Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday, was known for her strongly worded dissents. But she wrote several decisions that set precedents and policy for higher education. The decision for which Ginsburg is best known came in 1996, when the Supreme Court ruled that Virginia could not maintain the Virginia Military Institute for male students only . The commonwealth maintained that the "adversative" system at VMI was appropriate only for men. Ginsburg defined the system this way: "Cadets live in spartan barracks where surveillance is constant and privacy nonexistent; they wear uniforms, eat together in the mess hall, and regularly participate in drills. Entering students are incessantly exposed to the rat line, ‘an extreme form of the adversative model,’ comparable in intensity to Marine Corps boot camp. Tormenting and punishing, the rat line bonds new cadets to their fellow sufferers and, when they have completed the seven-month experience, to their former tormentors." But Ginsburg rejected the idea that only men could benefit from the system. The suit against VMI was brought by the Justice Department on behalf of a woman who wanted to enroll. And she also rejected VMI’s argument that the practice of excluding women would […]
