Mr. Clinton thank you, thank you. Want to thank all of you. I tried to entertain Justice Ginsburg for a few moments before we came over here, telling herr stories of my adventures and misadventures in american politics, back when we viewed each other as threedimensional human beings and not cartoons. [applause] as is fairly had notwn now, i actually met Justice Ginsburg until that memorable sunday evening in 1993 when she came to see me the white house. I had already interviewed two other people and it immediately leaked to the press. I had a lot of young aides who work hard and were good people but if a reporter called them, they were more afraid to say i dont know than anything else, so i got a big kick out of it. I sneaked who is now one of the most famous people in the world into the white house and nobody knew. [laughter] had beenon i president for less than a year, and i already had a Supreme Court appointment to make. I wanted to do a good job. Judge ginsburg was one of three people still in the running. They were all excellent candidates. Reviewed the resumes, but also their life stories. Hillary and a lot of other people had already told me i needed to take a hard look at ruth bader ginsburg. They had never met, actually, but hillary had met her granddaughter because she went to a preschool event not long before i announced her appointment. She thought her granddaughter was a pretty good advertisement for her grandmother. , you need tome know about this person because you like people who have good life stories, whove actually lived what they say they believe. For those who havent seen the recent film about her remarkable life, a very short version. She grew up in brooklyn in a family of modest means, and thanks to her mothers relentless early encouragement, she attended Cornell University and then harvard law, where she and partnerusband marty through Cancer Treatment while raising a daughter and working toward a degree. When he took a job in new york, she left harvard. That was a big sacrifice. There were then 500 people at Harvard Law School, and she was one of nine women. [applause] mr. Clinton today, most students in law school are women. [applause] mr. Clinton after she graduated from law school, she went on to cofound the womens rights project at the aclu and began her career as a judge. Still, when the legal field was not particularly open to women. From the start of our first conversation in 1993, i got why so many people were hoping i would appoint her. She was both brilliant and had a good head on her shoulders. She was rigorous, but warmhearted. She had a great sense of humor and a sensible, achievable judicial philosophy. She also kept the moral compass and the mental toughness that guided her from humble beginnings. I was so engrossed with her story when we were sitting there, and i just kept peppering her with questions. I suddenly felt that i was really not interviewing somebody for the Supreme Court at all. I was just a guy talking to somebody that i really liked. And that i hoped would be a part of our future. I had once taught constitutional law, and i knew how much the Supreme Court mattered. Even to people who didnt know it, i knew that it affects all americans, sometimes very personally and deeply. I always thought a Supreme Court justice should have the heart, spirit, talent, common sense and wisdom to translate the hopes of ire American People, the legitimate desire for fair and equal treatment, and all the cases presented to it in an enduring body of constitutional law and still enable the American People to move forward. When i ran for president , i promised the American People that kind of justice. I think i kept that promise. [applause] mr. Clinton i appointed Justice Ginsburg for three reasons. First, she proved to be one of the nations best judges on the bench, progressive in outlook and judgment, fair and balanced in decisions. Second, she had a lifetime of pioneering work on behalf of women, and she had a truly historic record of achievement there. Before she was a judge, she argued six cases involving gender discrimination before the Supreme Court and won five of them. That is a better average than most people have. [applause] mr. Clinton finally, i thought she had the ability to build Common Ground in a country that was already becoming increasingly polarized. To find a way whenever possible for the court to be an instrument of our common unity in their to the constitution. She had already proved herself to be a healer. Time and again, her moral imagination had cooled the fires ander colleagues discord insured that jurists kept their right to dissent without entangling the court in endless animosities. In short, i liked her and i believed in her. I just knew that she was the right person for the court, but i have to say, in the last 26 years, she has far exceeded even my expectations. [applause] mr. Clinton she has written landmark opinions advancing gender equality, marriage equality, the rights of people with disabilities, the rights of immigrants. [applause] mr. Clinton and she is almost as wellknown for her amazing dissenting opinions. [applause] mr. Clinton in every case, she offers an alternative vision about how america ought to work for everybody, how it ought to be. How votes ought to be counted, not discarded. How districts should be fair. [applause] mr. Clinton i could go on and on. There are seven or eight of those dissents that i just read every now and then when i am bored and want to be reminded about why i still believe in america and the constitution. [applause] mr. Clinton but i have to say this. One thing