>> good afternoon, everyone. it's a pleasure to welcome everyone to the second annual dean's lecture to the graduating class. and the excitement here is extraordinary. there were long lines. we have an overflow room, because this room is packed. we have people in the front rows with notorious rgbt t-shirts. and we're all gathered here to hear from -- i'd like a big round of applause for -- our extraordinary speaker, justice ginsburg. [applause] >> thank you. >> so the idea behind this lecture is that it's an opportunity for our graduating students to hear from a giant in the law, as she reflects on her career and offers advice to graduating students. and i can't imagine a better speaker for us to be listening to. because we're going to be talking about justice ginsburg's career i'm not going to go into a long intro. it's just particularly wonderful to have you here. first of all because you're someone who is not only a great justice but really a rarity among justices, somebody who would be an historic figure even if you'd never been a judge, because of your work for gender equity as an advocate, also because you're such a wonderful member of this community. we're so grateful that you come here so often, justice ginsburg. two of our faculty, mary and wendy, are working on your authorized biography. and, of course your late husband, marty ginsburg, was just the most beloved member of this faculty. welcome here today, justice. >> thank you, dean. and may i extend my congratulations to all of you who are graduating from this extraordinarily fine law school. the dean is right, that i had a very close affiliation with the law school. and i'm proud to say that the shareholder, a former law clerk of mine and former dean of the columbia law school, david caesar is here today and he is visiting at georgetown and any of you who are interested in tax should be sure that you attend his classes. [laughter] >> that was a great occasion and a tribute to an extraordinary man. welcome back. what i'd like to do is start by talking a little bit about your career, and, you know, you grew up in brooklyn and then went to cornell. and i think for all of us here, as everyone is starting their legal career, when did it first occur to you that you wanted to be a lawyer? was it something that you went to college with the idea that you would become a lawyer? >> no! [laughter] in the ancient days when i was going to college, the law was not a welcoming profession for women. so my mother had stressed the importance to me of being independent, and to her that meant be a high school history teacher. it's a good, steady job. women are accepted. i didn't think about law until at cornell i was a research assistant for a professor of constitutional law. and he wanted me to be aware that our country was going through bad times. this is the early 50's. and it was the heyday of senator joseph mccarthy, who saw a communist in every corner. and this professor wanted me to appreciate these people who were being called before the committee or the senate security committee and quizzed about some youth organization that they had belonged to in the 1930's, that there were lawyers standing up for these people, lawyers reminding our congress that we have a first amendment that says we can think right and speak freely without big brother telling us what is proper speech and that there is a fifth amendment that protects people against self-incrimination. so i got the idea that being a lawyer is a pretty good thing, because in addition to practicing the profession, you could do some good for your society, make things a little better for other people. well, that made me decide that law school was the best place for me. of course, if i had any tenant intalentin the world that god could give me, i would be a great diva. [laughter] but sadly, i have a monotone. and my grade school teachers were very cruel. they rated me a sparrow, not a robin, and sparrows were not allowed to sing the words only mouth them. [laughter] so anyway, there was some concern with my father and aunt about my becoming a lawyer. but then i married marty. it was the week after i graduated from cornell. we were married. and then my family said, it's okay. if ruth wants to be a lawyer, if she can't earn a living, she will have a man to support her. [laughter] >> and you had met marty at cornell? >> yes. my first year, his second year. >> and how did you meet? >> well, we met because we had friends who thought we might like each other. marty had a girlfriend at smith. i had a boyfriend at columbia law school. but there was a long cold week at cornell. [laughter] so that's how we started out. [laughter] then i it came to me, after not too long, that martin ginsburg was ever so much smarter than my boyfriend at columbia law school. [laughter] >> and then you got married at the end of your time in college and you went to law school? >> well, marty did not have a stellar career at cornell because mainly he majored in golf. he was on the golf team. and he started out -- he was going to be a pre-med. but the chemistry classes were in the afternoon and it interfered with golf practice. so then he switched to government. and i said, what courses are you taking? he would take the same. >> aw. now, i heard an interview where he talked about the fact that your academic records at cornell were not so similar. >> he said he was last passing man in his class and i was first woman in my class. if you look at it like a scroll, we're right there together. [laughter] >> and what was law school like? there weren't many women in your class. >> there were nine women in my class. i entered in '56. the very first year that harvard accepted women was 1950. so it was only about five years. there were nine of us. there were 500 men. the women in my class felt that they were literally on trial. there were two of us in -- we had four sections, two in each. we felt that all eyes were on us that if we failed if we gave a bad answer to a question, we would be failing not only for ourselves but for all women. whether it was true or not, we did feel that we were on display in the classroom. i had a colleague at columbia law school, and this is in the 70's and he said one day that he has some regrets about the expanding -- about expanding the enrollment of women at that time. at that time, women were about 25%. of course, he said in the old days, if you wanted a crisp right answer you always called on the woman because she was super prepared. she would give you the answer that you wanted and then you could go on with the class. but he said nowadays there's no difference. the women are as unprepared as the men. [laughter] one of biggest challenges we had, harvard law school in those days had two teaching buildings but only one of them had a women's bathroom. >> hmm. >> so bad enough if you need to use the rest room during a class, but think about exams. exams were very pressured at the law school. the remarkable thing about it is that we never complained. we never thought to ask. it was just the way things were. these were pre-title 7 days, so employers would put sign-up sheets for summer jobs, for permanent jobs. and it would say "men only." service the same way at columbia when i transferred from harvard to columbia in my third year. columbia had a wonderful placement officer but she put up those lists, and again no one thought that we could complain. >> why