My Own Words
Page 9
Jews in the United States, I mean to convey, today face few closed doors and do not fear letting the world know who we are. A question stated in various ways is indicative of large advances made. What is the difference between a New York City garment district bookkeeper and a Supreme Court Justice? One generation my life bears witness, the difference between opportunities open to my mother, a bookkeeper, and those open to me.
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I. Justice Ginsburg has delivered numerous versions of these remarks to various audiences over the years. The version reprinted here was delivered to the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies on September 13, 2009. We have edited the remarks for length and to ensure clarity outside the specific context in which they were originally delivered.
II. Since these remarks were delivered, one more Jewish Justice, Elena Kagan, joined the Supreme Court, becoming the 112th Justice on August 7, 2010. Additionally, on March 16, 2016, President Obama nominated a Jewish judge, Merrick Garland, to the Court. The Senate has not yet acted on his nomination.
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Three Brave Jewish WomenI
I am pleased beyond measure to receive the National Council of Jewish Women’s award, because it comes from an organization devoted to the principle of Tikkun Olam, the obligation to improve/fix/better the world carefully and steadily, to do one’s part to make our communities, nation, and universe more humane, fairer, more just. There is an age-old connection between social justice and Jewish tradition. The humanity and bravery of Jewish women, in particular, sustain and encourage me when my spirits need lifting. I will mention just three examples.
High on my list of inspirers is Emma Lazarus, cousin to the great jurist Benjamin N. Cardozo. Emma Lazarus was a Zionist before that word came into vogue. She wrote constantly, from her first volume of poetry published in 1866 at age seventeen, until her tragic death from cancer at age thirty-eight. Her love for humankind, and especially for her people, is evident in all her writings. Her poem “The New Colossus,” etched on the base of the Statue of Liberty, has welcomed legions of immigrants to the United States.
I draw strength, too, from a diary entry penned decades ago by a girl barely fifteen. These are her words:
One of the many questions that have often bothered me is why women have been, and still are, thought to be so inferior to men. It’s easy to say it’s unfair, but that’s not enough for me; I’d really like to know the reason for this great injustice!
Men presumably dominated women from the very beginning because of their greater physical strength; it’s men who earn a living, beget children, [and] do as they please. . . . Until recently, women silently went along with this, which was stupid, since the longer it’s kept up, the more deeply entrenched it becomes. Fortunately, education, work and progress have opened women’s eyes. In many countries they’ve been granted equal rights; many people, mainly women, but also men, now realize how wrong it was to tolerate this state of affairs for so long. . . .
Yours,
Anne M. Frank
This insightful comment was one of the last made in her diary. Anne Frank, Diary readers in this audience know, was born in the Netherlands in July 1929. She died in 1945, while imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, three months short of her sixteenth birthday.
My third example comes from Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, who had seven sisters, but no brother. When Henrietta’s mother died, Haym Peretz, no relation, offered to say the Kaddish that, according to ancient custom, could be recited only by men. Henrietta responded in a letter dated September 16, 1916:
It is impossible for me to find words in which to tell you how deeply I was touched by your offer to act as “Kaddish” for my dear mother. . . . What you have offered to do [is beautiful beyond thanks]—I shall never forget it.
You will wonder, then, that I cannot accept your offer. . . . I know well, and appreciate what you say about, the Jewish custom [that only male children recite the prayer, and if there are no male survivors, a male stranger may act as substitute]; and Jewish custom is very dear and sacred to me. [Y]et I cannot ask you to say Kaddish after my mother. The Kaddish means to me that the survivor publicly . . . manifests his . . . intention to assume the relation to the Jewish community which his parent had, [so that] the chain of tradition remains unbroken from generation to generation, each adding its own link. You can do that for the generations of your family, I must do that for the generations of my family. . . .
My mother had eight daughters and no son; and yet never did I hear a word of regret pass the lips of either my mother or my father that one of us was not a son. When my father died, my mother would not permit others to take her daughters’ place in saying the Kaddish, and so I am sure I am acting in her spirit when I am moved to decline your offer. But beautiful your offer remains nevertheless, and, I repeat, I know full well that it is much more in consonance with the generally accepted Jewish tradition than is my or my family’s conception. You understand me, don’t you?
Szold’s plea for understanding, for celebration of our common heritage while tolerating—even appreciating—the differences among us on matters of religious practice, is captivating, don’t you agree? Can you imagine a more perfect put-down, or words more supportive when a colleague’s position seems to betray a certain lack of understanding?
A remark I made at the American Jewish Committee’s annual meeting in 1995 holds true today as it will tomorrow. May I close with those words: I am a judge, born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in all the years I have the good fortune to serve on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and courage to remain steadfast in the service of that demand.
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I. These remarks were delivered to the National Council of Jewish Women at the Washington Institute on March 12, 2001. We have edited the remarks for length and to ensure clarity outside the specific context in which they were originally delivered.
