Ruth Bader Ginsburg

About

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Ginsburg is well known for her progressive positions, as well as having a straightforward way of expressing herself and her opinions. Online, Ginsburg is also respected and regarded as a pop culture icon by many feminists and progressives.

Background

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1933. She was educated at Cornell, Harvard, and Columbia, and worked as a law clerk for other judges, a professor of law, the general counsel for the ACLU, and the editor of law journals before becoming a judge herself by appointment by Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 1993, she was nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States by President Bill Clinton, and she was confirmed by a 93 to 6 vote of the Senate. She is the second female Supreme Court Justice and the first Jewish female Justice.^[1]

During her career as a Justice, Ginsburg has written many famous opinions, including most recently the dissent in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision of 2014 and the dissent in the Bush v. Gore decision of 2000, which famously ruled that the recount of Florida’s votes should cease and that George W. Bush could become President without it.

Online History

Justices of the Supreme Court do not maintain online presences of their own, however, there is evidence online of a fandom of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For instance, an algorithmically-generated Facebook page for the Justice has over 23,000 likes as of November 2015,^[2] and in the month of October 4th 2015-November 4th, 2015, there were over 6,000 mentions of the Justice on Twitter.^[3] There are over 3,000 posts using the hashtag #ruthbaderginsburg on Instagram^[4] and there are over 10,000 videos mentioning or featuring the Justice in some way on YouTube.^[5] In addition, the social justice fan blog Notorious R.B.G. (see below) has acquired a substantial following.

Related Memes

Notorious R.B.G.

Notorious R.B.G. is a social justice blog depicting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “badass,” gangster-like figure. The trend has spawned a variety of macros, paraphernalia, and books.

Dissent of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby is a United States Supreme Court case between the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and Oklahoma-based arts and crafts store chain Hobby Lobby which examined whether closely held private corporations are required to cover the costs of contraception for female employees as part of the health care coverage mandated under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In June 2014, the case became a heated topic of bipartisan debate in the social media after the Supreme Court ruled that family-owned corporations are exempt from such regulations under the protection of the U.S. Constitution and federal laws concerning religious freedom. Ginsburg wrote a famous and much-quoted dissent of the decision, for which she was lauded by progressives and women’s rights advocates, some of whom created widely-disseminated fan art.

Sleeping at the State of the Union

On two occasions, in 2010 and 2015, Ginsburg has been photographed napping at the President’s yearly State of the Union address. In 2015, Ginsburg was asked about whether or not she had fallen asleep, and she admitted that before the speech, she and the other justices had gone out for “dinner and drinks” and that she was not “100% sober” during the proceedings. The incident was covered in many major publications, including USA Today^[6] and Politico.^[7]