{The following is the second of two pieces dedicated to telling the stories of women past and present during Women's National History Month.}
In this week's piece, I will take a look at an American icon, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (known by many as the "Notorious R.B.G.") through the lens of a 2016 collection of her professional and personal writings titled My Own Words. Put together by her biographers, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams, both accomplished legal professors themselves, My Own Words is not a typical biography in any sense. Bracketed by contextualizing introductory pieces by Hartnett and Williams and one piece by her now deceased husband Marty Ginsburg, My Own Words showcases to readers the varied writings of a sharp legal mind whose long career as a women's rights advocate, law professor, and then judge and justice, colors the pages and legal arguments contained within.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in 1933 and grew up in a Jewish household, learning from her mother early on to be independent and studious. After her mother's death due to cancer upon Ruth's 1950 graduation from high school, she would go on study law at Harvard and Columbia University, rededicating herself to the scholarly pursuits her stay-at-home mother was determined Ruth have.
Ginsburg's first foray into the national spotlight would come when, as one of the first women professors at Columbia University in the 1970s and an early beneficiary of the burgeoning women's rights movement at the time, would partner with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to found the Women's Rights Project. As her role with the ACLU required arguing cases before the courts as part of a litigious, piecemeal achievement strategy on behalf of American women inspired by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, her national profile would rise with each of the six cases she would argue before the Supreme Court. All in all, her inspiring work with the ACLU would attract the attention of two presidential administrations: President Carter would appoint her to the D.C. Circuit's U.S. Court of Appeals in 1980 and President Clinton would elevate her into her current position of Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993.
My Own Words is dedicated primarily to Ginsburg's legal lectures, opinions, and speeches given throughout her long career. Taken as a whole, these works compose a detailed picture of her liberal-leaning constitutional philosophy, reveal the inner-workings of a busy Supreme Court, and serve to contextualize American jurisprudence in a larger international context centered largely around expanding the reach of human rights and the rule of law in democratic (and on a more hopeful note, non-democratic) societies. This includes encouraging the development of legal regimes dedicated to eliminating discrimination based on race, gender, and socioeconomic circumstance.
Even as the book's biographical narrative turns on the highlights of her legal career, her story is fleshed out further in the tributes she gives recognizing the women trailblazers that came before her as well as close contemporaries she sees in a similar light, like justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and former justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She gives stirring remarks about her friendships within the court, especially the unlikely one that developed between her and the late conservative-leaning justice Antonin Scalia around their mutual love of the opera. (In fact, they both performed as special guests in operatic showings on two separate occasions.) Overall, it was very rewarding to get a glimpse at both the formal and informal ceremonies of the Supreme Court and the dynamic bonds of collegiality the court depends on to function effectively as last-resort arbiters in cases of constitutional import, interpersonal bonds that serve an equal importance in the other co-equal branches of government.
While being extremely gracious about her colleagues on and off the bench, she pulls no punches in describing the ideological differences that exist even in as politically-insulated a branch as the judicial one, even as the Supreme Court tends to be unanimous or close to unanimous in a good majority of its decisions. In the end, the key to keeping it together, Ginsburg notes, is to attack the ideas in an argument rather than resort to ad-hominum attacks on another justice's character or personal beliefs. The behind-the-scenes legal battles fought in majority and dissenting opinions is just another ongoing dialogue, one of many spirited discussions necessary in a democratic system. After all, democracy turns on reaching a consensus among groups of people with vastly different beliefs, finding the places of common ground and moving together from there.
While not necessarily a biographical work, My Own Words is a strong showing nevertheless in terms of granting readers a better perspective on the professional and personal life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, despite some repetitiveness and overlap between certain passages, as Ginsburg often cites her legal opinions frequently in her many off-the-court appearances at legal conferences, schools, memorials, and other public venues. Some readers will feel dissatisfied at the heavier focus on Ginsburg's legal philosophies and insights at the expense of getting a more personal sense of the motivations driving her long career, such as the struggles and self-doubt she no doubt experienced at some point in her life, perhaps during her early days as an ACLU advocate fighting the good fight against gender-based discrimination. However, in my opinion, My Own Words gives just enough glimpses into both Ginsburg's personal and professional lives to sate readers for now, while building anticipation for the full-fledged official Hartnett and Williams biography of Ginsburg expected to be published after Ginsburg completes her term on the Supreme Court. Stay tuned!
Works Cited:
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, Hartnett, Mary, & Williams, Wendy W. (2016). My Own Words. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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