Just leave it this way. All right. David i dont consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . When you went to cornell, your grades were obviously good. You applied to law school at harvard. You got into Harvard Law School. Was the class half women and half men . [laughter] jus. Ginsburg in those ancient days, i went to law school from 1956 and 1959. In my entering class at Harvard Law School, there were over 500 in the class, nine of us were women. A big jump from martys class, he was a year ahead of me. There were five women. Today, Harvard Law School, it is about 50 women. [applause] david in your Harvard Law School class, you did extremely well and got onto the harvard law review and you were near the top of your class, maybe first or tied for first in your class. When your husband needed to move to new york, you wanted to transfer to Columbia Law School and the dean of the Harvard Law School did not think that was such a great idea if you wanted to be a harvard graduate. Is that correct . Jus. Ginsburg yes. He said i had to spend my third year at harvard. The reason i didnt was marty was diagnosed with a testicular tumor in his third year of law chool. Those were early days for cancer care. There was no such thing as chemotherapy, there was only massive radiation. We did not know whether he would survive. I did not want to be a single mom. Jane, my daughter, was 14 months when i started law school. We wanted to Stay Together as a family. Marty had a good job with a firm in new york. I asked the dean, i thought it would be an easy answer if i successfully complete my education at columbia, may i have my harvard degree . Absolutely not. You must spend your third year here. I had the perfect rebuttal. There was a cornell classmate of mine who had had her first year of law school at penn. She transferred into our second ear class. I said to the dean, she will have her second and third year and will earn a harvard degree, but i think it is universally understood that the first year of law school is by far the most important. She has years two and three. I have years one and two. It should make no ifference. But i was told a rule is a rule. David you went to Columbia Law School and your degree is from columbia. Jus. Ginsburg yes. David you did extremely well in the review there as well. From the harvard law review and the columbia law review, you were flooded with job offers from major law firms . [laughter] jus. Ginsburg there wasnt a single firm in the entire city of new york that would take a hance on me. I have said i had three strikes against me. Was jewish. The wall street firms were just beginning to welcome jews. Then, i was a woman. But the absolute killer i was a mother. My daughter was four years old when i graduated from law school. Employers who might take a chance on a woman were not prepared to take a chance on a mother. David one of your law professors got you a clerkship with judge paul mainieri. Was that easy to do because you are a mother . Jus. Ginsburg he had no qualms about a woman. He had had a woman as a law clerk before. But he was concerned. The Southern District of new york was a busy court. Sometimes, he would need a law clerks aide even on a unday. I found out about this years later. Did not know at the time. The professor said to the judge, give her a chance and if she doesnt work out, there is a young man in the class who is going to a downtown firm. He will jump in and take over. That was the carrot. It was also a stick. He stick was if you dont give her a chance, i will never recommend another columbia tudent to you. That is how it was for women of my vintage. Getting the first job was powerfully hard. David after your clerkship, you ultimately got a position as a law professor at rutgers. Jus. Ginsberg yes. An interlude, while i was working for the columbia project on international procedure. David how did you get connected to the aclu and your trailblazing efforts in gender discrimination and gender law . Jus. Ginsberg it came about first from my students at rutgers who wanted a course on women and the law. I went to the library and inside of a month, i read every federal decision ever written about genderbased distinctions in the law. At the same time, new complaints were coming into the new jersey affiliate of the aclu, complaints of the kind the aclu had not seen before. One group of complainers were Public School teachers, who were put on Maternity Leave when the pregnancy began to show because the School Districts worried, we dont want the little children to think their teacher swallowed a watermelon. [laughter] us. Ginsburg these women were the leave was unpaid and there was no guaranteed right to eturn. They began to complain, so it was the two things coming together. The students wanting to learn about womens status under the law and these new complaints oming to the aclu. For me, it was a tremendous stroke of good fortune. Because up until the start of the 1970s, it simply wasnt possible to move courts in the direction of recognizing women as people of equal citizenship stature. David when president clinton became president , you were obviously somebody being considered and president clinton said, well, women dont want