The biopic about United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was written by her nephew and she gives it her tacit seal of approval by appearing in the final shot.

Having known his aunt all his life, first-time screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman begins his account in 1956, when, already married and with a baby daughter, Ginsburg became one of just nine women in a class of more than 500 men entering Harvard Law School that year.

Driving the story is the significant role Ginsburg played in changing certain social norms*. She was lucky, as an undergraduate at Cornell, to meet Marty Ginsburg (Armie Hammer), an all-around great guy who not only did the cooking and helped with the babies (there would eventually be a son as well) but later did very well on Wall Street. On the other hand, he almost died of testicular cancer very early on, but pulled through to make possible a great marriage in all respects until his death in 2010.

The film, naturally, is structured upon the hurdles* confronted and jumped. Despite having graduated law school tied* for first in her class, she was turned down by all the top New York law firms.

By 1970, Ginsburg began focusing on sex discrimination* and how such cases could be tackled in the courts. At this point, she wants to be more than a teacher, so she begins a rough-and-tumble affiliation with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); complicit* but also butting heads with* its legal boss Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux), Ginsburg finds the ideal case of gender-based sex discrimination, in which Charles Moritz (Christian Mulkey), a single male Colorado caregiver, has been denied US$296 on his tax deduction. The fact that the victim of discrimination is male is just what she’s been looking for.

The success of this case represents the breakthrough that opens the door to many more like it, leading to her national recognition and final appointment as the second female U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Shot almost entirely in Montreal, this is Mimi Leder’s first theatrical feature since the straight-to-DVD “Thick as Thieves” nine years ago.