[slow poignant instrumental music]
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- I don't like to speak of my own personal experience,
but I will cite one example because it is a general one.
I did very well in law school.
It was not possible to do much better.
There was not a single law firm in the whole city
of New York that would invite me
to come even for an interview.
I don't have two heads, so that wasn't the problem.
I suspected that the door was closed because of my sex,
so the barriers were there,
and it isn't simply a question of changing ages of marriage.
Institutions, gatekeepers shut the door to women,
and those doors have been open very recently.
- [Man] How are you holding up?
[muffled speaking]
[people applauding]
[heels clacking] [muffled chatter]
- There's remarkable little knowledge
among college students about the Supreme Court.
I've been teaching college students almost every year
that I've been a law professor, and it's remarkable
how few justices they could name
or how little they know about the Constitution.
I've seen opinion polls that more people
can name the Seven Dwarfs than can name justices
on the United States Supreme Court.
I think it's because people don't appreciate
how much what the Supreme Court does affects their lives.
[muffled chatter]
- All righty. Good evening, everybody.
[people cheering]
- Well, welcome to the White House.
[people cheering and applauding]
- There she is, also known as the Notorious RBG.
[lively instrumental music] [audience applauds]
- Please give a warm welcome
to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
- So Notorious BIG and I had something in common.
We were both born and bred in Brooklyn, New York.
- How does it feel to become at this stage
in your life this character?
- It's awesome.
[audience laughs and applauds]
- "I'm not a rockstar"? Au contraire.
[audience laughs]
She is a rockstar. [laughs]
[crowd cheering] [soft poignant music]
[audience applauds]
- Thank you.
My assignment this morning is
to describe the essential difference
between the 14th Amendment
and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment
as a foundation for a constitutional sex equality principle.
In a nutshell, the difference is this.
The equal status and dignity of men and women under the law
is the animating purpose of Equal Rights Amendment.
By contrast, sex equality was not contemplated
by the framers of the 14th Amendment.
The law is a consuming love for me.
It seemed to me an area in which women were not yet wanted.
When you look at the Supreme Court
and there isn't one woman, you don't aspire to something
that is such a remote possibility.
- [Woman] Were you surprised when you were appointed?
- I don't think it's fair to say that I was surprised.
I was elated that the Carter administration
made a concerted effort to appoint women to the judiciary
so then, at that point, I could aspire.
- [Woman] Do you have any aspirations for the Supreme Court?
- I'm entirely content with the job
that I now have as I did not target the Court of Appeals
for the DC circuit as my life's ambition.
So I don't target any other job.
[flash bulbs bursting]
- She argued six landmark cases in behalf
of women before the United States Supreme Court
and happily won five out of six.
I am proud to nominate this pathbreaking attorney, advocate,
and judge to be the 107th justice
to the United States Supreme Court.
[audience applauds] [flash bulbs bursting]
- Mr. President, I am grateful beyond measure
for the confidence you have placed in me.
I have a thank you.
It is to my mother, Celia Amster Bader,
the bravest and strongest person I have known,
who was taken from me much too soon.
I pray that I may be all that she would have been
had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve
and daughters are cherished as much as sons.
Thank you.
[audience applauds] [flash bulbs bursting]
- This is only the day after my nomination was announced.
I'm still sometimes thinking I'm walking in a dream.
[flash bulbs bursting]
- [Woman] Some reports from conservative interest group
that they are concerned that Judge Ginsburg may legislate
from the bench and not merely interpret the law.
- I have never been as optimistic
in naming Judge Ginsburg to move to the court.
She probably
will have had a more difficult time the first time
in the circuit court than she will
through the Supreme Court.
- I intend to cooperate with the committee
in every way I can to expedite the process,
and for the rest, I am what I am,
and I hope that they will be pleased.
[heels clacking] [muffled chatter]
- Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee
welcomed Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
the president's nominee to be associate justice
of the United States Supreme Court.
[muffled chatter] [gavel bangs]
Would you be kind enough though, judge,
to introduce your family to us?
- My life's partner for 39 years, Martin Ginsburg.
- [Joe] Welcome, welcome.
- [Ruth] And my son from the great state of Chicago,
James Ginsburg. - All right. [laughs]
- And my incredible daughter, Jane Ginsberg
and Clara and Paul Spera.
- Well, you have quite a family, and we welcome you all.
Senator Metzenbaum.
- Happy to see you here, Judge Ginsburg.
In your view is the right
to choose a fundamental constitutional right?
[tense contemplative music]
- Majority of the court has said that this is a right
of a woman guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
It's a decision that she must make for herself.
The case poses the question, who decides?
Is it the state or the individual?
I think that the most recent decision
says the woman decides.
- I think you ought to tell us where you really come down
on this thing because I'm not asking you
to decide a future case.
I'm just asking you to is it in the Constitution?
Is it constitutional?
- It's certainly a question that is going
to be before this court, so this is the kind of question
that it would be injudicious for me to address.
- Our next panel is comprised of representatives
of a number of groups wishing to testify
in opposition to the nomination of Judge Ginsburg.
- Consistent with her warped perspective,
Mrs. Ginsburg, as a litigator,
argued that pregnancy should be treated
as a disability rather than as a gift from God.
- Because Judge Ginsburg holds this view,
I oppose her nomination and urge you
to vote against the confirmation.
- Personally, I disagree with her on this issue,
but she's an excellent person and a fine judicial scholar.
- [Joe] The next panel is comprised
of a former ACLU colleague.
- When she was teaching at Columbia
and running the ACLU Women's Rights Project,
her vision of social justice was instructive to all of us.
Her nomination to the Supreme Court,
I think, fulfills her destiny.
- I was just wondering what it was in your own experience
that really led you to take this path
and devote so much of your career
to breaking down the legal barriers,
the advancement of the women in our society.
- Senator Kennedy, I'm very sensitized to discrimination.
I grew up at the time of World War II in a Jewish family.
[slow somber instrumental music]
I have memories as a child, even before the war,
of being in a car with my parents and driving places,
and there was a sign in front of a resort,
and it said, "No dogs or Jews allowed."
That in this country during my childhood.
People who have known discrimination
are bound to be sympathetic to understand.
