Trial Magazine

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life
Jane Sherron de Hart
Alfred A. Knopf
knopfdoubleday.com
752 pp., $35

Historian Jane Sherron De Hart examines U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s most well-known decisions and how her staunch defense of equal justice has made her an icon. De Hart also pays close attention to Justice Ginsburg’s experiences as a student and attorney, with half of the book covering events before her 1993 appointment to the Court. By describing these earlier milestones, De Hart connects Justice Ginsburg’s personal life and her jurisprudence: for example, how being one of nine women in a class of 522 students at Harvard Law School may have influenced the opinion she authored in United States v. Virginia declaring the Virginia Military Institute’s ban on female students unconstitutional.