Sisters in Law
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17 lymph nodes: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, December 22, 1998.
17 died of the disease: Testicular Cancer Resource Center, “Testicular Cancer Treatments: Chemotherapy,” http://tcrc.acor.org/chemo.html.
17 she says flatly: Debra Bruno, “Justice Ginsburg Remembers Her First Steps in the Law,” Legal Times, November 13, 2007, www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1194861838591 and http://www.law.com/jsp/article .jsp?id=900005558448&Justice_Ginsburg_Remembers_Her_First_Steps_in_the_Law&slreturn=20130313123922.
17 of radiation: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, December 22, 1998.
17 “a set of notes”: Ibid.
17 the only woman: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Miriam’s Cup (website), http://www.miriamscup.com/GinsburgBiog.htm.
17 no further evidence of cancer: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, December 22, 1998.
17 “couldn’t cope with”: Bruno, “Justice Ginsburg Remembers.”
17 no more children: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, December 22, 1998.
18 “would not give it up”: Stephanie Frances Ward, “Family Ties,” ABA Journal, October 1, 2010, http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/family_ties1/.
18 applied to him: Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 28.
19 “run out of money”: taped interview with Sandra O’Connor, Phoenix Oral History Project, 1980, Arizona Historical Society.
19 old, tired, and corrupt: Paul Eckstein, interview with the author, April 16, 2013; Zachary Smith, Politics and Public Policy in Arizona (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).
19 took over the state media: “The Arizona Republic: An Overview,” azcentral.com, http://www.azcentral.com/help/articles/about2.html.
19 up-and-coming Young Republicans: Dennis Abrams, Sandra Day O’Connor (New York: Chelsea House, 2009), 42.
20 county vice chairman: “Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Talks about Her Life on Valley Girl,” AOL.com, July 12, 2012, http://on.aol.com/video/justice-sandra-day-oconnor-talks-about-her-life-on-the-valley-girl-517415204.
20 voluntary organization: Phoenix Oral History Project, taped interview with Sandra Day O’Connor, 1980, Arizona Historical Society.
20 365 nights: Ibid.
20 gave a party: John Driggs, interview with the author, January 25, 2014.
21 “I’m not hiring a woman”: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, interview, Academy of Achievement, August 17, 2010, http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gin0int-4.
21 salty style of speech: “A Conversation with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” C-SPAN, September 15, 2009, http://www.c-span.org/video/?288900-1/conversation-justice-ruthbader-ginsburg.
21 as harshly as race: Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel, Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 400. In 1973, a former Brennan clerk, then teaching at Berkeley, baldly pressured his former justice to hire his first woman clerk, Marsha Berzon. The Harvard Law Review had just done a study of the paucity of female clerks, the male ex-clerk warned Brennan, and it was just a matter of time before the spotlight on him grew more intense.
21 “as if I wasn’t there”: “A Conversation with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” C-SPAN, September 15, 2009, http://www.c-span.org/video/?288900-1/conversation-justice-ruthbader-ginsburg.
21 rest of the year: Sandra Grayson, interview with the author, November 8, 2013.
21 Eva Moberg: Moberg’s article, “Kvinnans villkorliga frigivning,” appeared in an anthology, Unga Liberaler: nio inlägg i idédebatten (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1961). Ginsburg’s Swedish roots are the subject of a pathbreaking revisionist history of her jurisprudence by the young legal scholar Cary C. Franklin, “The AntiStereotyping Principle in Constitutional Sex Discrimination Law,” NYU Law Review 85 (2010), electronic copy available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1589754. Much of this section of Sisters in Law is indebted to Franklin’s research, as well as my own findings in the Ginsburg archives.
22 sex-role stereotyping: Franklin, “The AntiStereotyping Principle,” 119.
22 “The Emancipation of Man”: Olof Palme, “The Emancipation of Man,” Address Before the Women’s National Democratic Club (June 8, 1970), http://www.olofpalme.org/wp-content/dokument/700608_emancipation_of_man”.pdf. Kenneth M. Davidson, Ruth B. Ginsburg, and Herma H. Kay, Sex-Based Discrimination: Text, Cases and Materials (Saint Paul, Minn.: West Publishing, 1974), 938, 944.
22 “her personal talents”: Palme, “The Emancipation of Man.”
22 reproducing on the job: Malvina Halberstam, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Encyclopedia, Jewish Women’s Archive, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ginsburg-ruth-bader.
22 she crowed: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, December 22, 1998.
23 “bra and panties”: Frank Askin, interview with the author, June 18, 2013.
23 his unforthcoming spouse: Monagahn interview; Askin interview.
23 pictures her children had drawn: Paul Rosenblatt, interview with the author, February 7, 2014.
23 “we were so busy”: Ibid.
24 any State on account of sex: The text of the amendment is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment.
24 “I never had a further problem”: Phoenix Oral History Project, transcript of taped interview with Sandra Day O’Connor, 1980, Arizona Historical Society, 10.
25 “child care as a result”: Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 31.
