RBG
“When there are nine.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s response when asked when there will be enough females on the Supreme Court
June 11, 2018
Like millions of others, I am a shameless fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For anyone who knows me, the reasons should be obvious. If Ginsburg is not proof that women are not only as smart or more qualified than any man, I’m not sure what it is. Case in point:
Ginsburg graduated valedictorian of her high school class, two days after mother died.
She earned her bachelor's degree in government from Cornell University in 1954, finishing first in her class.
She made the law reviews at both Harvard and Columbia Law Schools, graduating first in her class at Columbia. She was the first female to make Harvard Law Review.
She started law school at Harvard when her daughter, Jane, was just 14 months old. Instead of overwhelming her, Ginsburg said caring for Jane actually made law school easier.
At Harvard, the law school’s dean chided her and the other eight females in her class “for taking the places of qualified males.”
During her first year of law school, when her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer, Ginsburg kept her sick husband up-to-date with his studies while she maintained her position at the top of the class.
When her husband recovered from cancer and finished law school, she moved with him to New York and completed her law degree at Columbia, finishing at the top of the class in 1959. However, her exceptional academic record could not protect her from gender-based discrimination in the 1960s, and she had difficulty finding a job because “women were not supposed to hold jobs.”
After clerking for U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri from 1959 to 1961, Ginsburg taught at Rutgers University Law School and at Columbia, where she became the school's first female tenured professor.
She argued and won five cases before the Supreme Court prior to President Jimmy Carter appointing her to the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed her, 96-3.
She has not missed a day of oral arguments, not even when she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for pancreatic cancer, after surgery for colon cancer, OR the day after her beloved husband passed away.
For the past 20 years, she has worked out twice weekly with a regime that includes an elliptical warm up, squats, planks, medicine ball tosses and push-ups, while listening to classical music.
As I’ve said in a previous post, I don’t often go the movies. However, I made it a priority to see RBG, the documentary about the diminutive 85 year-old jurist, who has become more than just a trailblazer known for leading the charge on gender equality and women’s rights. Ginsburg has also become a pop culture icon, inspiring young women, as well as the “Notorious RBG” meme and one of Kate McKinnon’s most iconic characters on “Saturday Night Live.” This movie was my kind of “chick flick.”
While chick flicks are often love stories, the marriage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her late husband, Martin Ginsburg has to be the ultimate love story. The Ginsburg marriage has been called a "marvel of life; a marathon of love and support." Martin Ginsburg was a successful tax attorney, a famous chef among his family and friends, and held a teaching position at Columbia. When his wife was appointed to the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he moved his teaching post to Georgetown, with the explanation that his wife had been given “a good job” in Washington.
Before he passed away in 2010, he told a friend, "I think that the most important thing I have done is to enable Ruth to do what she has done."
This is what love and gender-equality looks like, folks.
#RBG #mykindofchickflick #Iamwomanhearmeroar #goseeRBG