March 15 marks the 80th birthday of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Thurgood Marshall of the campaign to establish equal legal rights for women. When Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School in 1956, laws governing women’s status were almost as discriminatory as the racial segregation laws that prevailed in the Southern states. The U.S. Supreme Court had previously held that women could constitutionally be barred from becoming lawyers, or from working in a bar unless their father or husband owned the establishment. Social Security laws, workers’ compensation laws and laws on determining pensions distinguished between male and female workers and were structured around the assumption that men worked and women stayed home and took care of the children. Thus it was unusual for a woman to work, and she could be paid less than a man since she really belonged at home. Other laws distinguished between men and women for purposes of jury service, promotion in the military, taxes and access to alcoholic beverages.

Ginsburg’s own life reflected the clear prejudice against women. There were only nine women in her Harvard Law School class of 500. The dean asked each woman why she was taking a seat meant for a man. She made law review after her first year, the traditional marker of high achievement in law school. She transferred her last year from Harvard to Columbia Law School when her husband, Martin Ginsburg, graduated from Harvard and began working in New York. She graduated in 1959 from Columbia at the top of her class.

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