American Dream Reconsidered 2017: A Conversation with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

[Music] I'm Tania Castro very moskalenko chief executive officer of the auditorium theater at Roosevelt University thank you for joining us tonight for this special event that kicks off a 2017 2018 season and kicks off Rozsival University's American Dream reconsidered conference the conference is devoted to examining the issues that are important in our country today from healthcare to immigration it is perhaps fitting that today September 11th such an important anniversary in our nation's history we would be examining what the American dream means today in honor of the lives that were lost on this day 16 years ago I ask you to join me in a moment of silence thank you it is my pleasure to welcome you to the auditorium theater the theater for the people in our 1718 season and I want to take this opportunity to thank her season sponsor the MacArthur Foundation in our hotel sponsor the Palmer House Hilton in her book my own words Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says if I could choose the talent I would most like to have it would be a glorious voice tonight that's how I feel she continues I would be a great diva perhaps Renata Tebaldi or Beverly Sills or in the Mets arranged Marilyn Horne even though Justice Ginsburg is a sparrow not a Robin as her grade school teacher once told her today she appears on the same stage that has hostess hosted countless great divas from Adelina Patti in 1889 to leontyne price to Beverly Sills herself so I ask you that if she gets inspired this evening that we all encourage her to give us a wonderful aria before we welcome the justice to our stage it is my honor to introduce to you the president of Roosevelt University dr. Eileen Alexa please help me welcome [Applause] good evening ladies and gentlemen and Thank You Tanya I am very pleased to welcome you to the keynote conversation for Roosevelt University second annual conference of the American Dream who reconsidered you will find a schedule for the conference in your program we're grateful that you're here tonight and we also thank the donors that have made our conference possible Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois Huntington Bank and the Jack Miller Center also would like to give a very special thank you to Henry Fogle Dean of the Chicago College of Performing Arts who facilitated our introduction to Justice Ginsburg and said this evening in motion Thank You Henry also professor Lynn whiner professor Stuart Warner Michael Ford and a team of faculty and staff worked all year to make sure this conference happens and tonight happens thank you so much all of you and let us not forget the staff for the auditorium theater this magnificent theatre for the people for the job they do bringing us here tonight thank you so much ladies and gentlemen you know Roosevelt University was founded over 70 years ago when faculty administrators and students of the YMCA College of Chicago walked out to protest racial and religious admission Coda's we became one of the first universities in the country to admit all qualified students regardless of age race religion gender gender social class or nationality this new college created on the principle of social justice was dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt and I called to the enlightenment of the human spirit the first classes then as now included students of all races ethnicities income brackets and religions veterans immigrants and refugees students from big cities and small towns in fact one reporter in Chicago called it and I quote Chicago's equality lab what a legacy our mission has been to provide educational pathways to the American dream of opportunity democracy and justice that is why this evening is so special to us having United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg here to talk about her life and her work provides an exemplary road map to our students as they begin to develop their own pathways to follow many of our students staff and faculty are immigrants raise your hands if you're immigrants or children of immigrants just like Justice Ginsburg many are among the first in their families to go to college like Justice Ginsburg many have faced discrimination adversity and challenges because of who they are like Justice Ginsburg so she's a model for all of us someone who has not let prejudice or difficulty bar her way against all odds she has succeeded in her goals and relentlessly pursued justice and as you no doubt know she has become the first Supreme Court justice to become a popular cultural icon sure the notorious RBG Justice Ginsburg exemplifies the American Dream and the legacy and values of Roosevelt University this evening she will be speaking with George and Claire Williams they unite yes the United States judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit now George Williams also began serving in the federal judiciary in 1985 has been committed to creating opportunities for minority lawyers and has also participated in numerous international judicial training initiatives she also serves on the boards of the Carnegie Foundation federal judges Association a National Institute for trial advocacy so welcome and thank you George Williams [Applause] now ladies and gentlemen it is my honor and distinct pleasure to welcome to the stage George and Claire Williams and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg [Applause] thank you thank you please be seated everyone be seated I [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] love you too well thank you turn in dr. Ali for the kind introduction and good evening everyone I think you can do better than that we have the rock star in the room good evening and as Tonya said we remember those who who died and suffered and lost their lives in 9/11 but we also send heartfelt prayers and blessings to all of our brothers and sisters dealing with the Hurricanes across this country and in the Caribbean the fires in California the earthquake in Mexico we want to remember them and think about them and send them our breast blessings and prayers right Justice Ginsburg yes and it's a moment when we remember our fear our anxiety we remember the horror of that day and the suffering that natural disasters caused but there is a positive note and that is Americans come together in a time of tragedy I remember how the atmosphere was on 9/11 every one of the people who were victims were from many different national origins race religion and yet we were together in our empathy for the those people and their suffering I just wish that spirit would last beyond the immediate tragedy that spirit well you can't imagine how thrilled we all were when Justice Ginsburg said yes yes to coming to Roosevelt University yes to Chicago yes to having a conversation about her remarkable life and career she always says she's not a rock star but we know she is the second woman Supreme Court justice number 107 in the history of the country and to understand how and why it is you are such a force we begin at the beginning because you had loving parents Celia and Nathan Bader grew up in Brooklyn your family as Ally said your mom's side originally from Austria your dad's people from Russia you described your growing up in a close loving family in fact your mother's sister married your father's brother and your parents didn't go to high school what was their view of Education and how did they inspire you as you move forward my father didn't go to any school in the United States he came here when he was 13 and went immediately to work my mother did go to high school she graduated age 15 she went to work so she and her siblings could help support the eldest son in the family the only one who had a college education and she inspired you though because you used to go to the library with her and tell us what that Chinese food size is about it was one of the great pleasures of my young life and my mother would deposit me in the children's section of the library was one floor above a Chinese restaurant and she would go to