Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I Dissent

Eye of past US Supreme Court Justice, from the Still I Rise series

LED Neckpiece, emiko oye © 2024
Collaboration with Matt Cantu for LED components

Repurposed, recycled and chromed LEGO®, Argentium and sterling silver, repurposed & restrung Hematite bead necklace from artist’s paternal grandmother, silk cord, patinated sterling silver lobster clasp, recycled steel label, LED filament, AAA battery holder with JST PH connector, 10 Ohm resistor, 2 AAA rechargeable batteries

Eye dimensions in inches: 5 W x 3.75 H x 2.625 D
Necklace dimensions:  0.33 bead diameter x 22 inside circumference

Ruth Bader Ginsburg photograph by Sebastian Kim

Portrait of Ruth Bader GInsburg by Sebastian Kim, 2015

About Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1933-2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg fundamentally shifted the foundations of life for American women. In her early career there were hundreds of state and federal laws that restricted the rights of women. In no small part due to the work of Ginsburg, the shift in cultural attitudes and legal precedent on behalf of women has been nothing less than a revolution. 

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School and acquired her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. Despite her excellent credentials, she struggled to find employment as a lawyer, because of her gender and the fact that she was a mother. At the time, only a very small percentage of lawyers in the United States were women, and only two women had ever served as federal judges. From 1961-1963, Ginsberg served as a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure.

She was a professor of law at Rutgers University in 1963-1972, and Columbia Law School in 1972-1980 and in 1971, and was a leading figure in gender-discrimination litigation. She co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union and served as the ACLU’s general counsel until 1980 when she was appointed a judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

She was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Clinton, as the second woman and first Jewish woman to become a Supreme Court Justice where she spent the last years of her life working diligently to remind us that, as she said, “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

(Above text are excerpts from The Notorious RBG, California Commission on the Status of Women and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Britannica)

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Gender equality

  • United States v. Virginia (1996): Ginsburg wrote the opinion that qualified women could not be denied admission to the Virginia Military Institute 

  • Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007): Ginsburg read her dissent aloud to bring attention to the gender pay gap 

  • Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974): Ginsburg's work paved the way for this act, which allowed women to apply for credit cards and mortgages without a male co-signer 

Supreme Court 

  • Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): Ginsburg agreed with the majority of judges to overturn the ban on same-sex marriages in the US

Other accomplishments 

  • Founding counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project

  • Designing and teaching law courses on gender discrimination laws

  • Writing the first casebook on sex discrimination

  • Establishing the first legal journal focused on women