by Jonathan Entin / The Conversation all images provided by The Illinois Holocaust Museum
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died September 18, Chief Justice John Roberts said that “Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped shape the modern era of women’s rights – even before she went on the Supreme Court
The comparison was entirely appropriate: As Marshall oversaw the legal strategy that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that outlawed segregated schools, Ginsburg coordinated a similar effort against sex discrimination. Decades before she joined the court, Ginsburg’s work as an attorney in the 1970s fundamentally changed the Supreme Court’s approach to women’s rights, and the modern skepticism about sex-based policies stems in no small way from her lawyering. Ginsburg’s work helped to change the way we all think about women – and men, for that matter. I’m a legal scholar who studies social reform movements and I served as a law clerk to Ginsburg when she was an appeals court judge. In my opinion – as remarkable as Marshall’s work on behalf of African Americans was – in some ways Ginsburg faced more daunting prospects when she started.
COVERSTORY
rip rbg
Even before her appointment, Ginsburg had reshaped American law. When he nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, President Bill Clinton compared her legal work on behalf of women to the epochal work of Thurgood Marshall on behalf of African Americans.
7