have her hair done and then come back by then I would have picked out the five books to take home to read that that week but in in my head there was this mixture of the delicious Chinese food being cooked and the books and I see you have a Greek mythology it's a love of Greek mythology and also loved he do yes and and why did you love Nancy Drew Nancy Nancy Drew was a doer and and her boyfriend said it trailed along there weren't many books like that when I was going and you inspired by your mother we're very active in high school you want it to be bat Mitzvahed right and you were the first girl no I was not because that came much later ball mitzvah was were boys right my dear colleague Elena Kagan was the first girl Bat Mitzvah on in her West Side of New York synagogue no it was not possible for girls who by age which made us very jealous of the boys because they had the Obamas and all a big party and lesser presence but somehow you managed without that Bat Mitzvah to be a camp rabbi isn't that a picture of you and you were known as Kiki yes but the camp was all girls so so that was pretty easy and and your mom and continued to inspire you but tragically your mom became ill during your high school years is that right my first year in high school yes it was the beginning of her long bout with ovarian cancer you were very devoted to her and often studied at her bedside yes if my mother wanted me to study hard and get good grades and you you've said at the time you were nominated to the Supreme Court that your mom was the bravest and strongest person that you had known who was taken from you much too soon yeah her spirit though has carried you through hasn't it yes I think my mother wouldn't it would have been beyond her wildest dreams to see what has become of me she but she taught me a few important things and one of them was to be independent and by that she meant it would be nice if someday you found Prince Charming but we be prepared to fend for yourself have something that you can do to just to support yourself and the other good advice was what she called being a lady which meant don't succumb to emotions that do you no good and on her list of those were anger Envy and remorse her notion was those emotions will just SAP your time they won't get you any place so forget about them and that's what you did and you said that you prayed that you might be all that she would have been if she had been given an opportunity yes well in those days there were no anti-discrimination laws so it was assumed that women would be paid less than men that if they were working they would be pin money earners and they wouldn't get any fringe benefits that's the way the world would end in flood you did so well that you did go to college you chose Cornell at that time when you went you were interested Cornell we have some graduates from Cornell you were interested in teaching I can't really say I was interested in but it was considered a safe thing for girls there were many women schoolteachers and you could get a job and not face discrimination but I I tried it out I went to Ithaca High School and I was assistant to the history teacher and there was a lesson I was to teach myself the lesson had it was about the spanish-american war and there was one list was the United States everything the United States did was right and everything the other side did was wrong and I knew that that's not the way the world is and I didn't want to teach children and so as you were trying to figure out what you would actually do you actually met Marty the love of your life when he was a second year student I was first year student I was 17 he was 18 blind date it was on my side [Laughter] [Applause] so there's more to that story here anyway Marty and I we were best friends for a long time because he had a girlfriend at Smith College and I had a boyfriend at Columbia Law School it's because well it's a long cold week in between [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] but the truly amazing thing about Marty he was the only boy I had ever known who cared that I had in brain and you eventually married Marty and you were married for 56 years yeah now I think you got married at Marty's parents home yes and your mother-in-law had a special gift for you I we looked down at the bottom of the slide are those earplugs yes but they're not the right ones and the ones well let me tell you the story so I am about to be married and my mother-in-law took me aside he went into her bedroom she said risen I would like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage something I'd like to know and she said dear it helps sometimes to be a little deaf and with that she handed me a package of max earplugs which I use to this day and do you have them on sometimes when you're on the court but I am a little deaf when a colleague says an unkind word it is 2:00 now so that's that's the gift your mother gave you the gift that keeps giving right and so you were married and then Marty went to the military he went to Harvard first and then the military he had one year of Harvard Law School and then was pulled out it was the time of the Korean War so the next two years we spent at Fort Sill Oklahoma and you worked in the Social Security office and that's where you first ran into well no there have been issues in terms of being Jewish but in terms of in the work life discrimination right I take an an exam and I got a government a rating of gs5 and I showed up at the Social Security office and told the head of the office by the way I'm three months pregnant and his answer was well then you can't be a gs5 we will put you in at the lowest GS rating gs2 and you'll do the work that we hired you to do but you'll get the lowest possible right in those days I didn't think there was anything to be done about it that's the way it was now I'm gonna fast-forward a minute because you became pregnant with James and there was something you did having learned this lesson right and then when that was in 1960 five yes I had learned the lesson so it was a wonderful thing that happened that I became pregnant but I had a year two year contract to it I was teaching at Rutgers law school it's part of the state university and I knew that if I told them about the pregnancy my contract wouldn't be renewed so this ever helpful mother-in-law came to my rescue again I wore her clothes for the last couple months of the semester and then with contract in hand I said to my colleagues when I come back in the fall they'll be one more member of our family now marty was discharged he went back to Harvard it was his second year and you decided to go to law school tell us about that decision in fact I decided to go to law school when I was at Cornell when I realized that high school history teaching was not for me I was turned on to the law because I saw what good it could do my ecology is were not the best for the United States it was the time when Senator Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin was holding forth he saw a communist in every corner people were being hauled before the house on American Activities Committee and the Senate investigating committee asked about some group that they belonged to in the 30s in the height of the depression and then I saw a lawyer standing up for these people and reminding the Congress there is a First Amendment that says we have the right to think speak and write as we believe and not as Big Brother government tells us it's the right way to think speak and believe and also reminding the members of Congress when they were quizzing people these people have Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination so my idea was I could be a lawyer and make a living that way but I could also use whatever skill I developed to make things a little better to help get us out of bad times and one of the dilemmas you faced was you had a daughter you had a daughter Jane and your and what did what was the advice this time now from your father-in-law what did was he say to you I was accepted at law school and then took a leave for two years while Marty was in the military and I worried