Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1933, Ginsburg earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and married alumnus Martin Ginsburg. In 1956, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, becoming one of the few women in law school at the time, and then transferred to Columbia Law School, graduating first in her class. Since then, Ginsburg has taught at Rutgers Law School. In 1980, then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Federal Circuit. Ginsburg became a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1993 and was the only female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement in 2006 to the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009. On September 18, 2020, Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 87.
Ginsburg is considered one of the liberal and moderate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, and because of her stance, she is jokingly called "the infamous Ginsburg" by students, often active in the public eye, becoming a symbol of popular culture. In 2018, the documentary "Female Justice Ginsburg" was released. After Ginsburg's death, her interviews were also translated into China and were well received by readers.
Stills from the documentary "Justice Ginsburg".
More than 1,000 of Ginsburg's personal collections participated in the auction, including law textbooks she read as a student, literature about feminism, social science classics, and so on. Novels include The Catcher in the Rye, Madame Chatterley's Lover, and works by Leo Tolstoy. Social Science has works by Tocqueville, Susan Sontag, Kate Miller and others. At the same time, a copy of My Own Words, written by Ginsburg herself, is also among them.
In addition, Ginsburg is the first woman to serve as the editor of two major U.S. law reviews, the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review. The auction's collection also contains a large number of copies of Ginsburg's personal annotations from the Harvard Law Review from 1957 to 1958.
Another highlight of the auction items was Gloria Steinem's memoir My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem, a Ginsburg friend and feminist pioneer. Gloria Steinham was also a prominent American journalist and social activist, a representative of the women's liberation movement in the United States from the late 1960s to the 1970s. In the book, Steinham writes: "To my dearest Ruth, who paved the way for all of us with the love of her life. ”
Catherine Williamson, head of Bonhams' book division, who led the auction, said in an interview with The Guardian: "A person's personal collection of books can give us an idea of this person and how she grew up. From this collection, we can learn how Ginsburg went from student to lawyer to law professor and Supreme Court justice. ”
Reference Links:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/20/law-books-and-feminist-classics-in-ruth-bader-ginsburg-library-up-for-auction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg
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