A Woman’s Journey to the Crown
How The Notorious RBG Came to Reign the Bench
“Order in the court,” demands a voice from the bench. It’s a woman’s voice — in fact the blunt Brooklyn accent belongs to the second female to ever reside as a justice on the United States Supreme Court. How did Ruth B. Ginsburg, a women lined in fish net gloves, become one of the most powerful figures in the developed world?
Born into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, Ginsburg was disadvantaged from a young age. Her eldest sister died at a young age from meningitis, leaving Ruth as an only child to deal with the early loss of her mother independently. Before the loss of her mother, Ruth and her mother grew close, causing her to frequently recall the influential time they spent together. During her remarks upon nomination to the Supreme Court, Ruth spoke of her mother as “the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”
Ruth did not allow her circumstances to deteriorate her dreams, so she enrolled at Harvard Law School as one of nine women in a class of five hundred students. In light of this honor, the Dean of Harvard Law called upon the female students, asking “How do you justify taking a spot from a qualified man?” This sparked Ginsburg’s determination to prove the intelligence of women. Nothing would hold her back — not even her husband’s diagnosis of testicular cancer during her first semester at law school, leaving her to take care of a child and sick husband while completing her rigorous curriculum.
After receiving her diploma, Ruth began looking for a job. While Ruth had come far already, her path ahead was not without obstacles. She was a wife, mother, and Jewish woman working in America’s 1960s. Ginsburg has confessed hiding under loose clothes during her second pregnancy to avoid “discriminatory employment practices.” Her demographic label would cost her denial of a clerkship to the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, despite a sound recommendation; however, one might argue this was for the best, leading her to land a clerkship with an influential judge in New York City before becoming an attorney.
Ginsburg became the director of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in the early 1970s where she litigated gender-equality cases, winning five of the six cases she argued before the Supreme Court. Her cases dealt with instances when, not only women, but also men and families were victims of discriminatory laws. In 1972, she received tenure at Columbia Law School, becoming the school’s first tenured female professor.
On January 20, 1975, she was on the other side of the bench; a lawyer representing a man, specifically a widower, who was denied his Social Security benefits following the death of his wife, a hardworking teacher who primarily brought in the family’s income. This case was unique because a widow — a woman who had lost her husband — would have received her “mother’s benefits,” but this was a man. Ruth, a lawyer of the opposite sex, was representing him — fighting for gender equality. In this period in America, she was in a group of 5% of women who had argued before the Supreme Court, and the first woman to argue against her own sex. Defying the odds, Ruth B. Ginsburg won the case, placing a heavy weight on the feminist movement to make the expectations of men and women equal. One’s job earnings would no longer be differentiated by the gender of the person earning them; they belonged to both husband and wife.
In just seventeen years Ruth Bader Ginsburg would use this platform to project herself onto the highest court in the land, becoming the second female supreme court justice in the history of the United States. These events not only earned her high esteem in her own field, but also gave her such respect among the average American that she was given a title comparing her to a modern, rap idol; the name “The Notorious RBG.” A rapper that was unfavorably known, lacking approval and support from the crowd, “The Notorious BIG” was Ruth’s comparative icon. He rocked a bold wardrobe better than any other 400 pound man. Gucci, Versace, Fendi lined his wardrobe while his crown sat upon his head just as the “Notorious RBG.” Contemplating how to express her style with the traditional black wardrobe, Ginsburg reigns the bench with lacy collars, clip-on earrings, with hands lined in black lace gloves which she took a liking to after initially wearing them for post-chemotherapy protection in 1999. Flashy looks sans robes, like a green dashiki or a turquoise ensemble made of Chinese silk soon made a statement, this was a woman on the bench.
The beloved Ruth B. Ginsburg continues to represent equality towards gender and is an impressive representation of the modern career mother in our legal system.