I want to thank Judge Ginsburg for revealing
not only the brilliant of her mind
but I think of her soul and heart as well.
- Now I know just how really fitting and proper
and how significant this vote is going to be for me.
- Whatever you've been doing has worked pretty well,
so keep doing it.
[poignant instrumental music] [muffled chatter]
[audience applauds]
- I, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, do solemnly swear.
- That I will support and defend the Constitution
of the United States.
- That I will support and defend the Constitution
of the United States.
- So help me God. - So help me God.
[flash bulbs bursting] [audience applauds]
- [Bill] Her story already is a part of our history.
Now her words and her judgments will help
to shape our nation today and well into the 21st century.
- It's by far the best place I have ever worked.
The relationship among the justices is very close
because no matter how great our differences
on what the law is or ought to be,
we know it will suffer if we can't get on well
Having Justice O'Connor here for 12 years
before I came made it infinitely easier for me.
She is an exceptionally fine and well-respected judge,
and she has been such a warm and wonderful friend to me.
Although we come from very different areas of the country,
I would say there's much more bonding between the two of us
than there is between any two men on that court.
[audience laughs]
I wish student groups would come and visit the court.
A very hearty welcome to the Supreme Court to all of you.
Please sit down, and perhaps one of the teachers
can tell me a little bit about you.
- You have two classes of 5th grade students,
ages ranging between 10 and 12 years old,
and we're from Indianapolis.
- [Ruth] Very good.
- Was it hard to be on the Supreme Court justice
because you're a woman?
- It's becoming less and less hard.
When I graduated from law school,
no woman in the history of the country had ever been
on the Supreme Court, but times have changed.
[upbeat lively 50s music]
My mother wanted me to be a school teacher
because that would afford me a nice steady income
and leave time for a husband and a family.
Doors were totally shut to most women.
Women simply could not be prosecutors.
The law was not the way to independence.
When I graduated from law school with high grades,
there was not a single law firm in the entire city
of New York that offered me employment.
In those days, I had three strikes against me.
One is I was Jewish, and many firms were just beginning
to let down racial, religious, national origin barriers.
Another, I was a woman, and then the one
that I think really did me in
was I had a four-year-old daughter.
It was enough of a risk to take a chance on a woman,
but taking a chance on a mother was too much.
[tense contemplative music]
- Justice Ginsburg, first of all,
I'd like to say that you don't look anything
near 60 years of age.
[laughs]
And secondly, could you tell us a little bit
about your family history?
[light jaunty music]
- My husband was my classmate in college.
We met when he was 18 and I was 17.
- The truth is, it was a blind date only on Ruth's side.
[audience laughs]
I cheated.
[audience laughs]
- We were best friends during our college days.
- "Oh, she's really cute," I perceptively noticed.
[audience laughs]
And then after a couple of evenings out,
I, "and boy she's really, really smart."
- And when I graduated from college, we got married.
I have a daughter and a son.
My daughter has two wonderful children.
- It's quite simple.
Your wife has a job, which, deep in your heart,
you wish you had.
[audience laughs]
- It wasn't easy to get that first job.
I had a great professor.
He recommended me to a judge
who always hired his law clerks from Columbia.
The judge said, "Well, I've looked at her resume.
She has a four-year-old daughter. How can I rely on her?"
And the professor said, "If you don't give her a chance,
I will never recommend another Columbia clerk to you."
[audience laughs]
And that's how I got my first job [muffled speaking].
There was an offer from Rutgers Law School
to teach procedure.
If I didn't take it, an offer my never come again.
My students, they wanted a course in women in the law.
In the space of one month, I read every federal decision
that had ever been written in the area of gender in the law.
There was barely anything.
[women chanting faintly] [up-tempo uplifting music]
- [Irin] The country was experiencing upheavals inspired
by activists who were no longer willing
to accept the status quo.
- [Ruth] Women came into the American Civil Liberties Union
and complained that they had to go on maternity leave.
You didn't get paid for that leave,
and you didn't have any right of return
unless the school wanted you back.
- [Woman] There were still laws on the books
that said women can't work more than certain hours.
They can't work at night.
They can't lift more than 15 pounds.
And basically, those laws were used
to keep women out of high-paying jobs.
- [Ruth] The American Civil Liberties Union
in New Jersey turned to me,
so those are the cases we started with.
- The ACLU was at the beginning of doing women's rights work
and was really in the forefront
of big-time gender discrimination litigation,
and Ruth was the head of it.
- [Ruth] Our lead case was Reed V Reed
[soft melancholy instrumental music]
Sally Reed, whose son died tragically
and killed himself with his father's rifle.
She wanted to be appointed administrator of his estate.
The statute read, "As between persons equally entitled
to administer a decedent's estate,
males must be preferred to females,"
and it was the turning point case.
- It was the first time the Supreme Court found
that gender discrimination was unconstitutional.
The decision in that case was revolutionary.
Ruth spent the next 10 years just blasting the door open.
- [Girl] Of the six women's right cases you've argued
before the Supreme Court,
which do you think has made the biggest change?
- One of my favorites involved a father,
a man whose wife was the dominant earner in the family,
and she died tragically in childbirth.
He wanted to work only part time and tend to his child.
He sought social security benefits
to assist him in that effort and was told,
"Well, those benefits aren't available to you.
Those are mother's benefits."
- The judges actually disbelieved that this
could be a real case because they
couldn't imagine a man wanting
to be the primary caregiver to his son.
- [Ruth] That judgment declares the gender line
at issue unconstitutional because it discriminates
in violation of the 5th Amendment
against gainfully employed women, such as Paula Wiesenfeld,
as well as against men and children
who have lost their wives and mothers.
- [Warren] A three-judge district court in New Jersey held
that this sex-based discrimination was unconstitutional.
We agree, and we affirm.
[poignant instrumental music]
- [Ruth] The Supreme Court unanimously held in favor
of that father because the baby who had lost a mother
rather than a father did not have the opportunity
to be cared for by the sole surviving parent.
The strategy was to go after gender stereotypes
and to rid the law books of these arbitrary lines
that separated the world into two spheres,
the world outside the home, which belonged the man,
and the world within the home that was women's province.
