Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life

705 Pages·2018·82.55 MB·English

by  Jane Sherron De Hart

ALSO BY JANE SHERRON DE HART
The Federal Theatre, 1935–1939: Plays, Relief, and Politics
Sex, Gender, and the Politics of the E.R.A.: A State and the Nation
(co-authored with Donald G. Mathews)
Women’s America: Refocusing the Past
(founding editor with Linda K. Kerber)

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2018 by Jane Sherron De Hart All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A.
Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House
of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: De Hart, Jane Sherron.
Title: Ruth Bader Ginsburg : a life / Jane Sherron De Hart.
Description: New York : Knopf, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004415 (print) | LCCN 2018005358 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781400040483 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525521594 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Ginsburg, Ruth Bader.
| Women judges—United States—Biography. | Judges—United States—Biography. | United States.
Supreme Court—Officials and employees. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Lawyers
& Judges. | LAW / Constitutional. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women’s Studies.
Classification: LCC KF8745.G56 (ebook) | LCC KF8745.G56 D44 2018 (print) | DDC 347.73/2634 [B]—
dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004415
Ebook ISBN 9780525521594
Cover illustration by Katherine Ross Cover design by Stephanie Ross v5.3.2
ep
For Jerry
for unwavering love and support
Contents
Cover
Also by Jane Sherron de Hart
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface: An American Icon
Part I · Becoming Ruth
Chapter 1: Celia’s Daughter
Chapter 2: Cornell and Marty
Chapter 3: Learning the Law on Male Turf
Chapter 4: Sailing in “Uncharted Waters”
Chapter 5: The Making of a Feminist Advocate
Chapter 6: Seizing the Moment
Part II · Mounting a Campaign
Chapter 7: A First Breakthrough
Chapter 8: Setting Up Shop and Strategy
Part III · Learning Under Fire
Chapter 9: “The Case That Got Away”
Chapter 10: A “Near Great Leap Forward”
Chapter 11: Coping with a Setback
Part IV · Moving Forward
Chapter 12: Getting Back on Track
Chapter 13: Moving Forward on Shifting Political Ground
Part V · Becoming Judge and Justice
Chapter 14: An Unexpected Cliff-Hanger
Chapter 15: The 107th Justice
Chapter 16: Mother of the Regiment
Chapter 17: “I Cannot Agree”
Part VI · Standing Firm
Chapter 18: Persevering in Hard Times
Chapter 19: Losing Marty and Leading the Minority
Chapter 20: Race Matters
Chapter 21: The Right Thing to Do
Chapter 22: A Hobbled Court
Chapter 23: An Election and a Presidency Like No Other
Epilogue: Legacy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Case Summaries
Illustration Credits
About the Author
Preface
An American Icon
The year was 1993. The president of the United States strode toward the lectern
in the White House Rose Garden, accompanied by a diminutive sixty-year-old
woman in a cobalt-blue suit and dark sunglasses. Before a bipartisan sprinkling
of the Senate Judiciary Committee, family members, friends, and the national
press, Bill Clinton presented his replacement for the retiring justice Byron White
—Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In the months and years ahead, he predicted, the nation would come to know
much more about the woman at his side. “People will find, as I have,” he
pledged, that “this nominee is a person of immense character. Quite simply,
what’s in her record speaks volumes about what is in her heart.” She has stood
“for the individual, the person less well off, the outsider in society, and has given
them greater hope by telling them that they have a place in our legal system.”
Indeed, Clinton continued, “many admirers of her work say she is to the
women’s movement what former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was
to the movement for African Americans.”
Following the president to the lectern, the nominee responded graciously.
Thanking him—and especially New York’s senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
who first brought her to Clinton’s attention—she followed the introduction of
her family with a statement that was at once personal and political. “The
announcement the President made is significant, I believe, because it contributes
to the end of the days when women, at least half the talent pool in our society,
appear in high places only as one-at-a-time performers.” Noting that Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor was sitting on the Supreme Court and nearly twenty-five
women served on the U.S. Court of Appeals, two as chief judges, she predicted
that more would follow.
She then recalled her daughter’s 1973 high school yearbook, where her
firstborn, Jane, had listed under “ambition” her hope to see her mother
nominated to the Supreme Court. The next line read, “ ‘If necessary, Jane will
appoint her.’ ” “Jane is so pleased, Mr. President, that you did it instead, and her
brother, James, is, too.”
Then Ginsburg turned to the many to whom she felt indebted: a revived
women’s movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, from which
feminists in the United States had drawn inspiration, as well as colleagues and
family. And with a deft touch, she mentioned that this was not the first time that
a member of her family had stood next to Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom she
herself had met just that day. “There is another I love dearly with whom the First
Lady is already an old friend.” Holding up a photograph of Mrs. Clinton
surrounded by nursery school children singing “The Toothbrush Song,” she
pointed to “my wonderful granddaughter, Clara.” She also thanked her husband,
Marty, “my best friend and biggest booster,” her mother-in-law, Evelyn, “the
most supportive parent a person could have,” and children with “tastes to
appreciate that Daddy cooks ever so much better than Mommy and so phased me
out of the kitchen at a relatively early age.” She concluded with a tribute to her
mother, Celia Amster Bader, “the bravest and strongest person I have ever
known….I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an
age when women could aspire and achieve, and daughters are as much cherished
as sons.” Those final words left the president fighting back tears.
· · ·
As I watched the ceremony on the evening news, it never occurred to me that
five years later I might actually meet the justice, much less write about her. My
work as a historian had taken a new turn when I began exploring the “dual
constitutional strategy” that had been devised by feminist lawyers in the late
1960s to secure gender equality in the law. One prong of that strategy sought
ratification of an equal rights amendment (ERA) to the Constitution prohibiting
gender-based discrimination. The other called for litigation efforts to persuade
the Supreme Court to strike down laws that discriminated on the basis of gender.
Ginsburg, then a law professor at Rutgers and later at Columbia University,
spearheaded the latter effort in the 1970s under the auspices of the Women’s
Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Having lately completed a fine-grained analysis of efforts in a key southern
state that twice came two votes short of ratifying the amendment, I had turned to