Online & On-Campus BSW and MSW Social Work Degrees in Nassau County, Long Island

“Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived.”
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Known fondly as simply RBG by many, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is best known for being a progressive Supreme Court Justice — and the first Jewish woman, and only the second woman ever at the time she was appointed to hold this post. But it would be an injustice not to recognize her work that inspired the masses and advanced women’s rights.

Some of that recognition came at the time of her passing in 2020 when Nassau County Executive Laura Currant conveyed the sense of loss we all felt at the time, saying, “Justice Ginsburg was an inspiration to countless women including me. I am privileged to have known her and my heart goes out to her children.”

RBG was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933 to a native New Yorker mother and an immigrant father. When she attended Harvard Law School, she was just one of nine women in a class of 500 students. She spent her last year of law school studying at Columbia and graduated at the top of her class in 1959.

She landed a position as a law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, followed by research associate at Columbia Law School and Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law. During this time, she became involved with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and was an important founding member of the Women’s Rights Project in 1971, where she served as a litigator and director. She was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeal for the D.C. Circuit by Jimmy Carter in 1980 and served there for 13 years until she took her seat on the Supreme Court (nominated by President Bill Clinton) in 1993.

It was during her time on the Supreme Court that she fought for gender equality and women’s rights, including gender pay discrimination.