50 Fun Facts About Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Which rap star's stage name inspired the nickname a law student gave Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Tumblr?

The Notorious B.I.G. lent his name to the Notorious R.B.G., a nickname law student Shana Knizhnik coined after a fiery voting rights dissent.

Which exercise could Ruth Bader Ginsburg do twenty of in a session with trainer Bryant Johnson before turning 80?

Push-ups were part of her twice-weekly sessions with Johnson, a former Army reservist, which began after cancer treatment in 1999 left her weak.

On which late-night host's show did Ruth Bader Ginsburg rule that a hot dog counts as a sandwich?

Stephen Colbert joined her gym workout in 2018 and put the question to her; she ruled that under his definition of a sandwich, a hot dog qualifies.

Which insect did researchers name after Ruth Bader Ginsburg because its neck plate resembles her lace collar?

A praying mantis got the name Ilomantis ginsburgae in 2016, and the species was identified from female rather than male specimens, a nod to her fight for equality.

Which conservative justice did Ruth Bader Ginsburg consider her closest colleague on the Supreme Court?

Antonin Scalia and Ginsburg often dined together, and the pair had already served side by side on the D.C. Circuit appeals court in the 1980s.

Which Saturday Night Live cast member began playing Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2015, capping each insult with a dance?

Kate McKinnon had her version of the justice call the insults Ginsburns, and took the character to a sketch at the 2016 Republican convention.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg joked in 2016 that she might move to which country if Donald Trump became president?

New Zealand was her quip in a July 2016 interview; she later apologized for commenting on a presidential candidate, calling her remarks ill advised.

Which household job did Martin Ginsburg take over because his wife Ruth Bader Ginsburg was famously terrible at it?

Cooking became Martin's domain and he grew into an accomplished French chef; after he died, a fellow justice's wife published his recipes as Chef Supreme.

Which president nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, where the Senate confirmed her by 96 votes to 3?

Bill Clinton picked her to replace the retiring Byron White, making her the first Jewish justice since Abe Fortas resigned in 1969.

In which art form did Ruth Bader Ginsburg appear on stage in non-speaking walk-on roles, including in Die Fledermaus?

Opera drew her on stage as an extra more than once, and in 2016 she spoke lines she had written herself in The Daughter of the Regiment.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court; who was the first, retiring in 2006?

Sandra Day O'Connor served alongside her for more than a decade, and the two are the joint subject of Linda Hirshman's book Sisters in Law.

In which New York City borough was Ruth Bader Ginsburg born and raised, the daughter of a Jewish emigrant from Odesa?

Brooklyn was home to her family's Flatbush household, and in 2023 a public hospital bearing her name opened in the borough, with a bronze statue of her in its lobby.

Which English actress played the young Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 2018 film On the Basis of Sex?

Felicity Jones starred opposite Armie Hammer as husband Marty, and the real justice makes a cameo appearance in the film.

Who was confirmed to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat shortly before the 2020 presidential election?

Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in on October 26, 2020, although Ginsburg had dictated a wish not to be replaced until a new president was installed.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 1996 majority opinion ended the male-only admissions policy of which state-run college?

Virginia Military Institute had offered a separate program for women instead, which she likened to Texas once creating a separate law school for Black students.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 2007 dissent urged Congress to act, inspiring a fair pay law named for which Goodyear worker?

Lilly Ledbetter had sued over years of lower pay than male colleagues; the Court ruled she had filed too late, and Congress later made such claims easier to win.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Shelby County v. Holder dissent likened scrapping a voting rule to discarding what in a rainstorm?

An umbrella, she wrote, should not be thrown away just because you are not getting wet; the 2013 ruling had struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 2014 dissent opposed letting which retailer drop contraception coverage on religious grounds?

Hobby Lobby won a decision she called one of startling breadth, and musician Jonathan Mann later turned part of her dissent into a song.

Which president met with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to nudge her toward retiring while his party still held the Senate?

Barack Obama made the case in 2013, but she refused, saying she would stay as long as she was mentally sharp enough to do the job.

What is the name of the decorative lace collar that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore over her robes and collected worldwide?

A jabot in black and gold signalled a dissent, while a yellow and cream one, a gift from her law clerks, marked a majority opinion.

At which Ivy League university did Ruth Bader Ginsburg earn her first degree and meet husband-to-be Martin at 17?

Cornell awarded her a government degree in 1954 as the highest-ranking woman in her class and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

From which law school did Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduate tied for first in her class after transferring from Harvard?

Columbia later made her its first tenured woman law professor; she had transferred there when her husband took a job in New York City.

At which organization did Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-found the Women's Rights Project in 1972 and become general counsel?

The American Civil Liberties Union project took her to the Supreme Court six times between 1973 and 1976, and she won five of those cases.

Which landmark ruling did Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticize for cutting short a democratic movement to change state laws?

Roe v. Wade, she argued on its 40th anniversary, halted a growing drive to liberalize abortion laws that might have built a more durable consensus.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only woman on the Supreme Court from 2006 until who joined her on the bench in 2009?

Sonia Sotomayor's arrival ended a three-year stretch in which Ginsburg, for the first time, read several of her dissents aloud from the bench in one term.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's courtroom wins for women's rights earned her comparison with which earlier Supreme Court justice?

