1L

Introduction to Law

Midterm Mini Thesis

 

Ruther Bader Ginsburg: A united states Justice who made a mark in the field of law

Introduction

Born on March 15, 1933, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the United States was an Associate Justice of the supreme court of the United States.  She was the second born daughter to her parents Nathan and Celia. Her parents were in the low-income working class and live in Brooklyn, New York.  Celia, Ginsburg’s mother, was a significant influence on her life and taught her high values of being independent through handwork and good education.  Despite not having attended college, herself Celia worked in a local garment making factory that would enable her to pay for college fee for her siblings.This was an act of great generosity and kindness that forever inspired and impressed Ginsburg.  

Early Life and Education

After high school, she proceeded to Cornel University, where she continued with her great excellence in academia and graduated on top of her class in 1954, the same year of her graduation. She married Martin, a law student she had met while at the University.  After her graduation, she paused her studies in order to concentrate her effort on her new young family.   In 1955 she got her first-born child. Almost at the same time, her husband was drafted for military service.  However, upon her husband’s return from the service, she joined Harvard Law school.  In 156, which was her first year in law school, her husband was diagnosed with cancer. However, Ginsburg’s own personal and family struggles did not deter or decrease her academic success or goals. She quickly took the challenge of tending her sick husband and keeping him up with his schoolwork while still remaining at the top of her law class.  Been a young mother, she had to tackle the challenge of being in a male-dominated career (she was one of the nine women out of a 500 law students’ class). Just like any other young woman in law career in the 1950s, she faced gender-based discrimination even from authorities for taking what was considered a man’s spot in Harvard Law school.  She managed to rise to the position of the first female of Harvard Law review.  Through her dedicated support, her husband Martin graduated from Harvard, and having recovered from cancer, moved to New York to take up a job offer at a private law firm.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg had to transfer to Columbia law school whet she also managed to serve in the law review.  In 1959 she graduated at the top of her class from Columbia law school.  

During the rest of the 1970s, Ginsburg was the main figure in sexual orientation separation prosecution. In 1972 she became establishing insight of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and coauthored a graduate school casebook on sexual orientation separation. Around the same time, she turned into the primary tenured female employee at Columbia Law School. She wrote many law survey articles and drafted or added to numerous Supreme Court briefs on the issue of sexual orientation separation. During the decade, she contended under the steady gaze of the Supreme Court multiple times, winning five cases.

         Attorney and a justice

Ginsburg experienced gender-based discrimination that most elite women face in their careers in the 1960s despite having shined throughout her academics.  She faced serious difficulties in trying to find a job until her former professor intervened by taking a stern refusal to recommend any graduate before the US district judge Edmund L. hired Ginsburg, at least in the position of court clerk .She was finally hired as a clerk, a position she served for a period of two years.  Later she was offered various positions in different law firms, but she always had to take lower pay than her male counterparts-even the lesser experienced by virtue of being a woman.  She was, however, very determined to pursue civil procedure and so she joined Columbian Project on International civil procedures. It is this project that immersed her fully into Swedish culture due to the international exposure it accorded to her. As soon as she returned to the United States, she took up a job offer as a professor at Rutgers Law school (from 1963- 1972). Later she moved to lecture at Columbia. In the 1970s, she took a proactive role in the American women’s right project, which campaigned against gender-based discrimination in the labor market. She managed to argue six landmark cases in the supreme court.  While advocating for gender equality, she did not only focus on women but also men who were facing discrimination.  

In 1980 she was appointed by Jimmy Carter to Court of appeals in DC. She accepted the appointment and served in the position up to 1993 when Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme court of the United States.  As a justice, she continued with her advocacy for Women’s rights. For instance, in 1996, she wrote the opinion of the majority in the United States vs. Virginia held that women who qualified could not on any ground be denied entry into Virginia Military Institute.  A slow but calculated approach characterizes her style bench style. For instance, instead of focusing on the whole aspect of the gender-based issue, she focused on its component, tackling one at a time and moving unto the next. This was important as she managed to send a message to the legislators; on what they can and what they cannot do.  Her argument was clear and precise; that social change in the United States could not come out of the courts but from Congress.  She did not refrain from giving her guidance and opinion as long as he felt the need o to do so.

Milestone judicial opinions

Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co

In this case, the plaintiff, who was a female worker and underpaid as compared to her male counterparts, sued her employer under Title VII. However, she was denied relief under the statute of limitations.  The fact that this case was in line with her passion drew her attention and broke the status quo and the traditions by writing a very colloquial version of dissent and reading int out from the bench. She then went further to call upon the Congress to undo this form of interpretation of the law as she deemed it improper in her dissent.   She worked together with President Obama administration to develop and pass the Lilly Led better Fair pay Act of 2009. She is very proud of this law- as a matter of fact, she a copy of the act in her office.  

King v. Burwell.

