“Today, my ACLU connection would probably disqualify me,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told students at a lecture series at Southern Methodist University’s law school. Before being nominated to the court in 1993 by Clinton (and confirmed 96-3), Ginsburg had spent time working as the Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Right Project. These days, she says, her work as a women’s rights attorney for the civil rights organization would prevent her from being confirmed by this Senate.
ThinkProgress calls her “single most important women’s rights attorney in American history” for her work with the ACLU. She was instrumental, as they note, in two particular cases: Reed v Reed and Craig v Boren. The first case marked the first instance in which SCOTUS ruled that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment applied to women. The second case resulted in a ruling declaring that gender discrimation laws “were subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny.” Her role in gender equality under the law in the United States has been unparalleled and indispensable. And that would probably mean that she would not be confirmed today.
Above: Via ThinkProgress, Ginsburg during her time with the ACLU.
(Source: thinkprogress.org)