her. Jus. Ginsberg i had written a omment on roe v. Wade and it was not 100 applauding that decision. David you won a number of cases for the aclu on gender discrimination and became quite well known. You were asked to go on to the u. S. Court of appeals district of columbia by president carter. Were you surprised to get that appointment . Did you want to be a judge or were you happy to be a professor . Jus. Ginsberg president carter deserves enormous credit for what the federal bench looks ike today. When he became president , he noticed that the federal judges all looked like him, they were all white and all male. Carter appreciated that that is not how the great United States looks. So, he was determined to put omen and members of minority groups on the federal courts in numbers, not as well as a type of curiosity. I think he appointed over 25 women to District Court judgeships and 11 women to courts of appeals, and i was i think the last of them. David you served 13 years on the court of appeals, district of columbia. Jus. Ginsburg yes. David after 13 years, did you think you had a chance to be on the Supreme Court or did you think this was something that might never happen . Jus. Ginsberg no one thinks, my aim in life is to be a Supreme Court justice, it just is not realistic. There are only nine of us. Luck has a lot to do with who are the particular nine at a particular time. So, growing up, i never had an idea of being any kind of judge. As i said, women were barely there on the bench. When carter became president , there was only one woman on a ederal court of appeals. Shirley hostetler on the ninth circuit. He made her the first ever secretary of education. Then, there were none again. Carter changed that and no president ever went back. Eagan did not want to be outdone by carter. He was determined to put the first woman on the u. S. Supreme court. He made a nationwide search and came up with a spectacular choice in Justice Sandra day oconnor. David when president clinton became president , you were somebody being considered and then president clinton talked to somebody pushing for your appointment, Daniel Patrick moynihan, and president clinton said, women dont want her. How could that have been the case when you were the leading lawyer in gender discrimination . Why would women have not wanted you or some women not want you on the Supreme Court . Jus. Ginsberg just some women. Most women were overwhelmingly supportive of my nomination. But, i had written a comment on roe v. Wade and it was not 100 pplauding that decision. What i said was the court has an easy target because the texas law was the most extreme in the nation. Abortion could be had only if necessary to save the womans life. T does not matter that her health would be ruined, that she was the victim of rape or incest. I thought roe v. Wade was an easy case and the Supreme Court could have held that most extreme law unconstitutional and ut down its pen. Instead, the court wrote an opinion that made every abortion restriction in the country illegal in one fell swoop. And, that was not the way that the court ordinarily operated. It waits until the next case and the next case. Anyway, some women felt i should have been 100 in favor of roe v. Wade. Because i wasnt. David president clinton met with you and you had a good meeting and he offered you the appointment and the confirmation went pretty well, would you say . Jus. Ginsberg 963, yes, i would say. [laughter] [applause] david you have now been on the court 26 years, and therefore in total, you have been in the federal judiciary 39 years. 26 years in the Supreme Court. When you first got on the court, were the other justices saying, we are happy to see you here, lets go have dinner together, lets socialize, or were they standoffish . What was your relationship with Sandra Day Oconnor like on the court, as the second woman on the court . Jus. Ginsberg the court was not an unknown territory to me. I had worked at the court of appeals. It is a few blocks down the oad. Every once in a while, a judge, who was quite senior, would call me and say, we are going for lunch at cronheim, it was the biggest liquor distributor in the d. C. Area. [laughter] jus. Ginsberg before we went to his warehouse, we would stop at the Supreme Court and pick up Justice Brennan and justice arshall. I knew Justice Scalia from our court of appeals days. I knew Justice Clarence thomas, who was also on the d. C. Circuit. Sandra was as close as i came to having a big sister. I did have a big sister, but she died in my infancy, so i never new her. Justice oconnor was the most welcoming. She gave me some very good advice. Not only when i was a new justice, but during my first cancer battle. Because Justice Oconnor had Breast Cancer and she was on the bench nine days after her cancer surgeries. David wow. Jus. Ginsburg she was very clear about what i had to do. She said, ruth, you have your chemotherapy on friday, that way you will get over it during the weekend, so you can be back. [laughter] david now, the best way to win a case if you are arguing one before the Supreme Court is to write a great brief, to write a be a great oral advocate. Does the oral argument make a difference or the brief