Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Cornell University in 1954 and that year married Martin Ginsburg, a classmate. She enrolled at Harvard Law School, but after her husband found employment with a New York City law firm, she transferred to Columbia University, where she graduated tied for first in her class in 1959. That year she accepted a two-year clerkship for U.S. District Court Judge Edmund L. Palmieri in New York. After working on the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure from 1961 to 1963, Ginsburg accepted a post as a law professor at Rutgers University, where she taught until 1972. She also served as volunteer counsel to the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). At the ACLU, Ginsburg litigated sex discrimination cases and cofounded the Women’s Rights Project. Ironically, during her time at Rutgers she became pregnant with her son, James, and because she was not tenured, she concealed her pregnancy with oversized clothes. In 1972 Ginsburg accepted a position at Columbia University, the law school’s first woman with the rank of full professor.