Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Life in Photos

On September 18, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. Ginsburg was 87 years old and served on the highest court in the United States since 1993. Her work with the Supreme Court, the American Civil Liberties Union, and as a university professor solidified her status as one of the greatest justices and equal rights advocates in U.S. history. Here are a selection of photos from RBG's life.

Ginsburg was born on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. Ginsburg's father, Nathan Bader, was a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine who sold furs, and Ginsburg's mother, Celia Bader, worked in a garment factory and always told her about the value of an education and independence.

Ginsburg once recalled, "My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent."

Growing up, Ginsburg was extremely focused on her school work, even while her mother battled cancer when Ginsburg was in high school. Sadly, the day before Ginsburg's graduation, her mother passed away.

After graduating from Cornell in 1954 (at the top her of class!), she married her fellow classmate, Martin Ginsburg. Two years later, she become one of nine women at Harvard Law School — out of a class of 500. When her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer, she went to his classes and took notes for him so he could keep up with his studies ... while she simultaneously kept up with her own coursework and raising their daughter Jane. Martin recovered and took a position at a law firm in New York City, then Ruth moved with him and finished her degree at Columbia Law School, graduating first in her class.

Before she got married, Ginsburg recalled Martin's mother telling her to let the little things roll off her back by saying, "In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf." Ginsburg and Martin later married in his parents' backyard in Long Island, New York.

"I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through 56 years of a marital partnership nonpareil," Ginsburg recalled in 2016. "I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court."

A year after Martin (left) and Ginsburg married, Ginsburg gave birth to their first child, Jane.

Shortly after Jane was born, Martin was drafted into the military where he served with the U.S. Army for two years. When he was discharged, he enrolled at Harvard, where Ginsburg also enrolled for law school.

They later welcomed their son, James, in 1965.

Ginsburg attended Harvard Law School for two years. While there, she was one of only nine women in a class of hundreds—and was told to defend why she deserved a place in the class when a man could've had it. During her time there, she became the first woman to join the esteemed Harvard Law Review.

At the time, Ginsburg juggled her studies with taking care of both her daughter Jane and Martin, as he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. To help him, Ginsburg would attend classes for him, take notes, and help him with assignments.

According to a Harvard Law bulletin, when Ginsburg and her husband moved to New York in 1958 upon his graduation, she requested that she be awarded a degree after successfully completing her third and final year. Harvard denied Ginsburg's request, ultimately costing them a remarkable alumna.

Ginsburg instead enrolled at Columbia Law School.

“I struck out on three grounds,” Ginsburg said. “I was Jewish, a woman and a mother. The first raised one eyebrow; the second, two; the third made me indubitably inadmissible.” Despite her stellar education, she had trouble finding a job. After working on the Columbia Project on International Civil Procedure, Ginsburg took a job as law professor at Rutgers University, only the second woman to do so. It was here that Ginsburg found her passion, co-founding the still running Women’s Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal about women’s rights. When Ginsburg found out that her male colleagues were making significantly more than her, she and other female employees filed an Equal Pay Act complaint. They won.

In 1972, Ginsburg became the first tenured female Columbia Law School professor. As she co-wrote the first law school casebook on sex discrimination in 1974, Ginsburg practiced what she preached. At the university, she fought for her female colleagues to earn the same retirement benefits as her male counterparts.

She was not only the first woman to become a member of the student-run legal journals from each school, but the first person, ever. Which is not to say she didn't experience discrimination based on her gender. As depicted in the movie about Ginsburg's life, On the Basis of Sex, one of her professors at Harvard once made her and her female colleagues justify why they deserved a position that could have gone to a man. Ginsburg was later quoted as saying she went to law school for "for personal, selfish reasons. I thought I could do a lawyer's job better than any other."

Working with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ginsburg began litigating sex-discrimination cases. Her strategy was to take on winnable cases to slowly nullify institutionalized discrimination against woman with new legal precedents, though some feminists at the time criticized her for not going far enough. Before setting on the bench herself, Ginsburg argued six cases in front of the Supreme Court — and won five.

Ginsburg (pictured here with Martin, and their children James and Jane) said she greatly depended on her husband while she worked to co-found the Women's Rights Project.

"Marty realized how important that work was," she previously said. "In those years Marty took over the kitchen entirely, and I was phased out of it, to the everlasting appreciation of my food-loving children."

Reportedly, the Clinton administration said Martin was so passionate that Ginsburg should be a Supreme Court justice that he constantly lobbied for her to be considered for nomination to the Court. "I think that the most important thing I have done is to enable Ruth to do what she has done," Martin once said.

Ginsburg is pictured here with Joe Biden (right) and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (left) the day after Clinton nominated her to replace conservative Justice Byron White upon his retirement.

"In her years on the bench she has genuinely distinguished herself as one of our Nation's best judges," Clinton said in his nomination speech. "[She is] progressive in outlook, wise in judgment, balanced and fair in her opinions."

During the first day of Ginsburg's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, she spoke about a book called My Grandma Is Very Special, which her grandson, Paul Spera, wrote. Yeah, can't argue with a title like that.

