Debbie Levy's Blog, page 4

Katie and RBG Sit Down For A Chat, And. . .

 

 

 

 

 

Katie Couric: What do you hope little girls take away from this book? Little boys, too?

Justice Ginsburg: That they can do anything they want to do as long as they’re willing to put in the hard work that it takes to achieve.

To see the interview on Yahoo News, click here. The discussion of I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark starts at about the 25-minute mark . . . and includes RBG musing about being a little girl who would rather go out and climb trees like the boys (instead of sitting around in a pink party dress), and about viewing Nancy Drew as an early feminist icon!

How much do I love this? Let me count the ways. . . .

 

Glorious, Victorious RBG

Through her work as a lawyer in the 1970s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg racked up a string of victories at the Supreme Court that gradually produced more equality under the law between men and women and boys and girls.

But Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not always victorious. If she were, I would not have had the opportunity to title my book I DISSENT! Here is what she said at her confirmation hearings back in 1993 about the long road to victories in women’s rights and other fields:

“Generally, change in our society is incremental, I think. Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

This is a patient woman, and her patience has led to important victories in making this a more just nation. You sow seeds, care for them, wait, and maybe–not all the time, but enough of the time–you get the results you’re after. You may lose at first, but you plant those seeds and think ahead.

And so in her dissent–her loss–in the Lily Ledbetter case in 2007, Justice Ginsburg explained why her colleagues on the Supreme Court were wrong to rule against women workers who were fighting to get paid the same as men. Congress agreed. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was the first piece of legislation President Obama signed when he took office.

And in 2013, Justice Ginsburg dissented when the Court refused to uphold lower court rulings that approved of the University of Texas’ approach to increasing enrollment by African American and Hispanic students. By 2016 the case had made its way back to the Court–and this time the Court upheld the approach. This time RBG did not have to dissent.

Glorious, Victorious RBG. Step by step she has made a difference, one disagreement at a time.

This marks the close of this series of posts, which started with Glorious, Adorious RBG. I’ve still got so much great material in my research file that couldn’t make it into my book, so from time to time, I may be sharing more Glorious RBG tidbits–only they won’t necessarily rhyme. Glorious, Adorious, Not-Furious, Not-Spurious, Expurgatorious, So-Curious, Meritorious, Luxurious, Laborious, Stentorious, Non-Injurious, Victorious–those are enough rhyming monikers for one person.

And this: I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark is now out in the world!

(Photo of RBG at the typewriter is from the Supreme Court of the United States; photo of RBG in profile is by Mary Altaffer/AP)

 

 

Glorious, Non-Injurious RBG

It’s a mouthful, I know: Glorious, Non-Injurious RBG. But it’s worth the tongue-twisting. Here are good examples from the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Non-Injurious School of Life philosophy:

“Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain our time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors.”

– RBG essay in The Right Words at the Right Time, a collection edited by Marlo Thomas

“Whatever might appear from some sharply divided opinions, we know that we must get over whatever momentary annoyance we feel. We revere the Court. We don’t want to leave it in worse shape than we found it.”

– RBG in “Justice Prevails,” Cornell Alumni Magazine, 2013

Do no harm. Not only that, but turn the potentially injurious things others may do or say to you into something positive. Consider this, from RBG’s statement upon the death of Justice Antonin Scalia:

“From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies. We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots—the ‘applesauce’ and ‘argle bargle’—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion.”

Now that’s making lemonade out of lemons.

Finally, there’s this: As you know, not everyone subscribes to the Non-Injurious School of Life philosophy, and RBG has been the subject of some gratuitous barbs. That’s okay; it comes with being a public figure. Shortly after she was appointed to the Supreme Court, People magazine ran a photo of her and described her clothing as a “crime of fashion.” “Good thing Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s new job comes with a robe,” the magazine snarked.

Seems the world of fashion has caught up to RBG; these days her style is enthusiastically mimicked, not mocked, all over the media. Glorious, Non-Injurious RBG, who also happens to be a trend-setter.

Next: Victorious RBG.

