RBG's Notorious Legacy
Does Having Two Female Supreme Court Justices Influence the Number of Women Entering Law School?
Women have always been overshadowed by their male counterparts in the law school environment. Does having political leaders, such as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in powerful legal positions influence women’s decision to attain a law degree?
Elevator Pitch:
The passing of the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this past weekend left an irreplaceable mark on the United States. As a champion of civil rights for marginalized communities, Justice Ginsburg continuously proved her commitment to protect the public interest by both working as a civil rights attorney and serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court. Her legacy is one that has left women across the country inspired to be greater than the limitations society places on them.
Key Findings:
Between the years 1972-2011 our research finds there to be a statistically significant correlation between female representation on the Supreme Court and the number of women entering law school.
Authors’ Main Message:
Women in the legal field have always faced the barrier of gender-discrimination, both when it comes to entering law school as well as entering the legal workforce. However, through this article’s data analysis, it becomes clear that as more females pursue prestigious positions within the legal profession, more females are encouraged to enter the legal profession as well. In this piece, we provide a comprehensive analysis of how the legacy of having two female Supreme Court Justices correlates with the number of women enrolling in law schools across the country.
RBG’s Notorious Legacy:
The month of September was marked by the momentous occasion of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. The honorable Justice Ginsburg was a champion of civil rights for marginalized communities and defied many social constructs to both attain a law school education and a seat on the highest Court of the land.
Justice Ginsburg first broke the glass ceiling when she decided to go to law school at Harvard University in 1956 (Harvard Law). As one of nine female students in a 500-person class, Justice Ginsburg faced significant obstacles including gender-discrimination that she had to overcome continously in order to prove herself worthy of a seat at Harvard law. However, after her husband Martin D. Ginsburg accepted a job in New York City, Justice Ginsburg transferred to Columbia University to pursue her legal education and graduated at the top of her class.
Justice Ginsburg’s contributions to the civil rights arena include iconic court cases including Reed v. Reed in which Justice Ginsburg, who at the time was a law professor at Rutgers University School of Law and an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), wrote a brief that advocated for increased scrutiny in cases involving differential treatment on the basis of sex under the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Ginsburg’s crucial work in cases such as Reed v. Reed are exemplary of her commitment to serving the public interest despite her own personal experiences with gender-based discrimination both in the community and the workplace.
After forming a well-documented record of advocating and protecting the civil rights of many marginalized communities within America, Justice Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in August of 1993. On the Court, Justice Ginsburg ruthlessly used her voice and power of dissent to continue protecting the civil rights of marginalized citizens. In a hallmark case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Inc., the plaintiff Lilly Ledbetter filed a case against the company citing charges of gender discrimination in violation of Tilte VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In this case, Justice Ginsburg wrote a robust dissenting opinion stating that the Supreme Court majority had failed to acknowledge the longer lasting roots of gender-based discrimination when they sided with the tire company. Justice Ginsburg also urged “the Legislature [to] correct this Court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.” It was also Justice Ginsburg’s ruthlessness in using this power of dissent that earned her the iconic nickname, “The Notorious RBG.”
Our question then is, how truly notorious was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
It is no surprise that women have struggled to enter the legal arena for many years. However, in 1993 when Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, there were now two female Supreme Court Justices on the highest Court of the land: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (appointed in 1981) and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This, we thought, could have had a profound impact on the number of women willing to enter the world of law and politics.
To investigate the relationship between having two female Supreme Court Justices and the number of females entering law school, we analyzed data from the American Bar Association that compiled information on the number of law schools and the number of first-year female law students across the country (American Bar Association). We captured data from the time frame 1972-2011 as this represented 20 years before and after Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Court and marks 30 years of Justice O’Connor serving on the Court.
Using R statistical software, we broke this data set up into two datasets: the first of which looked at data from the years between 1972 and 1995 and the second of which looked at data from the years between 1995 and 2011. We chose the year 1994-1995 as the cutoff point for each dataset as Justice Ginsburg was appointed on August 13, 1993 and by that time, applicants entering the class of 1994-1995 would have already been processed.
To address our research question, we ran a difference of means test and got a p-value of 5. 071e-09. From these results, we can conclude that there is a statistically significant difference between the means of the two datasets as our p-value was significantly less than the accepted p-value in political science, 0.05. This tells us that there is a statistically significant correlation between female representation on the Supreme Court and the number of women entering law school.
So, beyond the essential work that Justice Ginsburg directly did to influence many lives, she also had a profound indirect impact on the decision of many women’s decision to go to law school through her position on the Supreme Court. Our data only spanned until 2011 and showed that women were starting to infiltrate the legal profession at increasing rates. However, 2018 reports from the American Bar Association show that women have actually outnumbered their male counterparts in law schools for three consecutive years. This trend is a part of Justice Ginsburg’s truly remarkable legacy and allows women to realize that they “belong in all places where decisions are being made.”
Rest in peace, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
WORKS CITED:
American Bar Association. “First Year and Total J.D. Enrollment by Gender 1947-2011.” 2012.
Cary, Mary Kate. “Justice Ginsburg Ready to Welcome Sotomayor.” CNN, Cable News Network, 20 May 2009, www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/16/sotomayor.ginsburg/index.html.
Harvard Law. “'We Have Lost a Giant': Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020).” Harvard Law Today, Harvard Law School, 18 Sept. 2020, today.law.harvard.edu/in-memoriam-ruth-bader-ginsburg/.
"Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2006/05-1074. Accessed 23 Sep. 2020.
“Legal Momentum.” Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Reed v. Reed | Legal Momentum, Legal Momentum, 18 Nov. 2011, www.legalmomentum.org/press/celebrating-40th-anniversary-reed-v-reed.
Pisarcik, Ian. “Women Outnumber Men in Law School Classrooms for Third Year in a Row, but Statistics Don't Tell the Full Story.” Jurist, JURIST Legal News & Research Services, Inc., 5 Mar. 2019, www.jurist.org/commentary/2019/03/pisarcik-women-outnumber-men-in-law-school/.