- [ME] She came up with the idea of using men as plaintiffs.
- These were men who is the male survivor of a wife,
they didn't get the benefit.
It was discrimination against the widower,
but it was also discrimination against the woman.
- We were given various tasks relating to the briefs,
and she discussed the case with us,
and we saw the evolution of the briefs.
We would do drafts, and then Ruth would rewrite them.
[laughs] She was an amazing writer, and the expression was,
"If you could get the briefs to sing," and hers sang.
They were powerful.
It's like people said when Tiger Woods was at his peak,
Tiger was playing golf up here,
and everybody else was playing golf down there.
He was at another level, and Ruth was like that.
- Craig Versus Boren and sometimes called the Beer Case.
[audience laughs]
Oklahoma had a very silly law.
Girls could buy beer at age 18,
but the boys had to wait until age 21.
So the thirsty boys at a fraternity
[audience laughs]
in Stillwater, Oklahoma brought this case.
[bluesy rock guitar music]
- [Man] It says that all females, even those that
are the most drunk, most alcoholic, most immature,
and most irresponsible may purchase 3.2% beer
at age 18 in absolutely unlimited quantities.
- [Warren] The law doesn't say it
in quite those words, does it?
[audience laughs]
- [Man] No, your honor, and the law doesn't say it
in quite the words that all males 18 to 21,
even though they are the most mature, most sober,
or most self restrained can't purchase a drop of it.
- Trying to hear [laughs] the Oklahoma,
I think it was the Oklahoma attorney general,
argue this case seriously was just hysterical.
That case in some ways it's so stupid that it was easier,
but it was a good precedent
because it got people thinking about stereotypes.
- I can tell you a case that made a big difference.
It was a case involving service of women on juries.
Women were not called for jury duty unless they volunteered,
and that was regarded as fine,
not as any kind of discrimination against women
but, in fact, discrimination in their favor.
But some women had the sense that the state was making them
or regarded them as dispensable, not really needed.
- [Warren] We'll hear arguments next
in 6067, Duren against Missouri.
- [Man] Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.
In March of 1976, petitioner Billy Duren appeared for trial
in the Jackson County Circuit Court.
Appearing with Mr. Duren was a jury panel.
That panel of 53 people included only five women.
If women are not on juries in sufficient numbers,
Billy Duren's right to a fair cross-sectional jury panel
has been defeated.
[melancholy contemplative instrumental music]
- I divided the argument with the public defender
from Kansas City, so I had a precious 15 minutes.
- [Warren] Mrs. Ginsburg, if you may lower the lectern
if you would like.
[courtroom chuckles]
- Mr. Chief justice, and may it please the court
hear Billy Duren's right to a fair chance
for a jury genuinely representative
of the communities complexion, and second,
the vaunted woman's privilege.
Women traditionally were deemed lesser citizens.
- [Warren] That wouldn't concern Mr. Duren, would it?
- [Ruth] Mr. Duren has a right to a jury drawn
from a panel reasonably representative of the community.
- I actually sat with her at council table.
Now, very few, I think, other people or professors
would have been that gracious and allowed that,
but that was the kind of person Ruth was.
What was interesting was watching the oral argument
because Ruth, she clearly had the respect of the court.
She did very well in her quiet and direct way
with the court.
Thurgood Marshall, he was very interesting in oral argument,
and I got the sense that he got it,
totally got it because he had been there
and he understood a world judging you by something
like race or gender that you had no control over,
and that essentially had really not much to do with anything
except in the eyes of people who were stereotyping.
- [Byron] Under the Missouri law,
women are eligible for jury duty,
but they are entitled to an automatic exemption.
No similar excuse is available to men.
Duren claims that his a 6th and 14th amendment right
to a trial by a jury representing a fair cross section
of the community is violated by this scheme.
[pleasant uplifting piano music]
- As this court said in the 1960s,
women are the center of home and family life.
One of my answers to that question
was men ought to be there, too,
sharing the work of caring for children and the home,
and women should be regarded as citizens
in the public arena of equal stature with men.
That was the essential message that I endeavored
to get across in all the cases that I argued.
- Justice Ginsburg slowly convinced the Supreme Court that,
under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment
and also the 5th amendment,
the government could not say that men and women
were fundamentally different and needed
to be treated as such under the law.
The way that she approached it was
to take these nine male justices by the hand
and lead them very slowly on a path,
and it wasn't until she had almost entirely
accomplished her goals did they realize how far they'd come.
- In retrospect and what we accomplished
and looking back on those two years,
I always say there was a brief and shining moment
in my life when I helped change the world. [chuckles]
[camera clicks]
- I would like to present to you this gift bag
from the city of Indianapolis.
We are known for our winning Indiana Pacers basketball team
and, of course, the Indy 500 race.
I sincerely hope you enjoy our gifts to you.
- Miss, thank you so much.
Oh, let's see this.
- These are flags from the-
- These are flags from-
- Indianapolis for the Indy 500 race.
- Ah. These I may share with my grandson.
I think he would appreciate that.
[audience applauds]
Well thank you so much.
[audience applauds]
ME Freedman was one of my wonderful students
who made it possible for dreams to come true.
I remember our first meeting.
ME came to my office a little angry and said,
"The way women are treated by the law is dreadful,
and I want to take courses that will help me do things
to aid women."
And I said, "If you want to aid women and men
and make a better society, become a damn good lawyer,"
and that's exactly what she has done.
- She was clearly the intellectual equal,
if not the superior, of the nine men she was arguing before.
She was light years ahead of us and of the justice
who asked the question and taught her students to be aware
of the need to judge individuals on their merits,
not on the basis of stereotype and qualities
like gender that have nothing to do
with merit and ability to do the job.
Thank you.
[audience applauds]
- If any of you have the opportunity to do that kind
of not-for-profit public interest work, you should grab it.
It was an amazing experience.
- I'd like to tell you the happy ending to one of the cases.
The baby in that story is today in his last year of college
and has recently applied to Columbia Law School.
[audience applauds and exclaims]
[uplifting poignant music]
[cameras clicking] [muffled chatter]
[group applauds]
This was my first grade class, too,
and I learned to read and to write in this room.
[cameras clicking]
To all my friends in this room,
my heart is just brimming over.
