Mairead Dalton
eSomethin Staff
With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, Americans are looking back on her accomplishments in light of her passing and the upcoming election.
Of course, her greatest accomplishment is becoming the second woman to ever serve on the United States Supreme Court — the highest court in the country. She is also the first Jewish person to ever serve.
On the bench, Ruth Bader Ginsburg became a household name. She wrote the majority opinion on the landmark case of the United States v. Virginia, which held that women can not be turned away from the state-supported Virginia Military Institute simply for being a woman. In 1999, she was awarded the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award for her efforts towards equality and civil rights.
Even before she was elected to the Supreme court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a force to be reckoned with. She was one of eight women in her class of 500 at Harvard University and, despite continually being berated about taking the spots of more qualified men, she became the first female member of the incredibly prestigious law journal, the Harvard Law Review.
She managed these accomplishments while taking care of her young daughter and her husband during a cancer treatment.
When her husband accepted a job at a law firm in New York, she transferred schools to Columbia Law School, wherein 1959 she graduated first in her class.
As an attorney, she was able to convince an all-male Supreme Court to include discrimination on the basis of sex in the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause in the 1970s. Also, she served as the director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she argued numerous cases regarding gender inequality in front of the Supreme Court, several of which she won.
While some people view her solely focused as a women’s rights advocate, she has also argued laws that put women at a greater advantage than men, such as a portion of the Social Security Act because it gave additional privileges to widows, and not to widowers.
There is no question that Ginsburg has done a lot for this country. She voted in favour of the legalization of same-sex marriage across the country in 2015, along with other progressive steps for the rights of undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and those with disabilities.
With her constant fight to improve the lives of people across the country, and her rallying cry of “I dissent” it is clear that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be remembered for hundreds of years.
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