The following interview with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg
took place at the US Supreme Court on August 2nd, 2019.
It had originally been scheduled a few weeks later.
It was brought forward at her request.
It was subsequently revealed
that a cancerous tumor had been discovered on her pancreas,
and three days after the interview, she began radiation therapy.
This is one of her last interviews.
I had two years out of university when I was married
because my husband was called into service.
And during those two years, I became pregnant.
And I worried, would I be able to manage
a young child and Harvard Law School?
So my husband's father said to me,
"Ruth, if you don't want to go to law school,
no one will think the less of you."
"You have a very good reason not to enroll."
"But if you really want to be a lawyer,
you will stop feeling sorry for yourself."
"You will pick yourself up, and you will find a way."
And that advice, at every turn in my life,
I thought, "Do I really want this?"
And if the answer's "Yes,"
you find a way.
This was inspired by Nelson Mandela.
Who once said, "What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived...
...it is what difference we have made to the lives of others
that will determine the significance of the life we lead."
His life left a lasting mark on the world.
A legacy that has helped inspire so many others to stand up.
To fight for change and to become leaders.
So this is in memory of Madiba.
It was made to remind us of the difference one person can make.
It's about people who have made brave choices.
Leaders who have walked alongside him and followed in his footsteps.
Caring for others. Working for a better and more equal world.
And giving inspiration to the rest of us
to live to lead.
♪ You can't break me down You can't take me down ♪
♪ You can't take me down ♪
♪ You can't break me down You can't take me down ♪
- Are we all good to go? - Yep.
- Hey, are we rolling? - We're rolling.
- Okay. Justice Ginsburg... - Yes?
Take one.
I can't imagine anyone else on Earth
who I would be more proud to be in the room with than Ms. Ginsburg.
They call her the Notorious R.B.G.
She's a feminist icon, and a favorite among the young people.
She is the standard of courage
and intellect and kindness and heart.
Ruth used to ask,
"What is the difference between a bookkeeper in Brooklyn
and a Supreme Court justice?"
Her answer?
"One generation."
It has been said that Ruth wanted to be an opera virtuoso
but became a rock star instead.
Virtually every significant case brought before the Supreme Court
in the decade of the '70s on behalf of women,
bore her mark.
Later, she became a star on the bench,
where she sat for 27 years.
She's an amazing, brave woman.
And strong.
People ask me sometimes,
"When will there be enough women on the court?"
And my answer is,
"When there are nine."
♪ I wanna give you an extraordinary life ♪
So much has been written and said about you,
but I wonder if we could start with you telling me a little bit about your life.
My current life, and for the past 26 years,
I have been a member of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Before that, I was a lawyer and a law teacher.
My entering law school class had some 500 students.
Nine of them were women.
Parents of girls in those days
thought the most important degree for their daughter
was not the Bachelor of Arts or Sciences.
It was the MRS degree.
But my mother was not that way.
One of the things she urged strongly
was that it's fine if you meet Prince Charming,
but always be able to fend for yourself.
Be independent.
Two things were important to my mother.
One was that I be independent,
and the other, she called it
"being a lady."
And by that, she didn't mean wearing white gloves,
she meant that a lady doesn't give way
to emotions that sap energy and do no good.
So anger, jealousy, remorse.
Those were emotions that
don't move you forward.
They trap you.
Don't snap back in anger.
Take a few deep breaths,
and respond in a way that you may be persuasive.
It was a great sadness in my young life
that she died the day before I graduated from high school.
She battled cancer for four years,
and then finally succumbed.
I decided to become a lawyer when I was a college student.
It was a bad time for the United States.
There was a huge Red Scare.
This is no field day for Moscow or its sympathizers.
The only answer
to a strategy of victory for the communist world
is a strategy of victory for the free world.
And there was a senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy,
who saw a communist in every corner.
Apparently, every time anybody says anything
against anybody working for Senator McCarthy...
- Just answer the quest... - ...he's accusing them of communism.
Just answer the question.
People were hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
And my professor of constitutional law
impressed upon me that lawyers were standing up for these people
and reminding our Congress that we have a First Amendment
that protects our right to think, speak, and write as we believe,
and not as some Big Brother government tells us.
That there is the right to freedom of thought and expression.
I said that I was exercising my rights
guaranteed to me under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
So that gave me the idea that being a lawyer was a pretty nifty thing to do.
I thought I could earn a living, and then I could do something
to make things a little better in my society.
I didn't appreciate fully
the barriers to going and getting a job in the law.
I did very well in law school,
but there wasn't a single firm in the city of New York
that would offer me a job.
I don't know how many times I heard from law firms,
"We had a lady lawyer, and she was dreadful."
I had three strikes against me.
One is I am Jewish, and there was considerable antisemitism.