In this case, Ginsburg took the majority side in the consecutive Supreme court rulings. For instance, on June 25, she joined six other justices in upholding the critical component of the Affordable Care Act. This decision allows the Federal government to provide American citizens who healthcare through exchanges with some subsidies irrespective of the insurance companies’ nature.

Bergefell v. Hodges

In this case, the United States’ supreme court handed down a historic decision that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states in a 5-4 majority ruling.  Ginsburg has always depicted support of the idea of same-sex marriages; she has officiated various sex same marriages and always rose to challenge any arguments against such marriages.  She was, therefore, very instrumental in the final decision of this case and joined by five other justices, she read her dissent opinion.

International Perspective 

Looking to worldwide perspectives of law, expressly on questions identified with modifying, is one enormous point that climbs up out of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s twenty years on the Supreme Court. This viewpoint dates to her calling as a rehearsing legitimate advocate. The fundamental issue she taught to the court, in 1971, included references to two cases from the then-West German Constitutional Court. Ruth Ginsburg said that she didn’t expect the court to imply these cases as it should suspect, anyway rather accepted that they might have “a positive mental impact. West German Constitutional Court was doing, the Justices may consider: ‘How a long ways behind would we have the option to be?'” Since that time, she has had any impact in trim our — and the court’s — making the thought of the spot of worldwide and a new law in US rule. Her years on the court have been independent by its making care to certified movements around the globe, comparably as an attestation that the United States should keep conscious of these changes. 

While dependably mindful of the way that solitary US law gives a keeping viewpoint for the Court, Justice Ginsburg has given a basic voice to looking past our edges to “add to the store of information proper to the strategy of trying inquiries.” No choice of hers ideal epitomizes this methodology over her agreeing choice in Grutter v. Bollinger. Resulting to being kept admission to the University from getting Michigan Law School, Barbara Grutter, a white lady, announced that she had been duped subject to her race and sued to challenge the genuineness of the school’s administrative methodology as for minorities in the public field attestations program. The court found that the confirmations cycle didn’t excuse the Fourteenth Amendment’s relative security ensure, and that grouping was enough convincing energy to allow race as entered by the doctoral level school’s attestations program. 

As she should suspect in Grutter, Justice Ginsburg depended on overall essential open doors law, and expressly upon two United Countries Conventions, to help her decisions. Referring to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, she saw that: The Court’s acknowledgment that race-cognizant exercises “must have a genuine endpoint,” agrees with the overall comprehension . . . of the authoritative procedure as for minorities in the public field. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Types of Racial Discrimination, approved by the United States in 1994 . . . trains [that administrative methodology as for minorities in the public eye measures] “will for no situation incorporate hence the assistance of clashing or separate rights for unquestionable racial get-togethers after the targets for which they were taken have been refined

Depending further on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Victimization Women, she noticed that governmental policy regarding minorities in society programs are passable; however, should be impermanent estimates restricted to the time allotment needed to accomplish accepted uniformity. Moreover, her disagreeing supposition in the buddy instance of Gratz v. Bollingerreferred to her utilization of worldwide law in Grutter. Separating among harmful and healing segregation, she expressed that. 

“contemporary basic freedoms records draw only this line; they recognize arrangements of mistreatment and measures intended to quicken true balance.” Justice Ginsburg had been pondering governmental policy regarding minorities in society through a basic global liberties focal point sometime before these cases arrived at the court.

Declaration of Human Rights13 — and properly thus, given that both governmental policy regarding minorities in society and the Declaration itself remain at the crossing point of the common/political and financial/social rights systems. She portrayed how governmental policy regarding minorities in society programs expect to review noteworthy and proceeding with dissents of the privilege to uniformity, just as to propel the financial and social prosperity of parties lopsidedly affected by destitution, absence of value training and medical care, or joblessness. 

Shows that she would later refer to in Grutter, she expressed that the records “indicates that governmental policy regarding minorities in society isn’t really in conflict with common freedoms standards, however may draw power from them, specifically, from the remedies on balance combined with arrangements on financial and social well-being. “Indeed, the Declaration’s social government assistance subject lines up with the possibility that a different understudy body could improve the instructive experience. Article 26 expresses that government-funded training “will be coordinated” to “promoting getting, resilience, and fellowship among all countries, racial or strict groups.” As Justice Ginsburg clarified, “Governmental policy regarding minorities in society so coordinated may separate a larger number of hindrances than it raises by empowering individuals from assorted parties to partake in the regular business of living, working, and learning together.” 

Justice Ginsburg’s public talks have supported the act of looking past our outskirts for direction: “The US legal framework will be the less fortunate, I have asked, in the event that we don’t both offer our experience with, and gain from, general sets of laws with values and a guarantee to majority rules system like our own. American lawyers dealing with basic liberties issues, regardless of whether in the US or abroad, discover her eagerness to think about the practices furthermore, rationale of the global network particularly significant. As Justice Ginsburg herself has noticed, this methodology lines up with our history. The Framers of our Constitution comprehended that the nation would be limited by global law and conceded Congress the authority to characterize and rebuff . . . Offenses illegal of Nations.” Our first Chief Justice, John Jay, composed that “by having a spot among the countries of the earth, [the United States had] become manageable to the laws of nations.” In the Paquete Habana, the Supreme Court broadly clarified that “international law is important for our law.” 

