I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing: disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what’s right for people everywhere. This biographical picture book about her life, tells the justice’s story through the lens of her many famous dissents, or disagreements.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg grew up in a time different from today; girls were taught to aspire to be wives and mothers—not study at college and become lawyers. I Dissent traces Justice Ginsburg’s achievements in the field of law back to her girlhood years, emphasizing for readers the importance of dissent in the face of an unequal society. Students will delight as they watch a young Ginsburg "protest" being forced to write with her right hand (she was left-handed) and "object" to being made to take home economics instead of shop class. The book briefly covers her high school, college, and law school years, as well as her marriage to Martin Ginsburg and birth of her two children, while the majority of the narrative focuses on Ginsburg's law career, her entry into the U.S. Supreme Court, and her work as an associate justice.