i did not see coming when i nominated her is her ascendance to popculture icon. [laughter] mr. Clinton her workout routine is marveled at. [laughter] mr. Clinton hilary got me a book, the rbg workout, and said, i bet you cant do it. I said, oh yeah, i am just a kid. Just 73. I can do this. [laughter] mr. Clinton i had to work out on my weight machine and do other stuff for two months before i could complete her workout. [laughter] [applause] is clinton regularly, she portrayed on saturday night live delivering her blistering ginsburns. Now you can see her image and her quotes on tshirts, tote bags, and coffee mugs the world over. You could become resentful of such a person. [laughter] mr. Clinton but you are not. We like her because she seems so totally on the level. In a world hungry for people who arent trying to con you, who are on the level. [applause] mr. Clinton shes spent a lifetime trying to give other people from the get go the opportunities she spent her early life struggling to reach. In one of her law review articles, she wrote, the greatest figures of the american judiciary have been independent thinking individuals with open, but not empty, minds. Individuals willing to listen and learn. They have exhibited a readiness to reexamine their own premises, liberal or conservative, as thoroughly as those of others. She has lived her life doing that. And somehow, she has also found the time not only to attend just about every opera ever produced, and actually appear on stage in some of them as well. Not very long ago, i had the honor of going to the university of virginia to a special symposium on the presidency, and i said it seems to me you could define the presidency of everyone who served by how they answered two questions connected to the oath of office. You have to promise to protect and uphold the constitution and those two questions can be found in the very first phrase of the prologue. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more Perfect Union. The same could be said of Supreme Court justices. The two questions are who is in we the people, and what does a more Perfect Union mean . I believe for ruth bader ginsburg, we the people is all of us. [applause] mr. Clinton and i believe that in her more Perfect Union, all of us, on equal terms, will be at home. [applause] mr. Clinton shes going to be interviewed tonight by nprs remarkable Legal Affairs correspondent, and i think weve reached the stage in her life where i can admit without , one of my career favorite journalists. Mr. Clinton favorite journalists. [laughter] mr. Clinton nina totenberg. [applause] mr. Clinton heres the last thing i want to say, and i am confident i speak for everyone in this vast arena. Here pointed her , and one person, senator david prior, voted for her, but all of us hope she will stay on that court forever. [cheers and applause] mr. Clinton ladies and gentlemen, Justice Ginsburg and nina totenberg. [applause] [cheers] ms. Totenberg thank you, thank you. Everyone please be seated. Please be seated. Rbg rbg rbg [laughter] ms. Totenberg thank you all for coming. I think Justice Ginsburg and i have never, ever appeared before and already ins appeared before an audience this large before. [cheers and applause] and i understand that normally, this is recently the worldwide wrestling entertainment [laughter] ms. Totenberg we are not going to wrestle each other. We are going to try to entertain you bit and entertain you a bit and inform you. You have heard president clinton describing why he picked Justice Ginsburg, but i think i should start this interview asking you about that interview. So let me set the stage. The year is 1993. The new president is flirting with all manner of potential Supreme Court nominations, and the names keep getting leaked to the likes of me. [laughter] ms. Totenberg and behind the scenes, the inevitable the inimitable Martin Ginsburg is doing everything in his power to promote his tiny but auspicious wife, and finally, you get a call from the white house counsel, and it is a call that are in something of a fashion dilemma. Tell us about how you got the call that day calling you to the white house and what your fashion dilemma was. Justice ginsburg i was called on a saturday in vermont, where i was to attend a wedding. Bernie nussbaum said the president wants to meet you. Please come out to d. C. And i said, well, ive come all this way to attend a wedding. Can i come tomorrow morning . [laughter] and he said, fine. Youll go right from the airport to the white house. And i said, but ill be wearing my traveling clothes. Well, that is ok. Because the president would be just coming off the golf course. [laughter] so i arrive in my plainclothes, and in comes a very handsome president wearing his sunday best, because he had just come from church. [laughter] ms. Totenberg so what was the conversation with the president like . What kinds of things did he ask . And did you have a good time, or were you in interview agony . Were you in interview agony . Justice ginsburg i didnt hear that did you have a good time, or were you in interview agony . Justice ginsburg i had a wonderful time. It was very easy to talk to the president. We talked about constitutional law. After all, he was a constitutional law professor. We talked about family. We talked about many things. And i have had the experience with some men that they have certain discomfort talking to a woman. That was not that way with president clinton. [laughter] [applause] ms. Totenberg i was told after that interview by a number of white house aides that he just fell for you, hook, line and