Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Irin Carmon

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.”

. Laws which disable women from full participation in the political, business and economic arenas are often characterized as “protective” and beneficial. Those same laws applied to racial or ethnic minorities would readily be recognized as invidious and impermissible. The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage.

But as she later acknowledged, “one doesn’t learn that lesson in a day. Generally, change in our society is incremental, I think. Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” She would have to be patient. She would have to be strategic. And maybe a little deaf.

In another case, female employees sued General Electric, a company that had once made all women quit upon marrying, for excluding pregnancy coverage on its employee plan. GE’s lawyer told the Supreme Court with a straight face that, after all, women didn’t have to be pregnant. If they wanted to work, GE’s attorney suggested, women now had legal access to what he called “an in-and-out noon-hour treatment.” He meant abortion.

“I thought, ‘This is my dream of the way the world should be.’ When fathers take equal responsibility for the care of their children, that’s when women will truly be liberated,” RBG explained in 1993 to the in-house paper at the Supreme Court.

One of the first things many clerks hear from RBG is that the most important job requirement is that they treat her two secretaries well. “There was one law clerk applicant who came to interview with me—top rating at Harvard—who treated my secretaries with disdain,” RBG recalled. “As if they were just minions. So that is one very important thing—how you deal with my secretaries. They are not hired help. As I tell my clerks, ‘if push came to shove, I could do your work—but I can’t do without my secretaries.’”