For the people: Naming her to the court in 1993, President Bill Clinton compared Ginsburg, 69, to civil rights champion Justice Thurgood Marshall. A staunch feminist, she wrote the 1996 opinion ordering the Virginia Military Institute to admit women. Last session, she voted in favor of patients having the right to demand a second opinion from their HMO.

Independent spirit: Ginsburg calls husband Martin, a tax-law professor at Georgetown University, "superchef," for his feats in the kitchen. She does not give him any advice about cooking, but then, he doesn't giv e her any advice about the law.

Grace notes: After undergoing colon cancer surgery in 1999 and a year of treatment at Washington Hospital Center, she praised her care but complained that the radio in the radiation room was better equipped for hard rock than Handel.