Whether you could do it all, and your fatherinlaw, martys father, was actually. You could tell the story better than i could. Tremendously supportive always. He said, ruth, if you dont want to go to law school, you have the best reason in the world and no one will think the less of you. But if you really want to go to law school and become a lawyer, well, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and you will find a way. That advice has stood me in good stead my entire life. The question is do i want this enough. If the answer is yes, i find a way. [ spectators murmur ] when you think about your life as a new yorker up until the time you went to washington, are there particular artists or political leaders or activists that influenced your thinking or who you are over the course of time . Well. The writers i think every girl of my age read and loved a tree grows in brooklyn. Mmhmm. Then there was that kind of risque, nastyboy book, j. D. Salingers catcher in the rye. [ laughter ] and another person that i found inspiring was eleanor roosevelt, who wrote a column in the brooklyn eagle, my day. It was syndicated, and it appeared regularly in the brooklyn eagle. An artist who inspired me i mentioned dean dixon. Im just reading his biography now. Its a conductor another conductor has finally written it. It deserves he deserves a biography. But he was a person who certainly changed my life, introducing me to such wonderful music. And what about artists . Mean your taste in artwork is. I dont know that i would call it avantgarde but. Compared to what . Compared to what my colleagues have on their walls . Yes, compared to what your colleagues have on their walls, for sure. [ laughter ] for sure. I mean, the justices of the Supreme Court are allowed to pick artwork from the smithsonian thats not in the main exhibit halls and to hang it on their walls. Two from the National Gallery and five from the museum of american art, which is a smithsonian museum. So, whats on your walls . So, i have two early rothkos from the National Gallery. And then i have five from the museum of american art, including two josef albers. The museum of american art has something called the frost collection. These are painters in the unit states in the depression, running from roughly 1931, 32 to 1945. So, youve told us what your first opera was and how you got introduced into opera. Now, would you describe how you introduced your daughter jane to opera and what happened . In the wrong way at first. She was 4 years old. [ laughter ] i took her to the amato opera. It was an amateur Opera Company in manhattan. It was an abbreviated version of trovatore. When the soprano began singing, this small child stood up and screamed at the top of her lungs because thats what the soprano sounded like to her. [ laughter ] so i ushered her out of there quickly and decided it was a little premature. [ laughter ] so we waited until she was 8, and we chose cosi fan tutte at the met. It was an english translation. Oh, good. [ laughs ] and we played the recordings for months before the great evening. I sat down with the libretto with her, and by the time she came to the performance, she knew most of the words. We sat in the first row of the Family Circle so she wouldnt have any heads to look over. We got her a velvet jumper, patentleather shoes, and it worked. [ laughter ] there is a new movie called on the basis of sex, and its about your first genderdiscrimination case. And when i was at the screening, watching you, in the course of this movie, get turned down by one law firm after another, big, small, and medium in new york city, i couldnt help but wonder what ur career would have been like if just one of those law firms had actually hired you. I know what it would have been like. Its as Justice Sandra day oconnor said. She was a few years ahead of me in law school. She was very high in her class at stanford. No one would offer her a job as a lawyer. So she volunteered her Services Free to a county attorney and said, ill work for you for four months. If, at the end of that period, you think im worth it, you can put me on the payroll. Thats how she got her first job in the law. But she said, ruth, you know, if we had gone to a large law firm, you know where we would be today . Today we would be retired partners. [ laughter ] and because that opportunity wasnt open to us, look where we ended up. [ laughter, applause ] so, lets talk for a few minutes about your early professional life. I think most people probably dont kn that you learned swedish so you could be the Research Assistant for who . And why . It was the Columbia Law School project on international procedure. Part of that project was to do studies of European Legal systems. So there was one book about the italian legal system, another the french. And those were well underway when they decided to do sweden because sweden had adopted a new code of procedure in which they tried to incorporate what they saw as the best of the angloamerican system. So it had been in operation long enough to see how it was working out. So i spent a lot of time in sweden in 62 and 63 on that adventure. And you had to learn swedish. Yes, well, i can read old swedish. I can read the swedish law codes [laughs] better than a modern novel. [ laughs ] so, you were first in your class at harvard law school. No, i was not. Well, you never graduated from harvard law school, but when you left, you were first in your class. I would say i was about fifth or sixth at harvard. And you were on the law review and then tied, i guess, for