The Principle
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020), Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court from 1993 to her death, was one of the most important jurists in American legal history. Before her appointment to the Court, she had systematically dismantled legal gender discrimination through the ACLU's Women's Rights Project with a methodical strategy modelled on Thurgood Marshall's civil rights litigation. Throughout her career she explicitly grounded her pursuit of justice in the Jewish concept of tikkun olam - "repairing the world" - and in Deuteronomy 16:20's injunction: "Justice, justice you shall pursue." Her judicial philosophy brought a specifically biblical-prophetic understanding of justice - that law must actively pursue equality for the vulnerable - into the highest court in the United States.
Biblical Foundation
Deuteronomy 16:20 - "That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee" - was the verse Ginsburg cited most frequently as the animating principle of her judicial vocation. The Hebrew tzedek tzedek tirdof - "justice, justice you shall pursue" - combines the concept of tzedek (righteousness/justice) with active pursuit: justice is not a passive hope but an obligation requiring active effort. The repetition of "justice" has been interpreted by rabbinic tradition as emphasising both procedural justice (just process) and substantive justice (just outcomes) - the two poles of Ginsburg's judicial philosophy. Leviticus 19:15 - "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour" - establishes the impartiality standard Ginsburg brought to her anti-discrimination work: law must treat every person with equal dignity regardless of sex, race, or social position. Amos 5:24 - "But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" - provided the prophetic vision of justice as a transformative force that must flow through legal institutions.
Historical Transmission
Tikkun olam as a concept originates in the Lurianic Kabbalah of the 16th century but was popularised as a social justice concept in 20th century American Reform Judaism. Ginsburg encountered it through her upbringing in Brooklyn's East Flatbush Jewish community, her education at James Madison High School, and her formation in the liberal Jewish tradition that understood biblical justice as a mandate for social reform. Her systematic use of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause to challenge gender discrimination drew on the legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall's civil rights litigation - itself rooted in the biblical equality tradition - while bringing specifically Jewish textual reasoning to bear on constitutional interpretation. Her famous dissents - the "Notorious RBG" dissents in cases including Bush v. Gore (2000), Ledbetter v. Goodyear (2007), and Shelby County v. Holder (2013) - embodied the prophetic tradition of speaking an unwelcome truth to power, which has deep roots in the Hebrew prophetic literature Ginsburg knew well.
Modern Application
Ginsburg's litigation before the Supreme Court in the 1970s produced decisions - Frontiero v. Richardson (1973), Craig v. Boren (1976) - that established intermediate scrutiny for gender classifications and effectively ended the most overt forms of legal gender discrimination in American law. Her opinions and dissents on the Court continued this work, with United States v. Virginia (1996) - striking down Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy - being her most significant majority opinion. Ginsburg explicitly connected her judicial work to tikkun olam in public speeches, and her invocation of Deuteronomy 16:20 resonated beyond Jewish audiences because the prophetic vision of justice as something to be pursued rather than merely administered speaks across religious traditions. Her legacy demonstrates that the biblical-prophetic understanding of justice - as active pursuit of equality for the vulnerable, not merely formal adherence to procedure - can function as a genuine jurisprudential principle within a secular legal system.
Scholarly Debate
Scholars debate how much Ginsburg's Jewish tradition specifically shaped her jurisprudence versus the broader liberal legal culture in which she was formed. Jonathan Rosen's The Talmud and the Internet and other cultural critics have traced the specifically Talmudic character of her reasoning - her habit of preserving minority opinions, her attention to textual precedent, her dialectical method. Deborah Dinner's The Sex Equality Dilemma examines the legal strategy Ginsburg developed, noting that her choice to use cases involving male plaintiffs to challenge gender discrimination was a strategic decision about which precedents would be most durable. For legal theorists, the most important question Ginsburg raises is whether a biblical-prophetic commitment to pursuing justice can be operationalised within the constraints of constitutional interpretation - whether tzedek tzedek tirdof can be a judicial principle rather than merely a political aspiration.