Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15, 1933) is a United States jurist. Since 1993, she has served as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Early life
Ginsburg was born Joan Ruth Bader in Brooklyn, New York, the second daughter of Nathan and Celia Bader. Ginsburg's older sister died when she was very young; the neighborhood where she grew up was made up of working-class immigrants, most of them Jewish, Italian, and Irish.
Ginsburg's mother called her "Kiki" and took an active role in Ruth's education, taking her to the library often and applying for scholarships that would allow her to attend college. Celia struggled with cancer throughout Ruth's high school years and died the day before graduation, forcing Ginsburg to withdraw from giving the salutatorian speech she had planned for months. In school, classmates recalled Ginsburg as highly popular and competitive; she joined the twirling squad in high school.
Women's rights advocate
She married Martin D. Ginsburg, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, in 1954, and has a daughter, Jane, and a son, James. She received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1954, attended Harvard Law School, and when her husband accepted a job in New York City, she tranferred to Columbia Law School, where she received her LL.B. degree. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959-1961. From 1961-1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963-1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972-1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford University, California from 1977-1978.
In 1971, Ginsburg was instrumental in launching the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU's General Counsel from 1973-1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974-1980. In this position, Ginsburg successfully argued several women's rights cases before the Supreme Court, including 1973's Frontiero v. Richardson.
Judicial career
She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Carter in 1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate confirmed her by a 97 to 3 vote and she took her seat August 10, 1993.
During her service on both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, Ginsburg is generally regarded as the most liberal judges on the Rehnquist Court. Ginsburg has urged a moderate approach to adjudication, writing that "Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication. Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable." Ginsburg has urged that the Supreme Court not wholly displace the legislative branches, but rather allow for dialogue with elected branches. She has also been a strong advocate for the citation of foreign law and norms judicial opinions, and regards the Constitution as an evolving document, rather than a static one. Though Ginsburg has consistently voted to uphold a woman's right of abortion, she has criticized the court's ruling in Roe v. Wade as being decided on unnecessarily broad grounds and halting legislative reforms.
Controversy
Ginsberg provoked a moderate amount of controversy on April 4, 2005, when she claiming her authority to consult foreign legal decisions, rejecting the argument from conservatives that U.S. law should not take international thinking into account. "Judges in the United States are free to consult all manner of commentary," she said in a speech to several hundred lawyers and scholars, and other members of the American Society of International Law.
She cited several instances when the logic of foreign courts had helped untangle legal questions domestically, and of legislatures and courts abroad adopting U.S. law in return. Fears about relying too heavily on world opinion "should not lead us to abandon the effort to learn what we can from the experience and good thinking foreign sources may convey," Ginsburg told the audience.
On March 1, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Constitution forbids executing convicts who committed their crimes before turning 18. The majority opinion reasoned that the United States was increasingly out of step with the world by allowing minors to be executed, saying "the United States now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty."
Antonin Scalia lambasted that logic, saying that the justices personal opinion and the opinions of "like-minded foreigners" should not be given a role in helping interpret the Constitution.
House Republicans have introduced a resolution declaring that the "meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based on judgments, laws or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such foreign judgments, laws or pronouncements inform an understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States."
In her speech, Ginsburg criticized the resolutions in Congress and the spirit in which they were written. "Although I doubt the resolutions will pass this Congress, it is disquieting that they have attracted sizable support," she said. "The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification," Ginsburg said. "Even more so today, the United States is subject to the scrutiny of a candid world," she said. "What the United States does, for good or for ill, continues to be watched by the international community, in particular by organizations concerned with the advancement of the rule of law and respect for human dignity."
Objecters contend that defining law and viewing the opinions of foriegners is the job of the legislature, not the judiciary. The judiciary should be limited to looking at the US Constitution for their decision.
Some notable cases in which Ginsburg wrote an opinion:
- Bush v. Gore Dissenting
- Eldred v. Ashcroft Court Opinion
External links
- Supreme court official bio (PDF) (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/biographiescurrent.pdf)
- Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZD2.html)
- LookSmart - Ruth Bader Ginsburg (http://search.looksmart.com/p/browse/us1/us317916/us53716/us62703/us10211698/us551221/us551229/us551232/) directory category
- Yahoo - Ruth Bader Ginsburg (http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Judicial_Branch/Supreme_Court/Justices/Ginsburg__Ruth_Bader/) directory category
| Preceded by: Byron White | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States August 10, 1993 – present (a) | Succeeded by: — |