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by
Irin Carmon
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January 24 - January 30, 2022
To the women on whose shoulders we stand
“I just try to do the good job that I have to the best of my ability, and I really don’t think about whether I’m inspirational. I just do the best I can.” —RBG, 2015
When the jabot with scalloped glass beads glitters flat against the top of RBG’s black robe, it’s bad news for liberals. That’s her dissent collar.
“Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA,” RBG had written in her opinion. Killing the Voting Rights Act because it had worked too well, she had added, was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
No one—not the firms and judges that had refused to hire a young mother, not the bosses who had forced her out of a job for getting pregnant or paid her less for being a woman—had ever expected her to be sitting up there at the court.
RBG often repeated her mother’s advice that getting angry was a waste of your own time. Even more often, she shared her mother-in-law’s counsel for marriage: that sometimes it helped to be a little deaf.
RBG quoted Martin Luther King directly: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” she said. But then she added her own words: “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”
“Women lose power with age, and men gain it.”
“The star of every production she had was the law, not the lawyer.”
She likes to quote the opening words of the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union.” Beautiful, yes, but as she always points out, “we the people” originally left out a lot of people. “It would not include me,” RBG said, or enslaved people, or Native Americans. Over the course of the centuries, people left out of the Constitution fought to have their humanity recognized by it. RBG sees that struggle as her life’s work.
July 19–20, 1848 “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” —Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls
December 1853 “Was invited to sit in the Chief Justice’s seat. As I took the place, I involuntarily exclaimed: ‘Who knows, but this chair may one day be occupied by a woman.’ The brethren laughed heartily.” —abolitionist feminist Sarah Grimké
July 28, 1868: The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, recognizing the citizenship rights of ex-slaves, promises equal protection under the law, but makes it clear only men’s voting rights count.
April 15, 1873: The Supreme Court allows Illinois to block Myra Bradwell from practicing law just because she’s a woman. In a 2011 reenactment of the case, RBG rules for Bradwell. “The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” —Justice Joseph P. Bradley, in a concurrence in Bradwell v. Illinois “The method of communication between the Creator and the jurist is never disclosed.” —RBG, brief to the Supreme Court, 1972
January 4, 1897: A woman abducted from her home at gunpoint wasn’t raped, the Supreme Court says in Mills v. United States, because for an act to be rape, “more force is necessary.”
August 18, 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment recognizes women’s right to vote, though violent barriers remain for women of color.
1944: Lucille Lomen becomes the first female clerk at the Supreme Court. “When you say you have ‘no available graduates’ whom you could recommend for appointment as my clerk, do you include women? It is possible I may decide to take one, if I can find one who is absolutely first-rate.” —Justice William O. Douglas, 1944
May 17, 1954: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court reverses itself on “separate but equal.”
“The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the 1940s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S.” —RBG
November 20, 1961: The Supreme Court signs off on making jury service optional because “woman is still regarded as the center of home and family life.”
1963: RBG becomes the second woman to teach full-time at Rutgers School of Law. “[The dean explained] it was only fair to pay me modestly, because my husband had a very good job.” —RBG
June 10, 1963: President John F. Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act, which bans discrimination in pay on the basis of sex. It’s full of loopholes.
Rights Act, which contains a last-minute ban on sex discrimination in employment. “Unless [sex discrimination is banned], the white women of this country would be drastically discriminated against in favor of a Negro woman.” —Representative Glenn Andrews of Alabama
June 7, 1965: The Supreme Court finds that Connecticut’s birth control ban violates a “right to marital privacy.”
June 13, 1967: President Johnson nominates famed civil rights litigator Thurgood Marshall (and RBG inspiration) to be the first black justice of the Supreme Court.
Spring 1970: RBG teaches her first class on women and the law. “The Department of Justice, I am sure, doesn’t have any male secretaries. . . . They hire women secretaries because they are better.” —Chief Justice Warren Burger at oral argument for Phillips v. Martin-Marietta, December 9, 1970
June 25, 1971: RBG writes her first brief to the Supreme Court in Reed v. Reed.
June 23, 1972: Richard Nixon signs into law Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in education.
January 22, 1973: In Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court makes abortion legal throughout the United States. RBG is uneasy about how the court got there, and how fast. “This right of privacy . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” —Justice Harry Blackmun, Roe v. Wade
August 19, 1981: President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court. Male justices who had made noises over the years about resigning if a woman ever joined their ranks stay put.
June 14, 1993: President Bill Clinton nominates RBG to be an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
June 26, 1996: RBG writes the majority opinion in the landmark case United States v. Virginia, requiring the Virginia Military Institute to admit women.
December 12, 2000: RBG is one of four dissenters in Bush v. Gore, which effectively declares George W. Bush president. “The wisdom of the court’s decision to intervene and the wisdom of its ultimate determination await history’s judgment.” —RBG, Bush v. Gore dissent
“To my sorrow, I am now what [O’Connor] was her first twelve years on the court—the lone woman.” —RBG
April 18, 2007: RBG launches her era of furious dissent with the abortion case Gonzales v. Carhart. “The Court . . . pretends that its decision protects women.” —RBG, summarizing her dissent from the bench
May 29, 2007: RBG reads her dissent from the bench in the sex discrimination ...
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November 4, 2008: Barack Obama is elected the first black president. “I don’t know. I hear that Justice Ginsburg has been working on her jump shot.” —Barack Obama, after being invite...
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February 24, 2009: RBG attends President Obama’s first speech to Congress. “I wanted people to see that the Supreme Court isn’t all male.” —RBG
May 10, 2010: President Obama nominates Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. “I like the idea that we’re all over the bench. It says women are here to stay.” —RBG
August 2013: RBG becomes the first Supreme Court justice to officiate a same-sex wedding. “I think it will be one more statement that people who love each other and want to live together should be able to enjoy the blessings and the strife in the marriage relationship.” —RBG on performing same-sex weddings
June 30, 2014: In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court allows corporations to refuse contraceptive coverage to women based on the employer’s religious belief.
“The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.” —RBG, Hobby Lobby dissent
For a while, her favorites were books about Greek and Norse mythology, and then she graduated to Nancy Drew.
There were four men to every woman, and parents and daughters said aloud what a good place it was to find a man.
Thanks to the competition for the spots reserved for women, RBG remembered, “The women were a heck of a lot smarter than the men.” But they hid their smarts.
“Ruth was a wonderful student and a beautiful young woman. Most of the men were in awe of her, but Marty was not,” Carr Ferguson, a Cornell classmate and one of Marty’s closest friends, remembered. “He’s never been in awe of anybody. He wooed and won her by convincing her how much he respected her.”
“Dear,” said Evelyn, whom Kiki would soon call Mother, “I’m going to tell you the secret of a happy marriage: It helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” In her outstretched hand were a pair of earplugs.
“My mother-in-law meant simply this,” RBG said. “Sometimes people say unkind or thoughtless things, and when they do, it is best to be a little hard of hearing—to tune out and not snap back in anger or impatience.”
“Ruth, if you don’t want to go to law school, you have the best reason in the world and no one would think less of you,” Morris said. “But if you really want to go to law school, you will stop feeling sorry for yourself. You will find a way.” Ruth really wanted to go to law school.
“I wanted to know more about what my husband does,” she mumbled. “So that I can be a sympathetic and understanding wife.”
