JUSTICE, JUSTICE THOU SHALT PURSUE

Anyone needing more reasons to admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) will find them in this inspiring collection of speeches (all previously unpublished), briefs, oral arguments, dissenting opinions, and a candid conversation with Tyler, a professor at the Berkeley School of Law who served as Ginsburg’s law clerk during the 1999 term. One of only nine women in her Harvard Law School class of over 500 students, Ginsburg at the time was also raising her first child, and she endured the added burden of caring for her husband when he became stricken with cancer. After graduating in 1959, she discovered that “employers were upfront about wanting no lady lawyers,” especially if they were Jewish and a mother. With great difficulty, she found a clerkship. In 1963, she joined the Rutgers Law School faculty and later became director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and one of the organization’s four general counsels. In 1993, Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court. From her 27-year tenure, Ginsburg includes several opinions along with bench announcements summarizing her dissents in cases that dealt with gender discrimination, voting rights, equal pay, and a corporation’s right to impose religious beliefs on employees. Ginsburg’s legal writings reflect the clarity and cogent reasoning that she claimed were influenced by Justice Louis Brandeis, whom she praised for his “craftsmanship, sense of collegiality,” judicial restraint, and “readiness to defend civil rights and liberties when the values our Constitution advances required it.” The aim of the fact-filled Brandeis brief, she said, “was to educate the Judiciary about the real world in which the laws under inspection operated.” Among other decisive influences, Ginsburg cited her Jewish heritage: “The demand for justice, for peace, and for enlightenment runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition."

An informative perspective on a tireless advocate for fairness and equity.