sinker. When we were talking, he said in five minutes, i had just fallen for her hook line and sinker. [laughter] when did you get the word, do i recall that you got a call from Bernie Nussbaum when you were in the bathtub or Something Like that, that night . Justice ginsburg [laughter] it was rather late on sunday night, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was absolutely on cloud nine. And then the president said, and tomorrow morning, we will have a little ceremony in the rose garden and we would like you to make a few remarks. So i had to come down from the cloud [laughter] sit at my writing table. I liked the remarks. It was the only time in that entire episode one there was no time for white house handlers to go over what i was going to say. [laughter] it was my own words unedited. Ms. Totenberg you then went into a confirmation process. I think in the end you got i am not sure about this i think there were only Justice Ginsburg 963. Ms. Totenberg 963. [laughter] [cheers and applause] ms. Totenberg republicans today often cite the ginsberg rule. When i go back and read the transcripts, i read about what your rule was, but it strikes me that in light of modern confirmation hearings, nominees are considerably less responsive, of all political stripes, not just republican nominees. You actually answered questions about abortion and the death penalty, and all kinds of things. Justice ginsburg the ginsburg rule was, please do not ask a question that may come before the court, because then, i would have to disqualify myself if i gave you an answer. A judge is not supposed to react off the top of her head when a question is presented to us. We read first of all the decisions that were written by the courts below, the trial court, court of appeals, and then we read the briefs that are anything but brief. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg filed by the lawyers, and we read the relevant precedent. So, to give an answer to a question without the benefit of all that reading and briefing is not what a judge should do. Still, there was a lot out there that i could be asked about, because i was 17 years a law teacher, 13 years a judge in a court of appeals, so i had written hundreds of opinions, many articles, and anything that i had already written was fair game. Ms. Totenberg so, you arrive at the court, you are the second woman. Justice Sandra Oconnor had been there for 12 years without you. What advice did she give you . Justice ginsburg she told me just enough to enable me to navigate those early weeks. She didnt douse me with a bucket full of information. Just enough to get by. She was, i think, very pleased at the change the court made when i was appointed. Justice oconnor was the lone woman on the court for 12 years. In our robing room, there was a bathroom, and it says men. For Justice Oconnor, when she the need arose, she had to go all the way back to her chamber. When i came onboard, they rushed a renovation. They created a womens bathroom equal in size to the mens. [applause] [laughter] ms. Totenberg your first opinion assigned to you was not quite what you expected, and you went to her. Justice ginsburg yes. The legend is that the new justice, the junior justice will get a single issue case in which the court is unanimous. So chief Justice Rehnquist gave me as my first assignment, a miserable, horrific case. Here was an Employee Retirement and security act, one of the most complex statutes congress ever wrote. The court was not unanimous. It was divided 63, and Justice Oconnor was on the other side, she was one of the three. So i came to her, and i said, sandra, you are not supposed to do that to me. [laughter] her response, this is typical of Justice Oconnor, she said, you roof, you just do it you just do it get your opinion draft in circulation before he makes the next set of assignments, otherwise you will risk getting another miserable case. [laughter] ms. Totenberg i could never understand why lawyers that appeared before the court and not people who were not accustomed to the court, but some very seasoned lawyers would get these two women mixed up. Sandra day oconnor was about 57 or 58. You claim to be over five feet tall. [laughter] she was a western ranch girl with a western twang. You were a new yorker, a brooklyn girl. I dont know that it was a brooklyn twang, but you are clearly an easterner. She didnt wear the hair the way you do and still people kept calling you Justice Oconnor and her, Justice Ginsburg. Why . Justice ginsburg much more often, i was called Justice Oconnor. The lawyers had learned there was a woman on the court and her name was Justice Oconnor. So when they heard a womans voice, it had to be Justice Oconnor. She would sometimes respond, i am jtice oconnor, she is Justice Ginsburg. There was a lot of attention paid to the two of us and how we interacted. One day, i think it was in usa today, there was a headline. The headline was, rude ruth interrupts sandra. [laughter] sandra had asked a question in argument, i thought she was finished, and she said, just a minute, i have followup questions. I apologized to her and she said, ruth, dont give it another thought, the guys do it to each other all the time. [laughter] ms. Totenberg there even was a tshirt presented to the two of you at the time, i think by some group of women from radcliffe, and one side said i am sandra, not ruth . Justice ginsburg it was the National Association of women judges. They had a reception for the two of us. And they gave her a tshirt that said, i am sandra, not ruth. And mine, i am ruth, not sandra. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg if we could fastforward, i could tell you, that doesnt happen anymore now that we are three. [cheers and applause] ms. Totenberg what kind of a difference does it make to have three . Justice ginsburg one is the public perception. We have a 10minute line, often schoolchildren coming in and out of the court, and if they see three women, because of my seniority, i sit next to the chief, Justice Sotomayor is on one side, Justice Kagan on the the other, we are one third of the court, we are all over the bench and as you will affirm, my sisters in law are not shrinking violets. [laughter] they are very active in the colloquy that goes on in the oral arguments. When Justice Scalia with this with us, there was kind of a competition between Justice Sotomayor and Justice Scalia, which one would ask the most questions in oral argument. [laughter] ms. Totenberg you were the lone woman justice after Justice Oconnor retired. From 2006 until pretty near the end of 2009. And i have the sense that you were not a very happy camper at that time. Justice ginsburg it was a lonely position. Viewing the court, there was something wrong with the picture. The public would see these eight rather wellfed men coming on the bench [laughter] Justice Ginsburg and then there was this rather small woman. Ms. Totenberg and did you find that even there on occasion, when you were just one, did you occasionally see that phenomenon of, you Say Something and nothing happens, and then 10 minutes later or five minutes later, one of your brethren says the same thing, and everybody , oh, thats a very good idea. Justice ginsburg that happened at conference more than once. When i would make a comment, no reaction. Then one of my male colleagues would say basically the same thing and people would react. Thats a good idea. Lets discuss it. Its a habit that had developed that you dont expect very much from a woman, so you kind of tune out when she speaks. But you listen when a male speaks. Now, i can tell you that that experience, which i had as a member of a law faculty, as a member of a court of appeals, now that i have two sisters in law, it doesnt happen. [cheers and applause] o ms. Totenberg i am going to pause and asking the question on peoples minds. You have had a lot of serious threats to your health this year. You were operated on for lung cancer in december, you have just completed three weeks of radiation treatment for an additional cancer. So, how are you feeling, and excuse me, i am really thrilled that we are here, but why are we here . [laughter] ms. Totenberg you finished radiation treatment at the end of august. Justice ginsburg yes. [laughter] august 23 was the last session. But i had promised the Clinton Library that i would be here, and i just was not going to [cheers and applause] Justice Ginsburg thank you. Thank you. And i pleased to say that i am am feeling very good tonight. [applause] ms. Totenberg how do you keep going . I mean, you have i took a ton of briefs with me on the plane here, d i managed about an hour and a half, and then i was ready for a break. You did this when you are sometimes feeling really rotten in the last year. How do you keep going . Justice ginsburg i think my work is what saved me, because instead of dwelling on my physical discomfort, if i have an opinion to write, or i have a brief to read, i know i have just got to get it done, and so, i have to get over it. This is another instance where i got very good advice from Justice Oconnor. Justice oconnor had a mastectomy and she was on the bench nine days after her surgery. She told me in my first cancer bout with Colorectal Cancer ruth, you schedule your chemotherapy for a friday, then you can get over it saturday and sunday and be back in court on monday. [laughter] [applause] ms. Totenberg but you have done this really all of your life. Cancer is not a stranger to you. Your mother died the day before your graduation. Your husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer when you were both at Harvard Law School and you had an 18 month or twoyearold child at the same time, and you were on law review i think i often get, just to describe what a day in your life that awful year was like before marty survived and beat the odds. Justice ginsburg we took it day by day. We always believed that we would prevail. That we would beat the cancer. It was not an easy time. After he had surgery, he had massive radiation, because there was no chemotherapy in those days. So, he would come home, be sick, go to sleep, get up about 12 00, midnight, and whatever he ate for the day, he would eat then, then he would dictate a paper to me. I had note takers for all of his classes. My routine was, i would go to my classes in the morning, the hospital in the afternoon, come home, play with my daughter who was then three years old. Put her to bed. After dinner, which was at midnight, i would then go back to the books and prepare for the next day. So i was getting along on two hours of sleep a night. For weeks on end. But we always had a positive attitude that we would live. [applause] ms. Totenberg for your last year of law school, because marty was a year ahead of you, you moved to new york to be with him for his job, you graduated tied for first in your class at columbia law school. But you couldnt get a job. Oconnor used to talk about how lucky that was in hindsight, that you couldnt get jobs when you graduated at the tops of your respective classes. Justice ginsburg well, it is an example of how something that may seem dreadful, very bad luck, turns out to be the most fortunate thing that ever