Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15, 1933, Brooklyn, New York) is an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining the Court, she was a professor at Rutgers University School of Law, Newark School of Law and Columbia Law School, a litigator for the ACLU, and a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. During much of her life, she has been active in the women’s rights movement, and is today considered a member of the Court’s liberal wing. She is the second woman and first Jewish woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Ginsburg has consistently supported abortion rights and joined in the Supreme Court’s opinion striking down Nebraska’s partial-birth abortion law in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000). She did criticize the court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade BUT did so because she contended a more moderate approach would have created a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights.

She is considered to be part of the “liberal wing” in the current court and has a Segal-Cover score of 0.680 placing her as the most liberal (by that measure) of current justices, although more moderate than those of many other post-War justices. In a 2003 statistical analysis of Supreme Court voting patterns, Ginsburg emerged the second most liberal member of the Court (behind Justice Stevens).

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 Apr 2007, 20:58 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 May 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg&oldid=126941498>.

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