U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was hospitalized Thursday with three broken ribs, is unlikely to miss the next sitting of the court that begins Nov. 26.
The 85-year-old justice did not let two broken ribs keep her from even a day’s work in 2012. She has also survived multiple bouts with cancer and underwent heart surgery in 2014.
A linchpin for the four-member liberal minority on the nation’s highest court, she has said she plans to serve until she turns 90.
Ginsburg, the second of only four women to serve on the high court, was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Before that she made her mark in the legal arena as the director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. During her tenure, she argued six landmark cases on gender equality before the Supreme Court, winning five of them.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Carrying on her work for gender equality, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, which ended the males-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute. Ginsburg wrote that the state-run institution could not use gender to deny women the opportunity to attend the prestigious school.
She was also instrumental in the court’s ruling in Safford Unified School District v. Redding, in which the court said a school went too far when it strip-searched a 13-year-old girl while looking for drugs.
Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion in the case of Bush v. Gore garnered her a lot of attention when she set aside her usually restrained style. Breaking from the majority opinion, which effectively decided the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Ginsburg ended her decision with the words, “I dissent,” markedly omitting the adverb “respectfully” that is traditionally included.
