Article
Amicus Curiae Blog (October 20, 2020)

A Tribute to RBG

By Sheena Denny* and Julia Durst**

“Fight for the things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg lived by these words and challenged all of us to rise in service to our community, and to our country. Justice Ginsburg’s legacy will be felt by all for years to come.

As a true champion of gender equality, Justice Ginsburg’s fight began when she attended Cornell as an undergraduate. Graduating top of her class, Justice Ginsburg “challenged the norm [while] simultaneously work[ing] within the norms.”1 While most women were focused on finding a mate, Ginsburg was more focused on earning her degree.2 She often played the role of a “party girl” while concealing the time she spent at the campus library.3

Her challenges did not end at Cornell. While attending Harvard Law, she attempted to check a cite for law review but was barred from entering the periodical room because women were not allowed.4 Working around the system, she had a male colleague check the cite for her.5

Justice Ginsburg completed two years at Harvard Law, graduated top of her class from Columbia Law, and was the first woman to serve on the law reviews of two Ivy League schools, yet she still faced significant challenges in the legal field. Determined to break down existing barriers preventing women from reaching new heights, Ginsburg successfully persuaded the Supreme Court to declare a state law unconstitutional because of gender discrimination in Reed v. Reed.6 Ginsburg’s success in Reed “helped to pave the way for future cases by suggesting that gender classifications, like racial ones, be subjected to strict scrutiny, the highest standard used in equal protection analysis.”7 Ginsburg has since admitted that she did not expect the justices to be persuaded enough to adopt the strict scrutiny standard in this case.8 Her hope was that “after presenting the idea over a period of time, a body of precedent would be established that would make it possible for the Court to explicitly enunciate this test.”9 Justice Ginsburg’s legacy is saturated with hope of a better tomorrow, giving life to her profound statement, “[s]o that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.”10

Justice Ginsburg’s body lied in repose the Wednesday and Thursday following her death outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and in state at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, making her the first woman ever to receive either honor; a fitting tribute to an inspiring woman. She was a brilliant legal mind and fierce feminist icon. Justice Ginsburg’s life resonated with women on a more human level. “Supreme Court Justice” may be her most famous label, but she accumulated many others in her life: the quiet revolutionary, the great equalizer, but the one that will resonate for years to come, is the notorious RBG. Her accomplishments continue to have a profound effect; empowering women across the nation to strive for excellence.

* * * *

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg was truly an extraordinary lawyer and a brilliant jurist, who worked tirelessly to promote the promise of equal justice for all. As a champion of equal rights, she was an inspiration to me and so many other women. Her intellect, resilience, work ethic, and commitment to justice were truly remarkable.” – Judge Jeanne M. Cochran, Minnesota Court of Appeals.

* * * *

Away from the bench, her experiences feel universal to women: she was a military spouse, busy mother, underemployed job seeker, and sexual harassment survivor.

After graduating from Cornell, Ginsburg and her new husband Marty moved to Oklahoma where Marty was stationed while in the Army Reserve.11 Ginsburg remarked she had never witnessed the kind of segregation still prevalent in Oklahoma.12 Schools on the Fort Sill military base were integrated, but schools in the town were not.13 She also experienced firsthand the discriminatory treatment pregnant job applicants and employees faced in the mid-1950s.14

Ginsburg had her daughter Jane shortly before her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer.15 She juggled motherhood with caring for her ailing husband. She then added law school on top.16 “When I started law school, my daughter Jane was 14 months. I attribute my success in law school largely to Jane. . . . I felt each part of my life gave me respite from the other. . . . Having Jane gave me a better sense of what life is.”17

* * * *

“RBG had a profound legal and cultural impact in the world. For me, her impact was deeply personal. Knowing that she felt that she did not get to be a “real” lawyer until she was 37 makes this 37-year-old law student feel a lot better about a later in life career switch. As a fellow mom in law school, when I am up late after a tough bedtime trying to study and it feels like I can’t do it, I remember how RBG did it. She did it with a baby and went to class for herself and her husband with the whole world against her. And she did it so I could do it today.” – Nicole J. Frethem, MHSL 3L student.

* * * *

After finishing school, Ginsburg had difficulty finding a job because she was a woman and a mother. She tied for first in her graduating class at Columbia but received no offers from the twelve law firms where she interviewed.18 She was also rejected for a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter because he “wasn’t ready to hire a woman.”19

Ginsburg experienced the tactics of predatory men in power and, in recent years, lent her support to the Me Too movement.20 While an undergraduate at Cornell University, a professor provided her a practice test that was the same as the actual test, and she realized he wanted some kind of sexual favor in exchange.21 At just eighteen years old, she boldly confronted him about it, yelling, “How dare you! How dare you!”22

Throughout her life, Ginsburg shared her past struggles and triumphs as a mother, a professional, and a woman. Her lasting impact is as a jurist, but her legacy is as a woman.

