page_title: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
section_title: Other activities
hierarchical_section_title: Ruth Bader Ginsburg / Other activities
caption_attribution_description: Bill of Rights Day Naturalization Ceremony at the National Archives in Washington, DC, on December 14, 2018. NARA photo by Jeff Reed.
context_page_description: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on June 14, 1993 and has served since August 10, 1993. Ginsburg became the second of four female justices to be confirmed to the Court after Sandra Day O'Connor, the two others being Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both of whom are still serving in 2020. Following O'Connor's retirement in 2006 and until Sotomayor joined the Court in 2009, she was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with her dissents, which were noted by legal observers and in popular culture. She is generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court. Ginsburg has authored notable majority opinions, including United States v. Virginia, Olmstead v. L.C., and Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.
  Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother, one of her biggest sources of encouragement, died shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school.
context_section_description: At his request, Ginsburg administered Vice President Al Gore's oath of office to a second term during the second inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1997. She was the third woman to administer an inaugural oath of office. Ginsburg is believed to be the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex wedding, performing the August 31, 2013, ceremony of Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and John Roberts, a government economist. Earlier that summer, the court had bolstered same-sex marriage rights in two separate cases. Ginsburg believed the issue being settled led same-sex couples to ask her to officiate as there was no longer the fear of compromising rulings on the issue.
  The Supreme Court bar formerly inscribed its certificates "in the year of our Lord", which some Orthodox Jews opposed, and asked Ginsburg to object to. She did so, and due to her objection, Supreme Court bar members have since been given other choices of how to inscribe the year on their certificates.
  Despite their ideological differences, Ginsburg considered Scalia her closest colleague on the court. The two justices often dined and attended the opera together. In her spare time, Ginsburg has appeared in several operas in non-speaking supernumerary roles such as Die Fledermaus (2003) and Ariadne auf Naxos (1994 and 2009 with Scalia), and spoke lines penned by herself in The Daughter of the Regiment (2016).
  In January 2012, Ginsburg went to Egypt for four days of discussions with judges, law school faculty, law school students, and legal experts. In an interview with Al Hayat TV, she stated that the first requirement of a new constitution should be that it would "safeguard basic fundamental human rights like our First Amendment". Asked if Egypt should model its new constitution on those of other nations, she said Egypt should be "aided by all Constitution-writing that has gone on since the end of World War II", she cited the United States Constitution and Constitution of South Africa as documents she might look to if drafting a new constitution. She said the U.S. was fortunate to have a constitution authored by "very wise" men but pointed out that in the 1780s, no women were able to participate directly in the process, and slavery still existed in the U.S.
  During three separate interviews that were conducted in July 2016, Ginsburg criticized presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, telling The New York Times and the Associated Press that she did not want to think about the possibility of a Trump presidency. She joked that she might consider moving to New Zealand. She later apologized for commenting on the presumptive Republican nominee, calling her remarks "ill advised".
  Ginsburg's first book, My Own Words published by Simon & Schuster, was released October 4, 2016. The book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover nonfiction at No. 12. While promoting her book in October 2016 during an interview with Katie Couric, Ginsburg responded to a question about Colin Kaepernick choosing not to stand for the national anthem at sporting events calling the protest "really dumb". She later apologized for her criticism calling her earlier comments "inappropriately dismissive and harsh" and noting she had not been familiar with the incident and should have declined to respond to the question.
  In 2018, Ginsburg expressed her support for the #MeToo movement, which encourages women to speak up about their experiences with sexual harassment. She told an audience, "It's about time. For so long women were silent, thinking there was nothing you could do about it, but now the law is on the side of women, or men, who encounter harassment and that's a good thing." She also reflected on her own experiences with gender discrimination and sexual harassment, including a time when a chemistry professor at Cornell unsuccessfully attempted to trade her exam answers for sex.
caption: Ginsburg speaks at a naturalization ceremony at the National Archives in 2018.
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