Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) is something of a hero to women across the country. The Supreme Court justice is one of the pioneers of the court and continues to be one of the most relevant people in the legal system.
Ginsburg, 84, has a rigorous workout and maintains her schedule. Recently, Saturday Night Live actor, Kate McKinnon, portrayed her, and the justice enjoyed it. During a Sundance Cinema Talks conversation, people wondered how much longer she could carry on with her vital job as a liberal justice. She said thanks for asking, according to The Los Angeles Times:
‘As long as I can do the job full steam, I will be here.’
The earliest she could leave the Supreme Court would be 2021, at age 88, but she does not plan to step down even then. RBG has law clerks staffed through the court’s 2020 term.
When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg started her legal career, it was a different world. At the Sundance Film Festival, she spoke about the #MeToo movement, NPR reported:
‘It’s about time. For so long women were silent, thinking there was nothing you could do about it, but now the law is on the side of women, or men, who encounter harassment and that’s a good thing.
‘So far it’s been great. When I see women appearing every place in numbers, I’m less worried about a backlash than I might have been 20 years ago.’
Ginsburg recalled times she experienced sexism as a student and a teacher:
‘Every woman of my vintage knows what sexual harassment is, although we didn’t have a name for it.’
She asked a Cornell chemistry instructor for a practice exam, but he gave her a copy of the real one:
‘I knew exactly what he wanted in return. (I) went to his office and said, “How dare you? How dare you do this?” And that was the end of that.’
When Ginsburg was at Columbia Law School, the school laid off 25 women in the maintenance department, but not one man. RBG headed to the university’s vice president for business to tell him that the school was violating Title VII. He told her:
‘Professor Ginsburg, Columbia has excellent Wall Street lawyers representing them and would you like a cup of tea?’
Ginsburg had two children at the same time she was founding the ACLU Women’s Right’s Project and working as a Columbia professor. In addition, she litigated cases across the country and before the Supreme Court.
One day she got a call from her son James’ school:.
‘The child was what his teachers called “hyperactive” and I called “lively.” (After a call from the school, she said) this child has two parents. Please alternate calls. It’s his father’s turn.’
The justice said:
‘The calls came barely once a semester and the reason was they had to think long and hard before asking a man to take time out of his work day to come to the school.
‘The remarkable thing about Marty (her husband Professor Ginsburg) is that he cared that I had a brain. No guy up until then was the least interested in how I thought.’
Featured Image via Getty Images/Robin Marchant.