Thurgood Marshall was the comparison first drawn in 1985 by Erwin Griswold, the Harvard dean said to have once asked why she was taking a man's place.

After Ruth Bader Ginsburg's final Supreme Court argument, William Rehnquist joked about putting whom on the new dollar?

Susan B. Anthony was his suggestion; Ginsburg considered answering that women would not settle for tokens, but chose to say nothing.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is believed to be the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at which kind of event, in 2013?

A same-sex wedding between Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser and economist John Roberts was the occasion, in the summer the Court bolstered such marriage rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave her blessing for a toy version of herself to cameo in which 2019 animated film?

The Lego Movie 2 shows her mini-figurine in a brief segment, and the figure was then sold in toy sets after the film's release.

Where was Ruth Bader Ginsburg buried beside her husband Martin, a former Army officer, in September 2020?

Arlington National Cemetery received her eleven days after her death, once thousands of mourners had filed past her casket outside the Court.

Which president made Ruth Bader Ginsburg a federal appeals judge thirteen years before she joined the Supreme Court?

Jimmy Carter named her to the D.C. Circuit in 1980, two years after a law expanding the federal bench stressed naming women and minorities as judges.

What happened to Ruth Bader Ginsburg at an Oklahoma Social Security office after she became pregnant at 21?

She was demoted while her husband was stationed at Fort Sill as an Army Reserve officer, an early taste of the discrimination she later fought in court.

Which language did Ruth Bader Ginsburg learn in the early 1960s to co-author a book on court procedure?

Swedish took her to Lund University to work with jurist Anders Bruzelius, and seeing a heavily pregnant judge still at work there shaped her views on equality.

Which Russian-born novelist taught Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was an undergraduate in the early 1950s?

Vladimir Nabokov was on her college's faculty, and she later named him as a major influence on her development as a writer.

Martin Ginsburg, husband of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, became an internationally prominent attorney in which legal specialty?

Tax law made Martin's name at the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and he later became a law professor at Georgetown when the couple moved to Washington.

At which university did Ruth Bader Ginsburg land her first professorship in 1963, on lower pay than male colleagues?

Rutgers justified the gap by telling her that her husband had a very good job; she was then one of fewer than twenty women law professors in the country.

Which childhood nickname did Ruth Bader Ginsburg's older sister Marylin give her when she was a baby?

Kiki came from Marylin calling her a kicky baby; Marylin died of meningitis at the age of six, when her little sister was just 14 months old.

Ruth was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's second name; which first name was dropped because several classmates shared it?

Joan was so common in her class that her mother, Celia, suggested the teacher call her Ruth instead to avoid confusion.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Reed v. Reed brief helped extend to women the Equal Protection Clause of which amendment?

The Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee reached women through this 1971 case, for which she had volunteered to write the brief and cited two German rulings.

Craig v. Boren, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped win, ended an Oklahoma law treating the sexes differently over what?

Buying beer was legal for Oklahoma women at 18 but for men only at 21; the 1976 ruling created the intermediate scrutiny test for laws based on sex.

Which Supreme Court justice refused to hire Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a clerk in 1960 because she was a woman?

Felix Frankfurter turned her down despite a strong recommendation from a Harvard professor; she clerked for district judge Edmund Palmieri in New York from 1959 to 1961.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg won Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld in 1975 for which kind of male client denied Social Security benefits?

A widowed father could not collect the benefits a widow received while raising a child; she picked male plaintiffs to show such laws hurt both sexes.

In Egypt in 2012, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she might look to which country's constitution rather than the U.S. one?

South Africa won her praise for a far more recent constitution that deliberately built an independent judiciary and embraced human rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg apologized in 2016 after calling which athlete's national anthem protest really dumb?

Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand drew the remark in a Katie Couric interview; she later called her comments inappropriately dismissive and harsh.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at home in Washington in September 2020 on the eve of which Jewish holiday?

Rosh Hashanah began that evening, and a rabbi noted a theme of the holiday: the very righteous die at the very end of the year because they are needed until then.

The Hebrew motto in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's chambers, urging the pursuit of justice, comes from which book of the Bible?

Deuteronomy supplies the phrase, which opens by saying justice twice; she displayed an artist's rendering of it as a reminder of her heritage and her duty.

Which Republican senator suggested Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the president as a Supreme Court nominee?

Orrin Hatch's suggestion reached the president through attorney general Janet Reno, and the bar association's judiciary committee gave her its highest rating.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she hoped to match the nearly 23 years served by which earlier Supreme Court justice?

Louis Brandeis's mark fell to her in April 2016; by then she had named a new model, John Paul Stevens, who retired at 90 after nearly 35 years.

Daniel Stiepleman, who wrote the Ruth Bader Ginsburg film On the Basis of Sex, is related to the justice in what way?

Her nephew wrote the script, which made the 2014 Black List of the best unproduced screenplays four years before the film reached cinemas.

In 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped Orthodox Jewish lawyers make which phrase optional on Supreme Court bar certificates?

In the year of our Lord kept observant lawyers from displaying their certificates; after she objected, members could choose how the date is inscribed.