The House that Ruth Built: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gender and Justice
![handle is hein.journals/nylshr14 and id is 339 raw text is: THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT:
JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG,
GENDER AND JUSTICE
Carol Pressman
I. INTRODUCTION
In 1959, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and eleven other female law
students graduated from Columbia Law School.' Despite graduating first
in her class, she received no offers from law firms. I applied for
clerkships to every judge in the southem district, in the eastern district, and
again, no one was interested.2 Finding her first job out of law school was
difficult.' According to Ginsburg, I had three strikes against me. I was
Jewish, I was a woman, and I was a mother.4 I was fortunate to finally
get a clerkship because one of my teachers worked very hard on my case,
and persuaded [Judge Edmund Palmieri, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York that] I would do the work and I wouldn't be running
home to take care of [my daughter] Jane constantly.5 After teaching at
Rutgers Law School, Ginsburg eventually established herself at Columbia
* The House that Ruth Built was the name given to Yankee Stadium and refers to their
star player, George Herman The Babe Ruth. MIKEY MANTLE & PHIL PEPE, MY FAVORITE
SuMMER 1956 x (1991). Ruth led the Yankees to four World Series wins and hit sixty home
runs during the 1927 season. BASEBALL LEGENDS at 251 (1997).
'See Pimetime Live: Top of the Class'- Ruth Bader Ginsburg (ABC television broadcast,
Dec. 29, 1994) (explaining that Ginsburg's graduating class at Columbia Law School consisted
of twelve women and 341 men).
2 Primetime Live, supra note 1.
' See Stephanie B. Goldberg, The Second Woman Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Talks
Candidly About a Changing Society, 79 ABA J. 40, 41 (1993). Ginsburg was turned down
by Justice Felix Frankfurter, who said he wasn't ready to hire a woman, and by Judge
Learned Hand, who was concerned that his off-color language was too raw for a lady.
ELEANOR H. AYER, RuTH BADER GINSBURG: FIRE AND STEEL ON THE SUPREME COURT 34,
35 (1994).
4 Goldberg, supra note 3, at 41.
'Id.
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The House that Ruth Built: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gender and Justice
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