鲁斯（菲丽希缇·琼斯 Felicity Jones 饰）渴望成为一名律师，并且凭借着自己的努力考上了哈佛大学的法学院。在法学院里，鲁斯因为身为女性而遭到了来自各方面的歧视和压力，只有他的丈夫马丁（艾米·汉莫 Armie Hammer 饰）坚定的支持着妻子的选择，因为他明白，鲁斯充满了天赋和正义感。
马丁被查出患上了癌症，病愈之后，他带着孩子们前往纽约工作。为了能够和自己的家人们生活在一起，鲁斯向学校提出希望能够转去哥伦比亚大学完成学业，却被拒绝了。之后，鲁斯离开了哈佛，成为了罗格斯大学的法学教授，可即便她是这样的优秀，依然没有律师行肯聘用她，只因为她是一个女人。

I ask no favors for my sex… All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks.
—Sarah Moore Grimké, activist for women’s suffrage, 1837
As the United States Supreme Court leans increasingly to the right, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s vigorous dissenting opinions and ferocious 20-push-up workouts have earned this tiny, soft-spoken, intellectual giant the status of rock star and the title “Notorious RBG.” What many don’t know is Ginsburg’s strategic, trailblazing role in defining gender-discrimination law. Intent on systematically releasing women from second-class status, she argued six pivotal gender-bias cases in the 1970s before an all-male Supreme Court blind to sexism.
Now 84, and still inspired by the lawyers who defended free speech during the Red Scare, Ginsburg refuses to relinquish her passionate duty, steadily fighting for equal rights for all citizens under the law. Through intimate interviews and unprecedented access to Ginsburg’s life outside the court, RBG tells the electric story of Ginsburg’s consuming love affairs with both the Constitution and her beloved husband Marty—and of a life’s work that led her to become an icon of justice in the highest court in the land.