There isn't a place that I would rather have dedicated
to me in this building than the library.
This is where I learned to read.
This is where I learned to love learning.
[muffled chatter]
- [Winston] Justice Ginsburg, who a role model
when you were growing up?
- Winston, they didn't have a term role model
when I was growing up, but I can think about someone
who was in a book and not real.
But I guess she was a role model for a lot of us.
She was Nancy Drew.
[audience laughs]
And then there was Amelia Earhart.
Not too many women in the lawyering or judging line
because mostly, they didn't exist.
[audience applauds] [cameras clicking]
- [Woman] We are proud of this room.
We dedicate it to you,
the Ruth Bade Ginsburg courtroom,
and we hope you will visit many times.
- I've judged moot courts all around the country,
but I never dreamed that a courtroom
would be named after me, and this is remarkable.
How did you do this?
- [Woman] Well, let's have for students come up
and make that presentation.
- Here, your portrait will hang in this courtroom
as an inspiration to us all because you represent the level
of excellence that all of us hope to achieve.
Thank you.
- The first time a port was done of me, it was a huge woman.
And I looked and it, I said to the artist,
I showed her my hand.
I said, "Well, my wrist is very small."
She put a dab of black paint, but her notion was a woman
to be in power must be large.
She must be at least five foot 10 and not five foot two.
That looks like me. That's...
[audience laughs and applauds]
[melancholy piano music]
The children seem genuinely happy.
I was happy most of the time in PS 238,
but I was still there in the day when,
if you were left-handed as I was,
the teacher tried to make you change.
So I remember crying in the first grade
because I did my penmanship, and it was simply awful,
but I did it with my right hand, and I got a D,
and I said, "I will never again write with my right hand."
The story that was told about the girls having cooking
and sewing while the boys had shop,
I remember envying the boys long
before I even knew the word feminist
'cause I liked shop better than cooking or sewing.
Our neighborhood was predominantly Irish,
Italian, Polish, Catholic, and Jewish.
My mother told me two things.
One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent,
but most girls growing up in the 40s
were to find Prince Charming and live happily ever after.
She said it was most important
to get a job and support myself.
Sadly, she died when I was 17.
She died the day before my high school graduation.
- She really doesn't talk much about how that felt.
She internalizes it. She's quite stoic.
Whether it's her sister dying young as a child,
whether it's her mother dying the day
before her high school graduation,
without that kind of skillset,
everything that life threw at her,
we might not have her on the Supreme Court today.
- I think my daughter is following much the same career path
as I did.
Jane will speak for herself,
but she might have preferred something more venturesome
than law because it wasn't a daring thing to do anymore.
- [Woman] Speak for yourself, Jane.
[audience laughs]
- I don't know whether I wanna characterize things
in terms of daring or not,
but I guess I certainly got the feeling that a law
was a profession which gave you a fair amount of autonomy.
[bright uplifting poignant music]
- [Ruth] We are the first mother daughter who have taught
at a law school in the United States.
- My daughter is three years old,
so it's a little premature.
It'd be nice if she would be a concert pianist.
She's a pretty feisty little kid.
There will be legal examples of bounding since her mother
and her father and her grandmother
and her grandfather are all lawyers,
which might persuade her after all to be a concert pianist
if the talent is there.
[audience laughs]
- Enter the robing room.
The first thing we do is go around the room,
each justice shaking hands with every other.
And that's a symbol of the work
that we do as a collegial body.
We go around the room in seniority
so the chief will summarize the case.
No one can enter the room who is not a justice,
no secretary, no law clerk.
You will not see a laptop.
Notes are taken by each justice by hand.
They're just a private conversation
among the justices about the case.
- When Justice Ginsburg first became a judge,
she left some of the work she had hoped
to accomplish unfinished.
Now she got close, but she didn't go all the way.
With the US versus Virginia, the VMI case,
she came even closer.
- The Virginia Military Institute case
is one of a line of decisions saying
that no doors should be closed to people
who have the talent and the will to enter and do the job.
[men shouting in distance] [soft pleasant music]
It was a school maintained by the state in Virginia
that gave a good education.
[footsteps marching in unison]
It was a grant opportunity,
but the state afforded it only to members of one sex.
- [Man] What we have here is a single sex institution
for men as designed as a place to teach manly values
that only men can learn to show
that men can suffer adversity and succeed.
- [Ruth] If women are to be leaders
in life and in the military, then men have got
to become accustomed to taking commands from women,
and men won't become accustomed to that
if women aren't let in.
- [Man] This court is called upon to decide
as whether a state institution can model its program
on the assumption that there are certain things
that women can't do in general.
There are certain things that men will not do with women
because those men think that women are not capable of that.
[guns cocking]
- Here, the administration has total control over us.
They can come in our rooms anytime they want,
and I don't think that a female student
would like it very much if somebody
from administration came in and kicked in her door,
no matter what she was doing.
- They don't belong there.
It's been an all-male school,
just like some of the black students
in Alabama and Mississippi are all male black schools.
They don't want whites. They don't want females.
Leave 'em alone.
- If you don't let women in,
you're gonna always have that question as to is it fair?
And you always want to be fair to everybody,
and everybody should have the same opportunities
as everybody else.
[men shouting indistinctly] [cannon booms]
- [Ruth] On behalf of women capable
of all the activities required of VMI cadets,
instituted this lawsuit in 1990,
maintaining that under the Equal Protection Clause
of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution,
Virginia may not reserve exclusively for men.
[pleasant uplifting music]
[upbeat marching music]
- No one expects you to be able to run this marathon today.
VMI will provide you the training
and the conditioning necessary in such a way
that you will grow over time.
- I remember being in high school
and watching the VMI decision when I was in GROTC class,
and I remember hearing and watching Justice Ginsburg.
And in essence, what she said is that women
are not inferior to men, and we can do all things.
My best friend at the time said, "Women don't belong there."
I told him, "I'm committed."
I said, "Not only will I go, but I'll graduate."
And so he bet me $1 in that moment
that I wouldn't make it out my first year
at the Virginia Military Institute.
We actually went along with another fellow cadet,
and I was the only one to graduate.
My first year was a little bit of a blur.
