Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
Prof. Ruth Ginsburg. C-plus. Very precise. Female. Reads.
— an excerpt from a note written by the late Justice Harry Blackmun during then-professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s first argument before the Supreme Court in Frontiero v. Richardson, in January 1973. Blackmun took detailed notes about SCOTUS advocates, grading each of them from A through F (the scale used from 1970 to 1974), from to 1-100 (the scale used from 1975 to 1977), and from 0-8 (the scale used from 1978 to 1994). Over the course of her arguments before the high court, Ginsburg continued to improve, earning some Bs and B-s from the justice. Her final GPA was a 2.8. When recently informed of the grades she earned from Blackmun, Ginsburg had this to say: “Listen to the arguments and judge for yourself.”
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.