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Sandra Day O’ConnorI
Thanks to the organizers of this event for inviting me to speak, on behalf of my colleagues, in honor of the incomparable Sandra Day O’Connor, first woman ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. During her twenty-five years on the Court’s bench and continuing thereafter, she has shown, time and again, that she is a true cowgirl, resourceful, resilient, equipped to cope with whatever fortune brings her way.
Collegiality is key to the effective operation of a multi-member bench. Sandra Day O’Connor has done more to promote collegiality among the Court’s members, and with our counterparts abroad, than any other Justice, past or present. Justice Breyer wrote of that quality: “Sandra has a special talent, perhaps a gene, for lighting up the room . . . she enters; for [restoring] good humor in the presence of strong disagreement; for [producing constructive] results; and for [reminding] those at odds today . . . that ‘tomorrow is another day.’ ”1
Of all the accolades Justice O’Connor has received, one strikes me as concisely on target. Growing up on the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona, she could brand cattle, drive a tractor, fire a rifle accurately well before she reached her teens. One of the hands on the ranch recalled his clear memory of Sandra Day: “She wasn’t the rough and rugged type,” he said, “but she worked well with us in the canyons—she held her own.”2 Justice O’Connor has done just that at every stage of her professional and family life.
When she joined the Court in 1981, she brought to the Conference table experience others did not possess at all or to the same degree: she grew up female in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, raised a family, and did all manner of legal work—government service, private practice, successful candidacies for public office, leadership of Arizona’s Senate, and state court judicial service, both trial and appellate. Quick and diligent learner that she is, she mastered mysteries of federal law and practice in short order, and held her own from the very start.
Her welcome when I became the junior Ju
stice is characteristic. The Court has customs and habits not recorded in its official rules. Justice O’Connor knew what it was like to learn the ropes on one’s own. She told me what I needed to know when I came on board for the Court’s 1993 Term—not in an intimidating dose, just enough to enable me to navigate safely my first days and weeks.
At the end of the October 1993 sitting, I anxiously awaited my first opinion assignment, expecting—in keeping with tradition—that the brand-new Justice would be slated for an uncontroversial, unanimous opinion. When the Chief’s assignment list came round, I was dismayed. The Chief gave me an intricate, not at all easy, ERISA case, on which the Court had divided 6–3. (ERISA is the acronym for the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, candidate for the most inscrutable legislation Congress has ever passed.) I sought Justice O’Connor’s advice. It was simple. “Just do it,” she said, “and, if you can, circulate your draft opinion before he makes the next set of assignments. Otherwise, you will risk receiving another tedious case.” That advice typifies Justice O’Connor’s approach to all things. Waste no time on anger, regret, or resentment, just get the job done.
Justice O’Connor was a dissenter in the ERISA case. As I read the bench announcement summarizing the Court’s decision, she gave an attendant a note for me. It read: “This is your first opinion for the Court, it is a fine one, I look forward to many more.” (Remembering how good that note made me feel, I sent similar notes to Justices Sotomayor and Kagan when they announced their first opinions for the Court.)
As first woman on the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor set a pace I could scarcely match. To this day, my mail is filled with requests that run this way: last year (or some years before) Justice O’Connor visited our campus or country, spoke at our bar or civic association, did this or that; next, words politely phrased to this effect—now it’s your turn. My secretaries once imagined that Justice O’Connor had a secret twin sister with whom she divided her appearances. The reality is, she has an extraordinary ability to manage her time.
Why has she gone to Des Moines, Belfast, Lithuania, Rwanda, when she might rather fly-fish, ski, play tennis, or golf? In her own words:
For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show. . . . As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.3
Of her journeys abroad, her former law clerk, Ruth McGregor, now retired Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, said: “Justice O’Connor has worked tirelessly to encourage emerging nations [to live under the rule of law]” by “maintain[ing] democratically elected legislatures . . . and independent judiciaries”; at the same time, she has strongly reminded us that “this country could lose the rule of law if we do not act to protect our precious heritage.”4
There was a time in 1988 when Justice O’Connor’s energy flagged, long months in which she coped with rigorous treatment for breast cancer. Though tired and in physical discomfort, she didn’t miss a sitting day on the Court that busy Term. Once fully recovered, she spoke of that trying time; her account, carried on public television, gave women battling cancer hope, the courage to continue, to do as she did. She went back to the 8:00 a.m. exercise class she initiated at the Court long before it was predicted she could. “[T]here was a lot I couldn’t do,” she said, “[b]ut I did a little, I did what I could.”5
What she could do became evident years later, when the Olympic Women’s Basketball Team visited the Court. Justice O’Connor led the team on a tour ending at “the Highest Court in the Land,” the full basketball court on the building’s top floor. The team practiced some minutes, then one of the players passed the ball to Justice O’Connor. She missed her first shot, but the second went straight through the hoop.
