with me. I started reading it on the plane to Albany, and it was — even for Scalia — it was a real zinger. It was. So I spent the whole weekend thinking about how I would — in a restrained and moderate way — answer to these comments. I mean he took me to task for everything. I had a footnote in which I referred to “the Charlottesville campus of the University of Virginia.” He said, “We must excuse this Justice who is probably more familiar with schools in New York where they may have a campus here and a campus there. There is no Charlottesville campus. There is only <em>the</em> University of Virginia. Period.” The greatest thing for me was to have a Scalia dissent. He would point out all the soft spots, and that would give me an opportunity to improve the opinion to make it more persuasive than it was before I got this stimulating dissent.</p> <p><strong>After the <em>Obergefell v. Hodges</em> decision, which legalized gay marriage, you attended a social occasion along with Justice Scalia and ended up singing together, didn’t you?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: It was the day of the same-sex marriage case. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion for the Court. I joined him. Justice Scalia dissented vigorously. That’s an understatement. And yet we were all together that evening at this wonderful dinner that Catherine and Wayne Reynolds had. The head of NIH took out his guitar. Renee Fleming began to sing with him. And everybody joined in. So there was Justice Kennedy and Justice Scalia, and I was there too, all singing rather raucously, “The times, they are a-changing.”</p> <p><strong style="font-size: 1rem;">There was an opera written about you and Scalia and your conservative liberal friendship. You had a couple of favorite lines from one of the arias in the opera.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Well first, in the Court everything goes by seniority, so the opera is <em>Scalia/Ginsburg</em>. Even though I was three years older than Justice Scalia, he was appointed several years before I was, so he comes first in the ranking. It opens with Scalia’s rage aria. And for those who know music, it’s straight out of Handel, real Handelian. And the words are: “The Justices are blind. How can they possibly spout this? The Constitution says absolutely nothing about this.” And then my answering aria is: “Dear Justice Scalia, you are searching in vain for bright-line solutions to cases that have no easy answer, but the great thing about our Constitution is like our society, it can evolve.” And then the opera switches into a jazz mode, and the singer goes on, “Let it grow, let it grow!”</p> <p><strong>What does the American Dream mean to you, Justice Ginsburg?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: How can I describe the American Dream? Maybe it’s captured by the first ride I took on a New York subway, after returning from several months in Sweden, where everybody looked the same, and here I was on the subway, and the amazing diversity of the people of the United States. You know the motto is <em>E pluribus unum</em> — “Of many, one” — and that’s the idea that, more than just tolerating, we can appreciate our differences and yet pull together for the long haul. So that is my idea of the American Dream, sometimes referred to as “the melting pot.” That’s not quite right, because we keep our individual identities, but we are all Americans, and proud to live in the land of the free.</p> <p><strong>This is a historic moment for the Supreme Court, an unprecedented three Supreme Court justices are women, something Justice Frankfurter would have been very surprised by. Talk about how that might affect the future.</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: It’s obvious now that women are really here and we’re here to stay, just as men are. We are not one or two at a time curiosities. So I think this is an exhilarating change. When I was a new justice on this court for the twelve years that I sat together with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, invariably one lawyer or another would call me Justice O’Connor. They had become accustomed to a woman on the court and Justice O’Connor was the woman, so if they heard a woman’s voice — well, that must be the lady justice, even though we don’t look alike, we don’t sound alike. But last year no one called Justice Sotomayor Justice Ginsburg or me Justice Sotomayor, and I am certain that lawyers will perceive the difference among the three of us and we will each have our individual identities. We’re not quite where the Supreme Court of Canada is. The Supreme Court of Canada also has nine justices: four are women, including their chief justice. I think we will not be too far behind.</p> <p><strong>What do you think is the next frontier in women’s rights or civil rights? Where do we still need to go?</strong></p> <p>Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The hardest barrier to surmount for most women, I think it’s no longer at the entry level of any job, no longer access to any educational facility. I think, for example, that Justice Kagan did not encounter any discrimination in admissions to college, law school, getting a job, getting a clerkship. But what is very hard for most women is what happens when children are born. Will men become equal parents, sharing the joys as well as the burdens of bringing up the next generation? But that’s my dream for the world, for every child to have two loving parents who share in raising the child. And now, I think I have to go back to work.</p> <p><strong>Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us.</strong></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Ruth Bader Ginsburg Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>35 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.63947368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001.jpg" data-image-caption="President Bill Clinton looks on as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, August 10, 1993. Her husband Martin Ginsburg holds the Bible, while Chief Justice William Rehnquist administers the oath. (Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="SWEARING-IN OF RUTH BADER GINSBURG" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001-380x243.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/0000288594-001-760x486.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635.jpg" data-image-caption="President Barack Obama hugs Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor look on, prior to his deliverance of the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., January 25, 2011. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais-Pool/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Obama Delivers State Of The Union Address To Joint Session Of Congress" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/108333635-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/466730748.jpg" data-image-caption="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at the annual Women's History Month reception, hosted by Nancy Pelosi, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The event honored the women Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, March 18, 2015. (Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="U.S. Supreme Court Women Justices Are Honored On Capitol Hill For Women's History Month" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/466730748-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/466730748-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100311146540.