or what is the best way to win a case in the Supreme Court . For somebody who might want to argue a case. [laughter] jus. Ginsburg to have a case that is strong on the merits. An oral argument at the court is ot a debate. I would say of the two components, the brief is by far the most important. It is what we start with and what we end up with when we go back to chambers. Oral argument is fleeting. David if somebody wants to be a Supreme Court clerk, do you send in a letter applying or how does that work . [laughter] jus. Ginsberg we get hundreds and hundreds of applications. Avid the court meets from october to june, more or less. What do the justices do in july and august . Do they sit around reading briefs or do they do other things . Jus. Ginsberg one thing that follows us all over the world throughout the year is the Death Penalty business, which the court treats like a firing squad. Very often, when an execution date is set, there is an 11thhour application for a tay. No one justice is responsible for the final vote. We all are pulled wherever we are in the world. In addition, most of us take some time off to teach. David so, today, when you are thinking about the court, what is it that gives you the greatest hope for the future of the court and the way it works . Jus. Ginsberg i think that all of us revere the institution in which we work and we want to leave it in as good shape as we found it. David if somebody wants to be a Supreme Court clerk, each justice gets four clerks, do you just send in a letter applying or how does that work . [laughter] jus. Ginsberg we get hundreds and hundreds of applications. Y best source for law clerks are other judges, other federal judges. Law professors tend to write glowing letters of ecommendation. Everyone is the best and the brightest student that ever graduated from this law school. [laughter] jus. Ginsberg but, my colleagues in other federal courts will tell me the straight story. Very often, i will get a call from another federal judge saying, i have a clerk this year who i think would be just right for you. Those are my best recommendations. David we have a few questions from people attending today. If you could change one thing about the constitution, what would it be and why . [laughter] david i guess you probably, if you were a founding father, founding mother [laughter] david what might you have put in the constitution that did not quite get in there . Jus. Ginsberg i would add an equal rights amendment. [applause] jus. Ginsberg i explain it this way. When i take out my pocket constitution to show my granddaughters, i can show them the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. But i cant point to anything that says women and men are persons of equal citizenship stature. Every constitution in the world written since the year 1950 has the equivalent of that statement men and women are persons equal in stature before the law. I would like my greatgrandchild to have a constitution that includes that statement, that this is a fundamental premise of our society, just the way freedom of thought and expression. David what gives you the most hope for the future . Jus. Ginsberg my granddaughters. [applause] jus. Ginsberg im very proud of my eldest granddaughter, who is lawyer. Cares a great deal about our country. And about its highest values. She and other young people like her, i think, will help us get back on track. [applause] david ok. What do you think is the biggest threat to our democracy . [laughter] jus. Ginsberg a public that doesnt care about preserving he rights we have. You know that great speech on liberty . He says if the fire dies in the hearts of people, there is no constitution and no judge that can restore it. My faith is in the spirit of liberty. David when you go to a restaurant these days, can you actually have dinner without a selfie request or people coming up for autographs . Is it possible for you to do that anymore . Jus. Ginsberg it is amazing. Im 86 and a half years old and Everyone Wants to take a picture with me. [laughter] [applause] David Justice ginsburg, i want to thank you very much for a very interesting conversation. [applause] avid thank you for your service to our country over 39 years. [applause] from the couldnt be prouders to the wait did we just winners. Everyone uses their phone differently. Thats why Xfinity Mobile lets you design your own data. Now you can share it between lines. Mix with unlimited, and switch it up at anytime so you only pay for what you need. Its a different kind of Wireless Network designed to save you money. Save up to 400 a year on your wireless bill. Plus get 250 back when you buy an eligible phone. Call, click, or visit a store today. Emily hes one of the closest confidants of the google cofounders. The leader of alphabets secretive x lab. He picked up the nickname astro in childhood, with no idea he would someday be working on making socalled moonshots a reality. Raised by parents he calls hyper intellectual hippies, one of his grandfathers won a nobel prize in economics. The other, some say should have won in physics for his work on the hydrogen bomb. Perhaps it is only fitting that astro teller is working on ideas that could change the world, or