Similarly, as critically, nonetheless, this methodology flags our lowliness, fortifies the estimation of the interview and near discourse, and perceives that we have a lot to gain from others’ advancements as we keep on cooperating against basic shameful acts. As Justice Ginsburg has so expressively expressed: “Comparative investigation earnestly is pertinent to the assignment of deciphering constitutions and implementing common liberties. We are the washouts in the event that we disregard what others can enlighten us concerning attempts to destroy predisposition against ladies, minorities, and other hindered gatherings. For nonsensical bias and rank separation are irresistible in our reality. In this reality, just as the assurance to counter it, we as a whole offer”.

Judicial philosophy and impact on the American legal system

Judicial philosophy refers to the intense personal believes upon which a certain Justice basis their legal opinions and decisions. Ginsburg’s judicial philosophy is a living constitution. This is a jurisprudence that fosters the belief that the constitution has to adapt to changing times to fit in the costly. According to this philosophy, the law has to take on different meanings based on the time and circumstances of its interpretation. This jurisprudence strongly opposes the textualism philosophy that pays much attention to the original texts and their meanings during the interpretation. Ginsburg’s impact on the American legal system is a force to reckon with right now and will be many years after she is gone.  First and foremost, she has challenged the status quo and proved that law is a male-dominated career. Despite having faced so many challenges at the onset of her legal career, she has risen over and above all, to be one of the most honored Justices in American history.  Her significant contribution has been advocating and pushing for laws that are aimed at going away with gender discrimination, especially in the labor market entry and remuneration.   Her other key contributions, including advocating anti-racial society that is characterized by inclusivity. She is a stern defender of the rights of minority groups such as black Americans, a same-sex couple, and people living with disabilities. Her overall approach seems to rely on the principle of an equal society.

Conclusion: A Legacy that lives on

All through her legal practice Justice Ginsburg fought for ladies and indefatigably battled for sex balance. She turned into the second female law educator at Rutgers University, battled for equivalent compensation, and was the principal tenured female law teacher at Columbia. Ginsburg impacted the lives of millions the nation over and world. Among the innumerable significant achievements of Ginsburg, one especially sticks out. She contended six cases before the Supreme Court — and won five. She contended cases rotating around sexual orientation segregation for ladies as well as for men. She attempted to ensure all were dealt with similarly, and ladies were supported and regarded equivalent to men

Justice Ginsburg did not just turn into the main thrust for sexual orientation. Justice, however, is one of the main legal counselors and Supreme Court Justices to turn into a mainstream society symbol. Her life has been portrayed in motion pictures and books for quite a long time, bringing about a fan base brimming with goal-oriented ladies that look to her to act as an illustration of what is feasible for their lives. She has filled in as motivation, and despite the fact that she will be remembered fondly, her heritage will progress forward. She was regularly the main lady in the room and has made ready not to be in the room but have a lasting seat at the table. The case of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will proceed as ladies’ endeavor to discover their place in a world overwhelmed by men. Her life is a guide to many and inspiration to legal practitioners than anyone the power to initiate change.

 

Bibliography 

 

Baugh, J. A., Smith, C. E., Hensley, T. R., & Johnson, S. P. (1994). Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Preliminary Assessment. U. Tol. L., Rev.26, 1.

Ginsburg, R. B. (2004). An Open Discussion with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Connecticut Law Review36, 1033-1048.

Metzger, G., Gluck, A., & Ginsburg, R. B. (2013). A Conversation with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Colum. J. Gender & L.25, 6.

Siegel, N. S., & Siegel, R. B. (2010). Struck by stereotype: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination. Duke Law Journal59(4), 771-798.

Sorock, Carolyn E. “Closing the gap legislatively: consequences of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.” Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 85 (2010): 1199.

Koh, Harold Hongju. “International law as part of our law.” The American Journal of International Law 98, no. 1 (2004): 43-57.

Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, and Deborah Jones Merritt. “Affirmative action: an international human rights dialogue.” Cardozo L. Rev. 21 (1999): 253.

Krieger, Nancy, Pamela D. Waterman, Cathy Hartman, Lisa M. Bates, Anne M. Stoddard, Margaret M. Quinn, Glorian Sorensen, and Elizabeth M. Barbeau. “Social hazards on the job: workplace abuse, sexual harassment, and racial discrimination—a study of black, Latino, and white low-income women and men workers in the United States.” International Journal of Health Services 36, no. 1 (2006): 51-85.

Henkin, Louis. “The universality of the concept of human rights.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506, no. 1 (1989): 10-16

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