The second, I was a woman,
and those barriers were just beginning to fall.
The third one was a strikeout.
I was a mother.
My daughter was four years old when I graduated from law school.
So the rare firms that would take a chance on a woman
would not risk hiring a mother.
When the women's movement came alive in the late 1960s,
I knew that's what I...
I wanted.
There were things that I had observed growing up.
Before I became a lawyer,
there was a time when women were not accepted as members of the bar.
There were no women judges.
Very few women engineers.
No women police officers.
No women firefighters.
This is Mary McDonald.
Age?
Well, old enough to be the mother of those three.
Profession?
That's part of it right there.
Together, with a good deal of housework and lots of mileage in the family car.
And I thought, "Well, that's just part of the territory."
"You have to put up with it."
But in the late '60s, women began to think,
"No, we don't have to put up with it. We should be able to do
whatever we have the talent to do,
and no one should stop us simply because we're women."
I was teaching law at Rutgers University,
and my students wanted to have a course on women and the law.
And in the space of a month,
I read every federal decision about women's rights or the lack thereof.
Women were making claims that they hadn't before.
So I was a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union,
devoting the entire decade of the '70s to see what I could contribute.
So in that decade of the '70s,
I appeared before many courts.
This court included.
When I first got into the business of gender equality,
it was a world in which most men thought,
"There really is no such thing as discrimination against women."
All the barriers were regarded as protections.
They exclude women from an occupation
thought more appropriate to men.
The sex criterion stigmatizes
when it is used to limit hours of work for women only.
Hours regulations, today, "protect" women
from competing for extra remuneration, higher-paying jobs, promotions.
People knew that race discrimination was odious.
Discrimination based on religion was a bad thing.
But they didn't think that about the barriers that women face.
There's a line of contention that...
more protections are necessary for women.
From bans on pornography to child-rearing benefits for mothers
but not for fathers, not equally for fathers.
Uh, the greater protection that women need from
child sexual molestation,
where they are more frequently the victims,
and I'd be interested in your thinking as to the use of the legislative branch
as some of the other women's advocates have articulated the views in the 1980s.
I think it's grand to use the legislative branch.
What you discuss, Senator Specter, I think reflects a large generational difference.
In the days of the protective laws,
the legislative branch was used extensively.
And the legislative branch said that we'll restrict the hours
for women but not for men.
We will restrict night work for women but not for men.
We will restrict the jobs that women can take but not men.
Because we know better, we can protect them.
They need to be protected from unhealthy and unsafe conditions.
Especially jobs that pay double time, um, and the like.
The legislature works all over the place protecting women.
They thought they operated benignly in the women's favor.
And another one, women didn't serve on juries
because they were considered the center of home and family life.
What that says to a woman is, "You're not really a full citizen."
Citizens have obligations, as well as rights.
My generation had the sense that
that protection was protecting men's jobs against...
from women's competition.
I knew what I was doing was important
and that I had to make people understand.
Supreme Court Justice Brennan put it very well.
The woman was not
on a pedestal.
She was, in fact, in a cage.
And on the other side, there were several cases in which I represented men.
One of my favorite clients, his wife died in childbirth,
and he was left the sole surviving parent.
There were childcare benefits if a male worker dies,
but if a female worker died,
there were no childcare benefits for the widower.
The underlying assumption was,
"Wives are typically dependent, husbands are not."
The impact is to encourage the traditional division of labor between man and woman.
We were trying to change that way of thinking.
So that
men, if they were parents,
would have the same benefits as women.
And women who wanted to be whatever,
a doctor or a lawyer, police officer,
that would be fine.
Virtually every significant case brought before the Supreme Court
in the decade of the '70s on behalf of women,
bore her mark.
Wanting what seems now to be such a terribly simple principle,
equal treatment for women and men before the law.
A principle that was always embraced by your husband, Marty.
In every way.
I have had the great, good fortune to share life
with a partner
truly extraordinary for his generation.
A man who believed at age 18, when we met,
and who believes today...
that a woman's work...
whether at home or on the job,
is as important as a man's.
I became a lawyer
in days when women were not wanted by most members of the legal profession.
I became a lawyer because Marty, and his parents,
supported that choice unreservedly.
He was always my biggest booster,
and he was tireless in his effort to see
that I would be the nominee.
He also had a particular skill. He was a great cook.
Our arrangement was, when my children were young,
I was the everyday cook, he was the weekend and company cook.
My daughter, in her teens,
noticed the enormous difference between Daddy's cooking and Mommy's.
And decided Daddy shouldn't be just the weekend cook,
he should be the everyday cook.
So for all the years that I've lived in Washington, DC,
I've not cooked a meal.
There is one in this audience
whose presence I want specially to acknowledge.