first in your class when you graduated from columbia. And if you all will go see on the basis of sex, you will learn all about all of this. And you were recommended for a Supreme Court clerkship, i thk, with justice frankfurter, who didnt even give you an interview. You finally did get a clerkship with the help of one of your professors, jerry gunther, with a. Well, you tell us the story. Its a fascinating tale. Professor gunther was in charge of getting clerkships for columbia law students. And he vowed he would find a place for me. I think he called every judge in the Southern District of new york and the Eastern District of new york, all of the Second Circuit judges, and there were no bidders. So he called back one of them who was a Columbia College and law school graduate, judge edmund l. Palmieri. And palmieri said, her record is fine, but she has a 4yearold daughter, and sometimes we have to work on saturday, even on a sunday. So gunthers response was, give her a chance. And if she doesnt work out, theres a young man in her class who is going to a downtown firm, and he will jump in and take over. So that was the carrot. There was also a stick, and the stick was, and if you dont give her a chance, i will never recommend another columbia law student to you. It worked out. It worked out very well. [ laughter ] for women of my generation, getting the first job was the big hurdle. The woman who got the first job generally did at least as well as the men, so the second job was not the same hurdle. Mm. Theres another story that you tell, one of my favorites, about the pressures placed on women in the workplace then as now, to some extent and it involves your sometimeserrant son james, whose daughter mimi is at nyu now. And is in this audience. And is in the audience tonight. But james was not the most behaviorally perfect child. Lets put it that way. [ laughter ] thats a euphemism. I called him lively. His teachers called him hyperactive. [ laughs ] so, you used to get calls frequently. Yes. At least once a month come down to the school and let us tell you about your sons latest escapade. [ laughter ] well, one day, i was in my office at columbia and feeling particularly weary because id been up all night writing a brief. I said, this child has two parents. Please alternate calls. [ laughter, applause ] and its his fathers turn. So marty was called. He went down to the school. What did james do . Your son stole the elevator. It was one of these handheld elevators and the operator had gone out for a smoke, and james was dared by one of his classmates to take the kindergarten class up to the top floor. [ laughter ] got to the top floor and was greeted by three stone faces. So when marty was confronted with this, your son stole the elevator, his response was, how far could he take it . [ laughter ] so i dont know if it was martys sense of humor or the reluctance of the school to take a man away from his work there was no quick change in my sons behavior, but i got called barely once a semester. [ laughter ] people who know you well see you as a special kind of feminist a little shy and retiring on the one hand and unyielding on the other. And i would note here for the record that, although you were a star professor at rutgers, you joined an equalpay lawsuit against the school while you were there. And when you were a professor at columbia, you joined another sexdiscrimination class action, not to mention the fact that you weighed in when t university tried to lay off 25 maids in order to save money but not one janitor. So my question is how did you take on all of these Employers Without totally alienating them . At rutgers, there was a very kindly dean. I was engaged in 1963, the very year the equal pay act passed. But the message hadnt gotten home. So this kindly dean said, you will have to take a substantial cut in salary. I said, i expect that. Rutgers is a state university. But when he told me how much, i asked, well, what do you pay so and so, a man who had been out of law school about the same amount of time. He said, ruth, he has a wife and two children to support and your husband has a goodpaying job in new york. Thats the way it was. Well, the women at rutgersnewark brought an equalpay claim. It settled finally in 1969, and the lowest raise that any woman got was 6,000, which in those days. Was a lot of money. Yes. A very lot of money. Then at columbia, with the maids janitor controversy so, columbia laid off 25 maids many of them had been working there for years and years and not a single janitor. A feminist friend came to me and said, youre brand new at Columbia Law School. This is what columbia did. What are you going to do about it . So i went to the Vice President in charge of business and told him that columbia was violating title vii. And he said, dear, we have very good council, and would you like a cup of tea . [ laughter ] ouf. With that, on the friday, there was a press conference. People who were there there was bella abzug, susan sontag. On monday was a hearing on the temporary restraining order. The eeoc, the equal Employment Opportunities commission, sent out its chief counsel to argue it. The union switched sides. It finally dawned on them that they had a group that they had never organized, that they could organize the women. So columbia was startled. After all, they had signed a contract with the union and the union had insisted on separate seniority lines so that the janitors would come ahead of the maids. But the union then saw the light and said, well, we couldnt possibly defend a contract that