Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) was born in Brooklyn and graduated first in her class at Columbia Law School in 1959 but struggled to find work as a woman. She taught at Rutgers and became Columbia's first tenured woman law professor in 1972. As co-founder of the ACLU Women's Rights Project she argued six sex-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. Jimmy Carter appointed her to the D.C. Circuit in 1980, and Bill Clinton named her to the Supreme Court in 1993; the Senate confirmed her 96-3. She served until her death in September 2020.

Admirers credit Ginsburg with reshaping American sex-discrimination law, first as an advocate and then as a justice, and in her final years she became a popular icon known as the 'Notorious R.B.G.' Conservative critics saw her as a reliably liberal vote who read the Constitution expansively. Some liberals faulted her decision not to retire while Democrats controlled the Senate in 2013-2014, since her death in 2020 let Donald Trump appoint Amy Coney Barrett. In 2016 she apologized for public remarks criticizing Trump as a candidate and for calling national anthem protests 'really dumb'. Her friendship with Antonin Scalia is widely remembered.