Equal Justice for ALL People

Turbulent and disturbing times require great inspiration. This woman is that inspiration! I share her today with permission from the author, the Jon S Randall Peace Page. If you don’t know him, I highly recommend that you check out his work. I have long been an admirer, and he highlights some amazing people. Thank you Jon. 

"Although she went to the top of her law school class, one of only 9 women among 543 men, the dean still asked her why she felt entitled to be in the class, taking the place from a man.

She and her female colleagues were also called on in class for “comic relief” and they were even excluded from using certain sections of the library, according to writer Kerri Lee Alexander.

She was born on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father immigrated to the United States, while her mother was a native of New York. Her family valued education and instilled in her a love of learning, according to The National Women’s History Museum.

Barely five feet tall and weighing 100 pounds and initially perceived by some as “shy” and “demure”, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nevertheless a fighter.

Whenever The Peace Page has shared a story about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court and a legal pioneer for gender equality, the post usually becomes one of the more popular stories on the page.

As others have shared in past stories of her on The Peace Page, we sure could use her in today’s world.

Hi, this is Jon. This is for RBG, for everyone she fought for, for National Women's History Month.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a historic figure”, according to Nina Totenberg of NPR. “She changed the way the world is for American women . . . When she began her legal crusade, women were treated, by law, differently from men. Hundreds of state and federal laws restricted what women could do, barring them from jobs, rights and even from jury service. By the time she donned judicial robes, however, Ginsburg had worked a revolution.”

“By the time she was in her 80s, she had become something of a rock star to women of all ages. She was the subject of a hit documentary, a biopic, an operetta, merchandise galore featuring her "Notorious RBG" moniker, a Time magazine cover and regular Saturday Night Live sketches.”

“Ginsburg saw President Franklin Roosevelt lift America out of the Great Depression. She saw Nazism crushed and she saw Jim Crow beaten into submission. She saw her mother, alive with talent but unable to use it in a sexist age, and she swore to free women from that existence. And then she did it,” wrote Ian Millhiser.

Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. She served there for thirteen years, prior to being nominated as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993. She accepted his nomination and took her seat as a Supreme Court Justice on August 10, 1993.

“Justice Ginsburg personified the best of what it meant to be a judge. She brought a deep intellectual and personal integrity to everything she did,” said John F. Manning ’85, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. “Her powerful and unyielding commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice under law places her among the great justices in the annals of the Court. She was also one of the most impactful lawyers of the 20th century, whose historic work advocating against gender discrimination and for equal rights for all opened doors for countless people and transformed our society.”

In a speech she would say:

“I subscribe to what Justice O’Connor wrote in the Michigan law school case: ‘[T]o cultivate . . . leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, . . . the path to leadership must be visibly open to the talented . . . individuals of every race and ethnicity.” “Effective participation by members of [minority groups and women] in the civil life of our Nation is essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.” We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our differences, while pulling together for the common good.”

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be remembered as a champion of equality,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. “Her legacy, however, goes far beyond what she achieved in court. Ginsburg also should be remembered for her resilience. Personal setbacks animated her quest for social justice. She memorably summed up the connection between her personal losses and her public life at a Federal Judicial Center conference that I attended years ago. Profound challenges—the loss of her mother the day before she graduated from high school, her husband’s struggle with cancer while they were both in law school—fueled her fierce determination to accomplish her dreams and achieve justice for others. ‘I wasn’t going to just sit in the corner and cry,’ I recall Ginsburg defiantly noting during her talk. Those words have stuck with me all these years. Ginsburg’s refusal to crumble into a heap of defeat is a defining and inspiring part of her legacy.”

After her death on September 18, 2020, Angela Onwuachi-Willig of Boston University Today also remembers Ginsburg’s resilience, adding:

“Recurring, explicit sex discrimination she faced in the job market and in her jobs as a lawyer. The lonely years she faced as the only woman on the Supreme Court after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement. Her repeated battles with cancer and other illnesses while she was a Supreme Court justice, coupled with too many hard-fought, but lost battles that resulted in dissents instead of majority opinions.

“In addition to acknowledging the great debt that I—that we—owe her for her contributions to our society . . . I have been looking more and more to Justice Ginsburg as a model of strength and forbearance in what many of us view as a period of mounting resistance to our calls for true equality, justice, and dignity for all and greater accountability for those who fail to show respect for those values and principles.

“Justice Ginsburg leaves a remarkable legacy that has truly changed the course of history. She is a towering figure in American jurisprudence, and yes, a symbol of hope and optimism that the arc of history truly does bend toward justice, to paraphrase Boston University alum Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59).

“No matter the challenge, Justice Ginsburg worked tirelessly for what she believed was right. She had the utmost integrity, never wavering from her principles even in the face of strong opposition. She gave of herself for something bigger—equality and our nation. She fought fiercely to advance her vision of equal justice for all people. And, she continued to fight and resist until her dying breath.”

~ jsr