violates title vii. There was columbia all by itself. Mm. [ chuckles ] i guess the hardest for my colleagues to take was the pension case. And tiaacref, as l insurers did, had separate seniority lines. Because on the average, women do live longer than men. But there are many women who die early and many men who live long, and the whole idea of this is you treat people as individuals, not lump them together this is the way women are, this is the way men are. The prediction was that the n would flee from tiaacref if they had to combine the tables, the longevity tables. None of that happened. Tiaacref is flourishing today. But that class action had a hundred named plaintiffs, women from all over the university, the precious few who had tenured positions and a group of administrators. And you prevailed. Yes. Of course. [ laughter ] did they settle, or did it go to trial . There was a case that went to the Supreme Court. It was from california. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, you have to treat the women the same as the men. And that that did it. And so all of the other cases settled. So. Im going to take you back to your days at harvard law school, when. I will allude again to the movie. Your. Marty was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and he had a lot of surgeries and a lot of radiation, and he was pretty sick for, i guess, a year, something pretty close to a year. It started in december. And he was finished with the at least there was there was a five year looksee operation, followup operation, but there was massive surgery. And then there was daily radiation because, in those days, there was no chemotherapy. That was a very trying time. So, would you describe what your typical day was like in that period of time . Because i think it framed your penchant for working until 4 00 in the morning or later. Well, id go to my classes in the morning. I had note takers for martyclasses. I would then go to mass general to see him. Then id come home and play with jane and feed her and put her to bed. Marty would get well, first, the daily radiation made him very sick. So when he finished being sick and he finally went to sleep, he would wake up about midnight. And, at midnight, whatever food he was going to have for the day, he would have then, and he would dictate his thirdyear paper to me. So when he went back to sleep, then i went back to my own work to prepare for the next mornings classes. So thats how you got to think that 2 00 a. M. Was an earlytobed time. Yes, it would he been. [ chuckles ] so, in the movie, there is this will really entice you fairly early on in the movie, theres a sex scene. I wonder what you thought of the sex scene. What i thought of it was that marty would have loved it. [ laughter, applause ] so, im looking at my watch because im a broadcaster. It says that were just about, i think, out of time. You know, you had a lifelong friendship with the late Justice Scalia or at least lifelong from the time of, i guess, the early 80s or maybe even before that when you were at the university of chicago for one semester or Something Like that. But you were friends for a very long time, and it is no secret that you had very different interpretations of the constitution and how to interpret the constitution, and those differences are even the basis of an opera. A comic opera. A comic opera. [ laughter ] a comic, not a tragic opera. A comic opera. So, people often say to me, how could they have such good friends . Perhaps i can explain scalias view, my view, and our togetherness by repeating some lines from the opera, scalia ginsburg. Oh, people ask me, why did you let scalia go first . Because everything, as you know, in the court is done by seniority and scalia was appointed in the late 80s. I didnt get there until the 90s. Anyway, his opening aria is a rage aria, and it goes like this. The justices are blind. How can they possibly spout this . The constitution says absolutely nothing about this. And then in my lyric soprano voice i answer him, telling him hes searching for brightline solutions to problems that dont have easy answers. But the great thing about our constitution is that, like our society, it can evolve. And then she goes into a jazz routine with, let it grow, let it grow. [ laughter ] the plot of this opera is roughly based on the magic flute, and Justice Scalia is locked in a dark room, being punished for excessive dissenting. [ laughter ] i enter the scene through a Glass Ceiling to help him get through the tests he has to pass to get out of the dark room. So the person in charge of the show asks, why do you want to help him . Hes your enemy. I say, hes not my enemy. Hes my dear friend. And then we sing a duet, and it is, we are different we are one, different in our approach to interpreting legal texts, but one in our reverence for the constitution and the institution we serve. So, with that, that seems like a good place to end. [ applause ] thank you, justice ginsburg. Thank you. This program was made possible by viewers like you. Captioning sponsored by wnet sreenivasan on this edition for sunday, september 20 tributes pour in for Supre Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the president pushes to fill her seatefore election day. Covid19 deaths and a grim milestone for the u. S. And our special roads to election 2020 iowa and illinois. Next on pbs newshour weekend. Pbs newshour weekend is made possible by sue and Edgar Wachenheim iii. The Anderson Family fund. Bernard and denise schwartz
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