She is my wonderful mother-in-law, Evelyn Ginsburg.
My mother-in-law, on my wedding day, gave me the best advice ever.
She said, "Dear, I would like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage."
"Well, I'd be glad to have it. What is it?"
She said, "Sometimes, it helps to be a little... deaf."
That is, if an unkind word is spoken, you tune out.
And I have followed that advice assiduously.
Not only in dealing with my dear spouse but with my colleagues.
What do you think the world needs more of at this moment?
Um. If I could pick one word, it would be "listening."
I think,
today, people tend to talk only to like-minded people.
I think the social media intensifies that.
One of the things that has made America great
is that we have such a diverse population.
So many different backgrounds, racial and national origins.
And the ability to not just tolerate
but even applaud our differences and yet come together.
When once asked, how we could be friends given our disagreement on lots of things,
Justice Scalia answered, "I attack ideas. I don't attack people."
"Some very good people have some very bad ideas."
The motto of the United States is, "E pluribus unum."
"Of many, one."
And that's, with all our diversity... Yet, we are one nation,
with a democracy I hope we can keep.
I would say that we are not experiencing the best of times.
Our legislature, which is the first branch of government,
is, right now,
not functioning.
But I can think back to 1993.
The year that President Clinton
nominated me for a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
I had spent ten years of my life litigating gender discrimination cases,
I was one of four general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union,
and yet
the vote to confirm me was 96 to 3.
That kind of rapport
doesn't exist now.
But my dream is that we will get back to it.
One day, I think it will take
strong people on...
from both parties, to say,
"Let's get together and work for the good of the country."
It was a great man
once said,
that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle,
it is the pendulum.
And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back.
Some terrible things have happened in the United States,
but one can only hope that we learn.
Have there been moments that have especially challenged you?
Well, I'd say the biggest challenge for me...
uh, was...
ten years ago when my husband died.
He was, as I said, my biggest booster, my biggest supporter.
He was the first boy I ever knew who cared that I had a brain.
He never regarded me as any kind of a threat or competition,
just the opposite.
I think he believed that because he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me,
I had to be something really special.
Well, I feel his loss...
every day.
But I think he would be pleased...
about what I am doing.
What do you think has really mattered most to you
during the course of your life?
That I had the opportunity
to help a movement for change.
Change so that daughters would be cherished as much as sons.
There should be no spaces where women can't enter,
as there were many in my growing up years.
Those barriers are now, thank goodness,
gone.
You need two things, talent and hard work to go with it.
But there should not be any artificial barriers
holding you back.
Indeed, in my lifetime,
I expect to see three, four, perhaps even more women,
on the high court bench.
Women not shaped from the same mold
but of different complexions.
We've advanced a long way, but there's still a long way to go.
Is there any advice you would give for young prospective leaders
in those parts of the world where gender equality is still a big issue?
Uh, if you want your country
to succeed, you should put your money
with the women.
That's my dream for the world.
I'm convinced we will all be better off for it,
if women and men are true partners.
I think the... At least the young people that I see,
think of Malala...
Malala Yousafzai?
And we should all fight for our rights, for the rights of children,
for the rights of women and for the rights of every human being.
- The Swedish Greta... - Greta Thunberg. Yep.
Yep.
You have not seen the last of us, we can assure you that.
The young people that I see are fired up...
...and they want our country to be what it should be.
If you could talk to your younger self,
what advice would you give her?
The first advice I would give to a girl just like me
would be, "Go for it."
"You can make your dreams come true
if you're willing to put in the hard work."
For a boy, I would say,
"Don't miss out on
the joys and the burdens
of raising your children."
And, then, something else I would say...
"Always do something outside yourself."
♪ Sisters, let's go down Let's go down, come on down ♪
You're a member of a community.
You are blessed with having certain talents.
You should use your education and your talent
to help make things a little better
for people who are not as fortunate
as you are.
To be born into a world that does not see you,
that does not believe in your potential,
that does not give you a path for opportunity
or a clear path for education.
And despite this, to be able to see beyond the world you are in,
to imagine that something can be different.
That is the job of a prophet.
And it is the rare prophet who not only imagines a new world,
but also makes that new world a reality in her lifetime.
This was the brilliance and vision of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
This was Justice Ginsburg's life's work.
To insist that the Constitution deliver on its promise.
That "we the people" would include all the people.
She carried out that work in every chapter of her life.
As an advocate arguing six times before this court
for equal treatment for women and men.
As a judge on the DC circuit, and as a justice on this court.
And as a path-marking role model to women and girls of all ages,
who now know that no office is out of reach for their dreams.
Nothing could stop Justice Ginsburg's unflagging devotion to this project.
Not even cancer.
Justice Ginsburg,
from generation to generation,
we promise to carry forward your legacy.