Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Concurrence in Stenberg, Attorney General of Nebraska, et al. v. Carhart

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) was a jurist and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg’s early commitment to women’s rights and equality was perhaps forged when the dean of Harvard Law School asked her and her eight female classmates why they were taking up seats at the school that rightly should be occupied by men. If that were not enough, she was unable to win a clerkship for a U.S. Supreme Court justice because of her gender, and she did not receive a job offer from the New York City firm where she clerked during the summer before her final year in law school. Then, after she took a teaching position at the Rutgers University Law School, she discovered that she was being paid less than male colleagues with the same rank. These circumstances motivated Ginsburg’s preoccupation with civil rights generally and the rights of women in particular.