how am I make it at this place that legend has it is a very rigorous the Harvard Law School and my father-in-law said to me if you don't want to go to law school no one will think the less of you you will have a new baby and you will have the best reason in the world but he said if you really want to become a lawyer you will pick yourself up you will stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will find a way and it was that advice that has stood me in good stead for my entire life that is I have to decide do I really want this and if the answer is yes then you find a way and one of the third year and Alondra abara of Roosevelt of Philosophy marketing and political science student wants to know what's your advice for women who want to go to law school now I think there has not been a better time to be a woman and enter the legal profession because no doors are closed anymore I won't say there's no more discrimination and that would be an exaggeration but think of the way it was for the nine women in my entering law school class a class of over 500 they would be sign-up sheets for interviews for jobs they would say men only there was no room in the dormitories for the women they had to find a place in town on their own but worse worst of all I think this would be inconceivable to you in this audience but classes were held in two buildings and only one of them had a women's bathroom mm-hmm so who is stuck in the other building you it's bad enough to run out during a lecture but if you're taking an exam a very time pressure exam and had to make a mad dash sort of sort of like the women in hidden figures yes yes yes very much like and you had they did well I guess it was true for them too right we didn't complain we wanted to be there we wanted be law students so we just accepted it that's the way it was and you were really excited because the Dean invited you I think it was the Dean to come to his home for dinner he invited all of the women in the first year class to have dinner at his home and each of us was accompanied by a distinguished professor at the law school and the professor's were distinguished the dinner was not but then after after dinner the Dean seated us in a horseshoe in his living room and said now I want each of you in turn to tell me what you're doing at this Law School occupying the seat they could be held by a man so the Dean years later explained to me that he didn't ask the question to wound or offend but there was still this is now in 1956 doubting Thomases on the faculty who thought it was unwise to let women in so he wanted to be armed with stories from the women themselves about what they would do with their Harvard Law School degree and though there were doubting Thomases you were number one in your class at Harvard at Columbia and it Columbia right and and and you were on the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review which is the highest journal in the law school community the most prestigious I should say that well it was a good credential especially when I went abroad because it wasn't known that these are student publications so that was helpful now one of the things that you said that helped you through law school was changed so that work at four o'clock what does that mean four o'clock was when then any left and we had a New England type nanny who came in at 8:00 in the morning and then I went off to classes I attended diligently I studied hard but four o'clock my life changed from being a grinding law student to being a mom so from four o'clock til when Jane went to sleep was Jamestown held their heavy law books and then and an infant not yet two so each part of my life was kind of a relief from the other well I had enough of the books there were silly games I could play with my daughter we could go to the park and when she went to sleep finally it was I was ready to go to go back to the law books and then in your second year and I think Marty's third year Marty got sick and you had to organize his classes and the notes and things like that but he sick really think he really should be added a terrible form of cancer and it was we were very fortunate to be where we were he had massive surgery three surgeries many years after that but managing his radiation taking care of Jane getting notes for his classes keeping up with my own classes the two of us figured that if we could survive that year then there was nothing that life could throw our way we we couldn't manage and didn't Marty get better grades that he got by far the best grade thing ever done well they he went he went to school two weeks that spring semester at the very end but he had the best teachers his classmates Harvard Law School was supposed to be a highly competitive place all of his classmates all of my classmates rallied around us [Music] they were so wonderfully helpful first visiting him in the hospital and then having individual tutorials to get him through it was truly a a village that saved both of you that year you you then graduated you work for a law firm I think the second year of law school and that firm when it was when you graduate it they didn't give you a job and there were 14 law firms you applied to plus as many as would accept an application from a woman but didn't get one offer you called it the closed door error yes I said I had three strikes against me at first being Jewish which was becoming less of a problem law firm large law firms were beginning to accept Jewish associates then being a woman and there were a couple of firms not many that would take a chance woman but no fur would take a chance on the mother of a four-year-old until my professor at Columbia Law School jerry gunther a world-renowned constitutional law scholar he was in charge of getting clerkships for Columbia students and he went to and Mendel Palmieri who is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School and said I'd like you to engage Ruth Bader Ginsburg the Palmieri said how can I risk it because I said you you had a woman clerk before yes I have but she didn't have a child so my professor made the judge and offer he couldn't refuse he said first give her a chance and if she doesn't work out there's a young man in her class who will take over he's kind of a job with a Wall Street firm and he has promised me that he will pick up the clerkship if she fails so that was the carrot was also a stick and distinct the stick was if you don't give her a chance I wouldn't ever recommend it another Columbia Law student to you now I never knew any of this at the time I just thought that this judge who had two young daughters was thinking about how he would like the world to be for his daughters well now things have changed because now 51 percent of law students are women women are 36 percent of Warriors when we look at law firms which didn't hire you women are 45% of the associates 21 percent partners managing partners and equity partners but there's still a gap in the equity partner range and the equity partner owns a share of the firm and women are making 80 percent of the male salary so still they're issues that we face as women in the law progress but still challenges open doors but going up the ladder once you get through the door it remains a problem justice O'Connor said something about that she said the more women were out there doing things the more opportunities will be open to women and she said we will all be better off for it and do you know how she got her first job in the law justice O'Connor is little older than I am so she graduated I thinking 51 or something like that she was very high in her classes Stanford Law School no one would hire her as a lawyer as a secretary yes not as a lawyer so what she did she went to a County attorney in California and said I will work for you free for four months and at the end of that four months you decide whether I'm worth putting on the payroll and of course she was the best person they ever had in that office and she was on the payroll when four months ended well and where you had you know we're about a generation apart so well you had your beginning the US Attorney's