Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Louis Brandeis inspired my work for women’s rights

One hundred years to the day of the nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg paid tribute to the first Jewish justice at a program at the university that bears his name.

At Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, on Thursday, Ginsburg, who is Jewish, told a crowd of some 2,200 students, faculty, staff, elected leaders and others that she admired Brandeis for his “craftsmanship, his sense of collegiality and his ability to combine a judicial restraint with the readiness to defend civil rights and liberties.”

Brandeis’ work has influenced Ginsburg’s, both as an advocate for women’s rights and as a judge. Like many others, Ginsburg has been inspired by Brandeis’  groundbreaking approach to constructing fact-based legal briefs – still known in legal circles as the “Brandeis Brief” — that drew on real-world circumstances.