There wasn't that many women.
I can't remember the exact numbers,
but it was a handful of us.
[helicopter blades whirring]
I think everyone at some point
in time thinks about quitting.
It's hundreds of pushups, thousands of sit ups,
multiple mal runs with 50-pound back sacks.
There's a lot of yelling. There's a lot of screaming.
There's no locks on any doors,
and you're roaming right beside hundreds
of males on either side.
[cadets shouting indistinctly]
I don't think anything can prepare you
to that type of experience.
Well, now I am a proud mom of twin boys, Alex and Xander.
They're 10 months now.
I'm a public defender in Arlington,
and I'm also the delegate for the 2nd District
of Prince William and Stafford.
My grandmother always told me to be the change
that you want to see, so I decided to throw my hat
in the race and make that change.
[bright uplifting music]
VMI instilled principles in me that I know I
wouldn't have received any other place.
Well, it teaches you a fortitude and integrity
and a gogetitness.
Some people would say to me afterward,
"Well, you were pregnant," and I'm like,
"Well, that's never an excuse to not do anything."
We wanna put a qualified teacher in every classroom.
[group cheering and clapping] [muffled speaking]
My husband and I met on the second day
at Virginia Military Institute.
It's no problem for him to stay home and to be
with the babies while I'm out knocking doors
or going to functions or speaking at political events.
It is very difficult to know where I would be right now
if it wasn't for Justice Ginsburg and her opinion.
She laid the foundation for all of us,
especially me as a woman to be able
to attend Virginia Military Institute,
and I think it helped me reach the place where I am today.
[footsteps marching in distance]
- On behalf of VMI corps cadets, faculty, and staff,
as well as Washington and Lee and School of Law,
we'd like to present with you
with these tokens of our appreciation.
[audience applauds]
- Who would've imagined that this woman
who nobody would give a job when she graduated
from law school would now not only be one
of the nine on the Supreme Court
but also calling upon the groundbreaking work
that she had done as an advocate.
It really came full circle with US Versus Virginia.
- Oh, isn't that beautiful?
- [Woman] Thank you so much.
[audience applauds]
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- This will be placed on a shelf just behind my desk,
and I am very proud to put it there.
- There was only one dissenter in the case
that allowed women into the Virginia Military Institute.
Justice Scalia dissented.
- [Antonin] It's not that women can't do it.
It was that it would interfere with the kind of relationship
among the students that produces the adversative method.
- So I took this dissent, this very spicy dissent,
and it absolutely ruined my weekend
at the second service.
[audience laughs and claps] [light pleasant music]
How we could be friends given our disagreement
on lots of things, Justice Scalia answered,
"I attack ideas, I don't attack people.
Some very good people have some very bad ideas."
[audience laughs and claps]
Our friendship should not have been surprising
to people who watched the court.
He has an extraordinary ability to make you smile.
When we were on the DC circuit together,
Justice Scalia would whisper something to me.
All I could do to avoid laughing out loud,
so I would sometimes pinch myself.
[audience chuckles]
People sometimes ask me,
"Well, what was your favorite Scalia joke?"
And I said, "I know what it is, but I can't tell you."
[audience laughs]
- To justify the position of, well,
you can have some slop over.
You don't have to be too precise about it.
It doesn't matter.
- [Man] He's called an originalist,
meaning he believes that the Constitution
ought to be interpreted more or less
as the founding fathers meant for it to be interpreted.
- Contemplating what the forefathers
would have envisioned had they foreseen modern conditions.
- [Man] Her view is that the Constitution
is what has been called a living document,
meaning it changes as society changes.
- I'm sorry, please. - I was going to.
[muffled speaking]
You wouldn't wanna live in most of the countries
of the world that have a bill of rights
which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.
You wouldn't wanna live there.
- I have to disagree with my colleagues in that respect.
- [Marvin] I'm glad that you can do it.
First,
[audience laughs]
I don't think that the rest of the world
is regarding our legislature at the current moment
as a model to be followed.
[audience laughs and claps] [soft pleasant music]
- She disagreed with everything that he said,
but she loved how he said it.
I don't think that they ever changed each other's minds.
- Now what's not to like
[audience laughs]
except her views of the law, of course?
[everyone laughs]
- It was about mutual respect. There was a warmth there.
Their families were friends.
They would spend New Year's together.
- And Ruth, honest to goodness, went up behind a motor boat
in a sail- - Parasail.
- Yeah.
[audience laughs]
- She's so light, you would think she would never come down.
[audience laughs]
- There's no greater lover of opera than Justice Ginsburg.
- If I could have any talent God could give me,
I would be a great diva because I simply love opera.
- So to bring together her famous friendship
with Scalia in opera form in many ways was her life's dream.
[bright pleasant music] [set banging]
- [Woman] We're here at the Castleton Opera Festival
for "Scalia/Ginsburg."
It's an opera about two Supreme Court justices,
how they are on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum,
but they're best friends.
♪ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ♪
[audience laughs]
♪ It's not the first time I've had to break ♪
♪ Through a ceiling ♪
[audience laughs and cheers]
♪ Flexible ♪
♪ Just another word for liberal ♪
[audience laughs]
- [Irin] She did not get to sing the arias herself.
She always says, "I'd have the voice of a sparrow."
- I had a wonderful time. I loved every minute of it.
The song that they sang tonight,
"We are different, we are one,"
I think that captures it.
♪ We are different ♪
- [Ruth] We each understand the way the other thinks.
♪ We are one ♪
[soft poignant instrumental music]
- He was indeed a magnificent performer.
How blessed I was to have a working colleague
and dear friend of such captivating brilliance,
high spirits, and quick wit.
In the words of a duet for tenor Scalia
and soprano Ginsburg, "We were different."
Yes, in our interpretation of written text,
yet one in our reverence for the court
and its place in the US.
[audience applauds]
♪ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ♪
♪ Doctor of law ♪
♪ Come to hear us at the opera ♪
♪ Direct from the Supreme Court ♪
[audience cheers and applauds]
- A lot of law students go straight into the world of work,
but one of the transition points to get
into the world of work is clerking.
Clerking is an opportunity to get behind the scenes
and see a little bit of how judges make decisions,
which is an invaluable experience.