25 did the people’s business: “Sandra Day O’Connor House,” Tempe Preservation on Flickr, http://www.tempe.gov/city-hall/community-development/historic-preservation/tempe-historic-property-register/sandra-day-oconnor-house.
25 discriminatory hiring hall: Kaplowitz v. University of Chicago, 387 F.Supp. 42 (1974), http://www.leagle.com/decision/1974429387FSupp42_1422.xml/KAPLOWITZ%20v.%20UNIVERSITY%20OF%20CHICAGO.
25 influence of the feminist revolution: Frank Askin, interview with author, June 18, 2013.
25 there was so little written: Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 19.
25 “putting up with them?”: David Margolick, “Trial by Adversity Shapes Jurist’s Outlook,” New York Times, June 25, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/19930625/us/trial-by-adversity-shapes-jurists-outlook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
26 in support of the Equal Rights Amendment: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, folder 1970–71, ERA correspondence, contains various letters to each of the members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
26 “Realizing the Equality Principle”: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 12.
26 stay-at-home dad during law school: David G. Post, interview with the author, June 3, 2014.
26 down the pipeline: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 11, folder speeches 70–71 includes the first of many speeches to the National Conference of Law Women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Sex and Unequal Protection: Men and Women as Victims,” keynote address, Southern Regional Conference of the National Conference of Law Women, Duke University, October 1, 1971, published in Journal of Family Law 11 (1971): 347 (hereafter Duke Speech).
27 feminist heroine’s consciousness-raising: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 46, F. Sex Equality, 1970.
27 “advantaged treatment today”: Duke Speech.
27 “extra work during the week”: Alix Kates Shulman, “A Marriage Agreement,” Up from Under (August/September 1970); reprinted in A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2012), available at http://jwa.org/sites/jwa .org/files/mediaobjects/a_marriage_agreement_alix_kates_shulman.jpg.
28 Shulman’s little essay: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Avon, 1990).
28 She collected: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 46, F. Sex Equality, 1972–73.
28 impoverishes women and enriches men: Lenore J. Weitzman, “The Economics of Divorce: Social and Economic Consequences of Property, Alimony and Child Support Awards,” UCLA Law Review 28 (1980–81): 1181.
28 “take their feet off our necks”: Duke Speech.
29 discuss life and law: Jan Goodman, interview with the author, July 31, 2013.
29 at Duke University: Duke Speech.
30 students in her seminar: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, folder ERA Correspondence, 1970–71.
30 appearances in the Supreme Court: Amy Davidson, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Retirement Dissent,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson.
30 she was now undertaking: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, November 8, 1978.
CHAPTER 2: THE LAWSUIT OF RUTH’S DREAMS
32 tax advance sheet: The story is by now vieux jeu, but this version comes from Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 23, which he credits to an interview with MG and a letter from him.
32 lifelong bachelor: From opinion of the Tenth Circuit in Moritz v. Commissioner of IRS, 469 F.2d 466 (1972), http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/469/466/79852/.
33 thought might be interested: Strebeigh, Equal, 24.
33 “absolutely brilliant piece of work”: Norman Dorsen, interview with the author, June 18, 2013.
34 “from obscurity”: Strebeigh, Equal, 25.
35 on behalf of women’s rights: Ibid., 27.
36 Those were laws that discriminate on race: United States v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
37 Ginsburg was counting on: “Developments in the Law—Equal Protection,” note, Harvard Law Review 82 (1969): 1065.
37 to be his law clerk: Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel, Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 388.
37 “related to performance”: “Developments in the Law—Equal Protection,” note, Harvard Law Review 82 (1969): 1068, n. 61. The authors give a passing nod to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination based on sex, without further commentary.
37 91 percent was male: Susan M. Hartmann, The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 80.
37 Dorsen (New York, Harvard J.D.): “Aryeh Neier,” ACLU ProCon.org, June 27, 2012, http://aclu.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=002205; “Melvin Wulf, LLB,” ACLU ProCon.org, June 12, 2008, http://aclu.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=002223.
38 could wait until “tomorrow”: Hartmann, The Other Feminists, 72–73.
38 apply only to race: See Kurland discussion below.
38 starting to have “tantrums”: Hartmann, The Other Feminists, 74.
38 racial civil rights movement: Suzy Post, KY Civil Rights Hall of Fame, oral history project, http://nunncenter.org/civilrights/category/interviewees/suzy-post/.
38 Suzy Post went to the next level: Hartmann, The Other Feminists, 81.
39 civil liberties frame around it: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; 2nd edition, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 299.
39 their network a little harder: Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 27, note citing copy of Dorsen letter from Ginsburg files.
39 who had just graduated: Ibid., 34.
39 attending Yale Law School: Ann Freedman, interview with the author, October 29, 2013.
40 “always a lawyer’s lawyer”: Ibid.
41 not in a good way: Fighting the Ginsburgs in Moritz, the solicitor general of the United States had produced a great gift to the project of women’s equality—a comprehensive list of all the U.S. laws and regulations that distinguished between the sexes; see http://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/viewspeeches.aspx?Filename=sp_02-10-06.html.
