Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law

by Jeffrey Rosen

I tried to write them so that a justice who agreed with me could write his opinion from the brief. I conceived of myself in large part as a teacher.

So, my objective was to take the Court step by step to the realization, in Justice Brennan’s words, that the pedestal on which some thought women were standing all too often turned out to be a cage.

“Dear, in every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” And that is advice I have applied not only in fifty-six years of marriage, but, to this day, in my current workplace. If an unkind word is said, you just tune out.

Another aspect of my criticism: the image you get from reading the Roe v. Wade opinion is it’s mostly a doctor’s rights case—a doctor’s right to prescribe what he thinks his patient needs. And the images of the doctor and the little woman—it’s never the woman alone. It’s always the woman in consultation with her doctor.