Office was not possible for women of my generation the US Attorney's Office has a civil side that does civil cases and criminal side does prosecutions no women were accepted to be an assistant US attorney on the criminal side us why well prosecutors have to deal with these tough criminal types and my response was have you been to the local legal aid office have you seen the people who are representing these tough criminal types they're all women but that was a job that paid very little so when you finished your clerkship you then went to Sweden and there and you had a project in Sweden that really opened your eyes you know I went to Sweden to write a book about that judicial system and I was an author for hire which was not my idea Colombia had a project on international procedure so I went off to Sweden and never in the winter always in the spring and summer and Sweden was quite ahead of us as far as recognising what women can contribute they had about 20% of the law students were women one of the proceedings I watched and in Stockholm it was the judge and there were nine late rires with her sitting with her and a judge was 8 months pregnant the the idea that family should have two earners not only was it accepted it was expected Sweden at the time had a rather high rate of inflation and if you wanted to support your family decently you needed two two incomes but there was a woman named Eva Mubarak who wrote a column in the Swedish daily newspaper and the gist of it was why should the woman have two jobs and the man only one he said we are expected to have dinner on the table at 7:00 to buy the new shoes take the children for their medical check-ups have his slippers ready for him when he comes home and her tagline was he should do more than take out the garbage so that idea that a family should have two earners and two parents was brought home to me and so you ended up then going back to teaching not high school but you became a law professor and you had been interested in procedure but that experience in Sweden moved you in a different direction in terms of gender rights and women yes I put it on a back burner for a long time because it seemed to me there was no way given the climate or our country and at the time the early sixties there was no way to change things but then there was the civil rights movement that provided grand inspiration there was the revived women's movement all over the world the UN had declared 1975 international women's here the Equal Pay Act was passed in 63 and Title 7 was passed in 64 Title 7 is how principle anti discrimination or an employment law so with those beginnings the Equal Pay Act and Title 7 it was possible to move things in a new direction and you ended up producing the first women's women's rights law reporter and writing the first textbook on sex-based discrimination yes I was a faculty advisor to the women's law report it was a student activity and one of the things that you noticed at Rutgers and Columbia was that law professors were women receive lower pay and not just law professors all women in academia and you ended up suing a well in in Rutgers there was a class action on behalf of all the women who worked on the Newark campus it wasn't a Title 7 it wasn't an ambitious title 7 case we weren't seeking promotion just equal pay and it was settled in 1969 the lowest annual increase that any woman got was $6,000 which in those days was it was real bucks then I moved to Columbia in 1972 and a feminist friend comes to my office to tell me Ruth Columbia has just fired 25 maids and not a single Jenner what are you going to do about it well in the in the maintenance custodial Department there were there were two separate seniority lines there was there were the maids and there were the janitors and under the union contract every janitor would have to go before every woman would have to go before the first male was laid off so I went to see the vice president for business at Columbia and told him Columbia is violating Title 7 and you are going to lose this case he said dear we have very capable counsel and wouldn't you like a cup of tea oh well that Friday there so the majors were given notices on their Monday Friday every feminist in the area it was Bella absolutely Gloria Steinem Susan Sontag and a it was a press conference and we explained what was wrong about what Columbia did there was an application for a temporary injunction to stop Columbia from going forward with these layoff notices the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sent its chief counsel down to argue in support of the injunction then Union whose contract Columbia was relying on switch sides and came over they've finally dawned on them they have a group they can organize that they paid no attention to so Columbia's lawyer said to the Union oil it's your contract well we can't stand by a contract that violates Title 7 so Columbia was left all alone this story has a happy ending when Columbia was told you can't fire the maids they somehow managed to deal with the oversupply in the maintenance department by attrition so when the seniority lines had to be combined and the first few that would have to leave were men Columbia found out I really don't have to layoff in any one so all the men stayed and all the women stayed and two of the women in that process became shop stewards these were women who said frankly we know we're being paid less and we don't care about that but we want our job they don't want to be on welfare mm-hmm and so I mean to me this is a very important story because you were a relatively young lawyer and you thought beyond your just immediate needs that is being a law professor you were thinking about the those that had the least wherewithal or the ability and you stood up which is of course the story of her life standing up now in contrast to when you became tenured there there were less than 20 tenured women faculty and now a women are 25% of law faculty 31% are deans 35% of the overall faculty and indeed two of the last deans at Harvard have been women and then your daughter Jane you were the first mother/daughter tenured women professors at Columbia right so while you were teaching you got involved with the ACLU and really focused on gender equality and co-founded the ACLU Women's Rights Project and from Roosevelt University student Laura Lauren Grimaldi who's a political science major she asked what led you to help create it when we knew it was possible to turn the Supreme Court in a new direction the Supreme Court until the year 1971 had never seen a gender-based classification it didn't like so it had held when one very courageous woman in the 1870s said we have this 14th amendment it says don't shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws so she said I am a person and a citizen the most basic right of citizenship is the franchise I want to vote and the court's opinion denying her claim was to this effect yes Virginia minor that was her name we know you are a person and you're also a citizen but so too are children and who would suggest children should have the right to vote when I'll skip over many cases until 1961 it's a woman named Wendell and Hoyt from from Hillsborough County Florida she was what we would today call a battered woman and one day her philandering husband had humiliated her to the breaking point she saw her young sons base well back in the corner of the room grabbed it brought it down with all her might on her husband's head he fell against a stone floor end of her humiliation end of their fight beginning of the murder prosecution Gwendolyn Hoyt had this idea if there were women on my jury they might better sense the rage I was feeling and not that they necessarily acquit me but they might convict me of the lesser crime of manslaughter rather than murder but she faced an all-male jury because Florida didn't put women on the jury rules when her case came to the was thought to be the very liberal Warren Court in 1961 the court's opinion was to this effect we don't know what Gwendolyn Hoyt is complaining about women have the best of both worlds true they're not on the