After being appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg became the second of only four female justices in US history. During her time as a justice, Ginsburg earned the nickname 'The Great Dissenter' for writing fiery, impassioned dissents when her fellow judges passed decisions Ginsburg found regressive. “I like to think most of my dissents will be the law someday,” Ginsburg said in 2015.

Shortly after joining the Supreme Court, Ginsburg became fast friends with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Despite their clear ideological differences, Ginsburg and Scalia considered each other good friends who also shared a love for the opera.

In 1994, the two rode on an elephant during a trip to India. "Some of her feminist friends gave me a hard time because she rode behind me on the elephant," Scalia later joked. Ginsburg explained, "The driver explained it was a matter of distribution of weight."

Ginsburg and Dame Maggie Smith were pictured together at a gala opening night dinner for the Washington Opera.

Ginsburg was a huge opera fan and some of her favorite operas and recordings include Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Verdi's "Aida."

While most Supreme Court judges simply wear black robes, Ginsburg chose to add a little flair to hers with collars—just like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the bench, did.

Ginsburg also used her collars as symbols for court cases and current events. She had an embellished gold collar for when she was in the majority vote and a "dissenting" collar that was dark, beaded, and looked like armor for when she was not in the majority. The day after Donald Trump was elected, Ginsburg wore her "dissenting" collar.

On June 27, 2010, Ginsburg's husband passed away from cancer. Before he died, he left her a note that read:

"My dearest Ruth—
You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!!"

Ginsburg had to work the day after Martin's death—it was toward the end of the Court's session that year and Ginsburg had an opinion for a landmark case in which she made the argument that Christian groups at public universities couldn't prevent gay students from attending their meetings, and she decided she couldn't miss the session.

Their daughter, Jane, said, "My father would certainly not have wanted her to miss the last days on the bench on account of his death."

Though Harvard didn't award Ginsburg a degree once she had completed her coursework, the Ivy League college later presented the "advocate extraordinaire" with an honorary degree in 2011.

When Ginsburg stood up to receive the degree, opera singer Plácido Domingo (right), who also received an honorary degree, serenaded her with a special Supreme Court verse.

Ginsburg sat for special portraits to commemorate her 20th anniversary of being a Supreme Court justice in 2013. Three years later, Ginsburg would say, "I will do this job as long as I feel that I can do it full steam. At my age, you have to take it year by year."

While speaking at the White House Conference on Aging, President Barack Obama cited Ginsburg as a prime example of how senior citizens are still productive and vital members of society. "Arguably the toughest justice on the Supreme Court is the oldest, Ruth Bader Ginsburg," Obama said. "Also known as the Notorious RBG. She’s tough."

Pictured here, the two share a warm embrace at the 2015 State of the Union Address.

U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (right) takes a selfie with Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan (left), Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor (middle) at the Capitol before a reception to honor the women Supreme Court justices. (Sotomayor's Supreme Court appointment was confirmed in August 2009, and Kagan's a year later.)

Of her popularity amongst the public, Ginsburg once said, "I am soon to be 85 and everyone wants to take their picture with me."

Ginsburg officiated the wedding of opera singer Alyson Cambridge and her husband, Timothy Eloe, in Washington D.C. Alyson asked Ginsburg to officiate her wedding during a party for the Washington National Opera, and Ginsburg instantly agreed.

In 2015, one of the landmark cases Ginsburg argued was Obergefell vs. Hodges, which ensured same-sex couples have the right to marry nationwide.

When some justices challenged whether or not the court should change the traditional meaning of marriage, Ginsburg referenced outdated property laws and said, “Marriage today is not what it was under the common law tradition, under the civil law tradition. Marriage was a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female. That ended as a result of this court’s decision in 1982 when Louisiana’s Head and Master Rule was struck down...Would that be a choice that state should [still] be allowed to have? To cling to marriage the way it once was?”

The law passed with a 5-4 vote.

In 2016, Ginsburg published her fifth book, My Own Words, and it was the first that she published as a Supreme Court justice. The book is a compilation of essays and speeches from throughout her career and includes her take on feminism.

She wrote, "Feminism…I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you're a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that's okay too."

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito (left), Ginsburg (in her "dissenting" collar) and Stephen Breyer (center) arrive at the U.S. Capitol to watch Trump as he was sworn in as president.

Before the 2016 election, Ginsburg said, "I can't imagine what this place would be–I can't imagine what the country would be–with Donald Trump as our president." She later said her statement was "ill-advised."

In her biopic, RBG, Ginsburg showed off her impressive lifting skills. Ginsburg said one of the toughest exercises she's done is the plank, which yeah, agreed.

Separate from the film, during Ginsburg's appearance at the Virginia Military Institute, Georgetown law professor Mary Hartnett said, "Justice Ginsburg does 10 pushups and she does not do the so-called 'girl pushups.' She does not use her knees. And then she stretches back for a very brief pause and she does 10 more."

After many years of fighting for equality and raising her family, Ginsburg said she wants to be remembered as "someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has. To do something...outside myself. 'Cause I've gotten much more satisfaction for the things that I've done for which I was not paid."