Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Irin Carmon

“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.

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.”

“She said, ‘I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.’”

The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage.

RBG jumped at the chance to build a gradual case that reproductive freedom was a condition of equality, beginning with a woman who didn’t want an abortion. She couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy of a country that banned abortion except when it was convenient for the military.

“People often ask me, ‘Well, did you always want to be a judge?’ My answer is it just wasn’t in the realm of the possible until Jimmy Carter became president and was determined to draw on the talent of all of the people, not just some of them.” —RBG, 2010

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg cannot be called a liberal or a conservative; she has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels,”

RBG replied evenly, “I think that every justice of the Supreme Court and every federal judge would subscribe to the principle that a judge must do what he or she determines to be legally right.” “You are good, judge,” Biden cackled. “You are real good.”

“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 have been supportive of my wife since the beginning of time, and she has been supportive of me. It’s not sacrifice; it’s family.” —Marty Ginsburg, 1993

So when RBG was asked how she had managed to have such an extraordinary marriage, she often answered by saying that Marty himself was extraordinary, and he saw the same in her. “He thought that I must be pretty good,” RBG said, “because why would he decide that he wanted to spend his life with me?”

Marty told a friend, “I think that the most important thing I have done is enable Ruth to do what she has done.”

My dearest Ruth—You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!! I will be in JH Medical Center until Friday, June 25, I believe, and between then and now I shall think hard on my remaining health and life, and whether on balance the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms.

“They have never been a thirteen-year-old girl,” RBG said of the other justices.

RBG plainly adores Barack Obama. She calls him “sympathique,” a French word that is one of her highest forms of praise.

Someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.