Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Irin Carmon

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.

August 18, 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment recognizes women’s right to vote, though violent barriers remain for women of color.

“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 new crop of female law students, a decade or so younger than her, did more than complain. They made demands.

“Damn, maybe I didn’t pluck her from obscurity. Maybe she plucked herself from obscurity.”

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

RBG knew people said “affirmative action” like it was an insult. “Others were of the view,” she later wrote, “that at last, the days of ‘negative action’ were over.”

(As of this writing, no one has come up with a male counterpart to “schoolmarmish.”)

“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.”

“If women are to be leaders in life and in the military, then men have got to become accustomed to taking commands from women, and men won’t become accustomed to that if women aren’t let in,”

phrase life partner was a marriage in which the woman didn’t lose herself and her autonomy, in which two humans shared their lives and goals on equal footing.

“I have been supportive of my wife since the beginning of time,” he said, “and she has been supportive of me. It’s not sacrifice; it’s family.”

IRIN: And when the time comes, what would you like to be remembered for? RBG: 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.

“Those, like me, who admire their service might find it hard to hope that they will soon leave the Court—but service comes in many forms, including making way for others,”