R  uth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) built her career on fighting discrimination against women. Following lawschool, she learned Swedish while working with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, and co-authored a book on Swedish civil procedure. This experience greatly influenced her opinions on gender equality .

As a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), RBG argued more than 300 cases, involving issues of speech, due process, equal protection, religious freedom, and other civil liberties. She served thirteen years as a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit and 27 years as a Supreme Court Justice where she authored more than 200 opinions. Justice Ginsburg was an energetic questioner whose legal writings were often scathing.

During her Supreme Court tenure, Justice Ginsburg came to be known for her tough jurisprudence, contemplative and often dissenting views, as well as for her unique variety of collars worn atop her staid black court robes. These RBG-style sartorial additions were subtle visual metaphors for her opinions; they spoke volumes before she ever uttered a word. Her “Majority Opinion” collar was worn when she was to read the opinion of the court, and her “Dissenting Opinion” collar was donned to express her condemnation of the court’s opinion. She also wore the latter the day after Donald Trump was elected President, though she had no dissenting opinion to read that day. Observers were left to speculate that she wore it to express her disapproval of the President-elect.

Some of her most notable court cases were Reed v. Reed, Frontiero v. Richardson, Craig v. Boren, Duren v. Missouri, United States v. Virginia, Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

Nicknamed “The Notorious RBG,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a pioneering legal mind who became a judicial icon and pop culture (s)hero later in life, inspiring many to take note of the function and importance of the United Sates Supreme Court.