The Legacy of Ruth Ginsburg or Significant Women's Rights Research Paper

The Legacy of Ruth Ginsburg or Significant Women's Rights Contributions of Ruth Ginsburg to the Twenth Century - Research Paper Example It is not possible to fully cover Ginsburgs contributions to womens rights in a paper of this limited scope. However, it will highlight her most importatnt work, and show how the progression of her legal reasoning has become the cornerstone of todays womens movement. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of womens rights foremost advocates, and she has earned a place in history as a woman that has led by example as well as action. Ginsburg immersed herself in womens issues at an early point in her professional life, and they became a hallmark of her career. Ginsburg was a groundbreaker, and at Harvard Law School she was one of only eight women out of a class of 500. She transferred to Columbia, where she graduated at the top of her class, though gender discrimination overshadowed her academic achievements.1 Ginsburg joined the faculty at Rutgers, and became "only the second female on the schools faculty and among the first 20 women law professors in the country".2 She became the first law professor at Harvard, directed the Womens Rights Project at the ACLU, and by 1973 Ginsburg was arguing a Supreme Court case regarding equal benefits for men and women in the armed forces.3 Ginsburg gained the attention of President Jimmy Carter by winning 5 out of 6 Supreme Court cases, and consistently arguing that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment applied to gender as well as race.4 Carter appointed Ginsbur g to the United States Court of appeals for the District of Columbia, and in 1993 she was "confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 96 to 3, becoming the 107th Supreme Court Justice, its second female jurist", and an outspoken advocate for womens rights on the bench.5 Since that date she has been instrumental in furthering the cause of gender equality in America. Her early work with the ACLU on the Womens Rights Project prepared her legal skills for writing the Supreme Court decision on United States v.