Sonia Chajet Wides, ‘21

On September 18th, the inimitable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87. Her life and her work have served and will continue to serve as inspiration and empowerment for generations of Americans and people around the world. 

Justice Ginsburg was a woman of many milestones: she was the first person in her family to attend college, the first woman to receive tenure on the Columbia Law School faculty, and the second female justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. She earned an icon status that was especially strong in her later years, when her pop culture relevance grew strikingly. Justice Ginsburg was, in particular, a leader for women’s rights. As a lawyer in the 1970s, she argued cases to the Supreme Court intended to extend equal protection under the law to gender and sex discrimination. As she argued these cases, she demonstrated her unique legal and strategic abilities, referencing obscure laws and maintaining a level of persistence that convinced the justices that the 14th Amendment included equality of the sexes.

As a Supreme Court justice herself, Justice Ginsburg became known for her steadfastness in ensuring gender equality. In 1996’s United States v. Virginia, the court deemed it unconstitutional for the Virginia Military Institute, a state-funded school, to have an all-male admissions policy. In the majority opinion for the case, Justice Ginsburg wrote that any acknowledgment of gender difference under the law must not “create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.” Justice Ginsburg also became famous for her scathing dissents of the courts’ decisions, the most famous of which is perhaps her dissent in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder. In that case, the court struck down crucial parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in favor of “states rights,” and Justice Ginsburg wrote in her dissent: “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.”

Throughout it all, Justice Ginsburg remained deeply close to her roots. The values that she absorbed growing up in the thriving Jewish community of 1930s and ‘40s Flatbush, Brooklyn propelled her throughout her legal career. Her intelligence, tenacity, thoughtfulness, and persistence, will continue to have tangible effects on the lives of Americans for generations to come-- both in the form of her legal rulings and in her role model status.