Keynote Conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg

welcome ladies and gentlemen to the world justice projects fifth global forum this afternoon we have the rare privilege of having a keynote conversation between two remarkable people dean elizabeth mcgill of the Stanford Law School is an extraordinary scholar and teacher of the law and was recruited by Stanford University to come to its law school to occupy an endowed chair and delete its faculty and students and staff as its dean in 2013 she has recently accepted a unanimous request that she served another full term as the Dean at Stanford Law School Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was also a distinguished scholar and teacher of the law and as you all must know a pioneering advocate for women's rights changing in a material way the jurisprudence of the United States in that subject area in 1980 she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where she served with distinction in the 1993 she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court of the United States where she has earned a leadership role Dean McGill and Justice Ginsburg know each other well from the time when the Dean was the law clerk to the Justice so this is a bit of a reunion if you will not their first reunion by any means so please enjoy this Keystone conversation we will hear from a legal education luminary and a judicial legend please give a warm well to lose Miguel and Ruth Bader Ginsburg well thank you Bill and thank all of you for being here and let me join bill in saying justice it's a privilege to have you here and to see you again and I know who the luminary is on this stage and it is you so it's a pleasure to be with you so I just had a series of questions that just an informal conversation that I that I hope will get you talking which I'm sure it will so the first question is you've you've throughout your career especially on the bench made a career of going abroad in the summers and also before the bench teaching abroad it's been an important part of your career so one question I have is how is teaching in countries outside of the United States affected you and your views on issues and more specifically maybe what are some of the most interesting things you've learned from foreign students faculties or judges this first may I say how glad I am to be here this is the third forum that I have attended I think this is this forum gives one hope for the world and then Liz McGill was she was the kind of Walker I wish I could have kept forever and she is one of the most outstanding logins in the United States as you just heard she accepted a second term to be Dean of the Stanford Law School which is probably even more than your first institution even more than yell the number one choice of law school applicants old teaching abroad it started right here in the Netherlands when I was on the Columbia Law School faculty Columbia had a program with Amsterdam and Leiden and they would meet one year in Amsterdam the next year in Leiden it was not for us law students it was originally students from not students they were young lawyers in the 30 to 35 age range and the first years it was Western Europe and then expanded to include Eastern Europe and then the world my next teaching experience was at the Salzburg seminar in Austria and there too was a poet with a program an introduction to US law for lawyers from all over the world lawyers and maybe five or six years into their legal career and then after that since I got the good job I now hold I have been teaching in summer programs run by US law schools and I wrote down there have been so many I've lived a long time so but let's see there was Istanbul Paris Rome Sorrento Crete Barcelona Venice Vienna Siena I left out a few but that's that has those have been wonderful summers for me some of the programs most of the programs were for US law students the one in Venice included both students from the University of Panama and US law students and that formula was wonderful because I think the students learn more from each other about their systems than they did from their lecturers and I think the understanding that's developed among people through that kind of experience summer learning experience together is invaluable and my first exposure to another legal system was when I was quite young after I finished my clerkship for federal district court I was engaged by the Columbia Law School project on international procedure to write together with a Swedish co-author a book about the Swedish judicial system Sweden was chosen because it was a country that had a new code of procedure I was not new now but it was and it was it went into effect in 1948 and by the time I got there in 62 it had been enforced long enough for one to examine it but it but what they tried to do it was basically a Germanic system but they tried to infuse what they thought was the best the common law way so they introduced on the civil side one concentrated trial episode not the kind of episodic procedure that they had earlier and they introduced questioning examination of witnesses by the lawyers instead of by the judge so that was a great experience for me to to see how another system went about trying to achieve the same end of a fair and just legal system but went about it in some different different ways so the world Justice Project has gathered 400 people in The Hague this week who are committed to advancing rule of law all around the world looking at the trends in the world right now are you optimistic about the future pessimistic about the future and if optimistic what makes you optimistic and is pessimistic what makes you pessimistic maybe end on optimism I had to start with optimism because our could you be otherwise and I can quote it was something that of the Reverend Martin Luther King said many times I don't know where it originated but he said the Ark of tomorrow universe is long but it bends toward justice and that's what I believe about the world I mean I've lived long enough to see some remarkable changes I grew up during the Second World War and to see the end of that horror and as revocable to see the end of apartheid and not only in South Africa but in our own country well just so young is it you may have heard about it but you didn't experience it in World War two we were fighting a war against racism odious racism and yet our own troops was segregated by race I think World War two was the beginning of the end of apartheid in America so what was the rest of your question I think we're marking you down as an optimist oh yes yes you don't have him no reason yet has them is like they're not pessimistic because I've