Learn More about Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Who knew an octogenarian former attorney could become a pop culture sensation? That probably wasn’t President Clinton’s plan when he appointed the gender equality and women’s rights activist to the Supreme Court in 1993, but 25 years later, Ginsburg is one of the court’s most recognized justices.

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Ginsburg is one of one hundred women featured in Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World, a collective biography that might deserve a spot on your bookshelf.

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg started out as a Tumblr blog focused on the justice’s feisty, fiery dissents, inspired by the fact that Justice Ginsburg made a point of reading her dissents from the bench instead of politely publishing them for private consumption. The resulting book is a quirky mix of biography, scrapbook, and legal commentary, but the best part is definitely its chronicling of the pop culture art (from tattoos to surrealist watercolors) that Ginsburg has inspired.

Ginsburg’s dissents are also the focus of I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark. Even older readers will appreciate this picture book biography, which includes information about Ginsburg’s work on the Court as well as her childhood, when the left-handed student protested being forced to write with her right hand and objected to being steered into home economics classes when she really wanted to take shop.

To read some of Ginsburg’s impassioned dissents for yourself, visit the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Reading List at the Library at Washington and Lee University. Sure, there are some legal complexities, but for the most part, you’ll be surprised by how readable and comprehensible Ginsburg’s legal writing is.

And finally, find out what Ginsburg thinks about everything from depictions of lawyers in opera to legal problems with wiretapping in My Own Words. The collection includes a broad selection of Ginsburg’s essays and opinions, from her days as a Cornell undergrad to her current role as Supreme Court justice.

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The 2018 documentary RBG celebrates Ginsburg's early activism, focusing on her early (and largely successful) efforts to redress gender gaps in business and public policy by arguing that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause applied to women. This may not seem controversial now, but it was groundbreaking at the time, and the film’s emotional resonance and buoyant spirit is a welcome note in challenging political times.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.) This was originally published in the summer 2018 issue of HSL.

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