2008-09 Symposium

The Jurisprudence of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Discussion of Fifteen Years on the U.S. Supreme Court

April 10, 2009 | Saxbe Auditorium

Interview

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Jutice of the United States Supreme Court

Justice Ginsburg received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1959-61. From 1961-63, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963-72, and Columbia Law School from 1972-80, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif., from 1977-78. In 1971, she was instrumental in launching the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union and served as the ACLU's general counsel from 1973-80, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974-80. She was appointed a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Carter in 1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat Aug. 10, 1993.

Keynote Speaker

Peter J. Rubin
Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court

Peter J. Rubin was appointed Associate Justice of the Appeals Court by Governor Deval Patrick, who administered the oath of office on January 15, 2008. Justice Rubin is a magna cum laude graduate of both Yale College and the Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following his graduation from law school, Justice Rubin served as a law clerk, first to Judge Collins J. Seitz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, then, for two years, to Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court. Before his appointment to the Appeals Court, Justice Rubin was a full-time Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice.

He has written extensively on Constitutional Law, with a particular focus on equal protection, due process and voting rights. In 2001, he founded the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit national legal organization. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, Justice Rubin was an appellate litigator, and while teaching at Georgetown he continued to engage in constitutional and appellate litigation, primarily in the United States Supreme Court. He also provided congressional testimony to Committees of both Houses of Congress; was Of Counsel to the firm of O'Melveny and Myers, LLP, in its appellate practice group; and served on the Boards of several nonprofit organizations.

Participants and Contributors

• James J. Brudney, Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
• Courtney M. Cahill, Associate Professor of Law, Roger Williams University School of Law
• Steven Calabresi, George C. Dix Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law
• Martha Chamallas, Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
• Adrienne D. Davis, William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law, Washington University Law School
• Cynthia Estlund, Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
• E. Gordon Gee, President, The Ohio State University
• Pamela S. Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford Law School
• Kenneth L. Karst, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
• Deborah Jones Merritt, John Deaver Drinko-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
• Alan C. Michaels, Dean and Edwin M. Cooperman Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
• Neomi Rao, Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason School of Law
• Reva Siegel, Deputy Dean and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale University
• Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School
• Marc Spindelman, Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Faculty Symposium Advisor
• Wendy Webster Williams, Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center
• Tobias Barrington Wolff, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School