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at the National Association of Women Judges 2010 conference in Washington, D.C. (AP Images/Jose Luis Magana)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100311146540-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100311146540-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.415270018622" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100515024329.jpg" data-image-caption="Ruth Bader Ginsburg visits her daughter, Jane, at Harvard Law School in 1978. (AP Images/Dennis Cook)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100515024329-268x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100515024329-537x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68815789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995.jpg" data-image-caption="Justice Ginsburg, photographed in her Supreme Court chambers, 2010. (AP Images/Alex Brandon)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995-380x262.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100803016995-760x523.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2903225806452" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives in the East Room of the White House in Washington, 2010. (AP Images/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502-295x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100806131502-589x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5169660678643" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks to the American Bar Association House of Delegates after receiving the ABA Medal in San Francisco, August 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385-250x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AP100809017385-501x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711.jpg" data-image-caption="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for a photo in her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. before an interview with the Associated Press. Ginsburg said during the interview that it was easy to foresee that Southern states would push ahead with tougher voter identification laws and other measures once the U.S. Supreme Court freed them from strict federal oversight of their elections. July 24, 2013. (AP)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711-380x285.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ap800767019711-760x570.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.7040358744395" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/BE083781.jpg" data-image-caption="By 1977, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had earned a national reputation as an advocate for the equality of the sexes, arguing a series of historic cases before the United States Supreme Court. (© Bettmann/CORBIS) " data-image-copyright="BE083781" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/BE083781-223x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/BE083781-446x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.090387374462" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1.jpg" data-image-caption="Future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her daughter, Jane, seen here in the 1960s. (Courtesy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg)" data-image-copyright="et_Ginsburg's-daughter-and-grandaughter-1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1-349x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/et_Ginsburgs-daughter-and-grandaughter-1-697x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4366729678639" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsberg-AP090205057590.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes part in a 2005 ceremony at the State Department in Washington. (AP Images/Ron Edmonds)" data-image-copyright="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsberg-AP090205057590-264x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsberg-AP090205057590-529x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2277867528271" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsberg-Ruth-352.jpg" data-image-caption="Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-image-copyright="Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsberg-Ruth-352-309x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsberg-Ruth-352-619x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace.jpg" data-image-caption="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows the many different collars (jabots) she wears with her robes, in her chambers at the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., June 17, 2016. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)" data-image-copyright="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg shows robes in her chambers at the Supreme Court building in Washington" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ginsburg-r-lace-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68684210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand.jpg" data-image-caption="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg receives the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement from Awards Council member Barbra Streisand at the Academy's 1995 Summit in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia." data-image-copyright="Ginsburg-Streisand" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand-380x261.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ginsburg-Streisand-760x522.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3126079447323" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, January 2005. (UPI Photo/Shawn Thew/File)" data-image-copyright="Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg diagnosed with pancreatic cancer" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg-289x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JusticeGinsberg-579x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor (retired), Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan in the Justices’ Conference Room prior to Justice Kagan’s Investiture, October 1, 2010. (Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="Associate Justice Elena Kagan Investiture Ceremony" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan-380x252.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OConnor_Sotomayor_Ginsburg_and_Kagan-760x505.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.80394736842105" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ruth-bader-ginsburg.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks in Washington, D.C., stating that the Supreme Court shut down tactics used by opponents of abortion and affirmative action in higher education in two major cases decided by the Supreme Court at the end of their term. June 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)" data-image-copyright="Supreme Court Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ruth-bader-ginsburg-380x306.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ruth-bader-ginsburg-760x611.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ruth-bader-ginsburg-4.jpg" data-image-caption="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, celebrating her 20th anniversary on the bench, is photographed in the West Conference Room at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., August 30, 2013. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ruth-bader-ginsburg-4-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ruth-bader-ginsburg-4-760x505.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SupremeCourt-COLUMNS-ginsburg-GettyImages-525581902.jpg" data-image-caption="The United States Supreme Court building is shown on June 15, 2005, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="United States Supreme Court" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SupremeCourt-COLUMNS-ginsburg-GettyImages-525581902-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SupremeCourt-COLUMNS-ginsburg-GettyImages-525581902-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67368421052632" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-AP090929018969.jpg" data-image-caption="The Justices of the United States Supreme Court sit for a class picture in September 2009. Seated, from left: Anthony M. Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Standing, from left are: Samuel Alito Jr., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. (AP Images/Charles Dharapak)" data-image-copyright="wp-AP090929018969" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-AP090929018969-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-AP090929018969-760x512.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_ginsburg_roberts_supremecourt_9263-005.jpg" data-image-caption="Chief Justice John Roberts looks on while Academy member and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks with Academy students. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wordpress_ginsburg_roberts_supremecourt_9263-005" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_ginsburg_roberts_supremecourt_9263-005-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_ginsburg_roberts_supremecourt_9263-005-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives at the first evening session of the Summit." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives at the first evening session of the Summit.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Reynolds_0026_wordpress.jpg" data-image-caption="Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives at the first evening session of the Summit. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="Reynolds_0026_wordpress" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Reynolds_0026_wordpress-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Reynolds_0026_wordpress-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.78289473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/551.jpg" data-image-caption="Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Ginsburg present the Gold Medal of the Academy to Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="551" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/551-380x297.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/551-760x595.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Ruth Bader Ginsburg">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/gin0-001a.jpg" data-image-caption="Ruth Bader Ginsburg" data-image-copyright="gin0-001a" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/gin0-001a-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/gin0-001a.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65921052631579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SCJustices.jpg" data-image-caption="Seated left to right: Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia (deceased), Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Standing left to right: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Justice Elena Kagan." data-image-copyright="New U.S. Supreme Court Poses For "Class Photo"" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SCJustices-380x250.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SCJustices-760x501.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2582781456954" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-09-953.jpg" data-image-caption="Ginsburg’s official informal photograph, taken in the Justices’ Dining Room in the fall of 1993. She has always been petite, with a delicate frame, but, after her twenty-year tenure on the Court, many wonder whether her fragile appearance signals her approaching retirement. (Richard Strauss / Smithsonian)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-09-953" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-09-953-302x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-09-953-604x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200.jpg" data-image-caption="The Ginsburgs on vacation with their children, James and Jane, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in December 1980. Marty had become a law professor at Georgetown. “I didn’t know that it was unusual for both parents to have careers,” James recalled. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-07-1200" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-07-1200-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2418300653595" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966.jpg" data-image-caption="This portrait was taken in the fall of 1980, during Ginsburg’s first term as a D.C. Circuit judge. Appointed by Jimmy Carter, she was expected to be a liberal firebrand, but ultimately demonstrated the caution of a common-law constitutionalist. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-06-966" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966-306x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-06-966-612x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.76315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200.jpg" data-image-caption="Ruth and Marty play with their three-year-old daughter, Jane, in 1958. Today, she is a professor at Columbia Law School. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-05-1200" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200-380x290.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-05-1200-760x580.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4448669201521" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831.jpg" data-image-caption="The Ginsburgs had just wed when Marty was drafted into the Army. He served at Artillery Village in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where this photograph was taken. While stationed there, he worked his way through the Escoffier guide to French cooking. He would always be the chef in the family. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-04-831" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831-263x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-04-831-526x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960.jpg" data-image-caption="Ruth as a senior at Cornell in December 1953. There, she met Marty Ginsburg, and they married just after she graduated, in 1954. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-03-960" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-03-960-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811.jpg" data-image-caption="In 1948, at age fifteen, Ruth was the camp rabbi at Che-Na-Wah, in Minerva, New York. Here, she delivers a sermon. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-02-811" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811-254x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-02-811-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4285714285714" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838.jpg" data-image-caption="Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1933. She is two years old in this photograph. Her father was a furrier during the height of the Depression, when customers were scarce. Her mother was stricken with cancer when Ruth was a girl, and died the day before Ruth’s high-school graduation. (Supreme Court of the United States)" data-image-copyright="130311_rbg-01-838" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838-266x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/130311_rbg-01-838-532x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING.jpg" data-image-caption="Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg embraces mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves at an American Academy of Achievement dinner in honor of the legacy of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. The dinner was held in the East Conference Room of the United States Supreme Court on May 25, 2017." data-image-copyright="wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp2280-et-2017-may25-SUPREMECOURT-GINSBURG-GRAVES-HUGGING-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i 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Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20170606130136/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. 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