Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known to the world as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was a pioneering American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. Nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, she was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, following Sandra Day O'Connor. Over a tenure that spanned nearly three decades, Ginsburg evolved from a moderate consensus-builder into a cultural icon, celebrated for her fierce dissents and unwavering commitment to gender equality and civil rights.

Born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, Ginsburg grew up in a working-class neighborhood. Her early life was marked by tragedy; her older sister, Marilyn, died of meningitis at age six, and her mother, Celia Bader, passed away just before Ginsburg graduated from high school. Despite these losses, Ginsburg excelled academically, earning her bachelor's degree from Cornell University. She married Martin D. Ginsburg and became a mother before enrolling at Harvard Law School, where she was one of only a few women in her class. She later transferred to Columbia Law School, graduating joint first in her class. During the early 1960s, she worked with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, learned Swedish, and co-authored a book with Swedish jurist Anders Bruzelius, an experience that profoundly shaped her views on gender equality.

Ginsburg began her legal career as a professor at Rutgers Law School and later Columbia Law School, where she became the first female member of the law faculty to attain tenure. In the 1970s, she dedicated herself to advocating for gender equality and women's rights as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, serving on its board of directors and as one of its general counsel. She argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court, strategically dismantling laws that discriminated on the basis of sex. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until her Supreme Court appointment in 1993. During her time on the high court, she authored landmark majority opinions in cases such as United States v. Virginia (1996), which struck down the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy, and Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), which affirmed the rights of individuals with disabilities.

Between Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement in 2006 and the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, Ginsburg was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. During that period, she became more forceful in her dissents, most notably in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), where her impassioned reading from the bench prompted Congress to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Despite two bouts with cancer and public pleas from liberal scholars, Ginsburg declined to retire in 2013 or 2014 when President Barack Obama and a Democratic-controlled Senate could have confirmed her successor. She died at her home in Washington, D.C., on September 18, 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. Her death created a vacancy that was filled 39 days later by Amy Coney Barrett, marking one of the most significant rightward shifts in the Court's history. Ginsburg's legacy endures as a testament to her tireless pursuit of justice and equality, inspiring generations of lawyers and activists.