Ruth Bader Ginsburg stands in front of the Supreme Court after being introduced to the media as the newest member of the court Oct. 1, 1993. The second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, she was a pioneering advocate for women’s rights and, in her ninth decade, became a much younger generation’s unlikely cultural icon.
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took her seat on the Supreme Court today, the first time two women have sat on the nation's highest court,” The Times reported in 1993. “With President Clinton and more than 300 friends, family and guests looking on, Justice Ginsburg again swore to ‘do equal right to the poor and to the rich,’ the same oath she took on Aug. 10, when she was sworn in as the 107th justice to sit on the Court.”
The Times added, “Justice Ginsburg's new colleagues shook hands with her as she approached Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist for the oath. Afterward, she took her place on the bench along with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to become a justice. Justice O'Connor joined the Court in 1981, and in that year Mrs. Ginsburg predicted in a speech at a university that another woman would join Justice O'Connor within the decade.”
Justice Ginsburg, whose pointed and powerful dissenting opinions earned her late-life rock stardom, died Sept. 18, 2020 at age 87.
