July 4, 2018, Tel-Aviv -- Today Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was honored with the inaugural Genesis Lifetime Achievement Award at a dinner ceremony in Tel-Aviv. The legendary women’s rights advocate received a glass sculpture of a shofar from Justice Aharon Barak, former President of the Supreme Court of Israel.
“It is an honor to bestow the Genesis Lifetime Achievement Award on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” said Aharon Barak. “Without a doubt, she is one of the great legal minds of our time; an outstanding Jewish jurist whose fearless pursuit of human rights, equality and justice for all stems from her Jewish values. It is a privilege to celebrate her here in Israel.” In addition to President Barak, all sitting justices as well as all former presidents of the Supreme Court of Israel, attended the ceremony in honor of Justice Ginsburg.
Accepting the award, Justice Ginsburg said: “I am a judge, born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice, for peace, and for enlightenment runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition. I hope, in all the years I have the good fortune to continue serving on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and courage to remain steadfast in the service of that demand.”
Justice Ginsburg was unanimously selected as the Lifetime Achievement Award honoree in November 2017 by the five Laureates of the Genesis Prize: Michael R. Bloomberg (2014); Michael Douglas (2015); Itzhak Perlman (2016); Sir Anish Kapoor (2017); and Natalie Portman (2018). The Genesis Prize Laureates recognized Justice Ginsburg as “A source of inspiration not just for Jews but for people of all faiths and ethnicities around the world.” Unlike the Genesis Prize, the honor does not come with a monetary award.
Former US President Bill Clinton, who appointed her to the US Supreme Court in 1993, sent a congratulatory letter to Justice Ginsburg, saying: “This award is a testament to your remarkable contributions to building a fairer and more just society, and to your lifelong effort to widen the circle of opportunity. … your groundbreaking legal work has pioneered civil liberties and women’s rights in the United States. Above all, your intelligence, integrity and dedication to the rule of law have played an invaluable role in shaping our country’s forward trajectory over the past quarter century, and I will always be proud to have appointed you to the Supreme Court.”
“I am delighted to welcome Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Israel,” said Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of The Genesis Prize Foundation. “Throughout history, Jewish women have been at the forefront of humanity’s fight for gender equality. Today, in honoring Justice Ginsburg as an outstanding daughter of the Jewish people, we also pay tribute to the many Jewish women who have made contributions to gender equality in all aspects of human endeavor. Justice Ginsburg is a pioneer and an inspiration to the next generation of leaders who try to make the world a better place for girls and women around the world.”
BACKGROUND
About U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1933. She married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954, and has a daughter, Jane, and a son, James. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959–1961. From 1961–1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963–1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972–1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977–1978. In 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. She served on the Board and Executive Committee of the American Bar Foundation from 1979-1989, on the Board of Editors of the American Bar Association Journal from 1972-1978, and on the Council of the American Law Institute from 1978-1993. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat August 10, 1993.
Contacts for media inquiries:
US: Alison Rose; arose@genesisprize.org; +1 267-738-0677
Israel: Nadav Berkowitz; Debby Communications; nadav@debby.co.il