happened to you. Justice oconnor put it this way, she said, suppose we had graduated from law school at a time when there was no discrimination, when women were welcomed at the bar, what would we be today . We would be retired partners from some large law firm. But that route was an open to was not open to us, so we had to find another path, and that path led us to become Supreme Court justices. [cheers and applause] ms. Totenberg you were recommended for many clerkships, Supreme Court clerkships, court of appeal clerkships and nobody would interview you, because those days, they were all men. You finally did get a clerkship back then thanks to the rather assertive intervention of one of your professors, who basically said to your judge, the judge who hired you, if you take her and it doesnt work out, i have a guy who i will send to you, he is at a law firm now, but if you dont, i will never send you another columbia grad. So, you went to work for judge palmieri for two years, despite the fact that you had two strikes against you where you were not only a woman, you were a mother. But one of the charming stories of this period of your life is that one of the judges would who turned you down, and was not interested in new, was judge learned hand, a very famous, famous judge, and he turned you down because he said he couldnt swear in front of you. [laughter] ms. Totenberg so you pick up the story from there. Justice ginsburg judge leonard hand lived one block away from the judge for home i clerked, judge judge palmieri. I clerked,e for whom judge palmieri. Judge palmieri often drove him home. When i was finished in time, i would ride uptown with them, sitting in the backseat. And this great jurist would say anything that came into his head. Words that my mother never taught me. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg and i asked him, you say you will not consider me as a clerk because you would have to censor your speech, and yet in this car, i dont seem to inhibit you at all. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg and his response was, young lady, i am not looking at you. [laughter] ms. Totenberg for those of you who have not seen rbg, or the biopic, on the basis of sex, i recommend both. They provide a pretty good view career prior to becoming a judge and then later a Supreme Court justice. What used to strike me when i covered your arguments, was how you had tailored your arguments. You had an allmale Supreme Court, and you tailored your gender discrimination cases, the arguments in those cases, to appeal to different justices in different ways. And you often had male plaintiffs. And one of those male plaintiffs was stephen wiesenthal, whose wife died in childbirth, and he was denied Social Security benefits for his remaining child who survived, even though his wife was the principal breadwinner. And you won, but there were basically three arguments that succeeded. I want you to talk about how each group of justices saw it. Justice ginsburg first, let me tell the audience how stephen wiesenthal came to my attention. He had written a letter to the editor to his local paper in edison, new jersey, and he said, i have been hearing a lot these days about womens lib. Let me tell you my story. My wife died of an embolism just after our son was born. And i knew that there were benefits available to us all parent sole surviving who had a young child to take care of. So i went to the Social Security benefits,claim those and i was told, we are very sorry, mr. Wiesenthal, these are mothers benefits, they are not available to fathers. So it was obvious to me that although the plaintiff was a man, the discrimination was against the woman as wage rner. She paid the same Social Security taxes the men would pay, but her contributions did not net for her family the same protection. So i think it was the dominant view of the court that this is really discrimination against the woman as wage earner. A few of the justices said, it is discrimination against the the male as parent. He doesnt have the option to personally care for his child. In Social Security, you could earn a certain amount and still get the same Social Security benefit. If you earned over the limit, the benefits would be reduced dollar by dollar. I can do parttime work, or a n a certain amount, and keep those benefits. So some of the justices said, it is obvious, this is discrimination against the male as parent, he has no choice but to work fulltime. He doesnt have the option to care personally for his newborn. And then, there was one who later became my chief, thenJustice Rehnquist who said, it is totally arbitrary from the point of view of the baby. Why should the baby have the opportunity for the care of a sole surviving parent only if that parent is female and not if the parent is male . So it was such a wonderful illustration of how genderbased discrimination hurts everyone hurts women, hurts men, and so children. [applause] ms. Totenberg there was a case you had that you wanted to take to the Supreme Court but you couldnt, because the case involving the army or air force pregnant woman. Justice ginsburg yes. The susan struck case. I had hoped that that would be the first reproductive choice case that the court would hear. In the case of rose in 1971, struck captain struck was serving in the air force, she was serving abroad when she became pregnant. Pregnancy in those days was mandatory grounds for discharge. The base commander said to her, 1971, two years before roe v. Wade, you can have an abortion on base. We provide those for women in service and wives of men and service. And