15 Things You Should Know About Ruth Bader Ginsburg
BY BETH ANNE MACALUSO JANUARY 21, 2017
“She has this soft little tiny voice, and she can say really devastating things in that quiet voice.”
—NPR’s Nina Totenberg
In the middle of one especially eventful Supreme Court session over three years ago—June 24, 2013, to be exact—Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened her mouth and began to speak. In two separate dissents, RBG excoriated the outcomes of three cases: Fisher v. University of Texas and two employment discrimination decisions, Vance v. Ball State and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar. But she wasn’t done yet. The next day, she read an even more scathing dissent, this time in Shelby County v. Holder. That decision ruled a section of the Voting Rights Act, requiring certain districts to get “preclearance” before changing voting laws, as unconstitutional. “The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the [Voting Rights Act] has proven effective,” Ginsburg opined. “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Reading aloud one’s dissent isn’t unheard of, but it is an undeniably vehement statement. Her outspokenness that day caused people all over the world—people who otherwise wouldn’t pay much heed to the decisions passed down by the Supreme Court of the United States—to sit up and take notice.
What people might not realize is that Justice Ginsburg has been using that quiet voice of hers to shape the course of our nation’s history for more than six decades. Below, a few things you might not know about Ginsburg—a.k.a. the Notorious RBG.
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