41 known how to use it: Nina Totenberg, interview with the author, September 6, 2013.
42 “the task at hand”: Ann Freedman, interview with the author, October 29, 2013.
43 original Moritz appeal: Ruth always said that Moritz was really the grandmother brief, because that’s the case she worked on first and that’s where she found Royster Guano. Elizabeth Vrato, The Counselors: Conversations with 18 Courageous Women Who Have Changed the World (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002).
44 “history of the Republic”: Geoffrey Stone, interview with the author, September 12, 2013.
CHAPTER 3: GOLDWATER GIRL AND CARD-CARRYING MEMBER OF THE ACLU
45 like Ginsburg’s: O’Connor legislator’s papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.
45 new feminists of Los Angeles: “Los Angeles’ New Feminists,” June 1970, O’Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.
45 filthy Greenwich Village walk-ups: O’Connor papers, Box 1:1.
45 cosmopolitan Atlantic Monthly: O’Connor papers, Box 1:1, contains the whole issue; see also http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1970/03/women-and-the-law/304923/.
45 got an earful: Elizabeth Pantazelos, “Women at Work: Articles from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s Address the Ongoing Obstacles that Career Women Face,” The Atlantic, May 2006, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/05/women-at-work/304944/.
46 “part time or occasional nature”: Remarks, May 7, 1970, O’Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.
46 “elected to high public office”: Ibid.
47 “been a splendid choice”: Letter to President Nixon, October 1, 1971, O’Connor files, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.
47 polluted the Court with a woman: Nixon tapes, cited in Joan Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 41, n. 11.
47 treated women differently: Diane Schulder, “Women and the Laws,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1970; clipping in O’Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.
47 by only a single vote: Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 60.
47 “in a meaningful way”: Remarks, May 7, 1970, O’Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.
48 run for public office: Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 36, n. 57.
48 it was a done deal: “Irene Rasmussen on the Equal Rights Amendment,” Arizona Memory Project, Arizona State Archives, http://azmemory.azlibrary .gov/cdm/ref/collection/archpriv/id/1794
49 defend the amendment: Sarah Slavin, ed., U.S. Women’s Interest Groups: Institutional Profiles (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995), 578.
49 “making men and women identical”: Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 59.
49 “questions have been raised,” she wrote: “Form letter from Senator Sandra Day O’Connor, February 18, 1984, re: Equal Rights Amendment,” Arizona Memory Project, Arizona State Archives, http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/ref/collection/archgov/id/481.
50 justices’ dining room: “Irene Rasmussen on the Equal Rights Amendment.”
51 “be sure his sox match”: Duke Speech.
51 a lesbian, of all things: Doris L. Sassower, “Women’s Rights Ignored,” ABA Journal (October 1971), 950.
51 one at a time: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “The Need for the Equal Rights Amendment,” ABA Journal 59 (1973): 1013.
51 “women or bridges”: Duke Speech.
52 “Some Problems of Construction”: Philip B. Kurland, “The Equal Rights Amendment: Some Problems of Construction,” Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 6 (1970–71): 243.
52 decisions of the Warren Court: Philip B. Kurland, Foreword, “Equal in Origin and Equal in Title to the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Government,” Harvard Law Review 78 (1964): 143, 145 (referring to “the absence of workmanlike product, the absence of right quality … disingenuousness and misrepresentation” in the landmark racia
l decision). Philip B. Kurland, “‘Brown v. Board of Education Was the Beginning’: The School Desegregation Cases in the United States Supreme Court, 1954–1979,” Washington University Law Quarterly (1979): 309, 313, 316.
52 upset the Lord’s order: Donald G. Mathews and Jane S. De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 37.
52 opponent of racial civil rights: Karl E. Campbell, Senator Sam Ervin, Last of the Founding Fathers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 124.
53 school desegregation decision: Kurland, “Brown v. Board of Education Was the Beginning.”
53 men’s prisons and toilets: American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 23, Minutes of Meeting Board of Directors, November 26, 1970.
53 heat of battle: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder ERA Correspondence, 1974.
53 “making relevant connections”: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Women at the Bar—A Generation of Change,” University of Puget Sound Law Review 2 (1978): 1, http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi ?article=1081&context=sulr
54 the ERA went down: Amy Leigh Campbell, Raising the Bar: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project (Bloomington, Ind.: Xlibris, 2004), 40, citing Ginsburg’s internal memorandum on Reed, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 6.
54 “facts and cool reason”: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, letter to Joan Krauskopf, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder ERA Correspondence, 1974.
54 opinion page at The New York Times: clippings reflect that she got picked by the NYT to do the op-ed in favor of the ERA, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 16, F1975.
54 League of Women Voters: Ginsburg Archives, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder ERA Correspondence, 1975.
54 predicted the world would end: Ibid.
54 “Three Minutes on the ERA” on NPR: Ginsburg Archives, Library of Congress, Box 14, folder April 1978.
55 cover of the brief: “Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and WRP Staff,” ACLU.org (website), March 7, 2006, http://www.aclu.org/womensrights/tribute-legacy-ruthbader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff.