The Life of Ruth Bader Ginsberg: Biography of an Educator

Abstract

Now in her eighties, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has lived a remarkable life. Justice Ginsburg has had an enormous impact on the way United States law respects gender equality, transformed the U.S. Constitution, and lead broad social transformation in America (Dodson, 2015). And while all of this is so, before she completed any of this, Justice Ginsburg was known as Professor Ginsburg, spending seventeen years teaching law at two highly respected institutions of higher education. During this time, she created and taught revolutionary courses on Women and the Law, co-write the first-ever published casebook on sex-based discrimination, and contributed broadly to law scholarship and advocacy (Kay, 2015). Though the time Ginsburg spent working in higher education goes largely unexamined in comparison to her time spent in judicial offices, her life is forever entwined with education, having been a way-making female law student, a pioneering professor and real-world advocate, and an adjudicator who changed the face of education in the United States. This manuscript will report Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s story and give perspective beyond her contributions as judge, focusing on her path to and work as educator.