On Friday, September 19, the world lost the gender equality and women’s rights champion, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She received a BA from Cornell, where she was the highest-ranking female in her graduating class, and went on to graduate from Columbia Law School, where she was tied for first in her class. After law school, Justice Ginsburg served as a clerk for the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She went on to teach at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, where she became its first female tenured professor. In 1972, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU and led the project until her appointment as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. She was nominated as an associate justice of the Supreme Court by President Clinton and took her seat on August 10, 1993.
As the nation remembers her life and her numerous accomplishments, the Connecticut Bar Association most recently recalls the time she took time out of her day to attend the CBA Young Lawyers Section sponsored swearing in of 33 CBA members to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in May 2018. The group was honored with a private visit from Justice Ginsburg in which she took a photo with the attorneys and answered questions.
Other CBA members might recall when she was a visiting scholar lecturer at UConn School of Law in March 2004. Justice Ginsburg spoke about behind-the-scenes customs of the US Supreme Court and current issues of the times, including the Court's recusal policy and the reliance on foreign law in its own jurisprudence.
We deeply feel the great loss of Justice Ginsburg in our legal community and send our condolences to her family. It is an amazing part of her legacy that she touched so many lives personally here in Connecticut and throughout the world.