jury rolls but if they want to serve they can go to the clerk's office and sign up well how many people would sign up for jury duty they could escape it and I said it's perfectly reasonable for the women to be eaten left off the jury roll because after all they are the center of home and family life that was it and you can imagine when to avoid in prison reading this and she said well what about me anyway that's the way it was until 1961 but in 1971 the Supreme Court changed and why people say do the what's going on in society does it affect the court very astute law professor said courts should never be affected by the weather of the day but inevitably they will be affected by the climate of the era and the climate of the ear was right for the assertion of equal rights and opportunities and so you argued 5 you argued 6 cases you won five of them and your philosophy was take it step by step and that first one was the reed case which held that women have the right to serve an administrator of an estate the second Fronteras military housing benefits to husbands equals wives third one property tax exemption not equal for surviving husbands and wives you didn't win that immediately but the next one Weinberger childcare survivor benefits for the husband equals wives Califano Social Security benefits survivor benefits for men equals women and then seventy-nine women have the right to serve on a jury and then eventually in 88 Florida amended the statute to extend tax exemption to widowers so when we look at these cases several of the plaintiffs in the cases were men why did you adopt that strategy what does take one vote this is a young man whose wife died in childbirth she had been a schoolteacher a math teacher she had a very healthy pregnancy she was in the classroom into the ninth month and then when she went her when Steven was enveloped her to the hospital to give birth the doctor came out and said Steven you have a healthy baby boy but your wife died of an embolism so Steven and he would not work full-time until his his infant son was in school full-time he figured that between part-time earnings and the Social Security benefits he could just about make it so he went to the local Social Security office and he was told we're sorry but these are mother's benefits they're available to widows not widowers now his case was a perfect example of what's wrong with gender lines in the law where did the discrimination begin well it began with poorer Wiesenfeld a woman who worked and paid the same Social Security taxes that men pay but her Social Security taxes didn't get for her family the same protection stephen was obviously discriminated against as a parent because he would not have the option to take personal care of his child he would have to work full-time to make the income the family needed and then my later chief then justice Rehnquist said I get it this is rank discrimination and it discriminates against the baby because the baby if if the baby's father died maybe we'll have the opportunity for the mother's care but if the baby's mother time will not have the opportunity to have the personal care of a parent that makes no sense so Weisenfeld an example of how these gender lines hurt everybody there the woman never man and the baby who by the way grew up to be a lawyer and then an investment banker and now has three children of his own how does one other question before we then begin the story of your judicial career that first case you argued in 1971 the reed case its frontier was the first one I argued I wrote the briefing read you wrote the brief and read you argued in front taro how did you feel when you had to make that argument before the Supreme Court front Harrow was an afternoon case the court heard two cases in the morning two in the afternoon I was up at Pat in the afternoon I did not dare eat lunch fearful that I couldn't keep it down I was extremely nervous but I had a well planned memorized first sentence that I knew I could get out when I looked up at the bench and thought to myself these are the most important judges in the United States and I have a captive audience they have to listen to me they have no place to go and then suddenly I felt instead of being nervous and great sense of power authority but one thing I knew a lot more about the subject of gender-based discrimination than any of the justices did so I wasn't in the end I was a schoolteacher because I figured that the the understanding of the judges in the early 70s the understanding of discrimination on the basis of gender it was about at the kindergarten level and my job was to take them up at least to high school all right so then you discovered you like kindergarten over height [Applause] [Laughter] but you could you had to do that not by being angry not by saying you sexist pig you have to do it through sweet sweet reason you have to make them want to decide and your favor and to take it step by step and to lay it out for them like for kindergarteners like you said so now which by the way no I have to say that technique step by step comes from Thurgood Marshall who many times said he was arguing against enforced separation of the races in school he would tell the court separate but equal is not before the house today these facilities are vastly unequal and when he had all the building blocks in place when he had the case of the Texas who set up a separate law school I was separate and vastly inferior and college cases when he had those building blocks in place then he said to the court and now I'm asking you to recognize that forced separation can never be equal so that's what we did to we tried to take clear winners like Sally weeds case Sally Louise was another tragic case she was married had a son she and her husband separated and she had custody of the son one he was quote of tender years when he was a little boy father applies for custody when the boy reaches his teen saying now he needs to be prepared for a man's world Sally thought that was a terrible mistake and sadly she proved right because when the boy was at his father's custody he became extremely depressed there one day took out one of his father's many guns and killed himself so Sally wanted to be appointed administrator of his estate not for economic reasons there was nothing there there was a small bank account a record collection a guitar some clothes that's about it but for sentimental values he was her son the probate court judge told Sally Reed I have no say in this matter because the Idaho Code tells me what I must do and the code reads ask between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent's estate males must be referred to female it's just that simple and it was something remarkable about Sally read at our legal system Sally weed was a woman from Boise Idaho she made her living by taking care of elderly and sick people in her home I doubt that she even had heard the word feminist but she thought that an injustice had been done to her and that the legal system could make it right so she took her case on her own dime to three levels of the Idaho Supreme Court and it turned out to be the turning point case in the Supreme Court and with all the work you did in this area you certainly came to the attention of President Jimmy Carter and you were appointed to the what is called the second most powerful court in the country although I'm from the Seventh Circuit I but and and you are appointed to that Court and B since 1789 when the federal judiciary began there had only been twelve women until you on the Court of Appeals and Florence Allen was appointed in 1934 Shirley hofstetler in 68 but it was a sea change with President Carter tell us about it in his own words Jimmy Carter was determined to change the complexion of the federal judiciary he looked at who were the federal judges he noticed a certain resemblance they all look like him they were all white and they were all male so he said that's not how the great United States is we're people of diverse races religions women as well as men so he determined to appoint members of minority groups and women to the bench in numbers not like