* * * *

“The Ruth Bader Ginsburg I mourn is not the pop-culture icon or even the Supreme Court Justice. I will miss the young attorney who overcame the triple threat of being a Jew, a woman, and a mother to fight for equality of the sexes in the highest courts of the United States. I will miss the lawyer who co-founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in an era nearly unimaginable to young women today. I am a 2L but I also am 49. My mother is part of Ginsburg’s generation; women who were told that certain career paths were for men only. Women who could not get credit in their own names. Women who were told their husbands could beat and rape them with impunity. Like any legacy, Ginsburg’s is complicated. White women benefited from her work earlier and more thoroughly than Black women, Native women, and others who were, at best, in the shadow of white feminism. Imani Gandy, senior editor of law and policy for Rewire News, acknowledged Ginsburg did not always get it right regarding police violence and other issues that disproportionately affect Black Americans, but also that Ginsburg could apologize and learn. “She was still capable of evolving at an age where most white people just stop. They don’t even try.” A conservative court ensured Ginsburg often was the measured but angry dissent as the majority ripped up the Voting Rights Act and lifted restrictions on corporate campaign financing. But her voice, in a power structure comprised mostly of men, stood firm on the idea that women also deserved the promises laid out in the Constitution. She died on the eve of the Jewish New Year, and our rabbis say only the most righteous among us leave Earth on that day.” – Jessica Griffith, MHSL 2L student.

Footnotes

* Sheena Denny is an associate on Mitchell Hamline’s Law Review for Volume 47 and a 3L Juris Doctor Candidate in the blended learning program at Mitchell Hamline. She partners with her Torts professor, Morgan Holcomb, in writing the monthly tax law column for the Bench & Bar’s notes and trends section. After graduating, she hopes to enter the field of contract law.↩︎

** Julia Durst is a 2L at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Her academic and professional interests include advocating for the rights of stigmatized and marginalized populations, including individuals with substance use disorders. Prior to law school, she spent over ten years working in addiction treatment programs as a counselor and clinical supervisor.↩︎

  1. Toni J. Ellington, Sylvia K. Higashi, Jayna K. Kim, & Mark M. Murakami, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Gender Discrimination, 20 HAWAII L. REV. 699 (1998). ↩︎
  2. Id. (citing Stephanie B. Goldberg, Development, The Second Woman Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Talks Candidly about a Changing Society, A.B.A. J. Oct. 1993 at 42). ↩︎
  3. Stephanie B. Goldberg, Development, The Second Woman Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Talks Candidly about a Changing Society, A.B.A. J. Oct. 1993 at 42. ↩︎
  4. Ellington, supra note 1, at 706. ↩︎
  5. Id. ↩︎
  6. 404 U.S. 71 (1971). ↩︎
  7. Joyce Ann Baugh, Christopher E. Smith, Thomas R. Hensley, Scott Patrick Johnson & Christopher Smith, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Preliminary Assessment, 26 U. TOL. L. REV. 1 at 25 (1994). ↩︎
  8. Deborah L. Markowitz, In Pursuit of Equality: One Woman’s Work to Change the Law, 11 WOMEN’S RTS. L. REP.WOMEN’S RTS. L. REP. 73, 79 (1989). ↩︎
  9. Id. at 79. ↩︎
  10. Ruth Bader Ginsburg interview with Malvina Harlan, NPR News (May 2, 2002). ↩︎
  11. Karen Flowers, Justice Ginsburg Spent Time at Fort Sill as Army Wife, FORT SILL TRIB. (Sept. 24, 2020), https://www.army.mil/article/239356/justice_ginsburg_spent_time_at_fort_sill_as_army_spouse. ↩︎
  12. Id. ↩︎
  13. Id. ↩︎
  14. Id. ↩︎
  15. Liz McNeil, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Late Husband Marty was the ‘Only Boy Who Cared She had a Brain,’ PEOPLE.COM (Dec. 19. 2018), https://people.com/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-husband-marty-only-boy-who-cared-she-had-a-brain/. ↩︎
  16. Id. ↩︎
  17. Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Perspective that Comes with Motherhood, THE ATLANTIC (Feb. 6, 2017), https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/515631/ruth-bader-ginsburg-motherhood/. ↩︎
  18. Sandra Pullman, Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and WRP Staff, ACLU.ORG, https://www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff (last visited Oct. 3, 2020). ↩︎
  19. Id. ↩︎
  20. Me Too on the Passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, METOOMVMT.ORG (Sept. 23, 2020), https://metoomvmt.org/stay-informed/press/me-too-on-the-passing-of-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg/ (describing the Me Too movement against sexual violence, and Ginsburg’s hope that it will endure over time and women will continue to come forward and share their experiences). ↩︎
  21. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Describes Facing Sexual Harassment, APNEWS.COM (Jan. 22, 2018), https://apnews.com/article/2c87966815e94fc0be0f38688012d584. ↩︎
  22. Nina Totemberg, A Five Decade-Long Friendship that Began with a Phone Call, NPR.ORG (Sept. 19, 2020), https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/896733375/a-five-decade-long-friendship-that-began-with-a-phone-call. ↩︎