By Jennifer Schuessler NEW YORK TIMES
She’s already a Supreme Court justice and a pop-culture action hero. And now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg can claim another outsize distinction: winner of a $1 million prize.
Ginsburg has been named the recipient of the 2019 Berggruen Prize, which is given annually to a thinker whose ideas “have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world.”
The previous winners of the prize, which was first awarded in 2016, have all been philosophers. Ginsburg, 86, who was chosen from a pool of more than 500 nominees, will direct the prize money to a charitable or nonprofit organization. She was hailed by the prize committee as “a lifelong trailblazer for human rights and gender equality,” and “a constant voice in favor of equality, the rights of workers and the separation of church and state.”
“Few in our era have done more to bring vital philosophical ideas to fruition in practical affairs than Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, chairman of the prize committee, said in a news release. “She has been both a visionary and a strategic leader in securing equality, fairness, and the rule of law not only in the realm of theory, but in social institutions and the lives of individuals.”
Ginsburg, a stalwart liberal voice on the court who underwent treatment for a tumor on her pancreas in August, was the subject of two movies released last year: the biopic “On the Basis of Sex,” and the documentary “RBG,” which included footage of Ginsburg lifting hand weights while wearing a sweatshirt reading “Super Diva!”
The prize is awarded by the Berggruen Institute, a research organization dedicated to improving governance and cross-cultural understanding.