I learned that a very important person passed away today. Her named was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
She was the second woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She is known for her work on women's rights. She fought for equality because she had faced discrimination as a woman going to law school. According to an article by Scholastic Kids Press, in 1956 she was one of nine females students at Harvard Law School. A professor asked the women, “How do you justify taking a spot from a qualified man?” She transferred to Columbia Law School when her husband got a job in New York and she graduated as one of the top two students. But even though she graduated at the top of her class, she had a hard time getting a good job as a lawyer just because she was a woman.
As a lawyer, she worked on rewriting rules that were unfair. One of the famous cases she worked on while she was on the Supreme Court helped allow women to go to Virginia Military Institute. She said that if a woman can do the work just as well as men, they should be given the opportunity.
She was also famous for writing dissenting opinions. A dissenting opinion is the explanation of why they disagreed with the majority of the court's decision. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that dissents were important.
Here's a video of Ruth Bader Ginsburg reading a kids book about her called I Dissent.
Today is also the start of the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah. A USA Today article quoted a book critic named Ruth Franklin as tweeting the following right after hearing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death: "According to Jewish tradition, a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah, which began tonight, is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness."
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