if you do, you can remain in the air force. But if you choose to go through the pregnancy, you are discharged. No exceptions. Susan struck said, i am a roman catholic, and i cannot have an abortion. But i made arrangements to have the child adopted at birth. I will cost the taxpayers cumulated leave time for they birth. And she said, you know, here we are at the air force base where some of my male colleagues get hooked on alcohol or drugs. And you dont mandate their discharge. If they report themselves, they can be in a Rehabilitation Program and you will keep them much longer than the time i am going to take off for the birth. It doesnt make any sense. Pregnancy is a mandatory ground for discharge. And that was that. Susan struck brought her case into Federal District court. She lost. By the way, she was very well represented. So she got a stay of her discharge every month, so she was always in, fighting to stay in, not out trying to get back in. Anyway, then it went to the court of appeals. She lost again, but there was a very good dissenting opinion. Then i wrote a petition to the Supreme Court to hear her case. The Supreme Court said yes, we ll take it. The solicitor general at the time, who had been dean of the law school i first attended, he asked to have a meeting with the top military people and said, this case has lost potential for the government. You should waive captain strucks discharge and then change the rule respectively so prospectively so that pregnancy is no longer an automatic discharge. [applause] Justice Ginsburg and the air force did, and then immediately, the government moved to have the case returned to the court of appeals for determination whether it was moot, because she got all the relief she was seeking. She remained an air force officer. So i called captain struck and said, is there anything you are missing so we can claim the case is still alive . My she said, no, i have all pay and allowances, so there is nothing there. But, there is one thing. This conversation is going on now in 1972. She said, all my life, i have dreamed of becoming a pilot. But the air force does not give Flight Training to women. Then we laughed, because we knew, 1972, it was much too early. It was still an impossible dream to win that case. The difference between then and now is one of the reasons why i am optimistic about the future. Today, it would be unthinkable to deny Flight Training to women. [applause] ms. Totenberg Justice Ginsburg, this may be a little i think it is important to talk about. The notion of originalism versus a living constitution. It majority of the Current Court believes, to one degree or another, in the notion that judges should interpret the constitution as it was meant by the Founding Fathers when it was written in the late 1700s. That the original intent is what matters, and the text as it was written and what it was intended. You and most of the justices you have served with, at least until now, have a somewhat different take. That the constitution was written to be elastic enough , nowretirednnedy put it, to accommodate changes in society. Can you talk about that . Justice ginsburg president clinton said it so well in his introduction. A constitution begins with the words, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more Perfect Union. Think of how things work in 1787. Who were we the people . Certainly not people held in human bondage. Because the original constitution preserved slavery. [applause] Justice Ginsburg and certainly not women, whatever their color. [applause] Justice Ginsburg and not even men who owned no property. So it was rather an elite group, we the people here . But i think the genius of our constitution is as Thurgood Marshall said. He says he does not celebrate the original constitution, but he does celebrate what the constitution has become well well over two centuries. Of wet is, the concept the people, has become ever more inclusive. So people who were left out at the beginning, slaves, women, men without property, native americans were not part of we the people. [applause] Justice Ginsburg so all of the people are now a part of the political constituency. And we are certainly a more Perfect Union as a result of that. [applause] Justice Ginsburg the original constitution preserved the slave trade until 1808. One of the provisions is an said, ifment, it someone held as a slave escapes into a free state and the master asks to get the slave back, the slave must be returned to the master. That fugitive slave clause is in article four of the constitution, where you can still read it today. But there is a star next to it saying, changed by the 14th amendment, it says. [applause] ms. Totenberg you know, the first time i met Justice Ginsburg, it was by phone. And we were both quite young women, compared to now. I was a brandnew Supreme Court reporter reading about the first case claiming that discrimination against women was a violation of the 14th amendment. The first case in the Supreme Court, that was ultimately the case the court first said that it was a violation of the 14th amendment. I didnt understand it, because i said, you know, the 14th amendment was enacted to cover slaves and africanamericans, and it doesnt say anything about women. And i called you up, and you gave me an hourlong lecture. But i am going to ask you for a 62nd version. 60second version. