Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933- )

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a graduate of Cornell University, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton and became the second female justice in U.S. history and the first Jewish justice in over twenty years. She was born to a working class family in Brooklyn, where she grew up in a Jewish and Italian immigrant neighborhood. Her mother died of cancer before she graduated from high school, where she ranked sixth in her class. She attended Cornell University on scholarship, and graduated as valedictorian. She continued her studies at Columbia University School of Law, where she also graduated at the top of her class. After completing her education, Ginsburg worked as a professor of law at Rutgers University and later at Columbia University, where she was the first woman hired with tenure. She was elected the first head of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in 1972 and remains a strong activist for civil equality. In 2007, Forbes Magazine ranked Ginsburg as the twentieth most powerful woman in the world.