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PS 1010
23 Sep. 2020.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Civil Rights Rulings
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a name well known amongst many political platforms devoted her
career to civil rights which opened doors for many here in the United States. Ginsburg was born
in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. She briefly attended Harvard Law School and graduated from
Columbia Law School. She taught at Rutgers University Law School, as well as Columbia
University, where she became its first female tenured professor. She served as the director of the
Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union during the 1970s and was
appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980. Named to the U.S.
Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton, Ginsburg was the second woman in history, and the
first Jewish female to serve on the bench of the highest court. She served as an associate justice
for the Supreme Court of The United States from 1993 until she died on September 18, 2020,
due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer. Over her years on the bench, she has been
part of some historical rulings.
United States vs. Virginia
The United States vs. Virginia was a landmark case for Ginsburg as well as women and
the United States Military. In 1996, Virginia Military Institute (VMI) was the sole single sex
school for higher learning in the state of Virginia. The school was designed to prepare men for
leadership in the civilian life and military career with training not available anywhere else in the
state of Virginia using this “adversative method.” Methods instilled at VMI consisted of physical
and mental discipline for their cadets in order to instill in them a strong moral code. The United
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States sued the state of Virginia and VMI due to their acceptance rules and regulations
specifically in regard to only accepting males which was an alleged violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the constitution of the United States. According to the school, women were not
suited to train at the academy or tolerate its education style. As a result of this case, the school
implemented a program specifically for women, although the program was not in any remotely
equal to the men’s program. The judgement in court that was held concluded that policy
implemented by VMU in regard to not allowing women was unconstitutional under the Equal
Protection Clause. “Neither the goal of producing citizen soldiers nor VMI’s implementing
methodology is inherently unsuitable to women,” Ginsburg wrote. “Surely that goal is great
enough to accommodate women, who today count as citizens in our American democracy equal
in stature to men.” This case was a prime example of the highlight of Ginsburg’s career, which