seen changes like that versus changes that some people thought would never happen well we let's talk about one of those changes you've been a very strong advocate about the need to place more women on the bench everywhere in the world in the United States and so why do you think that's so important and what what can countries do to increase the number of women on the bench well let me tell you how they came to be women in numbers on the bench in the United States when I graduated from law school in 1959 there was only one woman who had ever been on a federal appellate bench not the US Supreme Court but the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Flores Allen she was appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt she retired the year I graduated from law school and then they were none until our President Johnson appointed Shirley stepper from the Ninth Circuit President Carter made Charlie Hostetler the first-ever Secretary of Education in the United States and then they went on again it wasn't any lawyer or judge it was um President Jimmy Carter looked around at the US judiciary and said all those folks looked just like me meaning they're all white men and then he said but I am President of the United States and the United States is so much richer for the diversity of its population so I am going to appoint members of minority groups and women in numbers to the federal courts he had only four years in office no vacancy on the Supreme Court to film but he appointed over 25 women to federal trial courts district courts and 11 to courts of appeals and I was one of the lucky eleven by beginning that trend he did something grand there was never any compromise on quality on the whole I think the American Bar Association raided the Kotter appointees to the judiciary very high and at the end of his term in October of 1980 he he had a reception for all the women he had appointed to the bench and he said although he had no Supreme Court appointment to me he hoped history would remember him for changing the complexion of the US judiciary the next President Ronald Reagan didn't want to be outdone so he was determined to put the first woman on the US Supreme Court and that was he made a wonderful choice in Justice Saturday O'Connor and now there are three of us the hardest time for me on the US Supreme Court was when I was all alone when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired it didn't look right to have one little woman and eight rather well-fed men the public perception was wrong but now we are three were one third of the bench we're not doing as well as our neighbor to the north Canada has four women and one of them is their chief justice but we're doing a lot better than was was history people sometimes ask me well when do you think they'll be enough when will they be enough women on the court and my answer was when there were nine people started well for most of our history we have had nine men and nobody thought that there was anything strange about about that but it is exhilarating for me to see the enormous change even in law school so I was one of nine women in a class of over 500 and today most law schools have as many women as men I was never taught by a woman there were no women on law faculties and now we have being McGill and and I think you have some sister Dean's yes so there was a one-month period when the deans of Harvard Stanford and Yale were all women before Martha knew depth down so yes but a lot for all of those years the judiciary the legal profession was missing half the talent so I'm happy to see and more than happy exhilarated to see the changes and have occurred in the legal profession another change it seems to me and others is the dialogue between courts of the highest jurisdiction across countries and the the borrowing and the learning that happens you mentioned the Canadian Court and I know you know many judges from other countries do you think that dialogue is a good thing and it seems sometimes controversial do you think it's here to stay I think it's very important for us judges to experience others of assistance the Supreme Court has several exchanges so the first one I went on was in India with Justice Scalia I've been to the European Court of Justice four times we have every second year in exchange with the Supreme Court of Canada with the now Supreme Court of the UK used to be the Law Lords we've had a few exchanges with French jurors the jurors from abroad a visiting the Supreme Court constantly and it is it's something that we we encourage I was still on the court of appeals when they had the first international appellate judges conference in Washington DC and what why is that a good thing well we got exchanged we can learn from each other we can lose some of the myths that we were that we believed it turned out not to be not to be so and we not that our own system will change but release will we will appreciate why others do what they do one big topic when we meet with jurors from abroad is dissenting opinions in many systems there is a single judgment for the court dissents are not recognized and I recall vividly a visit from some french jurist when i was on the court of appeals they listened to the argument in a criminal appeal and I said I would send them to judgment when it came it down when I came down two to one and his French judge at first was horrified he said how could you in a criminal case somebody is going to prison and what is the law if one person disagrees and then he thought about it he said and yes I criticize your system because the law is supposed to be clear and certain and stable and the people shouldn't have the impression a different impression but then he said you know I really Henry you must feel so secure in your visual system that you're ready to be transparent that you're ready to say is there a tough legal problems that may not have a clear and certain action that weaves into the next question which is many observers have detected a decline in faith in institutions in general in in worldwide including including courts and I'm wondering if you have thoughts about the what are the keys to building trust and confidence in courts the Esprit of the judiciary I think I can say for the United States that of the three branches of government if you had a public opinion poll the federal courts would come out a way ahead of of the first branch wasn't always that way when I think back to 1993 when I was confirmed there were only three negative votes although I had spent ten years of my life litigating cases under the auspices of the American Civil Liberties Union when Justice Scalia who and when he was nominated in 1980s the vote