The Notorious RBG
“I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very
best of her ability.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Being a male, it’s very natural to idolise someone in the same sex but not the opposite. But because it is now the 21 st century, considering a female a hero doesn’t seem to be awkward anymore or the exception. I’m talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg who got the moniker the
notorious RBG from a law student admirer for highlighting RBG’s dissent in the landmark Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder.
On March 15, 1933, Celia Bader gave birth to her second daughter Joan Ruth at Beth Moses Hospital in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Later, the name Joan was dropped when RBG was in kindergarten in order to reduce the many children answering
that name. As a baby, she was very energetic and kicking a lot, so much so that her elder sister Marilyn called her “Kiki.” RBG didn’t get to know her sister because the following year, the six-year old Marilyn died of spinal meningitis.
The Baders were Jewish. Nathan Bader arrived in New York as a shy 13-year old Russian Jew from a town near Odessa, Ukraine. Celia Bader, on the other hand, arrived in New York City while still in her mother’s womb from a little town in Kraców, Poland. They got married sometime in the 1920’s. Nathan was a quiet parent but attentive, loving and
not much of a disciplinarian. Celia had a stronger personality and greater influence in the upbringing of RBG. She shared her love of literature and performance arts with RBG and put aside enough money for RBG’s university education. But Celia never saw RBG’s
academic successes. She died on June 25, 1950 of cancer, two days before RBG’s high school graduation. RBG was one of four students slated to make the commencement address for the graduating class of Brooklyn’s James Madison High School. She stayed home instead and grieved her loss with her father.
Then RBG went to Cornell University and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23, 1954. There she met her future husband, Martin (better known as Marty) Ginsburg who was a year older, and married him a month after her graduation at age 21. She worked for the Social Security Administration in Oklahoma but demoted immediately when she got pregnant with her first child. In 1955, she gave birth to adaughter. In 1956, RBG joined her husband as a Harvard law student. She was 1 of 9 women accepted in a class of around 500 men. When Marty was undergoing cancer treatment, RBG attended Marty’s classes and prepared the notes for him while going to her classes, too andco-raising their daughter Jane. When Marty got a job in the law firm of Weil, Gotshal &
Manges in New York, RBG transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated in 1959 tied for first in her class. What’s also a remarkable achievement in her law student days was that RBG became the first woman to be on both the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review.
Early in her legal career, RBG right away experienced discriminations. She was rejected a clerkship position, in spite of her academic excellence and high recommendations from well-known law professors, for Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Fast forward to 1973, RBG became the general counsel of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She participated in more than 300 gender discrimination cases and argued six of them at the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976, winning five.
When Jimmy Carter was the president, he nominated RBG to be a judge at the Second Circuit appeals court for the District of Columbia. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 18, 1980. Bill Clinton recalled while interviewing RBG as a possible
nominee for the Supreme Court: “As I sat with her in my study, I was so engrossed in her moving story that suddenly I was no longer the president interviewing a potential Supreme Court nominee; we were just two people having an honest discussion about life, America
and the law.” So on August 10, 1993, RBG was sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
RBG is known as a staunch advocate for gender equality and women’s rights. In her first oral argument before the Supreme Court as amicus curiae (friend of the court) in the pay discrimination case Frontiero v. Richardson on January 17, 1973, she argued: “Sex, like
race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability. Sex, like race, has been made the basis for unjustified or at least unproved assumptions concerning an individual’s potential to perform or to contribute to society.” The Supreme Court justices took notice of her argument and ruled 8 – 1 in favour of Frontiero.
While sitting as a justice of the Supreme Court, she wrote a searing dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear where her colleagues ruled 5 – 4 against Ledbetter on May 29, 2007. She said that the “court does not comprehend or is indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.” She told her colleagues they were “profoundly wrong” and pleaded directly with the lawmakers in Congress “to correct this court’s parsimonious reading” of Title VII. They sure listened to her and President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009.
It is hard to envision a sitting justice of the Supreme Court being considered a pop icon. The Notorious RBG moniker is an internet meme on Tumblr comparing her to the rapper The Notorious B.I.G. Later on, Saturday Night Live had several sketches with Kate McKinnon playing her. RBG accepted her fame with delight and even kept a large supply of Notorious RBG T-shirts as a parting gift for visitors.
RBG’s popularity endeared her greatly to a generation of young women, including their mothers and grandmothers. When she died on September 18, 2020 at age 87, women of all ages gathered outside the Supreme Court for a candlelight vigil, singing the songs
Amazing Grace and This Land is Your Land. Together, they were inspired with RBG’s words when she said: “Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others
to join you.” As we lost forever a principled and highly intelligent woman, I am hopeful that the torch of her lifetime legal fight for women’s equality and rights will pass on to the young women of the future. But here are 3 cases which I imagine RBG could have been involved, be impactful and perhaps changed the course of history. The first case I designate as Eve v. God in the Fall of Man story. Both Adam and Eve
freely eat the forbidden fruit, yet when God renders their respective punishments, Eve receives a graver sentence that would discriminate and abuse women for many years until now. Here’s what God says to Eve: “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule
over you (Genesis 3:16).” The offending clause is and I quote again: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This enables and authorises men to forever regard women as a property and belonging to an inferior status which they could dispense of in accordance with their whims. It will take enlightened men to correct the“profound error” which God, in His infinite wisdom, should have known the evil consequences of such a misogynistic language. And until now, it’s still used to abuse and
discriminate women all over the world.
The second case I name as Blessed Virgin Mary v. St. Peter. So here, Blessed Virgin Mary is suing St. Peter for maliciously grabbing the title head (now pope) of the church. St. Peter based his authority in Matthew 16:18, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” But the gospels of
Mark, Luke and John fail to mention this primacy of Peter. In all four gospels, however, they make note of Peter denying and disowning Jesus when He is arrested. This will be a strong evidence to prove Peter’s disqualification for the title. In contrast, Blessed Virgin Mary conceives and raises Jesus and is with Him all the way to the cross. She is not afraid of being associated with Jesus and never leaves His side during His time of need and suffering. And the last case is Catholic Nuns v. the Vatican State. This is again a discriminatory case against women: (1) banning them for performing the mass and (2) being considered in any of the hierarchical positions in the Vatican State. RBG will argue, similarly with the Frontiero case, that assumptions about women are “grounded on stereotypes concerning women’s physical limitations and ‘proper place’ in society.” She may even conclude her argument with the same lines in the Frontiero case, “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
RBG has done a lot in the legal fights for the advancement of women in the United States. We need more RBGs in the future, including here in Canada, because, as we know, whatever gains have been achieved could always be reversed. And when that happens, we need strong voice of dissents to help us through the dark times. RBG says, “Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”