[melancholy contemplative instrumental music]
I got very lucky. Yes, I did.
I got very lucky, yes.
Working for Justice Ginsburg was,
in addition to a great honor,
just a tremendous learning experience.
She's a meticulous editor. She's a very independent writer.
She's a very independent thinker.
It was a somewhat unusual year because
of the Bush versus Gore case.
- [Man] The Supreme Court has, for the first time
in American history, decided to step into a legal dispute
in the midst of a presidential election.
[crowd chanting indistinctly]
- That's not every term that you get something like that.
- [Ted] This is something that is unprecedented
in the state of Florida.
That's another change that took place.
- [Ruth] Mr. Olson, you have said the intent
of the voters simply won't do.
It's too vague. It's too subjective.
But at least, at least those words,
intent of the voter, are for the legislature.
- One of the most remarkable things, I felt,
in watching her up close during that time
was that she never lost her cool.
But in the main, you get to see a little bit
of how the court functions as an institution
and how the nine justices decide cases.
I've asked her about how she thinks
about all the work she's done as a judge,
and one of the things she told me is,
"Do your best work on every case,
decide it, and then let it go."
You cast your vote or your write your opinion,
and there's the next case and the next case.
That's true, but your brief contains not a single example
of anything else you think is exempt
from this prohibition other than a law license.
She's been an incredible mentor
to me well past that single year.
I've had the great privilege of remaining
in contact with her.
She's every bit the person she was. [laughs]
And the current current challenges?
- The statute books that were once riddled
with overt sex-based classification,
in the decade of the 70s, almost all of them were gone.
What's left and is harder to get at
is what I call unconscious bias.
Sometimes, it's a device that works
to overcome unconscious bias,
and my example of that is the symphony orchestra.
When I was growing up, you never saw a woman
except playing the harp.
Someone had the bright idea of dropping a curtain
so the people who were conducting the audition
didn't know if it was a woman or a man.
And with that simple change, the dropped curtain,
almost overnight, women started to show up
in symphony orchestras.
Not only do we audition behind a curtain,
but we audition shoeless.
[soft contemplative instrumental music]
- So you now sit on a court that has three women on it.
I actually sit on a court that has the majority
of women on it, including a woman as chief justice.
Do you think that the law would be much different
if there were, say, four or five women
on the US Supreme Court?
- I think it's pretty good that we have three now.
Three makes the big difference
because we're all over the bench,
and I sit toward the middle
because I've been around so long.
[audience laughs]
And if any of you have come to watch the show at the court,
you know that my newest colleagues
are not shrinking violets.
[audience laughs]
And yet there are some cases that at least I think
would have come out the other way
if there were five women or more,
and one of them is Lilly Ledbetter's case.
Every woman understood Lilly's problem.
[contemplative music] [car whooshing past]
Lilly was a woman who worked in a Goodyear tire plant.
She was an area manager.
She was hired in the 1970s
when only men were doing that job.
She was the first woman.
- There was a huge writeup in the "Business Week" magazine
about Goodyear Gadsden.
They were going to start hiring women
and minorities into management positions.
They offered me a job, but I was told,
"You will never discuss your pay."
And no one would ever say anything about their pay.
It was a good job for a woman. Goodyear was hard work.
I knew it was hot in the factory.
I knew it was dirty, but I continued to work extremely hard,
extremely cautious, because I knew, being a woman,
I could not make a mistake.
[traffic whooshing past]
I'd gone in to do my 12-hour shift,
pulled out all my paperwork, and this whole piece
of paper had first names, base pay.
I knew when I saw mine.
It was exactly to the dollar,
which was an odd amount, 3,727.
The other three on that piece of paper
was almost $6,000 a month base pay.
- She was at rock bottom.
The young man that she had trained
was getting more money than she was.
- I was embarrassed. I was humiliated.
I tried to figure out where did this come from?
Who knew this? I've still got two kids in college.
I've still got a house mortgage.
I've still got car payments.
I can't quit. I can't quit.
I can't go home. I've got to do this shift.
I told my husband when I got home that morning,
"This is not right what's been done to me and my family."
So I started searching for an attorney
that could take my case on a contingence basis,
and we went all the way to the Supreme Court.
[dramatic music]
- [John] We'll hear argument next
in Ledbetter versus Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
- Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.
A jury found that at the time petitioner filed her charge
of discrimination with the EEOC,
respondent was paying her less for each week's work
than it paid male employees and
that it did so because of her sex.
The question for the court is whether that treatment,
because of sex, constituted a violation of Title VII.
- I went to the Supreme Court,
and I looked up on the beach,
and there's that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
outlawed discrimination on the basis
of race, national origin, religion, and sex.
The employer knew that every woman
is being paid less than every man.
Why isn't that sufficient under Title VII?
- [Man] Justice Ginsburg, Title VII allows proof
of dissimilar treatment as evidence
of present intentional discrimination,
but it's not the elements of the client.
- I continued to believe and I continued to hope
that when that verdict came out,
that it would be in my favor.
- [John] Justice Alito has our opinion this morning
in case 05-1074.
- [Samuel] A jury returned a verdict in her favor
on the Title VII claim, but the 11th circuit,
applying our precedence, held that Ledbetter
had filed her EEOC charge too late.
We therefore affirm the judgment of the 11th circuit.
[somber music]
- Because of a procedural interpretation of employment law,
a majority of the Supreme Court said that Lilly Ledbetter
could not bring her case because her time had expired.
Now, Justice Ginsburg had had her own experiences
with pay discrimination.
When she was at Rutgers, she was told,
"We couldn't possibly pay you what we pay a man
because your husband makes a good salary."
- When Justice Ginsburg read that dissent,
that changed everything totally.
- [Ruth] Four members of this court,
Justices Stevens, Souter, Breyer,
and I dissent from today's decision.
In our view, the court does not comprehend
or is indifferent to the insidious way
in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.
This is not the first time this court
has ordered a cramped interpretation
of Title VII incompatible
with the statute's broad remedial purpose.
Today, the ball again lies in Congress's court
to correct this court's parsimonious reading of Title VII.
- Earlier this week, Lilly Ledbetter wrote
to the entire Congress, and I quote,
"I am still fighting for all the other women
and girls out there who deserve equal pay
and equal treatment under the law."
