The Dwight D. Eisenhower Service to Democracy Award
The Service to Democracy Award is presented to national leaders who exemplify President Eisenhower's founding principle when he established The American Assembly: "to reconcile divergent views in order to accomplish a common purpose."
1996
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Supreme Court Justice
Justice Ginsburg flanked by Columbia University President George Rupp, American Assembly CEO Dan Sharp, John Kluge, and Don McHenry, Assembly trustee.
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. Generally, she votes with the liberal wing of the Court. She is the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) and the first Jewish female justice.
Ginsburg spent a considerable portion of her career as an advocate for the equal citizenship status of women and men as a constitutional principle. She advocated as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel in the 1970s. She was a professor at Rutgers School of Law—Newark and Columbia Law School. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