Florence Allen and shortly Houston up one at a time curiosities and he said he had a reception in the fall of 1980 when I think he knew who he would not he would not win the election but he said even though he never had a Supreme Court appointment to fill he hoped he to be remembered for changing the face of the US judiciary so when people when I'm asked did you always want to be a judge my goodness what I wanted was a job in the law women weren't judges it was an impossible dream until to make automated his mission to change that and in terms of the federal judiciary we in the state court to disagree we actually have two systems the federal chart is on one shot side which shows that federal judges are appointed for lifetime recommended by senators nominated by the president confirmed by the Senate and you start at the district court level and make your way up to the Supreme Court on the state court side they're usually term limits for judges those judges are elected by citizens appointed by the governor and just an idea to give us a sense of how many cases you can see how many cases are just in the Illinois system itself so the federal courts here way fewer cases than in the state court and one of the things I wanted to note it says the Supreme Court hears roughly 75 cases but there are between seven and eight thousand cert petitions file yeah so how do you decide what cases to hear how do you get to that 75 or 80 as long ago the Supreme Court decided it could not function as what lawyers called an error correction instance that is it didn't sit simply to write wrong judgments there in the federal district courts and on top of that the courts of appeals they do a fine job with the everyday administration of justice so the Supreme Court decided that its function was to step in when other courts disagree on what the federal law is whether it's the meaning of a federal law or of a constitutional provision you can't have one law one federal law in California and in Illinois so we we tend to take cases only when other courts have disagreed on what the federal the federal law is so the first case that was in a hearing this term it comes from your circuit it's about the Federal Arbitration Act and the National Labor Relations Act two provisions of these statutes that clash so your circuit and Ninth Circuit came out one way the Second Circuit and it flipped the other way that's when we step in to keep the law of the United States more or less uniform and then with President Carter we can see from this chart from 1789 in terms of the federal judiciary to now there have been four hundred and nine women eleven percent on the state court we've had almost we've had fifty-six hundred women out of eighteen thousand positions 31 percent and historically on our trial courts twelve percent currently 26 percent in the district court twelve percent on the circuit 27 percent 2017 and now for women on our Supreme Court and now throw away it went for not yet oh you're in there nil annoy right now so you're ahead of us right [Laughter] [Applause] and so so in terms of women and progress on the court we spoken about Jimmy Carter but what about this issue of unconscious bias and women it is one of the lingering problems and my illustration of unconscious bias I've referred to it many times is the Symphony Orchestra growing up I never saw a woman in a Symphony Orchestra except perhaps as a woman playing the harp people who were in the music business swore that they could tell the difference between a woman playing the piano or the violin and a man a well-known critic from the New York Times Howard Tubman said blindfold me and I'll tell you if it's one woman that had her someone took him up on it then they did and he was all mixed up the one he thought was a woman was a man so then they came up with a brilliant idea why don't we drop a curtain between the people who are applying for positions in the officer and the people who were conducting the audition and let's see what happens well it was almost an overnight change with that simple device the unconscious bias was taken out of the picture a very fine violinist well-known in this town Jennifer Cole but I was telling the story she said you left something out okay Jennifer what did I leave out you left out that we audition Shoeless so they won't hear women's heels coming up and as you people certainly know that women are present on the court we're all over the bench and we're certainly here to stay so then we moved to your appointment to the Supreme Court the vote in the Senate was 96 to 3 it took 50 days compared to today what's that nomination process like is it broken [Laughter] [Applause] let's go back to the 81st when my dear dolly who I miss very much Justice Scalia he was I think it was 86 he had a track record he was a well-known conservative the vote in support of his confirmation was a hundred percent not a single negative vote 1993 only three negative votes for me same for Justice Breyer he still he had a number in the 90s well then with the Chief Justice Alito worse with justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan the bipartisan spirit that had prevailed in the 80s and the 90s family and people voted along party lines now if you were just judging it on the basis of merit our Chief Justice John Roberts should not have had any negative votes he had many on the Democratic side Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan superbly qualified jurors had many negative votes on the Republican side people voting along party lines that's a very dangerous thing for our judiciary it's supposed to judge impartially without respect to persons so my my hope I hope I will see this in my lifetime is that our Congress we'll get over this nonsense and go back to the way it was when it was functional and I can see you all love this photo as much as I do with all the women justices so I want to ask you Justice Ginsburg is for enough or three that are serving now and you know I haven't asked that question and you know my answer yeah always there'll be enough when there are nine but most of the time my my answer does not elicit this enthusiastic response but then I say why would you think it's strange to have nine women when for most of our country's history it's been nine men now you mentioned justice O'Connor and the influence she had on you she was your big sister but initially when you were together people would confuse you during oral argument and so is it true that there were teeth t-shirts made so that people could keep you straight at justice O'Connor the first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court was all alone on that bench for 12 years so the lawyers who appear before the court had finally it finally sunk in yes there is a woman on that Court and her name is Sandra Day O'Connor then I get added and invariably one council or another when I ask a question will say justice O'Connor and sango and sometimes intervene and say I'm justice O'Connor she's Justice Ginsburg but the idea was there's a woman on the Corporal so when we hear a woman's voice it's got to be justice O'Connor never mind that we don't look a bit alike and I'll tell you a story about stereotypes so there was a woman and linguist - who was she she felt she was unhappy because one day there was a headline in in USA Today the headline was rude Ruth interrupts Sandra and what did that mean well Sandra had she was easily when she was with us she usually asked the first question and I tried not to step on her questions but I didn't know she had to follow up so when I into me and she said I'm not finished I apologized to her after she said Ruth the guys do it to each other all the time and the interesting thing is the reporter who labeled me rude Ruth I suggested that he watched the men and he said at the end of the month you know she's right the men do interrupt each other all the time but I never noticed it until it was to two women anyway the t-shirt story is the National Association of women judges knew there would be this confusion so they gave us t-shirts and hos red I'm Sandra not Ruth that's random you know