Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by President Clinton as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in June 1993 and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, she served from 1980 to 1993 on the bench of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1972 to 1980, Justice Ginsburg was a professor at Columbia University School of Law; from 1963 to 1972, she served on the law faculty of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has served on the faculties of the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and as a visiting professor at many universities in the United States and abroad. In 1978, she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California.
Justice Ginsburg has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. (J.D.) from Columbia Law School. She holds honorary degrees from Lund University (Sweden), American University, Vermont Law School, Georgetown University, DePaul University, Brooklyn Law School, Hebrew Union College, Rutgers University, Amherst College, Lewis and Clark College, Radcliffe College, New York University, Columbia University, Smith College, Long Island University, University of Illinois, Brandeis University, Wheaton College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, George Washington University Law School, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, Brown University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, University of Pennsylvania, Willamette University, and Princeton University.
In 1972, then-Professor Ginsburg was instrumental in launching the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Throughout the 1970s she litigated a series of cases solidifying a constitutional principle against gender-based discrimination. Her bar association activities have included service on the Board of Editors of the American Bar Association Journal, and as Secretary, Board member, and Executive Committee member of the American Bar Foundation. Justice Ginsburg served on the Council of the American Law Institute, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She has written widely in the areas of civil procedure, conflict of laws, constitutional law, and comparative law.
Justice Ginsburg's late husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, was a professor of tax law at Georgetown University Law Center; her daughter, Jane C. Ginsburg, is a professor of literary and artistic property law at Columbia Law School; and her son, James S. Ginsburg, is a producer of classical recordings.