Joan Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn New York.

She earned her bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and married Martin Ginsburg in 1954.  She became a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class.  She transferred to Columbia Law School where she graduated join first in her class.  During the 1960s she worked with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, where she learned Swedish.  Her work in Sweden influenced her thinking about gender equality.  She then became a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.

She spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court.  In the 1970s she was one of the general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.  In 1980 President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she serviced until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in her home in Washington, D.C. on September 18th, 2020 at the age of 87 from complications of pancreatic cancer.  She was a true pioneer and trailblazer within the United States Judicial System.

To commemorate her life fellow TEC (The Elongated Collectors) member Tyler Tyson created the special pressed penny design.  The designs were made available to fellow club members as either just a single penny as pictured at the top of this article, or as a full denomination set which included the image pressed on a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar.