Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn in 1933, tied for first in her Columbia Law School class, and could not get a job at a New York firm because she was a woman — so she became a professor and the architect of the legal campaign for women's equality. As head of the ACLU Women's Rights Project in the 1970s she argued six sex-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court and won five, persuading an all-male bench, case by case, that the Constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of sex. After thirteen years on the federal appeals court, Bill Clinton named her to the Supreme Court in 1993, the second woman to serve.
Ginsburg brought to the bench the same patient, strategic commitment to equality she had shown as an advocate. She wrote the Court's opinion in United States v. Virginia, striking down the male-only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute and demanding an 'exceedingly persuasive justification' for sex-based classifications — the capstone of the revolution she had led. In her later years, as the Court moved right, she became its most celebrated dissenter, the 'Notorious RBG' whose dissents in Shelby County v. Holder and Ledbetter v. Goodyear spoke past the majority to Congress and the country — and, in Ledbetter's case, produced a federal statute. She died in office in 2020, an icon far beyond the law.
United States v. Virginia
1996Holding · The state's exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute violates equal protection; sex-based classifications require an 'exceedingly persuasive justification.'
Role · Ginsburg wrote for the Court.
The capstone of the sex-equality revolution she had led as an advocate, near the high-water mark of constitutional protection against sex discrimination.
Read the opinion →Shelby County v. Holder
2013Holding · (Dissenting) Gutting the Voting Rights Act's coverage formula is like 'throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.'
Role · Ginsburg dissented from Chief Justice Roberts's (§109) majority.
Her most famous dissent, warning of the voting restrictions that would follow, and a founding text of the 'Notorious RBG' phenomenon.
Read the opinion →Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
2007Holding · (Dissenting) The majority's cramped reading of the deadline for pay-discrimination claims ignores how such discrimination actually works.
Role · Ginsburg read her dissent aloud from the bench and called on Congress to act.
Congress responded with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 — a dissent that directly rewrote the law.
Read the opinion →Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed American law twice — first as the lawyer who dismantled sex discrimination, then as the justice who became an unlikely cultural icon. As the architect of the ACLU Women's Rights Project in the 1970s she argued a series of cases before the Supreme Court that established, step by careful step, that the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection forbids discrimination on the basis of sex — a litigation campaign often compared to Thurgood Marshall's (§96) against segregation. Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993, she wrote the Court's decision in United States v. Virginia, striking down the male-only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute and consolidating the constitutional revolution she had led as an advocate. In her later years, as the Court moved right, she became its most celebrated dissenter — the 'Notorious RBG' of Shelby County and Ledbetter — whose collars, workouts, and refusals to retire made her a phenomenon far beyond the law. She died in office in 2020, and the battle over her seat reshaped the Court. Jane De Hart's biography is the definitive life. Begin there, read the VMI opinion and the great Shelby County dissent, and hear Ginsburg in her own words.
The Bookshelf
The definitive biography, the product of years of research and interviews with Ginsburg herself. De Hart traces the Brooklyn childhood, the barriers of the 1950s legal world, the brilliant strategy of the 1970s litigation campaign, the years on the D.C. Circuit, and the Supreme Court tenure — connecting the advocate and the justice in a single arc. Thorough and authoritative, it is the fullest account of a life that reshaped the constitutional law of equality, and the essential starting point. Alfred A. Knopf.
The book that crystallized the phenomenon — an affectionate, illustrated life built from the Tumblr that made an octogenarian justice a pop-culture hero, blending the biography with her landmark dissents. The best guide to the 'Notorious RBG' and why she mattered beyond the law. Dey Street Books.
The intertwined story of the first two women on the Court — Hirshman on how the conservative O'Connor (§102) and the liberal Ginsburg, so different in method and temperament, together transformed the place of women in American law. Harper.
Two decades of interviews with Jeffrey Rosen, edited into a warm, wide-ranging portrait of her thinking on the Constitution, marriage, opera, and the craft of dissent — Ginsburg in her own measured voice. Henry Holt.
