Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Irin Carmon

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.”

RBG’s main concession to hitting her late seventies was to give up waterskiing.

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.

Celia’s instructions would remain carved in her daughter’s memory. Ruth was to always be a lady. “That meant always conduct yourself civilly, don’t let emotions like anger or envy get in your way,” RBG later explained. “Hold fast to your convictions and your self-respect, be a good teacher, but don’t snap back in anger. Anger, resentment, indulgence in recriminations waste time and sap energy.” Few mothers of that time gave their daughters Celia’s second piece of advice: Always be independent.

“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.”

Who knew another world was possible for women—one in which they could work, fight back at unfair conditions, end a pregnancy if they felt they needed to? One where the government, pushed by activists, had begun to take an active interest in freeing men and women from prescribed gender roles? It was a personal revolution for her too. She found out in her first six weeks on her own that she could do just fine.

“Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability.”

RBG looked the justices in the eye and quoted Sarah Grimké, the abolitionist and advocate for women’s suffrage. “She spoke not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity,” RBG said. “She said, ‘I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.’”

decades, some feminists had said the solution was an equal rights amendment to the Constitution, which would read, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” This amendment, known as the ERA, had been introduced in every session of Congress since 1923, but each time it had been held up in committee. RBG wondered whether the Constitution already held the answer. Its preamble began with “We the people,” and women were people, even if they had been long prevented from living out their full destinies. Didn’t women deserve equal protection under the law, as the Fourteenth Amendment promised?

RBG firmly believed that for women to be equal, men had to be free.

“I think that men and women, shoulder to shoulder, will work together to make this a better world. Just as I don’t think that men are the superior sex, neither do I think women are. I think that it is great that we are beginning to use the talents of all of the people, in all walks of life, and that we no longer have the closed doors that we once had.” —RBG

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity,” she said simply. “It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

“I think the current Chief is very good at meeting and greeting people, always saying the right thing for the remarks he makes for five or ten minutes at various gatherings.” RBG has said she hopes Roberts, like Rehnquist, might be teachable on the issues that matter to her.

“As we live, we can learn,” she said. “It’s important to listen. So I’m very glad that case came out as it did.”

“The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”

Legacy is a topic RBG won’t linger on, because it has a note of finality. But she will take stock. “In my life, what I find most satisfying is that I was a part of a movement that made life better, not just for women,” RBG says. “I think gender discrimination is bad for everyone, it’s bad for men, it’s bad for children. Having the opportunity to be part of that change is tremendously satisfying. Think of how the Constitution begins. ‘We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union.’ But we’re still striving for that more perfect union. And one of the perfections is for the ‘we the people’ to include an ever enlarged group.” This expansion has been RBG’s life’s work.