Notorious RBG

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2015) is a biography by Israeli-American journalist Irin Carmon and American lawyer and author Shana Knizhnik. In addition to offering a comprehensive biography of the iconic Supreme Court justice, the authors also include excerpts from some of Ginsburg's most important opinions, analysis of her rulings by various legal scholars, and a wide range of watercolors, tattoos, and even nail art created by the jurist's cult of followers. Based on a Tumblr blog of the same name by Knizhnik, the book reflects a millennial-native playfulness that informs both the writing and the imagery.

Born Joan Ruth Bader in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Ginsburg was raised by a Jewish mother and father of Austrian and Ukrainian descent, respectively. Active in her local conservative synagogue, Ginsburg learned Hebrew and served as a "camp rabbi" at her Jewish summer camp. Her mother, Celia, suffered from cancer and passed away the day before Ginsburg graduated from high school.

At Cornell University, Ginsburg met her future husband, Marty Ginsburg. They married a month after her graduation and moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Marty served as a training officer in the Army Reserve. Meanwhile, Ginsburg used her degree in government to obtain a job at the Oklahoma Social Security Administration but was demoted when her superiors learned she was pregnant. This was one of Ginsburg's earliest experiences with workplace sexism, but sadly not the last.



In 1956, a year after giving birth to her daughter Jane, Ginsburg was accepted to Harvard Law School. Out of the 500 students in her graduating class, only nine were women. One of the most infamous anecdotes of Ginsburg's early life occurred when the Dean of Harvard Law School invited all nine of his female students to dinner as a pretext for asking them, "Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?" When Marty obtained employment in New York City, this anecdote made the decision to transfer from Harvard to Columbia Law School much easier.

Despite graduating from Columbia at the top of her class tied with another student, Ginsburg struggled to obtain the kind of illustrious clerkships generally offered to top Ivy League graduates like her. It was only when her Columbia professor Gerald Gunther threatened to never recommend another of his graduates that Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of New York's Southern District reluctantly hired Ginsburg to his staff. After serving under Palmieri for two years, Ginsburg spent the next decade in academia, teaching at Rutgers Law School. At that time, there were only twenty female law professors in the United States.

The book pays particular attention to the ways that Marty subjugated his own career in favor of his wife's. Throughout her career, Marty spent far more time on cooking, housekeeping, and child-rearing than the vast majority of American men at that time in history. Before his death in 2010, Marty said, "I think that the most important thing I have done is to enable Ruth to do what she has done."



In 1972, Ginsburg began working at the American Civil Liberties Union where she founded the group's Women's Rights Projects and served as its inaugural general counsel. Between 1973 and 1976, Ginsburg brought six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, winning five of them. These included Frontiero v. Richardson, which allowed female service members to claim the same housing allowance as male service members, but also cases which highlighted ways in which men were discriminated against by the law. For example, in Weinberger v. Weisenfeld, Ginsburg successfully argued that widowers should receive the same survivor benefits as widows.

After serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1980 until 1993, Ginsburg was elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton. Key opinions authored by Ginsburg include the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, which ruled that the Virginia Military Institute's males-only admission policy was unconstitutional, and the dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore, which ended the Florida recount of ballots in the 2000 Presidential Election.

In discussing Ginsburg's record as both general counsel and Supreme Court Justice, the authors emphasize the importance of incrementalism to the jurist's reasoning. For example, instead of seeking to strike down all gender discrimination at once, Ginsburg sought to create a vast body of legal precedence by arguing individual cases that concerned equal rights for both men and women. This philosophy is also reflected in what is arguably the defining judicial debate of her era: abortion. While Ginsburg consistently argues in favor of a woman's abortion rights, she has been highly critical of Roe v. Wade because it unilaterally erased state abortion laws and "invited no dialogue with legislators."



While offering an important summary of Ginsburg's life and career, Notorious RBG is also, in the playful words of The New York Times, "an artisanal hagiography, a frank, and admiring piece of fan nonfiction."