James F. Hrdlicka is a postdoctoral research scholar in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and the Program in Political History and Leadership at Arizona State University. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Demoracy at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in History from the University of Virginia.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg served on the Supreme Court of the United States as associate justice from 1993 until her death in 2020. Before that, she served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from her appointment in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter until her appointment to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton.

She graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959 in a tie for the first in her class. She was on both the Columbia Law Review and the Harvard Law Review--the first woman to be on two major law reviews. She became a professor at Rutgers Law School in 1963 and she subsequently taught at Columbia Law School from 1972 to 1980.

In 1972, she also co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Through her work with the ACLU, she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976. She won five.