In the late spring of 1996, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was putting the final touches on what would become one of the most important decisions of her 27-year career on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then in her third term, the relatively new justice was assigned to write the court’s decision in United States v. Virginia, in which the U.S. Department of Justice was challenging the male-only policy at the Virginia Military Institute, a prestigious state-funded military college established in 1839.