[audience applauds]
- [Man] Ladies and gentlemen,
the president of the United States,
accompanied by Mrs. Lilly Ledbetter.
[audience cheers and applauds]
- I knew walking down that hall
that that was going to change the country,
and it was going to change the life of a lot of people.
- Making our economy work means making sure it works
for everybody, that there are no second class citizens
in our workplaces, and that it's not just unfair
and illegal, it's bad for business to pay somebody less
because of their gender or their age or their race
or their ethnicity, religion, or disability.
[audience cheers and claps] [moving instrumental music]
- Justice Ginsburg loves this example
because it's a dialogue between the branches of government.
Her goal was to build consensus.
Her famous friendship with Justice Scalia,
I believe, is also a measure of her commitment to reaching
across the aisle and working with people out of a belief
that the court is a sacred institution
and it works better when there's a sort of collegiality.
You can agree or disagree without being disagreeable.
- If you've ever met Justice Ginsburg,
you would know that she's an incredibly soft-spoken person.
She's very savvy, but Marty is the more ebullient half
of that pairing.
Whenever there was a birthday in chambers,
Marty would make some out of this world dessert
of some sort, and we would have tea
and dessert in the justices' chambers.
It was very nice.
And then we also had dinner at her apartment,
and Marty cooked, which was a real treat.
[bright lilting instrumental music]
He was a wise cracker, a chronic, incorrigible wise cracker,
and that was their shtick was he was the funny one,
she was the straight one, and that's how they behaved.
[somber piano music]
- Marty was my biggest supporter.
He gave me the courage to believe I could do things
that I wasn't sure I was able to do.
- Marty Ginsburg made sure that the president knew
about just one judge on the DC circuit at that time
who had made enormous contributions to the law,
particularly for women.
- She wouldn't be on the Supreme Court
if it weren't for Marty.
He was her campaign manager.
He really managed a war room, and I was part
of the war team trying to get people to weigh in
and write letters to make sure that those people
were run down and gathered up.
- I think that having another woman in the Supreme Court
is central to the importance of what's going on today,
and I think that Judge Ginsburg's sex is not irrelevant.
- Weinberger versus Wiesenfeld was a landmark decision
in the quest for equal rights for men and women.
I wish to see this committee
confirm Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg
to the United States Supreme Court.
[slow poignant music]
- I have a feeling probably the last thing Marty said
to Ruth was, "Hang in there.
Keep going. Just keep going.
I'll be watching."
- [Kathleen] They were devoted to each other.
She had what people have when their partner's gone,
figuring out who I am.
- He will be present in my life as long as I live.
I have his portrait in my bedroom,
and I look at it and say,
"You would probably like what I'm doing now."
Look at the preamble to our Constitution.
It says, "We, the people of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect union."
Who are we, the people, in the beginning?
White property-owning men. Who are we, the people, today?
The United States in all of its diversity,
and I think the genius of this document
that was written toward the end of the 18th century
and has governed us for well over 200 years
is that it is ever becoming more perfect,
and we, the people is ever becoming more inclusive.
- The irony of Justice Ginsburg's time on Supreme Court
is that she has spent most of it be a great dissenter.
[slow melancholy music]
- She dissents with an eye towards making change,
with an eye towards either Congress
or a future court vindicating her position.
She dissents with a purpose.
- [Ruth] Justices Steven, Souter, Breyer,
and I strongly descent from today's opinion.
[echoing boom]
- [Woman] Five to four was the Supreme Court vote.
- [Barbara] This begins to chip away at Roe V Wade.
- [John] I have filed a separate opinion
that Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer,
and Justice Sotomayor have joined.
We dissent from the court's decision
to strike down a key part of that statute.
[contemplative music]
[echoing boom]
- [Woman] It has been called one
of the biggest threats to our democracy.
That ruling allowed big companies,
including foreign corporations,
to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
- [Ruth] I dissent from today's decision.
John Thompson spent 14 years isolated on death row
before the truth came to light.
The lab reported to the prosecutors
that the perpetrator's blood type was B.
Thompson's blood type is O.
[discordant tense music]
[echoing boom]
- [Man] They cannot pay him all of the years that he lost?
- [Woman] Reporters say he should never
have been convicted in the first place.
- Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and I dissent.
[melancholy music]
- [Shana] I was following the Supreme Court
and had been looking towards the decision
that was gonna come out,
particularly in the voting rights case,
Shelby County V Holder.
- [Ruth] The Voting Rights Act
addresses an extraordinary problem,
a near century of disregard for the dictates
of the 15th Amendment,
and Congress has taken extraordinary measures
to meet the problem.
- She dissented from the majority's basically striking
down one of the most important pieces
of civil rights legislation in our history.
[crowd singing and chanting indistinctly]
- The great man who led the March from Selma to Montgomery
and there called for the passage of the Voting Rights Act
foresaw progress, even in Alabama.
"The arc of the moral universe is long," he said,
"but it bends toward justice,"
if there is a steadfast commitment
to see the task through to completion.
That commitment has been disserved by today's decision.
- She actually had an edit,
which I find hilarious because most people think,
"MLK, he's got this.
I'm not going to add or amend."
But she said, "If there is a steadfast commitment
to see the task to completion."
It is vintage Ginsburg.
She's experienced enormous sadness in her life.
She's lived through backlashes to her life's work.
We're in the middle of a backlash right now,
and yet she has kept on fighting.
- I couldn't believe that five justices had just decided
that the Voting Rights Act was no longer necessary,
that racism had been eradicated,
and that all of these problems of the 1960s just
didn't matter anymore in terms of voting rights.
And her words in that moment really spoke to me.
Basically, throwing away the Voting Rights Act
was "like throwing away an umbrella
in a rainstorm because you're not getting wet."
And I just thought that was just so perfect
in encapsulating how absurd what the court was doing,
and that was the first quote that I posted
on "Notorious RBG."
["William Tell Overture"]
That was the period of time where Tumblr was most popular.
But I just didn't have any expectation
that it was going to explode the way that it did.
- I was just looking at Tumblr today.
[audience laughs]
Bobblehead because the head bobbles.
