RBG: A Reading List highlights texts written by and about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. Additionally, this Reading List provides users with information and video on the nomination and confirmation of Justice Ginsburg, some of her most notable opinions and dissents authored as a justice, and several of the cases she argued before the Supreme Court as an attorney.
A joint effort between Washington and Lee University School of Law and Virginia Military Institute brought U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Lexington on February 1, 2017. Ginsburg addressed an audience of thousands at VMI's Cameron Hall in the morning, and had law students lining up three hours in advance for a private Q&A session in the afternoon.
Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg became only the second female justice, after Sandra Day O’Connor, in the history of the Supreme Court. Along with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, she was one of three women serving on the nation’s highest court at the time of her passing at age 87 on September 18, 2020.
Throughout the course of her professional life, Ginsburg was an advocate for women’s rights and gender equality. In the 1970s, she co-founded the women’s rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union and later became the organization’s general counsel. Also during that decade, she became the first woman to earn tenure as a professor at her alma mater, Columbia Law School. At the time she entered academia, at Rutgers University in 1963, there were fewer than 20 female law professors in the United States.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position she held until her appointment to the Supreme Court 13 years later.
In 1999, she won the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award for her contributions to gender equality and civil rights.
Video of W&L Law students' Q&A with Justice Ginsburg (February 1, 2017).