was unanimous and it hasn't been that way for the most recent appointees to the fore and aft of my current chief not for justice alito justice Sotomayor Justice Kagan and most recently and justice Gossett my hope is that we will get back to the way it was not so long ago and the way it should be but I think it will take people in our Congress but the kind of determination that to make harder had he saw something that he thought was wrong and he promoted change there will be people in our Congress one fine day who will say we're not serving our country well by the kind of division that now now exist and I'm allowed to miss so I expect to live to see that day in 2016 you you published the book my own words which was a collection of your writings from over the course of your career and you've been such a prolific writer and speaker can you talk a little bit about how you what you choose to write about and why you choose to write and what's the process like of deciding what to put in this book for instance of all the things you've done yeah my own words was supposed to follow a biography of me to my official biographers are Wendy Williams and Mary Hartnett they started writing about me in 2004 everything got into more recent is the idea was a the biography would come out and then we would have a selection of my writings speeches and articles but as the book preparation began to exceed a decade I said why don't we flip the order have my own words come out first but Wendy and Mary didn't the selection ha and they wrote an introduction to each section I wrote the overall introduction to the book but this is every every part of the book begins with something that Mary Anne and Wendy wrote and they started with my 8th grade and editorial in in my public school newspaper the highway Harold and I wrote then about great documents that have been important in advancing human rights in the world so I started with the Magna Carta and I ended with the UN Charter just in those days we were very hopeful for what the UN might become mm-hmm so the book starts with that and then there's a letter to the editor that I wrote as a college student at Cornell it was a bad time for our country there was a huge Red Scare Senator Joseph McCarthy saw a communist and every corner and the the paper and the student paper at Cornell had written about why wiretapping was a necessity because of the needs of national security and I wrote a letter saying and that wiretapping is not the good idea it that the article had and said it was that isn't all freedom chicken think speak and write are so precious but also vulnerable that people become so overwhelmed by the need for security that they're willing to sacrifice the most basic values of us a nation so and then the book goes on to the decade when I was a flaming feminist it was a hard job for Wendy and Mary because I don't know how many speeches I gave about the Equal Rights Amendment there were all variations on the same theme and my dear husband once said Ruth has debrief and all the other briefs were well variations on that theme and I had the speech and the honor but nowadays if I write I try to explain our system and how the court works the value of dissenting opinions jurist who have inspired me no more flaming feminism in your writing now and well I at my age I wouldn't call it blaming what do you want all of those cases so it's not flaming anymore I guess right as an advocate I guess I want the next topic I want to ask you about with judicial independence and but before we leave this topic you've held so many done so many incredible things in law as you reflect back on it do what was the most memorable of the jobs you've had is it is it this current job or for the being an advocate or the professor is the job right now but now have I think is the best and the hardest I've ever had where you know that I do my law clerks work very hard why didn't I work as hard I already do I remember holding a lunch with the Chief Justice when we when I clerk for you justice and that the justices had tea or lunch and it was Chief Justice Rehnquist and he initiated a conversation about the best job in law he was a sitting Chief Justice of the United States so we all thought that was a pretty good job and he insisted that his best job in law was being a head of the office of legal counsel because it was a team and you were an advocate and you had a client and it was it was more fun he said than being Chief Justice I've never been it the office of legal counsel it is a very good job Justice Scalia was also head of the office of needle legal counsel but I don't know don't you agree with me that being on the Supreme Court is I think so yes well it good work if you can get it right justice you know so many boys jurors from abroad say don't you think they should be a term limit as many constitutional courts abroad will have a 9 12 15 yeah long renewable that's the way to protect judicial independence it's not renewable so we don't worry about how the people you do what you think is according to the law and what is just I have tremendous job security the founding fathers were wise enough to put two protections in article three and one is we hold our offices during good behavior and the other is salary it cannot be diminished why we hold office so if the Congress doesn't like what the court is doing can't cut a salary but I contrast lifetime appointment with the system that most of our states still have that is at some level judges are elected not appointed and often those are contested election so when I go abroad that's a question I'm often asked how can you say that you take great pride in the judicial independence that exists in the United States one judge is run for office and I have no good answer to that question I do know that since justice O'Connor retired that is one of the projects that she is most engaged with it is the attempt to convince States to have appointed rather than elected elected judges more power to her it's a great goal very hard to change it so deep in the US system if you can and it's hard to take away from the people have a right to vote for their judges right and you're going to tell them it's no longer your right the governor will do the appointments or bipartisan commission but we have seen even in the state where you now live where California has the system it's not a contested election but periodically the justices stand for it up and down up or down vote and the Chief Justice Rose Byrd was brought down in two of her colleague yes because of decisions they've rendered yeah in case yeah right death penalty cases yes it's not a pretty picture so that's a good segue to judicial independence