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg you said, i thought you said the 14th amendment was about race. Said, yes, it certainly is about race. But the 14th amendment reads, denyhall any state the person equal protection under the law. [cheers and applause] Justice Ginsburg the first time the Supreme Court heard such an argument was in the 1870s. A woman wanted to vote, and she said she was stopped at the polls, and she said, she read ,he constitution and it said nor shall any state deny any person equal protection of the law. And the courts response to her was, you are indeed a person, and you are a citizen of the United States, but so too our children, and no one would suggest that children should have the right to vote. The court has come along way since then. [cheers and applause] Justice Ginsburg the turning point case that you asked me about was called reed v. Reed. It was about sally reed, and she had a great tragedy in her life. She had a son, she and her husband divorced. When the boy was young, the legal term is often and are years, sally was the legal term is of tender years. Sally was appointed custodian of the child. When he reached his teens, the father went to the family court and said, now he needs to be prepared for a mans world, so i should be the custodian. Sally thought that would not be good for her son, to live in his fathers home. But she lost. Sadly, she turned out to be right. The boy was sorely depressed, and one day he took out one of his fathers many guns and committed suicide. So sally wanted to be appointed administrator of his estate and take care of whatever he left behind, which was russias little a small bank account, a guitar, some records, that was about it. She applied. Her former husband applied two weeks later. In the Probate Court said to lawy, i am sorry, but the gives me no choice. It reads this is the law of the state of idaho as between persons equally entitled to administer a deceaseds estate, equally entitled, the male must be preferred to female. The thing about sally, she was an everyday woman and made her living caring for elderly or disabled people in her home. But she thought an injustice had been done to her. And she also believed that our ghtal system would ri that wrong. So on her own dime, she took the case through three levels of the idaho court and then i got involved and wrote the brief for her Supreme Court case. She prevailed with a unanimous decision. It was the first time, the case was decided in november, 1971, the first time in history the Supreme Court ever had a genderbased classification on the constitution. [applause] Justice Ginsburg after that precedent, we were on a roll. Case after case, challenging genderbased classifications. Ms. Totenberg and you can see on the basis of sex and andstand more, and rbg understand more. Speakingf children for a moment, i want to lighten things up before i close with conversation about your late great friend Justice Scalia, and your relationship with him. But first, can i tel get used to tell the story of the elevator speech . Justice ginsburg my son must have been 11. My son was a lively child. I called him lively. But his teachers called him hyperactive. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg his school had a handoperated elevator. The operator went out to smoke a cigarette, and one of my sons classmates dared him to take the kindergartners from the ground floor up to the top floor. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg my son did that, and he was greeted by three stone faces, the room teacher, the school principal, the school psychologist. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg and i was called. I was getting calls about once a month to come down to the school to hear about my sons latest escapades. Well, one day i was in my office at at columbia law school, feeling particularly weary because i had stayed up all night writing a brief. And i said to the caller, this child has two parents. Please alternate the calls. [laughter] [cheers and applause] Justice Ginsburg it is his fathers turn. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg so marty, my husband, went down to the school and was told your son stole the , elevator. My husband, who had a wonderful said, hmm, so he stole the elevator, how far did he take it . I suspect the school was very hesitant to take a man away from his work. There was no quick change to my sons behavior, but the calls came barely once each term because they had to think twice before calling a man away from his work. [laughter] ms. Totenberg you and the late sparice scalia used to incessantly about this subject of originalism versus a living constitution, and textualism. But you were great friends for many decades. You served on the same court of appeals. You had known each other at the university of chicago briefly. Let me start with the personal friendship. People seem always so surprised that Justice Scalia, this iconic conservative, and Justice Ginsburg, this iconic feminist, were such good friends. Really lovedat you him. So, what did you love about him . Justice ginsburg he had a marvelous sense of humor. When we were on the court of appeals together the court of appeals has three judges he would sit next to me and whisper something during the argument that absolutely cracked me up. I had to avoid bursting out into hysterical laughter. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg one thing we have in common, we both work very hard on our opinions. Thatied to write them so at least judges and other lawyers and hopefully the public could understand what we were saying. Justice scalia was the son of a latin professor at brooklyn college, and his mother was a gradeschool teacher. He was an expert. He would sometimes come to my chambers and say, ruth, you made a grammatical error. [laughter] i dont want to embarrass you by sending you a note that would be circulated to our colleagues. