Remembering RBG
The outpouring of grief following Friday’s announcement says a great deal about the giant we have lost. On hearing that Justice Ginsburg had passed, before even thinking about what her death meant politically and legally, I could only think about the army of incredible female justice champions I’m privileged to call my friends and colleagues (RBIJ itself is 75% female). I found myself remembering words from 2019 review in The Atlantic:
“Today, more than ever, women starved for models of female influence, authenticity, dignity, and voice hold up an octogenarian justice as the embodiment of hope for an empowered future.”
Any discussion of progress towards social equality is incomplete without her. As Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in the Seventies, she won five ground-breaking Supreme Court decisions and set anti-discriminatory precedent on everything from estate administration to social security. Before she even reached the highest court of the United States, she was already lifting up American women - and inspiring women everywhere.
As a Supreme Court Justice she made landmark rulings on same-sex marriage, presidential elections, voting rights, rights of the mentally disabled, abortion and gender discrimination in pay. Always lending her voice, even in defeat, she became famous for her scathing and precise dissents - a Simon & Schuster RBG biography for children was even titled “I Dissent.”
She believed these well-articulated judgments could speak to future generations, and the greatest ones would -in time - create change. “That’s the dissenter’s hope“, she wrote, “that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow”. An unrelenting example of how to move forward, even when you lose. It’s a hope that comforts and drives me to this day.
Her legacy is not limited to the precedents she set, or the dissents she wrote. She was a feminist icon who paved the way for female lawyers like me.
She was an inspiration professionally. Ginsburg and her fellow Justice Sandra Day O’Connor were the first women to serve on the Supreme Court, reaching the pinnacle of a profession that wasn’t exactly welcoming. When I started my legal career, female lawyers typically wore red suit jackets with a lot of shoulder padding. Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office was a best selling survival manual. But Justice Ginsburg led us along a different path, showing what was possible in a world she was helping to shape.
She was an example of not just what to do, but how to do it. She learned from a young age that anger and vitriol was self-defeating – that if you yell at people, they’re just going to yell back. Instead she looked to persuade, not conquer. By listening, educating and, when necessary, compromising, she reached across divides to establish genuine consensus.
This respectful (and strategic) approach is perhaps best demonstrated by her close friendship with Justice Anton Scalia, her fellow on the Supreme Court and ideological opposite. To quote the great woman: “You can disagree without being disagreeable.” In today’s political climate characterised by division and combat, where discourse is often limited to attacking groups not debating ideas, these lessons are in dire need.
Ginsburg herself remained positive about the future, in large part due to the sweeping changes she had witnessed during her long and storied life. In the midst of a lethal pandemic, when protests and counter protests portray a country divided, it can be hard to stay optimistic. We must remember her words: "Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."