Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York to Evelyn (née Bayer) and Morris Ginsburg, a department store executive. He grew up in Rockville Centre, Long Island , where he attended South Side High School. His family was Jewish. Ginsburg earned a B.A. from Cornell University in 1953 and a J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School in 1958. He was a star on Cornell’s golf team. After finishing a year at law school, Ginsburg married Joan Ruth Bader in 1954, after her graduation from Cornell. That same year, Ginsburg, an ROTC officer in the Army Reserve, was called up for active duty and stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Ginsburg had an undergraduate training in chemistry. In 1956, he returned to law school, and his wife also entered Harvard Law School. During his third year at Harvard, Ginsburg endured two operations and radiation therapy to treat testicular cancer.

Shortly after graduating from Cornell in 1954, Ginsburg married Ruth Bader on June 23. Ruth said she and Martin decided whatever profession they pursued, they would pursue it together. The couple chose law, and both studied at Harvard Law School.

After graduating from law school in 1958, Ginsburg joined the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He was subsequently admitted to the bar in New York in 1959 and in the District of Columbia in 1980.

In 1971, Ginsburg’s firm represented Ross Perot in a business matter, and the two men became close friends. After President Jimmy Carter nominated his wife to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980, Ginsburg reached out to Perot and other influential friends to assure her Senate confirmation. In 1984, Ginsburg resolved complex tax questions that threatened General Motors’s acquisition of Perot’s Electronic Data Systems. In 1986, Perot endowed the Martin Ginsburg chair in taxation at Georgetown, although Ginsburg himself never held this seat.

Ginsburg taught at New York University Law School as an adjunct faculty member from 1967 to 1979. He was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School (1977–1978), Harvard Law School (1985–1986), the University of Chicago Law School (1989–1990), and NYU (1992–1993). He was a tenured professor at Columbia Law School (Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law) from 1979 to 1980, and at Georgetown Law Center from 1980 until his death in 2010.

Martin David Ginsburg died from cancer on June 27, 2010. A US Army Reserve ROTC officer, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Following her passing from pancreatic cancer in 2020, Justice Ginsburg was laid to rest in Arlington next to her husband.

In the 2018 film On the Basis of Sex, a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Marty is portrayed by Armie Hammer, with Ruth played by Felicity Jones.