Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Life in Photos

After graduating high school, Ginsburg attended Cornell University where she earned her bachelor’s degree. Ginsburg graduated in 1954 at the top of her class.

While at Cornell, Ginsburg met her husband, Martin Ginsburg, on a blind date. The year she graduated, she married Martin, who she said “was the first guy I ever dated who cared that I had a brain.”

Before she got married, Ginsburg recalled Martin’s mother telling her to let the little things roll off her back by saying, “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” Ginsburg and Martin later married in his parents’ backyard in Long Island, New York.

“I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through 56 years of a marital partnership nonpareil,” Ginsburg recalled in 2016. “I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court.”

A year after Martin (left) and Ginsburg married, Ginsburg gave birth to their first child, Jane.

Shortly after Jane was born, Martin was drafted into the military where he served with the U.S. Army for two years. When he was discharged, he enrolled at Harvard, where Ginsburg also enrolled for law school.

They later welcomed their son, James, in 1965.

While teaching at Rutgers, Ginsburg noticed she was paid less than her male counterparts and decided to join a committee with other women at the school to advocate for equal pay. Eventually, the committee’s advocacy resulted in increased pay.

In the ’70s, she also worked for and helped establish the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, under which she argued six gender-equality cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

One of Ginsburg’s earliest cases involved advocating on behalf of a widower who was denied Social Security benefits after his wife died—at the time, such benefits were deemed “mother’s benefits.” Ginsburg appeared in front of the Supreme Court on January 20, 1975 to challenge the notion that working “is primarily the prerogative of men.” Ultimately, Ginsburg won the case and changed how the law defined women’s work.

One of Ginsburg’s Rutgers students, Margaret Moses, admired her so much that she went to work with Ginsburg at the ACLU, despite some employers saying it wasn’t a valid alternative to working for the U.S. Attorney’s office. Moses said, “She was an excellent role model—that combination of being brilliant and working very hard set a high standard to do the very best you could, to try to emulate her.”

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C, where she served until she was nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

While on the Court of Appeals, Ruth wrote more than 300 court opinions and was known for her ability to unite the court, even when they didn’t always agree on a ruling.

Ginsburg and Dame Maggie Smith were pictured together at a gala opening night dinner for the Washington Opera.

Ginsburg was a huge opera fan and some of her favorite operas and recordings include Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Verdi’s “Aida.”

While most Supreme Court judges simply wear black robes, Ginsburg chose to add a little flair to hers with collars—just like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the bench, did.

Ginsburg also used her collars as symbols for court cases and current events. She had an embellished gold collar for when she was in the majority vote and a dissenting collar that was dark, beaded, and looked like armor for when she was not in the majority. The day after Donald Trump was elected, Ginsburg wore her dissenting collar.

Ginsburg had to work the day after Martin’s death—it was toward the end of the Cour’'s session that year and Ginsburg had an opinion for a landmark case in which she made the argument that Christian groups at public universities couldn’t prevent gay students from attending their meetings, and she decided she couldn’t miss the session.

Their daughter, Jane, said, “My father would certainly not have wanted her to miss the last days on the bench on account of his death.”