Rutgers Renames Newark Building To Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg

NEWARK, NJ — For almost a decade before her historic rise to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought to instill lessons about equality and justice from the classrooms of Rutgers Law School. Now, the late justice’s former workplace, where she taught from 1963 to 1972, is putting Ginsburg’s name in stone – literally.

Earlier this month, Rutgers University announced that it will rename one of its most iconic residence halls at its Newark campus after Ginsburg.

The Rutgers Board of Governors unanimously approved renaming 15 Washington Street as Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall to honor the trailblazing jurist, whose lifelong pursuit for equal rights and justice began as a faculty member at Rutgers Law School in Newark.

While at Rutgers, Ginsburg pioneered teaching women’s rights with a seminar on the law and gender equality. Ginsburg also began to build the legal framework that would lead her to successfully argue landmark gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, which she joined as the second woman justice in 1993.

Ginsburg remained connected to Rutgers throughout her life after leaving the university, maintaining close contact with faculty colleagues and students whom she taught and mentored.

Ginsburg died of complications of metastatic pancreas cancer in September at her home in Washington, D.C. She was 87.

• See related article: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Liberal Stalwart, Dies At 87

Jane Ginsburg, the justice’s daughter, said her family is honored a building will be named after her mother at Rutgers-Newark.

“Rutgers was one of the very few U.S. law schools willing in the 1960s to hire women, or minorities,” said Ginsburg, a law professor at Columbia Law School. “It is particularly appropriate that the university that gave mother her start in law teaching would commemorate that association in such a tangible way.”

According to a statement from Rutgers, the hall housed the law school for nearly a quarter of a century after Ginsburg left Rutgers. It’s now home to 330 graduate and undergraduate students, including 100 law students.

It’s also the residence of Rutgers-Newark chancellor Nancy Cantor, who wrote the proposal to name the building following the justice’s death.

“Justice Ginsburg’s steadfast commitment to social justice and equal treatment under the law, and to training future generations of change-makers, is precisely at the core of the institutional identity of Rutgers Law School in Newark and of Rutgers-Newark more generally,” Cantor said.

“We live that every day, in our commitment to creating social mobility and in our work in Newark and beyond as an anchor institution, collaborating in the community, across sectors, for equitable growth and opportunity,” Cantor said.

The building that will bear the name Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall faces Washington Park, soon to be renamed Harriet Tubman Square, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka recently announced.

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Cantor said that the convergence of these two pioneering women’s legacies is “particularly compelling.”

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall is a home to students who represent precisely the breathtaking diversity of people whom our nation needs to realize their full potential — a realization dependent in no small part upon making good on America’s promise of equal justice under the law,” Cantor said.

“In an era when our nation is experiencing an unprecedented surge in awareness of who among us continue to be left behind in so many domains of public and private life and how far we have to go to achieve our nation’s promise of genuinely equal justice under the law, the case for naming a building for Ginsburg is more than strikingly appropriate … it’s urgent,” Cantor emphasized.

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