Pauli Murray and Dorothy Kenyon, longtime members of the Board of Directors beginning in 19, respectively, had worked to put gender equality work on the ACLU's agenda.ĭorothy Kenyon was appointed to the League of Nations Committee on the Legal Status of Women from 1938 to 1940 and from 1947 to 1950 served as the first U.S. Ginsburg's experiences with sex discrimination inspired her to lead the ACLU's campaign for gender equality, but she was not the first person to see the need for the ACLU to dedicate its efforts to women's rights. That same year, Ginsburg became the first woman to be granted tenure at Columbia Law School. Ginsburg envisioned that men and women would "create new traditions by their actions, if artificial barriers are removed, and avenues of opportunity held open to them." 3 The ACLU Women's Rights Project was born in 1972 under Ginsburg's leadership, in order to remove these barriers and open these opportunities. Prompted by her own experiences, Ginsburg began to handle sex discrimination complaints referred to her by the New Jersey affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. When she discovered that her salary was lower than that of her male colleagues, she joined an equal pay campaign with other women teaching at the university, which resulted in substantial increases for all the complainants. IF IT PLEASE THE COURT WOW ACHIEVEMENT CODEShe received offers from law firms after that job, but she chose to work on Columbia Law School's International Procedure Project instead, co-authoring a book on Sweden's legal system and translating Sweden's Judicial Code into English.Ĭontinuing in academia, Ginsburg joined the faculty of Rutgers Law School in 1963, but her status as a woman still put her at a disadvantage. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1959 to 1961. In the end, Ginsburg was hired to clerk for Judge Edmund L. Nor was there an offer from any of the twelve firms with which she interviewed only two gave her a follow-up interview. 2 Despite her performance, there was no job offer. "I thought I had done a terrific job, and I expected them to offer me a job on graduation," she recalled. Ginsburg had worked for a top law firm in New York during the summer of her second year in law school. Still, when she was recommended for a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter by Albert Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School, Frankfurter responded that he wasn't ready to hire a woman and asked Sachs to recommend a man. Upon graduating from Columbia in 1959, Ginsburg tied for first in her class. (Her daughter was born 14 months before Ginsberg entered law school.) This major accomplishment at two top schools was unprecedented by any student, male or female. One of only nine women at Harvard Law School in 1956, Ginsburg and her female classmates were asked by the dean why they were occupying seats that would otherwise be filled by men.ĭespite her discomfort, self-doubt, and misgivings, Ginsburg proved to be a stellar student, making law review at Harvard in 1957, and then again at Columbia Law School, where she finished her studies in order to keep the family together when her husband graduated from Harvard and accepted a job in New York. I have no talent in the arts, but I do write fairly well and analyze problems clearly." 1Īlthough she arrived without a civil rights agenda, the treatment Ginsburg received as a woman in law school honed her feminist instincts. I thought I could do a lawyer's job better than any other. Ginsburg attended law school, not originally for women's rights work, but "for personal, selfish reasons. For most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S." The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. Ginsburg recalls, "My mother told me two things constantly. Celia Bader provided a strong role model for her daughter at an early age. While singular in her achievements, she was far from alone in her pursuits and received much support from talented, dedicated women all along the way. Ginsburg has been a pioneer for gender equality throughout her distinguished career. In the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice and co-founder of the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, "Women's rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy." WRP gratefully acknowledges the work of intern Sandra Pullman in researching and drafting this Tribute.
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