Ruth Bader Ginsburg Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

Who is Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
A: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Ginsburg was appointed by whom?
A: President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993.

She is the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) of four to be what?
A: Confirmed to the court (along with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who are still serving).

Following O'Connor's retirement, and until Sotomayor joined the court, Ginsburg was what?
A: The only female justice on the Supreme Court.

During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with her what?
A: Her dissents, which were noted by legal observers and in popular culture.

She is generally viewed as belonging to what wing of the court?
A: The liberal wing.

Where was Ginsburg born?
A: In Brooklyn, New York.

Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother, one of her biggest sources of encouragement, died when?
A: Shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school.

Where did she earn her bachelor's degree?
A: At Cornell University.

She became a wife and mother before starting what?
A: Law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class.

Following law school, Ginsburg turned to what?
A: Academia.

She was a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching what?
A: Teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.

Ginsburg spent a considerable part of her legal career as an advocate for what?
A: For the advancement of gender equality and women's rights, winning multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court.

She advocated as a volunteer lawyer for whom?
A: The American Civil Liberties Union.

She was a member of its what?
A: Board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until what?
A: Her appointment to the Supreme Court.

Ginsburg has received attention in American popular culture for her fiery liberal dissents and refusal to step down; she has been dubbed what?
A: The "Notorious R.B.G."

Joan Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the second daughter of whom?
A: Celia and Nathan Bader, who lived in the Flatbush neighborhood.

Her father was a Jewish emigrant from where?
A: Odessa, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire.

Her mother was born where?
A: In New York to Austrian Jewish parents.

The Baders' older daughter Marylin died of meningitis at what age?
A: Six, when Ruth was 14 months old.

The family called Joan Ruth "Kiki", a nickname Marylin had given her for being what?
A: "A kicky baby".

When "Kiki" started school, Celia discovered that her daughter's class had several other girls named Joan, so Celia suggested that the teacher do what?
A: Call her daughter "Ruth" to avoid confusion.

Although not devout, the Bader family belonged to what?
A: East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue, where Ruth learned tenets of the Jewish faith and gained familiarity with the Hebrew language.

At age 13, Ruth acted as what?
A: The "camp rabbi" at a Jewish summer program at Camp Che-Na-Wah in Minerva, New York.

Celia took an active role in her daughter's education, often taking her where?
A: To the library.

Celia had been a good student in her youth, graduating from high school at age 15, yet she could not further her own education because her family instead chose to do what?
A: To send her brother to college.

Celia wanted her daughter to get more education, which she thought would allow Ruth to become what?
A: A high school history teacher.

Ruth attended James Madison High School, whose law program later did what?
A: Dedicated a courtroom in her honor.

Celia struggled with what throughout Ruth's high school years?
A: Cancer and died the day before Ruth's high school graduation.

Bader attended what university?
A: Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi.

While at Cornell, she met whom?
A: Martin D. Ginsburg at age 17.

She graduated from Cornell with what?
A: A Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23, 1954.

She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the highest-ranking what?
A: Female student in her graduating class.

When did Bader marry Ginsburg?
A: A month after her graduation from Cornell.

She and Martin moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was stationed as a what?
A: A reserve Officers' Training Corps officer in the Army Reserve after his call-up to active duty.

At age 21, she worked for the Social Security Administration office in Oklahoma, where she was demoted after what?
A: Becoming pregnant with her first child.

She gave birth to a daughter in what year?
A: 1955.

In the fall of 1956, Ginsburg enrolled at Harvard Law School, where she was one of only how many women in a class of about 500 men?
A: Nine.

What did the Dean of Harvard Law reportedly ask the female law students, including Ginsburg?
A: "Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?".

When her husband took a job in New York City, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School and became the first woman to be on what?
A: Two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review.

In 1959, she earned her law degree at Columbia and tied for what?
A: First in her class.

At the start of her legal career, Ginsburg encountered difficulty in finding what?
A: Employment.

In 1960, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter rejected Ginsburg for a clerkship position due to what?
A: Her gender.

She was rejected despite a strong recommendation from whom?
A: Albert Martin Sacks, who was a professor and later dean of Harvard Law School.

Columbia Law Professor Gerald Gunther also pushed for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to hire Ginsburg as a law clerk, threatening to what?
A: Threatening to never recommend another Columbia student to Palmieri if he did not give Ginsburg the opportunity.

Later that year, Ginsburg began her clerkship for Judge Palmieri, and she held the position for how long?
A: Two years.

From 1961 to 1963, Ginsburg was a research associate and then an associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure; she learned Swedish to do what?
A: To co-author a book with Anders Bruzelius on civil procedure in Sweden.

Where did Ginsburg conduct extensive research for her book?
A: At Lund University in Sweden.

Ginsburg's time in Sweden also influenced her thinking on what?
A: Gender equality.

She was inspired when she observed the changes in Sweden, where women were what?
A: 20 to 25 percent of all law students.

One of the judges whom Ginsburg watched for her research was eight months pregnant and still what?
A: Working.

Her first position as a professor was where?
A: At Rutgers Law School in 1963.

The appointment was not without its drawbacks; Ginsburg was informed that what?
A: She would be paid less than her male colleagues because she had a husband with a well-paid job.

At the time Ginsburg entered academia; she was one of fewer than how many female law professors in the United States?
A: 20.

She was a professor of law, mainly civil procedure, at Rutgers from 1963 to 1972, receiving tenure from the school when?
A: In 1969.

In 1970, she co-founded what?
A: The Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal in the U.S. to focus exclusively on women's rights.

From 1972 to 1980 where did she teach?
A: At Columbia, where she became the first tenured woman and co-authored the first law school casebook on sex discrimination.

She also spent a year as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at what from 1977 to 1978?
A: Stanford University.

In 1972, Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and, in 1973, she became what?
A: The Project’s general counsel.

As the director of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project, she argued how many gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976?
A: Six, winning five.

Rather than asking the court to end all gender discrimination at once, Ginsburg charted a strategic course, taking aim at what?
A: Specific discriminatory statutes and building on each successive victory.

She chose plaintiffs carefully, at times picking male plaintiffs to demonstrate what?
A: That gender discrimination was harmful to both men and women.

The laws Ginsburg targeted included those that on the surface appeared beneficial to women, but in fact reinforced what?
A: The notion that women needed to be dependent on men.

Her strategic advocacy extended to word choice, favoring the use of "gender" instead of "sex", after her secretary suggested what?
A: That the word "sex" would serve as a distraction to judges.

She attained a reputation as a skilled oral advocate and her work led directly to what?
A: The end of gender discrimination in many areas of the law.