Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Trivia Quiz

Answer: Columbia

Ginsburg had originally attended Harvard but moved to back to New York when her husband Martin joined a law firm in the city. Ginsburg is the first woman in America to serve on more than one university law review, writing for both the "Harvard Law Review" and the "Columbia Law Review."

Answer: Felix Frankfurter

Ginsburg had received recommendations from a number of credible sources, including the Dean of Harvard Law. However, Frankfurter denied her anyway because she was a woman and women rarely served as clerks during that time period. Other justices, however, did have female clerks. Ginsburg instead clerked for Edmund Palmieri for the Southern District of New York and a professor at Rutgers.

Answer: Women's rights

Ginsburg has a history of advancing women in the legal profession. She founded the "Women's Rights Law Reporter" and wrote numerous law books about sex discrimination. She was also Columbia's first tenured female professor.

Answer: Reed v. Reed

Ginsburg argued, and the Court unanimously agreed, estate administrators cannot be assigned in a way that discriminates against one gender. The Court said that sex-based distinctions must be examined using strict scrutiny to be constitutional.

Frontiero v. Richardson involved a military servicewoman who sought to have her husband receive benefits from her career. Previously, only the wives, not husbands, of servicemen could receive spousal benefits. Ginsburg fought and won for the couple. Duren v. Missouri involved a Missouri county's law that said jury duty was optional for women. Ginsburg won that case claiming that by not having women on juries, female defendants did not have a fair trial. In Wienberger v. Wiesenfeld, Ginsburg argued that widowers should receive benefits to care for minor children under the Social Security Act. The law, as it was written, only allowed for widows to collect those benefits.

Answer: She did not respond to him.

In an interview years later, Ginsburg admitted that she contemplated saying "We won't settle for tokens" but opted not to so as to not hurt her case. Rehnquist was the only dissenter who sided against Ginsburg in this case. Ginsburg later joined the Court and served with Rehnquist for 22 years.

Answer: When a Supreme Court nominee refuses to answer questions on how he or she would rule in a situation.

Ginsburg refused to answer many questions during her confirmation hearing when Bill Clinton nominated her to the Court in 1993. She states that she would be doing an injustice to decide how she would rule before these hypothetical cases were argued. When subsequent nominees refused to answer these questions during their hearings, they were said to be invoking the Ginsburg Rule.

Ginsburg's supporters defended her by saying her views were already well established from when she as serving on lower courts, so there was no need for her to answer. She did answer questions about her personal beliefs and was ultimately confirmed 96-3.

Answer: The mentally ill

The Court ruled that mental illness are disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that people affected by mental illnesses cannot be mandated to live in an institution if they could function properly in a community setting with reasonable accommodations. Ginsburg wrote that placing capable people with mental illness automatically in institutions qualified as an "unjustified isolation" and questioned whether or not the isolation would benefit the person in any way.

Answer: All these reasons

Ginsburg said because employees' salaries are often kept confidential, Ledbetter could not know she was being discriminated against for being a woman because she could not acquire the means to compare her salary to a comparable male's salary. Ginsburg also stated that Ledbetter, or other employees, may not see the discrimination immediately since the pay gap was often small week from week and would only show itself over time.

Answer: Preside over a same-sex wedding

She presided over the wedding of John Roberts (not the Chief Justice) and Michael Kaiser. Opponents of same-sex marriage stated that Ginsburg should have recused herself from Obergefell v. Hodges because she had performed same-sex marriages in the past. Ginsburg did not recuse herself.

Answer: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Hobby Lobby owners claimed that they had a First Amendment protection of freedom of religion and did not have to provide birth control as part of their insurance policies for their employees under the Affordable Care Act. They won at the Supreme Court.

Ginsburg and the other liberal justices dissented, saying that Hobby Lobby was a corporation and not a person, thus not entitled to First Amendment rights. She also stated her concern of a slippery slope allowing businesses to object to essentially anything if its owners claimed religious objections.

Ginsburg gained even more approval from women's organizations with her dissent when she said that the business owners were intruding themselves on the rights of women to make their own personal healthcare decisions.