On September 18th, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States passed away at her home in Washington after her battle with pancreatic cancer. This most recent bout was the Justice’s fourth such encounter with the disease, and is emblematic of her legacy as a tireless and dogged champion of the law. Justice Ginsburg provided an example and inspiration for generations of female lawyers that will continue long after her death.
Originally attending the Harvard School of Law, one of 8 female students in a class of 500, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School and graduated in a tie for first in her class in 1959. Eventually, Justice Ginsburg became the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law, establishing herself as a trailblazer in the profession. Ginsburg also displayed how passionate people can disagree and still have mutual respect. Reputedly, her best friend among the justices was former Justice Antonin Scalia, as far on the other side of the political spectrum from Justice Ginsburg as imaginable, yet their legal and philosophical sparring is legendary.
Justice Ginsburg leaves a trail of milestone judicial opinions, and dissents, in her wake. Such decisions include United States v. Virginia (1996), which ruled that the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admission policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment, Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (2000), an important Supreme Court ruling concerning who would bring a case to court, and even while recovering from lung surgery, she wrote the majority opinion in Timbs v. Indiana (2019), a slapping down of overzealous civil asset forfeiture by local, state, and federal government.
Justice Ginsburg was a lioness of the law, an advocate for all, and shall be missed by us.
Written by Alexander W. Vollmer, attorney for Marquardt Law Firm, P.C.