Glorious, Stentorious RBG

Stentorious (okay, it’s stentorian, but I like stentorious) : extremely loud <stentorian tones> (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

There are so many ways you can hear Justice Ginsburg speak–all from the comfort of your own home. You might listen to her questioning lawyers during oral arguments at the Supreme Court: click here, for example, for the audio from Vance v. Ball State University, a workplace discrimination case. Or here for Obergefell v. Hodges, the marriage-equality case. For video of a 2014 interview with Katie Couric, click here; here for C-SPAN video of her visit to her grade school in Brooklyn; here for Irin Carmon’s 2015 interview. You can even listen to Professor Ginsburg arguing her first case as a young lawyer at the Supreme Court in 1973 here.

And if you do listen, you will find that she is not, in fact, EXTREMELY LOUD. Her voice is rather small. You want to lean forward to make sure you don’t miss anything. So, no, RBG is not stentorian (or stentorious!) in the literal sense. But metaphorically? Oh yes. If I may paraphrase one of the reviews of I Dissent: speak softly and carry a big legal pad.

(Photo credit: Jim Davis/Boston Globe)

Glorious, Stentorious RBG. Stayed tuned for Non-Injurious RBG.

Glorious, Laborious RBG

Let’s take the primary sense of the word first: laborious, devoted to hard work. Industrious. Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t fool around.

Exhibit A: In 1999 she had surgery for colon cancer, followed by chemotherapy treatments. In 2009 she had surgery for pancreatic cancer. Both times, she scheduled her medical procedures so she would not miss a single day on the bench. And she did not.

Exhibit B: “Her former law clerks speak with one voice about her preparation for cases and work ethic,” wrote Richard Wolf in USA Today in 2013. His article quoted California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, who once clerked for RBG: “She works late into the wee morning hours on her various cases. It was not infrequent for law clerks to get messages left on their voicemail at 2 or 3 a.m., because that was her prime time.”

Exhibit C: From the same USA Today article: “When it’s time to write, Ginsburg is the court’s speed demon, taking an average of 60 days from oral arguments to issue her majority opinions — nearly a month faster than all her colleagues.”

Now let’s consider a secondary sense of the word, generally considered less complimentary: laborious, when one exhibits excessive effort or lack of spontaneity. From Jeffrey Toobin’s 2013 New Yorker profile:

“Just as RBG’s work ethic is legendary, so is her careful, slow speech pattern. During conversations, she is given to taking lengthy pauses. This can be unnerving, especially at the Supreme Court, where silence only amplifies the sound of ticking clocks. Therefore, her clerks came up with what they call the two-Mississippi rule: after speaking, wait two beats before you say anything else. Ginsburg’s pauses have nothing to do with her age. It’s just the way she is.”

Laborious? If thinking before, and while, you speak is an offense, I dearly wish more people  were guilty.

Just for fun, now here’s a photo of RBG not being laborious:

She’s in the front row, white wig and white dress. (Photo by Stephen R. Brown/AP.)

Glorious, Laborious RBG. Next time: Stentorious RBG.

Glorious, Luxurious RBG

For this seventh installment in my Glorious RBG series, I’m speaking of Luxurious RBG.

I’m speaking of the Supreme Court justice who appears on the bench in her plain black robe . . . adorned by one of her many lace or bejeweled jabots.

I’m speaking of the woman who favors dress gloves, long and short, white, black, and ecru, frequently made of lace.

I’m speaking of the woman whose husband, the eminent tax lawyer Martin Ginsburg, was an accomplished gourmet cook, known by family and friends for such dishes as Decadent Chocolate Bombe, which I discussed in RBG’s birthday post here. Then there’s his Vitello Tonnato, the sauce alone composed of one and one-thirds cups of olive oil, two egg yolks, Italian tuna in olive oil, eight anchovy fillets, and a half-cup of heavy cream. Or consider Reasonably Quick Potato Gratin (Marty’s title), with a cup of heavy cream, two cups of grated gruyere, sweet butter, yielding, his recipe indicates, six servings, “8 if people are not too hungry.”

So Luxurious RBG? I admit, this moniker only takes you so far. It should be noted that in her days as a young mother, RBG was known to her children for snacking on coffee and prunes, not exactly luxurious fare. And Ruth wasn’t the one whipping up the Vitello Tonnato in the Ginsburg household. Still, there were some pretty luxurious meals served up at home. And those jabots and gloves! Maybe Elegant RBG would be more accurate. But that would throw off my rhyme scheme.

You, too, can cook what the Glorious, Luxurious RBG could look forward to for dinner when her husband was alive. After Marty Ginsburg died in 2010, the Supreme Court Historical Society published a great little book called Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg. It has many of his most admired and enjoyed recipes, and they are luxurious. Bon appetit!