Each case on the Court’s docket attracted Justice O’Connor’s best effort and she was never shy about stating her views at conference or in follow-on discussions. When she wrote separately, concurring or in dissent, she stated her disagreement directly and professionally. She avoided castigating colleagues’ opinions as “Orwellian,”6 “profoundly misguided,”7 “not to be taken seriously,”8 or “a jurisprudential disaster.”9
In the twelve and a half years we served together, Court watchers have seen that women speak in different voices, and hold different views, just as men do. Even so, some advocates, each Term, revealed that they had not fully adjusted to the presence of two women on the High Court bench. During oral argument, many a distinguished counsel—including a Harvard Law School professor and more than one solicitor general—began his response to my question: “Well, Justice O’Connor . . .” Sometimes when that happened, Sandra would smile and crisply remind counsel: “She’s Justice Ginsburg. I’m Justice O’Connor.” Anticipating just such confusion, in 1993, my first Term as a member of the Court, the National Association of Women Judges had T-shirts made for us. Justice O’Connor’s read, “I’m Sandra, not Ruth,” mine, “I’m Ruth, not Sandra.”
As a retired Justice, she has taken on an array of “off the bench” activities. Prime among her current undertakings, Sandra created and is promoting the website—www.icivics.org—designed to educate grade school students about the three branches of government. Avidly as well, she has championed judicial independence, urging appointment, rather than election, of judges. She has regularly welcomed foreign jurists visiting the United States, and she has traveled long distances to meet with lawyers and judges abroad, many times at the request of the U.S. State Department.10
Some years ago, Justice O’Connor made a surprise one-night appearance in the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Henry V. Playing the role of Isabel, Queen of France, and looking regal, she spoke the famous line from the treaty scene: “Hap’ly a woman’s voice may do some good.”11 Indeed it may, as Justice O’Connor has constantly demonstrated in her quarter century of service on the Supreme Court, and in all her endeavors.
Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg hold basketballs that they received as gifts from the United States women’s Olympic basketball team during the team’s visit to the Court on December 6, 1995.
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I. These remarks were delivered at the National Museum of Women and the Arts in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2015, when Justice Ginsburg, together with Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan, attended a ceremony at which retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor accepted an award from the Seneca Women Global Leadership Forum. We have edited the remarks for length and to ensure clarity outside the specific context in which they were originally delivered.
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Gloria SteinemI
I have been looking forward to tonight with great joy, for our speaker, Gloria Steinem, is among humans, the least self-regarding, the most caring and giving. I vividly remember the day I opened New York magazine and found the first issue of Ms. magazine inside. Gloria’s bright mind, brave heart, and unflagging energy inspired that venture and so much else that, borrowing words from her friend Marlo Thomas, freed girls and boys to be you and me.
Gloria has been rightly called, now for at least a half century, the face of feminism, the image of the women’s liberation movement. Why her face more than any other? Yes, she is uncommonly beautiful. But that is not the reason why. Gail Collins, in a tribute to Gloria at age eighty, identified the trait that distinguishes Gloria from others whose celebrity status draws crowds. It is her gift for empathy: when Gloria is the center of attention, she holds no megaphone; “she’s almost always listening.”
Like my dear colleague Sandra Day O’Connor, Gloria spends much of her time in the air, traveling to places round the globe that are not the world’s best garden spots, places where her voice may do some good. Sandra is famous for the 8:00 a.m. aerobic class she initiated at the Court to keep fit. Gloria says she stays in shape “just running around airports and cities.”
; Skilled in the art of persuasion, she captivates audiences by gently leading them her way. One example among thousands. Sometime in the 1970s, Gloria and I attended a Second Circuit Judicial Conference in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania. The topic of our debate with sociologist Lionel Tiger and Fordham Law School professor Whelan: Should we or should we not have an Equal Rights Amendment in our Constitution? The audience was scarcely of one mind at the start. But when Gloria finished, the vote for the ERA would have been nearly unanimous.
For her unrelenting efforts to make our country and world a safer, opportunity-filled, happier place for girls and women, please join me in a rousing “Brava Gloria,” and in inviting her to the podium.
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I. These remarks were delivered at the New York City Bar Association on February 2, 2015, when Justice Ginsburg introduced Gloria Steinem, who was about to deliver the Annual Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture on Women and the Law. We have edited the remarks for length and to ensure clarity outside the specific context in which they were originally delivered.
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Remembering Great Ladies
Supreme Court Wives’ StoriesI
The stately rooms and halls of my workplace, the Supreme Court of the United States, are filled with portraits and busts of great men, 129 portraits in all, including 28 of Chief Justices, and 101 of Associate Justices. Taking a cue from Abigail Adams, I decided it was time to remember the ladies—the women associated with the Court in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Not as Justices, of course—no woman ever served in that capacity until President Reagan’s historic appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981—but as the Justices’ partners in life, their wives.