more generally this this group here of course is working to advance the rule of law in many different countries and I had a question about what what what can judicial personnel or judges or supporters of legal systems in the world do to shore up rule of law and keep them free of undue political or economic interference well I might give the example of Singapore there their approach to judicial independence is to pay their Supreme Court justices and million dollars a year and that's certainly not true in the United States I think I'll offer for making more money than we are just a couple of years out of out of law school it takes in a spree and after all it's existed now more than two centuries in the United States they're great Chief Justice John Marshall the judges weren't so secure in the beginning it may be apocryphal but Andrew Jackson was alleged to have said well that's what Chief Justice Marshall said now let him enforce it because the court has no no armed forces at its control it has no purse strings but then and I changed you to the system as he existed for so long and well I'll give a few examples one case that I disagree with and Bush being law so who was going to be President of the United States my own view was it's not a it's not a question for the court to decide but the court did take the chase made his decision was a divided decision but the next day there were no riots in the streets everybody accepted and that Bush would be the president I think the most chaotic example was not a Supreme Court decision but it was a trial court judge Sarika in the District of Columbia he was trying Berberis what did they birla burble burble the Democratic National Committee headquarters and he was conducting the trials and said every person must give relevant evidence the President of the United States has relevant evidence it is the tapes of the conversation he had in the Oval Office President Nixon turned over the tapes and the next day he resigned from office I mean I that is that's a real all sorry yes it's a hard question how you build that if you don't have it right now I guess in that's the topic for this group in it takes time and persistence one of the objectives of the world justice project is to build coalitions between the legal sector and the non legal sector to promote rule of law and I'm wondering if in your career interactions with non legal professionals have shaped your view or in ways you've seen have contributed to the advance of the rule of law or experiences outside the legal sector effected your view well I think if if a country wants to have a thriving economy it's got to have the rule of law and you have to be able to make contracts that will be enforced so I think those two go hand-in-hand a thriving economy and and the rule of law so I am hopeful that the rule of law will become increasingly the way systems operates now it's very hard in some places where judges are not paid enough to support their families so we will have inevitably corruption when that's the case so I know that other than the law another great love of yours is opera and that's a that has do you think there's a connection between law and opera or those just two independent parts of your your brain and heart I will be in Santa Fe in August and I will with the younger artists I do a program on law and justice in Opera haha and even better than that there is an opera titled Scalia Ginsburg it will have its second production this summer in Cooperstown New York at the some of us festival and I'll just give you an idea of how it goes it starts out with explaining the difference in approach to legal texts of Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg so it starts out with Scalia's rage Aria very handily in his style and his things the justices are blind how can they possibly out this the Constitution says absolutely nothing about and then I answer him I say you're searching for bright-line solutions the problems that don't have easy answers but the great thing about our Constitution is that like our society it can evolve this is an opera by the way was written by a young man named Eric Wang he is a composer of a bredis he majored in music at Harvard and he has a master's degree from Yale and then he decided that for his profession it would be good to know a little bit about the law so he enrolled in the University of Maryland law school and he took a constitutional law class he's reading these opinions dueling opinions Scalia confer and decides I could make a very funny shuffle the plot is roughly based on the Magic Flute Oh Justice Scalia is locked in a dark room he is being punished for excessive dissent and then I entered through a glass ceiling to help him go through the trials that he has to pass to get out of the dark room then the character left over from Don Giovanni and this one is the commenter Tory said why would you want to help him he's your enemy and I explained he's not my enemy he's my friend and then we sing a duet that shows we are different we are one it is different in the way we approach a legal text but one in our reverence for the Constitution and for the institution we serve and I'm very much looking forward to the production the entire libretto is available in the Columbia Journal of law and arts well last question justice this is the first day of a four-day conference and everyone here is going to be working hard over the next four days to think about strategies to promote rule of law in the countries that they're going to return to do you have any advice for the participants as they do their work this week and then think about returning home to do their work I can say from have any experience with this forum is it's a wonderful opportunity you will have many presentations for the entire group but you can meet separately I think there are many group sessions and the idea is that you will exchange and I think meeting each other all of you have been outstanding in promoting the rule of law in your own countries I think you will gain strength from knowing that there are others people like you in other systems that are striving to promote the rule of law [Applause] justise I want to say one last thing which is there's a there's a at the beginning of democracy and distrust johnhart Ealy's work on constitutional interpretation he says about Chief Justice Warren that you don't need to choose many heroes if you choose the right ones and that's how I feel about my experience with you justice highlight of my of my life today [Applause]

Channel: World Justice Project

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Length: 44min 38sec (2678 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2017