Born in New York City on November 13, 1928,[2] Green graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949.

She also received an honorary Doctor of Laws from George Washington University in 1994 and has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of Towson High School.

[4] Green was a member of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) from May 1988 until May 1995, and served as its presiding judge from May 1990 until May 1995.

[2][3] The FEC had challenged the propriety of the Christian Coalition's distribution of voter guides, on the grounds it had been too closely tied to large corporate donors.

[4] On January 31, 2005, Judge Green ruled that: (1) detainees had the fundamental Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law; (2) complaints stated a claim for violation of due process based on Combatant Status Review Tribunal's ("CSRT") extensive reliance on classified information in its resolution of "enemy combatant" status of detainees, the detainees' inability to review that information, and the prohibition of assistance by counsel jointly deprived detainees of sufficient notice of the factual bases for their detention and denied them a fair opportunity to challenge their incarceration; (3) due process required that CSRTs sufficiently consider whether the evidence upon which the tribunal relied in making its "enemy combatant" determinations had been obtained through torture; (4) complaints stated a claim for violation of due process based on the government's employment of an overly broad definition of "enemy combatant" subject to indefinite detention; and (5) Geneva Conventions applied to the Taliban detainees, but not to members of the al Qaeda terrorist organization.