Former Berkeley Law Dean Herma Hill Kay testified at her confirmation hearings that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would become “a judge worthy of the title.” I guess you think this prediction came true. please explain it to us.
when president clinton nominated then justice ruth bader ginsburg to the supreme court, she had already spent decades working tirelessly for a more just society, a society in which the constitution works for all people, a society in which that the constitution leaves no one behind. after her appointment to the court, she continued to work towards this ideal, this idea that we must have an increasingly inclusive constitution and we must ensure that our laws are not structured in a way that prevents people from achieving their full right . human potential.
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In court, Justice Ginsburg worked toward this ideal in many cases. Perhaps most memorable in the opinion of VMI (Vermont Military Institute). vmi involved the question of whether a state military institution could exclude women. Until that point, the Virginia Military Institute, an elite school with a storied history, incredible facilities, and powerful alumni, had only accepted male applicants. the clinton administration sued to force the commonwealth of virginia to open its doors to female cadets. Once sued, Virginia tried to create a parallel institution for women. In a seven-justice opinion, to a single dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that the surrogate institution was far from equal. it did not have the same facilities and opportunities. could not possibly accumulate, in any amount of time, the same prestige. So, to satisfy the constitution’s equal protection clause, VMI must admit female cadets. Justice Ginsburg visited VMI in 2017 and found, she said, that the institute had been enhanced by the addition of female cadets.
My Own Words is your first choice, an autobiography written with the help of two Georgetown law professors, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. williams.
My Own Words is a book that Justice Ginsburg put together with two authorized biographers. she compiled, with her help, documents covering the entire scope of her life, including things she wrote as a child for her school newspaper and much material from her time as an advocate for her. They include her comments in the White House Rose Garden when she was nominated, some of her testimony at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearings. there are a host of other speeches, including some by her husband where she talks about her career and her life together. it’s a very wide spectrum window into the things that were at the center of her life, her job, her family, and her marriage.
He then recommended talks with rbg by the president of the national constitution center, jeffrey rosen.
In this recently published book, Jeff Rosen catalogs a variety of revealing conversations he had with Justice Ginsburg over the years. She took material from multiple conversations to weave a story about what Justice Ginsburg thought about various things, including, for example, women’s rights and the opinions decided during her term that she most hoped to see overturned. It is a wonderful window into her life, through her words.
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i dissent is the following, tell us about it.
This is a wonderful book written for children that teaches children about Ginsburg justice and teaches them that it’s okay to question what other people say, it’s important to speak your mind, and it’s great to have the courage of your convictions. is a fantastic book because it exposes children to a great role model.
Their dissidences are drawing a roadmap, according to another former employee of the RBG. what does that mean?
He always hoped, even when he was on the losing side of a case, that eventually his opinion would be majority. therefore, often if she disagreed regarding the correct interpretation of a statute, her dissents would convey, for example, how congress could amend the statute to adopt a position that she thought was the correct interpretation In the first instance. . that is exactly what happened with respect to her dissent in the wage discrimination case; The court ruled against a plaintiff named Lilly Ledbetter on legal grounds. Then, as soon as he was elected, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, overturning the majority decision and amending Title Seven to make it easier to file wage discrimination lawsuits. regarding some of her other discrepancies, such as her dissent in shelby county vs. holder, who weakened the voting rights law and which she believed was decided in a notorious way, she felt she was writing for history. Her hope was that if the issue came back to court, people would review her dissent and her opinion would win a majority in a future court.
As you noted, she was the only Supreme Court Justice whose coach published an exercise book. that book is your next recommendation. tell us about rbg training: how it stays strong. . . and you can too! by bryant johnson.
this book details the exercise regimen he did with justice ginsburg for 20 years. shows how strong she was and offers a series of exercises that can help others maintain their own strength. I love that it has inspired so many others to stay fit. I think it’s just fantastic.
In a public conversation in Berkeley just a year ago, the judge told him that “if you’ve survived cancer, you have a zest for life that you didn’t have before.” you worked for her during the period when she received her first cancer diagnosis. she just succumbed to cancer after her fifth fight. Besides working out, what was rbg’s source of strength, on the bench and in life, in your opinion?
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justice, as its attorneys called it, was deeply dedicated to public service and to working for a fairer society. That dedication and sense of purpose strengthened her and kept her going through one adversity experience after another. it wasn’t just cancer. there were hundreds of other obstacles; for example, graduating from law school and not being able to find a job. she knew that she had the talent to make a contribution, to improve our society, so she was compelled and determined to make the most of every day that she spent on this earth. and, boy, did she do it. we are much better for having lived.
The last title on your list is an upcoming book Justice Ginsburg co-wrote with you. it will be called justice, justice you will persecute.
The title comes from a passage in Deuteronomy that Judge Ginsberg had inscribed on a piece of art that hung in her chambers. sums up the animating principle that she defined her contribution to our society. she was very fond of talking about how the constitution, in its preamble, set forth the work she undertook, “we the people of the united states, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, I order and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” She believed that making our country more perfect was a job that was always going on, and she believed that it was very important that each of us do our part, to try to build that more perfect union.
The book is a collection of materials she and I put together, inspired by a conversation she and I had last year at the University of California, where we talked about her life, her family, her work as an advocate, and her time on the pitch The book includes a number of never-before-published materials from various stages of her life, including some important speeches and some of her last speeches. includes her favorite among the hundreds of opinions she wrote in the supreme court. These were the opinions that she thought best represented the work that she did.
the judge was deeply interested in seeing the publication and wrote the introduction to a book by her dear friend herma hill kay, chronicling the lives of the first 14 women professors in the united states at accredited law schools. A professor named Pat Cain has taken over editing the manuscript since Herma passed away, and is preparing it for publication. that book will be published together with justice, justice you will persecute. is a wonderful chronicle of these pioneering women in the legal academy.
justice ginsburg insisted, if memory serves, that having women in law schools and on the bench made a difference. can you explain his reason? what difference did she think the performance made?
herma was the fifteenth law professor and justice ginsburg was the nineteenth. when i talked to her about her time at the two law schools she served, rutgers and columbia, there really weren’t any other women around her, maybe at most one of hers. so many of the things she experienced she faced without a cohort of people who had some of the same experiences. For example, she became pregnant with her second child while working as a one-year law professor at Rutgers Law School. I asked him in our conversation last fall: How does it make you feel knowing that in many law schools, including the one where I teach, the majority of the student body is female? She said: “I am absolutely delighted that women are now so well accepted at the bar.” We’ve come a long way, and much of that progress is due to Justice Ginsburg.
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