Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg with 10 of Her Most 'Notorious' Quotes
The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg earned her unofficial title, Notorious RBG, for her bold actions both as a Supreme Court Justice and as a lawyer before that. Prior to her Capitol Hill appointment to the most powerful court bench in the nation, Justice Ginsburg was a trailblazing activist and attorney. She initially attended Harvard Law School, though finished her degree at Columbia University, at a time when few women were accepted into colleges of any kind, let alone Ivy Leagues. She did not arrive at either school with an equal rights agenda. However, the treatment she received for being a woman inspired her to dedicate her career to the empowerment of disenfranchised minorities including, but not limited to women. When she graduated from Columbia Law School in1959 she was tied for first in her class.
Despite her early academic success, Ginsburg still struggled against discrimination as a female attorney. Following her graduation she was recommended for a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter by Albert Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School, but Frankfurter responded that he wasn't ready to hire a woman and asked Sachs to recommend a man. She also had worked for a top New York City law firm the summer of her second year in law school, but was denied employment when she applied after graduate school. She ended up working for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1959 to 1961. She later worked for Columbia Law School's International Procedure Project and Rutgers Law School in 1963. In 1972 after taking on sex discrimination complaints referred to her by the New Jersey affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, the same year she became the first woman to be granted tenure at Columbia Law School.
As the second woman ever to earn a Supreme Court seat, Ginsburg had one of the most impactful tenures of all time. A pioneer for social justice issues of gender equality, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, the beloved pioneer passed away this past September 2020 at age 87, due to complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. In honor of what would have been her 88th birthday, L'OFFICIEL highlights 10 of her most impactful quotes.