As the subject of a feature film (“On the Basis of Sex”) and a documentary (“RBG”) in 2018, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is overdue for a comprehensive biography. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life,”released in October, fits the bill, offering an in-depth look at the life of the second woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court. 

Although the book is not an authorized biography, Justice Ginsburg agreed to six interviews with the author, Jane Sherron De Hart, professor emerita of history at the University of California-Santa Barbara. The author also interviewed Ginsburg’s family members, friends and colleagues and Ginsburg made available some of her legal files.

De Hart’s book is lengthy — 546 pages of text, 111 pages of endnotes, and an extensive bibliography and index. Despite its length, this is a very readable book about a woman’s remarkable life and career and the numerous challenges she overcame. 

The author deserves credit for exhibiting as much fortitude and tenacity as her subject. This biography was 15 years in the making. In 2008 a California wildfire destroyed her home, her research and her manuscript. Fortunately, one of her research assistants had retained earlier drafts of some chapters, and De Hart was able to backtrack and re-create the rest.

This biography is divided into two parts. In the first, the author meticulously discusses the events that shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice and her desire for tikkun olam, “repair of the world.” De Hart discusses in detail how Ruth’s mother, Celia Amster Bader, who died of cervical cancer just days before her daughter’s high school graduation, greatly influenced and inspired Ruth’s feminism, urging her to become “an independent young lady.” 

Early in her life, Ginsburg encountered gender discrimination. Because she was a woman, the family’s Orthodox congregation would not allow her to sit shiva for her mother.

After high school, Ruth received her Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University in 1954, where she also met her future husband Martin D. Ginsburg. In the fall of 1956 Ginsburg enrolled in Harvard Law School where she was one of only nine women. When her husband took a job in New York City, Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School earning her Juris Doctor in 1959. 

Even with her legal degree, Ginsburg continued running into gender discrimination when finding a position. In 1960 Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter rejected Ginsburg for a clerkship even though one of her Harvard Law professors highly recommended her. 

From 1963 to 1980, Ginsburg worked in academia, first as a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she was paid less than her male colleagues because her husband had a well-paid job. Her next position was law professor at Columbia University, where she became the first tenured woman on its law school faculty. 

In 1972 Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and served as its general counsel beginning the following year. Although De Hart had no access to any diaries or personal letters from Ginsburg’s early life, Ginsburg did give DeHart access to her legal files from her days as an attorney with the ACLU.

De Hart, although not an attorney, read approximately 60 cases dealing with gender equality, including a dozen that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. There Ginsburg successfully argued that a law which discriminates based on gender violates the “equal protection of the law” clause in the 14^th Amendment and should be struck down by the courts. 

De Hart clearly explains the legal theories involved and the rulings of the court. The author gives Ginsburg credit for recognizing and arguing that laws that treat women and men differently are unconstitutional. 

Part two of Ginsburg’s biography covers her career on the federal bench beginning in 1980. Ginsburg was satisfied with her accomplishments as an advocate for women’s’ rights, but feeling she could do more as a judge, she sought a seat on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. The all-male selection committee downplayed her years of activism with the ACLU, selecting someone more proficient in corporate and securities law. She next turned to the Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit, and with the help of her husband, won an appointment from President Jimmy Carter after he had bypassed her nomination three previous times.

Unfortunately, the author covered Ginsburg’s 13 years on the Appellate Court in only seven pages. But De Hart did establish the fact that Ginsburg proved to be a consensus-building moderate who was able to make friends with highly conservative colleagues such as Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. 

In 1993, with the backing of President Bill Clinton and Senator Daniel Moynihan, D-N.Y., Ginsburg became an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The final 200 pages of De Hart’s book deal with Ginsburg’s tenure on the Supreme Court. This section is a letdown, and the fault lies with Ginsburg, not the author. Ginsburg specified that her papers from the Supreme Court were not to be available to researchers until 100 years after the death of her last-surviving Supreme Court colleague. Ginsburg also discouraged De Hart from interviewing her colleagues or her many law clerks. Nor does this book contain Ginsburg’s thoughts on the future of the Supreme Court and the Constitution. 

Without these interviews and access to personal papers, De Hart had to rely on Ginsburg’s written opinions. These restrictions caused the second part of this book to be strong on facts, but weaker on analysis.

Despite any flaws in this biography, however, De Hart has written an insightful and fascinating biography of the present Supreme Court’s most liberal member. She has explained the majority decisions and dissents in which Ginsburg has participated with amazingly clear language readers can comprehend—a remarkable feat for a person with no legal training. The book is highly recommended for anyone interested in American politics, women’s rights or the Supreme Court.