Seth Kaller, Inc.

This presentation copy of the second edition of Sex Discrimination and the Law: History, Practice, and Theory is inscribed by each author to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The authors also dedicated the book “To the pioneers for equality and justice whose example and comradeship have sustained us in our efforts,” a list of seven names that includes Ginsburg.

The warm inscriptions in this landmark book thank Ginsburg “for all you have done for women”; “who has lead us and climbed with us over often rocky terrain”; for “your insight, courage creativity and persistence in carving and now in paving the path to gender justice for us and for all women”; “who has taught us so much about these issues—and so much more”; “our teacher and inspiration”; “our justice of the Supreme Court, who, as teacher, lawyer, judge and justice, creatively imagined, skillfully crafted and then delivered gender justice”; “one of the first to see, address and teach us to recognize women’s legal inequality.”

[RUTH BADER GINSBURG]. Barbara A. Babcock, Deborah L. Rhode, Ann E. Freedman, Susan Deller Ross, Wendy Webster Williams, Rhonda Copelon, and Nadine H. Taub, Sex Discrimination and the Law: History, Practice, and Theory, 2d ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996. Hardcover, no dust jacket. Inscribed to Justice Ginsburg by all 7 coauthors. 1,514 pp., 5¾ x 9¼ in.

Inventory #27871       Price: $22,000

This inscribed volume also includes a transmission note from Susan Deller Ross on Georgetown University Law Center stationery:

                                                                        Wed. 16-6-99

Dear Ruth,

            I was so thrilled to read in the papers that the prognosis is good, and to have that verified by the look on Marty’s face today. It’s wonderful! And how typical for you to be back on the bench the very first day! I never know how you manage it all.

            My apologies for the delay in getting you the autograph copy of the book. Hope you enjoy it.

                                                                        Love, / Sue

Historical Background
In 1974, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while a professor of law at Columbia University, was one of three co-authors of Sex-Based Discrimination: Text, Cases and Materials. One year later, Barbara A. Babcock (1938-2020) of Stanford Law School, Ann E. Freedman (b. 1947) of Philadelphia, Eleanor Holmes Norton (b. 1937) of New York City, and Susan Ross (b. 1942) of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C., published the first edition of this work as Sex Discrimination and the Law: Causes and Remedies. Ross later worked with Ginsburg on the Women’s Rights Project that Ginsburg cofounded at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the 1970s.

Twenty years later, Deborah L. Rhode (1952-2021) of Stanford Law School, Wendy Webster Williams (b. 1944) of Georgetown University Law Center, Rhonda Copelon (1944-2010) of CUNY Law School at Queens College, and Nadine H. Taub (1943-2020) of Rutgers Law School joined Babcock (still at Stanford), Freedman (then at Rutgers Law School), and Ross (then at Georgetown University Law Center) in issuing this second edition, titled Sex Discrimination and the Law: History, Practice, and Theory. These professors and activists worked closely with Ginsburg forging the legal framework for women’s rights through law school curricula and the court system. Each played a significant role in the development of women’s equality and civil rights in conjunction with and following the lead of Ginsburg.

As head of the Civil Division in the Justice Department under Attorney General Griffin Bell in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, Babcock fought for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s appointment as a federal judge. Over Bell’s objections, Babcock told Carter, “women are not fungible.... For a very visible appointment that could lead to the supreme court, it has to be Ruth.” Failing to choose “a woman who is so well qualified and more than any woman applicant in the country has paid her dues,” Babcock told Carter, would be “a slap in the face.” In 1993, when President Bill Clinton was considering Ginsburg for the Supreme Court, Babcock “was again in my corner from start to finish,” Ginsburg said in a 2018 speech, crediting Babcock’s efforts with “the good job I have today.”

In 1999, Ginsburg was diagnosed with colon cancer, the first of five bouts with cancer. She underwent surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. During her treatment, as Ross suggests in her note, Ginsburg did not miss a day on the bench. The “Marty” to whom Ross refers is Ginsburg’s husband Martin Ginsburg (1932-2010).

Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) was born in Brooklyn into a Jewish family and graduated in 1954 from Cornell University, where she met Martin D. Ginsburg. They married a month after her graduation, and they moved to Oklahoma, where he was stationed in the U.S. Army Reserve. Ruth Bader Ginsburg enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1956 but transferred to Columbia Law School in New York after two years and graduated in 1959. She held a clerkship for a federal judge and then worked at Columbia Law School on international law. She was a professor at Rutgers Law School from 1963 to 1972 and at Columbia Law School from 1972 to 1980. In 1972, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union to combat gender discrimination. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She served as a liberal voice on the Supreme Court and authored many important opinions. Ginsburg died of complications from pancreatic cancer and was replaced on the court by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Condition: Some wear; some passages marked with sticky notes.