if you think about the court as it was then Breyer and Souter look much more alike [Laughter] one of the cases that you were most proud of on the court was the 1986 Virginia Military Institute case and it was a vote of eight to one and you actually ended up coming there some years later and one of the male cadets gave you his pin and you you mentioned that having women on the court that a difference can be in women's in our backgrounds why is that important to have women on the court and what effect does it have let's just point out that picture was taken in February of this year of the women cadets at VMI they are now more than welcome these bright young women they're going to be engineers nuclear scientists they're living under the same Spartan conditions as men but the school didn't make one compromise that would the first year things were rocky they said no dispensation for the women so they won't have to have head shapes when they come in just like the men I then endured along them it really wasn't necessary to make everything exactly the same the women live in the same Spartan quarters and they're subject to the same rat line but as you can see they can wear the hair the way they like and in the in the last 30 years have been many Chief Justice's but what usually comes to the public's attention most are those decisions that are 5 to 4 that 20% that 20% that covers the topics that we have listed on the side so how is it that you can work together with say and we know Scalia was one of your dearest friends on the court had very different views than you had how is it that you're able to work together that's one of the questions Dylan Warren who's a marketing political science student here and Randy : want to know how difficult is it to reach common ground and how is it you can move together even though your views are diametrically opposed and I suppose the principal reason is that we were really institution for which we work the Supreme Court of the United States and you are you are a member of a collegial Court you know it it just don't won't work if you didn't genuinely respect with your colleagues and like most of them so Scalia was one of the reasons he was such a favorite of mine as he was a very funny man and when we he was my buddy on the DC Circuit there were only three judges on a panel he's sitting next to me and he'll say something that will absolutely crack me up and I have to pinch myself very hard so I won't look less than sober as a judge and one of the things you said was that sometimes when you exchange your drafts with him he might have helpful suggestions to make your dissent stronger or you might have helpful suggestions for him well my suggestions for him well only one way you want more persuasive if you tone this down we don't make it quite so jazzy so for me and Julia did one thing quietly he was a great grammarian his father was a professor of Latin at Brooklyn College his mother was a grade school teacher so he was a very good grammarian and he if I made a grammatical slip he would either call me or come into my chambers he didn't advertise it to the rest of the court but he didn't help me to strengthen my opinion when I was in the majority but he in a very important way he did it he didn't come and offer suggestions about change this sentence or make this point he did it by writing a dissenting opinion that was a zinger a dissenting opinion that pointed out all the soft spots in my opinion and that gave me an opportunity to rewrite those portions to strengthen them to make them more persuasive than they were to start out with so I loved it when Scalia was on the other side because it meant I was going to end up with an opinion that took care of all the soft spots and that was going to be powerfully persuasive in one of the cases that was really controversial Bush versus Gore that he just told you to take a hot bath yeah and as you said the court is a reactive institution never in the forefront of social change there's always movement in society pushing the court that way so for example gay rights is something you had anticipated there's a reason that you said it seems like progress was made very quickly in these last five years or so it was because people came out of what we said was the closeted people fearful to admit that they were gay but fearful that they lose a job but it's only when gay people decided this is what I am and I'm proud of it and it's okay I'm not gonna hide it in any closet I'm gonna come out front and make that affirmative statement and also acting it's not you weren't alone there was so many like you and so many people who supported people like like you so it's only when it became a visible movement that the court was going to do anything about it and of course people found out their best friends their brothers their nieces their nephews I said it didn't it didn't have as some racial controversies did they kind of we they we this and they are that so who were they they were our child's best friend maybe our child our next-door neighbor people we for whom we had respect affection so that's been hasten to change as well and then there was this case the lilly Ledbetter case where the majority said the Equal Pay lawsuit has to be filed within 180 days of the initial action not the recent paycheck and you dissented in that case and you've said I am dejected but only momentarily these important issues they're going to come back again and again they'll be another time another day and one of the things that you do when you're dissenting is you wear a dissenting collar yeah but in really Ledbetter's case I said also the tagline of my opinion was the ball is now in Congress's court to correct the error into which my colleagues have fallen and then adapt that photograph is President Obama signing the lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which does adopt the Paycheck rule so sometimes it's the court that makes the correction or it's Congress that can make the correction if it's an ordinary law Congress can do it if the court is parsimonious in the way it reads title 7 Congress can fix that as it has done more than once so in your chambers you have quite a few parties for the birthdays of clerks for your birthdays one of the things the clerk's can do when it's your birthday is is ask you questions write about your life or whatever they want to ask you you've had 80 more than 80 clerks right I figured out three a year or 13 years on the DC circuit for a year on the Supreme Court isn't this a lot and and one of the things we look back when you couldn't get that job in the law firm you've said so often in life things that our impediment turn out to be great good fortune had you got that job in the law firm you might not be a justice today yes and it's the same reaction that justice O'Connor had so she said suppose we had come of age at a time when there was no discrimination where would we be today we would both be retired partners from some large law firm so you never know in life things when something looks bleak it may turn out to be to operate in your favor now we've talked about Marty and how critical he was and sort of the balance and and Marty was actually the chef in your family he was a brilliant tax attorney and a professor you said he was your biggest cheerleader you had equal parenting responsibilities and then when he passed his recipes were made into a book and is it the bestseller at the Supreme Court gift shop at his Supreme Court and the spouses decided that the best tribute they could arrange for Marty because he was a truly great cook was this cookbook so he had about 150 recipes on the disc they selected about 30 each section is introduced by a spouse so Maureen Scalia leads off the project was it was inspired by Martha Ann Alito who also loves food and then my daughter saw this selection that that Martha and Alito had made and she said mother daddy would not have picked those recipes I said okay Jane you pick the ones that you think should be in chef supreme so every one of those recipes it's in the book some 30-odd Jane picked including one that's called Jane's Caesar salad so she snuck one of her own recipes and speaking of Jane when she was growing up you you you you took your hand at cooking and you use the 60-minute chef and you you you knew how to prepare seven meals we rotate it yes the first rule was no more than one hour from when I walked in the door till when dinner is on the table we had a freezer so I could have a supply of my seven things that I made and we got back we got up to number seven we went back to number one well my my food loving daughter realized that there was an enormous difference between daddy's cooking and money and therefore mommy should be phased out of the kitchen altogether daddy should become the everyday cook in addition for the weekend and company cooks that's right and in fact Jane is a foodie and loves to cook and since Marty passed Jane still being a law professor Jane comes in once a month to fix meals for you that she freezes yeah so that you'll always be able to have dinner and before we move to our final set of slides one of the things that you said is that you as you balance things you can't have it all all at once what do you mean by that this was in response to an article to the effect that women can't have it all well my first response to that well who has it all all the time every day I can look across my long life and say yes I have had it all but and not necessarily at the same time so in any marriage you make accommodations one to the other when marty was at a law firm determined to become a partner in record speed so I took on most of the childcare and household responsibilities then when the women's movement came alive I Marty realized how important this was and then he did the lion's share of the work but it you adjust to each other and as I said over the long haul I have had it all now you have hobbies we know you love opera there's an opera named after you and Scalia and there you are in costume but that but not for our opera can I can I tell them that a little bit about Scalia Ginsburg how it goes okay because it's supposed to illustrate there's a - people think very differently matters of interpretation of text but who genuinely fond of each other anyways Scalia comes out first he has it's called a rage aria for those who know music it's very hard le and it's and he sings the justices are blind how can they possibly spout this the Constitution says I'm saluting money about this and then I tell him in my lyric soprano that he's searching for bright-line solutions to problems that don't have easy answers but the great thing about our Constitution is that like our society it can evolve and so that's that's of good that sets up the Opera so one of the other things one of your hobbies is working out you have a trainer Bryan Johnson you trained him twice a week you do thirty-second planks and there you are working out with Bryan and he calls her 10 cuz she's tough as nails and the book is coming out next year your RBG work out right it's it's it's Brian Brian's book right he wasn't approached by a number of publishers to say tell it give us the lowdown what is Ginsberg workout routine so this book tells it all and it was actually Marty that got you the workout because it was you're either first or second bout of my cancer and he said you look like you would come from a concentration camp and so you've been working out since 1999 right and you actually left the White House dinner to come and work out at Bryan and then we got a wrap up here I just call this the making of notorious RBG it had to do with the Shelby County case the where the Justice Department made changes to state voting procedures and also Hobby Lobby and those two young women did a tumblr on you and at the time you didn't even know who Knut aureus b.i.g was did you know well first I should say these women are an illustration of what I mean by anchor being a useful useless useless emotion so they're angry about the Supreme Court cutting the heart out of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case and then they decide that will get us anyplace let's do something positive they put my dissent on the internet and then it took off and they discovered you had something in common Oh with notorious b.i.g yes I bet it's obvious we were born and bred in Brooklyn New York thank you and so as a consequence there every and all thing is our things are our BG just a sample I love you as the princess little girls are BG and my personal favorite the dog wearing their RBG t-shirt there have been books on you there were there were books before but now there are more books they're coloring books there are magazine articles and more serious books then you decided to write in my own words or not you didn't write it but you agreed and you dedicated to Marti your dear partner and constant uplifting as your assistants says there's something new and exciting every day working in your chambers and coming up is a buy off of you on the basis of sex that Felicity Jones is is starring in so how do you how do you deal with all of this and as we see you're a role model for young girls women belong in places all the places where decisions are made and women shouldn't be an exception and so this little girl looks like a justice in every respect so you know I met you when you sent a letter to me in 2001 I was president of the federal judges Association and I had just introduced President Bush and I had this letter that you sent to me which I save forever because you were my role model and I thought I was special until I realized that's what you do with everyone you have teas for women you support your law clerks why is why is that so important that you are you become a role model and why are you my favorite conversation when I was asked to speak here this evening I said there's only one person that I would like to have as a conversation partner that's the Honorable and Claire Williams so some of these life lessons we've covered and I'm getting the signal that we're over time and I guess if you could just pick maybe one of those that we haven't talked about when it that you have up and right because I think there's pretty clear this is your advice on life lessons and you've covered some of those is there anything in particular you'd like to talk about maybe this combines the two the left bottom that is I think everyone who is in the legal profession has an opportunity and responsibility to use her skill or his skill to make life a little better for people who are not so fortunate and that's my idea of what it means to be a true professional but you're not just working to turn over above but that you are devoting part of your time to making things a little better for less fortunate people to help repair tears in the community the way you do and certainly we need that now because there are a lot of Tears in our community right so so Justice Ginsburg how do you want to be remembered Oh someone who tried her best with whatever talent God gave her to move things in a better direction to make this a place where people can live safely but without fear and with confidence that was if they're willing to put in the hard work that it takes the dreams can come true and finally how long will you serve on the court the Opera Scalia Ginsburg ends with Scalia's death and then I remain on the stage silent for a moment and then I say there's work to be done I will remain to do it as long as I can full steam thank you you said at the beginning that you prayed you would be all that your mother would have been if she had lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and were cherished as much as sons I think we all agree you have been more than what your mother could have dreamed or imagined a transformational phenomenal woman and inspiration to all that's who you are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg [Music]

Channel: Roosevelt University

Views: 6,763

Rating: 4.4461536 out of 5

Keywords: ruth bader ginsburg, supreme court, american dream, social justice, feminism, social injustice, roosevelt university

Id: UJPsAxbQes0

Length: 108min 40sec (6520 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2017