[audience laughs]
- [Unison] Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ooh.
[audience laughs and applauds]
[audience laughs]
- How did this happen?
[audience laughs]
- It's amazing, and to think of me an icon at 82.
[audience laughs and applauds]
And at first, I didn't know quite what to make of this
because I didn't even know who Notorious BIG was.
[audience laughs and applauds]
- And that's what I think made it so popular is that it
was this juxtaposition of these completely different people
but also experienced hardships in their lives and dealt
with it by pushing back and speaking truth to power.
[soft lilting instrumental music]
- My editor connected me with Irin.
We agreed to work together.
- [Irin] We wanted to capture that kind of spontaneity,
the visual lushness, and also turn it into a story.
- What is going on that she has become this cult figure now?
- Women are drawn to her, and young people
in particular are drawn to her.
[muffled chatter]
- She just is who she is.
She's very confident, very aware of herself.
- She believes in what she believes in,
and she's gonna say it.
She's not worried about what people think about her.
- When I became a Supreme Court justice,
there were six women in the Senate.
Now there are 20.
I was the second woman on the Supreme Court,
and when Justice O'Connor met, I was all alone.
Now I have two colleagues, Justice Sonia Sotomayor
and Justice Elena Kagan.
People ask me,
"Well, when do you think there will be enough?"
I'd say, "Well, when there are nine,"
and people are aghast.
We've had nine men for most of the country's history,
and no one thought there was anything wrong with that.
- And I looked up at the bench on which I sat for 25 years,
and what could I see?
I saw on the far right a woman, on the far left side a woman
and near the middle a woman, and it was dazzling.
[audience cheers and applauds]
- It's the first time the public can see we
are really there, really there to stay,
not one at a time curiosities.
[audience applauds]
At my age, you have to take it year by year.
I know I'm okay this year, but what will be next year?
I'm hopeful, however, because my most senior colleague,
Justice John Paul Stevens, stepped down at age 90.
So I have a way to go.
- [Man] A lot of people have been expressing encouragement
that you eat more kale, so to speak.
[audience laughs]
- The number one thing people ask me
when I talk about Justice Ginsburg is, "How is her health?
How's she doing?"
Then they ask, "How can we keep her alive forever?
Can I give her a kidney?" I hear that a lot.
[chuckles] She doesn't need one. She's great.
She's in great shape.
- I have a personal trainer who keeps me in shape.
We meet twice a week, and we do 20 pushups
and then the plank, which I think is harder,
with Bryant Johnson, my trainer, my trainer since 1999.
[upbeat lively music]
I attribute my wellbeing the two hours a week
when I devote to that.
- Let's get fully ripped and exploded.
Let's get shredded. Let's get stupid strong.
- Let's go.
- [Neil] Judging from her push-up regimen, she is not done.
Justice, welcome.
[audience applauds]
- The term just ending was momentous.
Our docket included far more than the usual number
of high-profile disputes.
But topping the headline news at our closing conference,
Justice Kennedy announced his retirement effective today.
Counting his years as a judge of the US Court of Appeals
for the 9th Circuit,
he has served on the federal judiciary for 43 years.
[audience applauds]
- How has the court changed over the quarter century
that you've served on it?
How is it different than when you started?
- Well, one thing that isn't different
is the collegiality of the court, and that remains.
Of course, I miss my favorite sparring partner,
Justice Scalia,
[soft poignant music]
but you don't see that kind
of friendship existing in our Congress anymore.
It once did.
I hope it will again.
There was a great man once said "that the true symbol
of the United States is not the bald eagle.
It is the pendulum.
And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction,
it will go back."
I grew up at the time of World War II.
The irony was we were fighting a war against racism,
and yet by an executive order of President Roosevelt,
people who had done nothing wrong
except they were of Japanese ancestry,
were interned in camps far from their homes.
That was a dreadful mistake.
Well, I would say that we are not experiencing the best
of times, but my dream is that we
will get back to it one day.
I think it will take a strong people
from both parties to say,
"Let's get together and work for the good of the country."
Let's try in the aisle. Yes, yes.
- If you could predict, how many more years
do you think it'll be until a woman becomes president?
- [Ruth] How many do you think?
- The year? - Year? [laughs]
- Well, I will predict that it will happen in your lifetime.
I'm not certain it will happen in mine,
but I will make a prediction that it will happen,
that you will see a woman as president of the United States.
[soft poignant music]
- Recognizing that this is probably the last time
that the American people will ever have a chance
to glimpse you as a person and what you
would like them to think most of all when they think of you?
- As someone who cares about people
and does the best she can with the talent she has
to make a contribution
for a better world.
[soaring moving music]
- How long was you working at the Supreme Court?
- How long have you been working at the Supreme Court?
- Almost 24 years.
[kid gasps loudly] [audience laughs]
- I found it the most popular question on a college campus,
young women want to know what kind of tires do I buy?
Don't buy Goodyear.
- He never paid me. I never received my dollar to this day.
We still talk, but I never received my dollar.
- I've argued five times in the Supreme Court.
Justice Ginsburg asks terrific questions.
They always go to the very heart of the case.
I just wish sometimes she would speak a little bit louder
when she was asking her questions.
- Professor Nabokov of changed the way I read,
and he changed the way I write.
Even when I'm drafting opinion,
thinking how the word order should go I remember him.
- [Man] Is there a reason
why you prefer gender discrimination
instead of sex discrimination?
- In the 70s when I was writing briefs, I had a secretary,
and she said, "I've been typing this word, sex, sex, sex,
and let me tell you.
Use the word gender.
It will ward off distracting associations."
[audience laughs]
- The analogy is apt in that both Thurgood Marshall
with Ruth Bader Ginsburg were using the law
in a creative way to advance civil rights.
- My dear mother-in-law gave me some counsel.
She said, "Remember that in every good marriage,
it helps sometimes to be a little hard of hearing."
[audience laughs and applauds] [pleasant lilting music]
- Your marriage is one reason we decided to give it a shot.
- Equal Rights Amendment was intended to prevent government
from slotting a person solely on the basis of sex.
The amendment arms the judiciary with a bedrock principle.
all men and all women are entitled
to equal justice under law.
Thank you.
[audience applauds]