A collection of Ginsburg's own writings and speeches, spanning from childhood editorials to major opinions and dissents, with introductions by her authorized biographers. It gathers her reflections on gender, judging, the craft of the dissent, and the colleagues she admired across ideological lines — including her famous friendship with Scalia (§103). Warm, wry, and revealing, it is the most accessible way to hear Ginsburg's voice directly, and a fine companion to the fuller biography. Simon & Schuster.
The posthumously completed capstone — her writings, speeches, and a landmark 2019 conversation with the Berkeley law professor Amanda Tyler on the equal-protection campaign she built as an advocate. The fullest single record of the litigation strategy that changed the Constitution. (Amy Leigh Campbell's Raise the Bar, 2003, documents the ACLU Women's Rights Project in detail.) University of California Press.
The opinion in which Ginsburg, as a justice, secured the principle she had spent a career building as an advocate. Striking down the Virginia Military Institute's exclusion of women, she held that sex-based classifications require an 'exceedingly persuasive justification' — a demanding standard that brought equal-protection law close to the goal her 1970s litigation had pursued. Measured and precise, it is both a landmark of sex-equality doctrine and the personal capstone of the movement she led. Read it as the moment the advocate's vision became the Court's command.
The dissent that made her a legend. When the Court gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act by striking its coverage formula, Ginsburg dissented with an image that swept across the country: throwing out the preclearance requirement because it had worked, she wrote, 'is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.' Impassioned and meticulously documented, it crystallized her late-career role as the conscience of the Court's liberal wing and helped launch the 'Notorious RBG' phenomenon. Read it as the model of the dissent as public argument.
The dissent that Congress enacted. When the Court threw out Lilly Ledbetter's pay-discrimination suit as filed too late, Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench — a rare move — and called on Congress to correct the Court. It did: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was the first bill Barack Obama signed into law. The clearest proof that a dissent can become the law. Free online.
The major posthumous scholarly volume — Totenberg, Herma Hill Kay, Linda Kerber, the Siegels, and others assessing the advocate and the justice, updated after her death with a foreword by Justice Breyer. The scholarly counterweight to a shelf of popular biography. Cambridge University Press.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.De Hart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life — for the definitive account of advocate and justice alike
- 2.United States v. Virginia — for the opinion that vindicated her life's work
- 3.Shelby County v. Holder dissent — for the great dissent that made her an icon
- 4.Ginsburg, My Own Words — for her voice, wit, and craft directly
- 5.Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue — for the litigation campaign that changed the Constitution
Where the Papers Are Kept
Ginsburg's papers are held at the Library of Congress, encompassing both her pioneering career as a litigator and her years on the bench, and substantial portions have been opened to researchers — a rich record of the sex-equality campaign and the modern Court. Combined with the Blackmun (§98) and other collections at the Library, they make Washington's manuscript holdings a central resource for the study of her era. A major American judicial archive. Visit →
Ideas for Further Research
- The advocate and the judge. Ginsburg is one of the few figures to have shaped a field of constitutional law first as a litigator and then as a justice, inviting comparison with Thurgood Marshall (§96). Study the continuity between the 1970s Women's Rights Project cases and her opinions on the bench, and ask what it means — for the law and for judicial independence — when a justice is asked to rule in the very area she once argued as a partisan.
- The dissent as public power. In her later years Ginsburg's dissents reached audiences far beyond the legal profession, and 'Notorious RBG' turned a justice into a cultural icon. Examine how she used the dissent as a form of public argument aimed at Congress and the country — the Ledbetter dissent helped spur a federal statute — and weigh what a justice gains, and what the Court's mystique risks, when a jurist becomes a celebrity.
- The choice not to retire. Ginsburg declined to step down during a friendly administration when her health was failing, and her death in 2020 allowed a swift conservative appointment that shifted the Court for a generation. Set her decision against the strategic-retirement calculations of other justices, and ask how the personal, the institutional, and the political should figure in a justice's judgment about when to leave — a question her example has made unavoidable. Seat lineage: Byron White §93 → Ruth Bader Ginsburg → Amy Coney Barrett §115.