Associate Justice

Institutional context

Ginsburg is the second woman on the Supreme Court of the United States, after Sandra Day O'Connor (1981). Her appointment marked the first time the Court had two women serving simultaneously.

Career path

Ginsburg earned a BA from Cornell and attended Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School, graduating from Columbia in 1959 tied for first in her class. She held faculty positions at Rutgers School of Law (1963–1972) and Columbia Law School (1972–1980), where she was the first woman to receive tenure. She co-founded and directed the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union from 1972, where she argued six gender-discrimination cases at the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976. President Carter appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980, where she served until her elevation.

Appointment

President Clinton nominated her on 22 June 1993; the Senate confirmed her on 3 August 1993 by 96–3. She was sworn in on 10 August 1993 and served until her death on 18 September 2020.

Tenure

Twenty-seven years. Her opinions for the Court included United States v. Virginia (1996), striking down the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy. Her later years on the Court were defined by widely circulated dissents, including in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014).

Cluster context

Ginsburg's 1993 appointment is contemporaneous with Rimington at MI5 and Reno at Justice — a small concentration in a single year against the otherwise sparse baseline. The Court's history of female appointments accelerated after Ginsburg: O'Connor (1981), Ginsburg (1993), Sotomayor (2009), Kagan (2010), Barrett (2020), Jackson (2022).

Sources

• Supreme Court of the United States — Past Justices
• Federal Judicial Center — Ginsburg biography