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg i would call him and say, this opinion is so strident, you will not be as persuasive as you would be if you would tone it down. He never, never took that advice. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg we also, we really cared about family, we spent every new years together. Manywo couples, plus the he had many more children than i did whatever children wanted to come along. And Justice Scalia and i shared a passion for opera. So we were extras at a couple of opera performances. At the Washington National opera. [laughter] ms. Totenberg am i making this up, or did you sit on his lap on one of those . Justice ginsburg the soprano sat on his lap. [laughter] she knew he was going to end lap, but whats she didnt know was that he was going to throw her all around and give her a big kiss. [laughter] ms. Totenberg and you traveled together. There is a funny picture in your chambers of the two of you. Justice ginsburg we traveled to india for a judicial exchange. The two of us broke away from the pack for a couple of days n. D we went to rajasta there was a famous picture where in the palace, it was the palace of the last maharajah. So there was a very elegant elephant, beautifullypainted elephant, and we went taking a ride on the elephant, and i was sitting in the back, and scalia is in the front. And feminist friends said, what are you doing sitting in the back of the elephant . And i explained, it had to do with the distribution of weight. [laughter] [applause] Justice Ginsburg there is an opera, as you would expect, a comic opera about the two of us. It is called scaliaginsburg, again, why is scalia first . Because in our place, seniority really counts, and he was appointed some years before i was. So the opera tries to portray the difference between us. And scalias opening aria is a rage aria. Theoes like this justices are lying. How can they possibly spot this . The constitution says absolutely nothing about this. Then, i answer, dear Justice Scalia ms. Totenberg oh, but you come in through a Glass Ceiling. Justice ginsburg oh, that is later. Ms. Totenberg thats later . I am sorry. I screwed up the story. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg there are different ways we approach the legal text. I said, you are searching for a bright line solution to problems that dont have easy answers, but the great thing about our constitution is that like our society, it can evolve. And then theres kind of a jazz iff with it, let it grow, let it grow. [laughter] so the song is roughly based on the magic flute. Justice scalia is locked in a darkroom being punished for excessive dissenting. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg that is when i enter through a Glass Ceiling to help him pass the test he needs to pass to get out of the darkroom. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg then a character, who is borrowed from don giovanni, is appalled. She says, why would you want to help him . He is your enemy. And i explained he is not my , enemy, he is my dear friend. Sing an we wonderful duet titled we are different, we are one. Different in our approach to reading a legal text, but one in our reverence for the constitution and for the institution we serve. [applause] ms. Totenberg Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg, dear notorious one, we thank you for a wonderful evening. [cheers and applause] ms. Totenberg i think there are some closing remarks, and everybody is coming up here extremely slowly. [laughter] ms. Totenberg we have to tap dance until they get here. [laughter] this has been a spectacular program, i hope you will help me thank our host, president clinton. [applause] come on up here. Thank you. Thank you, president clinton, for putting the Clinton Center in arkansas so we can have programs like this. Do you agree . [applause] please help me thank our terrific moderator nina , totenberg. [applause] and, of course, the remarkable, the notorious r. B. G. , Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. [applause] [cheers and applause] on behalf clinton foundation, the Clinton School of public service, thanks to all of you who are here and who watched us online. And we hope to see you at the clinton president ial center very soon. Good night. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy, visit ncicap. Org] announcer a look at our live coverage for wednesday. On cspan at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, a group of state Department Officials join a discussion on public diplomacy. At 11 45 a. M. , current and former pentagon officials share their views on cyber defense, artificial intelligence, and the role of space in international security. Eastern,2 at 7 a. M. British Prime MinisterBorris Johnson participates in his first Prime Ministers questions session as brexit negotiations continue. At 9 30 a. M. , the u. S. China Economic Security review Commission Holds a hearing on the relationship between the United States and china. On cspan3, it is the 23rd annual Development Bank of latin america conference in washington, d. C. , on issues related to the americas. This morning on washington journal, michael greenberger, director for the center of health and Homeland Security at the university of maryland discusses local, state and federal disaster response. The, the editor of washington examiner, philip klein, discusses the Republican Party and campaign 2020. At 9 30 a. M. , a lawyer for the immigrant children in the floras