(Photo of Justice Ginsburg in gloves from Reuters/Mario Anzuon; photo of the Ginsburgs by Mariana Cook/Supreme Court Historical Society.)

Next up: Laborious RBG.

Glorious, Meritorious RBG

“I try to teach, through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, the color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.”

– Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, February 17, 2015, interview with Irin Carmon of MSNBC (and co-author of Notorious RBG)

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

– Justice Ginsburg, May 29, 2015, remarks at Radcliffe Day, Harvard University

That is all. Glorious, Meritorious RBG.

Coming up: Luxurious RBG.

 

Glorious, So-Curious RBG

There she was, Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the first female law professors in the country at Rutgers Law School in Newark, New Jersey. There she was, from the time she started in 1963, teaching classes relating to her specialty, civil procedure.

And then students began asking for a class in women’s rights. Ideas about equality between the sexes were starting to change. Professor Ginsburg’s curiosity was piqued. As she later explained, in an interview at Ohio State University in 2006,

“To answer the students’ plea, I repaired to the library. Inside of a month I had read every federal decision ever written relating to women’s rights, also some state court decisions. That was no great feat, for there were precious few of them.”

RBG put together her class on women’s rights, sex discrimination, and gender equality, one of the first ever taught at a law school. She went on to co-found the first law review on women’s issues, to co-author the first casebook on women’s rights, and to co-found the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. And after that–the rest is history. (You know, the whole becoming a federal judge and then a Supreme Court justice thing.) See what a curious mind can lead to?

Glorious, So-Curious RBG.

Next time: Meritorious RBG.

(Photo is from the Supreme Court of the United States collection)

Glorious, Expurgatorious RBG

Yes. Expurgatorious. As in, tending to remove that which is erroneous or offensive. Stay with me here. . . .

When she was an undergraduate at Cornell, one of RBG’s professors was the writer Vladimir Nabakov. In a biography of her written by Elinor Swiger, RBG recalls that, thanks to Nabokov’s writerly influence:

“Even when I write an opinion, I will often read a sentence aloud and [ask], ‘Can I say this in fewer words–can I write it so the meaning will come across with greater clarity?'”

See? Expurgatorious, in the writerly sense. Then there’s this:

“If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be. So that’s number one on my list.”

– RBG in response to the question “What’s the worst ruling the current Court has produced,” in Jeffrey Rosen, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is An American Hero,” The New Republic, September 28, 2014

Expurgatorious, here, in the judicial sense. Glorious, Expurgatorious RBG. Not such a stretch.

(Photo credit: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)

Next up: So-Curious RBG.

Glorious, Not-Spurious RBG

Tell your students, your children, your masses yearning to know Ruth Bader Ginsburg that “spurious” is an excellent word that means “false” or “inauthentic.” And tell them that RBG is the opposite of spurious. She speaks her mind and she’s true to her values.

This characteristic was viewed with some consternation by at least one lawyer in the White House counsel’s office in 1993, after President Bill Clinton nominated then-Judge Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. The concern wasn’t about her qualifications, or about how she might perform as a Supreme Court justice. It was about how she would perform at her Senate hearings.

The lawyer sent a worried memo to David Gergen, then White House counselor.

“When asked a specific question about a prior decision or writing,” the memo noted, “Judge Ginsburg seems unable (or unwilling) to reassure that questioner’s underlying concerns, and instead, seems set on answering the specific charge. . . .”

What? She insisted on answering the specific question directly? She would not just make the questioner feel good about her prior rulings or writings?

Also from the worried lawyer’s memo:

“Judge Ginsburg has a strong tendency to defend the ACLU position. She has an instinct for defending some rather extreme liberal views. . . .”

It might have been more convenient for RBG to distance herself from the not-entirely-popular ACLU, after serving as director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in the 1970s. But it would also have been . . .  spurious.

The memo concludes: “And finally, Judge Ginsburg’s technique—her failure to make eye contact, her halting speech, her ‘laconic’ nature . . . is not helpful.” The memo was titled “Judge Ginsburg: Performance Pitfalls.”

The Senate confirmed Judge Ginsburg to become Justice Ginsburg by a vote of 96-3.

Glorious, Not-Spurious RBG. Next time: Expurgatorious RBG. (Yes. Expurgatorious.)

(Photo credit: White House Photography Office/Sharon Farmer)