did you transfer to columbia? >> marty's third year of law school he a virulent cancer. and those were days when there was no chemotherapy. there was only a huge operation and then daily radiation. and our daughter, jane, was born 14 months before i started law school. so marty tried to get a job in the boston area. he had a great opportunity in new york. so i did not want to be a single mom. we also didn't know how long marty would live. so, of course, we were not going to be separated that last year. and so i went to the then-dean of the harvard law school. his name is irwin griswald. and i said if i successfully complete my third year at columbia, will you give me a harvard degree? and the answer was absolutely not. and i thought i had the perfect rebuttal answer. there was a woman who had been my classmate at cornell. she took her first year of law school at the university of pennsylvania, transferred into our second-year class, and i said well, mrs. so-and-so is in the second year with me and she went to year two and three. i will have year one and two. you say that the first year is by far the most important. i had a case, that's what i thought. well we fast-forward to my grand colleague, who spoke her last year. on an occasion when she became dean of the harvard law school, she every year said ruth, we would love you to have a harvard law school degree. and when she made that offer marty said, hold out for an honorary degree. [laughter] so i was already one law degree. it's from columbia. you can't rewrite history. but i do have an honorary degree that i got from the university -- from harvard university in 2011. >> justice was belatedly done. and you were at the top of your class at harvard. top of your class at columbia. columbia law review. what was it like then, looking for work? you talked about how hard it was. no women were allowed to apply for many jobs. >> well, i had a tailored black suit that my ever-supportive mother-in-law got for my interviews. then i was stunned that no one was interested. only two firms called me to the downtown office, at their preliminary interview at columbia. and those two ended up not giving me an offer. but it was a wonderful professor, jerry gunter -- maybe you've used his constitutional law book -- he was determined to get me a job. he was in charge of clerkships for columbia students. and he called every federal judge in the eastern district, in the southern district, the second circuit judges. they were reticent. and the reason was some of them could overcome the fact that i was a woman. but none of them, that i was a mother of a four-year-old. and the fear was that i wouldn't be able to come in on a weekend. and i want be able to stay late. the result was that i overcompensated and worked harder than any clerk in the court. that's the way it was for women in the 50's. it was getting the first job. that was very hard. when you got the job, you did it very well. justice o'connor tells the story about her first job. she was also at the top of her class at stanford law school. and no one would hire her as a lawyer. so she volunteered to work for a county attorney, free for four months. and she said at the end of that four-month period, if you think i'm worth it, you can put me on the payroll. and that's how she got her first job in the law. well, this man called all these judges and he said i have an offer you can't refuse. give her a chance. and if she doesn't succeed there's a young man in her class who will step in and carry you through the year. so that was the kor carat. and then there was a stick. and the stick was, if you don't give her a chance, i will never recommend another columbia student to you. i never knew that until years and years later. i thought the judge -- he had two dauforts and i thought he -- daughters and i thought he must have been thinking about what he would like their opportunities to be. in those days, in the southern district, most judges wouldn't hire women. in the u.s. attorney's office, women were strictly forbidden in the criminal division. there was one woman in the civil division. and the excuse for not hiring women in the criminal division was they have to deal with all these tough types, and women aren't up to that. and i was amazed. i said, have you seen the lawyers at legal aid who are representing these tough types? they are women. [laughter] >> and then so you clerked. >> yes. >> what did you do after you clerked? >> by that time, i could have gone to any number of downtown firms. in fact, i was to go to one of them when a columbia law school professor came to me and said, ruth, how would you like to write a book about civil procedure in sweden? so i thought now, where is sweden in relation to norway and denmark? [laughter] it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for me in many ways. i was 27, 28 at the time. and i was going to have something that i wrote between hard covers. i was going to learn a language that i had no familiarity with. and something else. marty and i at that point had been married eight years. and i had never lived alone. and i wanted to know what it would be like. and marty was indulgent enough to take care of jane when i left for sweden. and i left in the beginning of may. she joined me after her first grade was over in june. so i had a taste of what living alone was like. and so that was my kind of eight-year itch. [laughter] which i never had after that. so i spent two years on the swedish project. columbia had a project on international procedure. and part of it was writing books about different procedural systems. part of it was revising the federal rules and title 28, to make our rules more accommodating to lawyers abroad, who wanted to find evidence in the united states or serve process in the united states. so after that, i was then again going to go to the law firm, which in fact was the firm with which marty was affiliated. when a columbia professor famous professor, who was kind of a one-person personnel office for law school jobs, walter asked me if i would come to see him in his office. and he said, ruth, what is your name doing on a harvard list when you're a columbia graduate? harvard list? what harvard list is he talking about? then i remembered that harvard had sent a form, are you interested in law teaching? if you are, fill this out. so i filled it out. i never gave another thought to it. so at that time, there were exactly 14 women in tenure track positions in law schools across the country. and so i jumped to the wrong conclusion. i said, walter, is columbia interested in me? and the answer was, ruth, not columbia, but rutgers, the state university of new jersey. why rutgers? i will be totally frank about how i got my first teaching job. rutgers had had an excellent civil procedure teacher named clyde ferguson. clyde left rutgers to become the dean of the howard law school here in d.c. rutgers tried to replace him with another african-american man. but having failed in that quest the next best thing was a woman. that's how i got my first teaching job. and the dean, he was a very good dean. he was a dear, sweet man. but he said, ruth, you know this is a state university. so you will have to take a cut in salary. and i expected that. but not the cut -- not the huge cut that it was. so i asked how much so-and-so was earning, a man about the same time out of law school. and the answer was, ruth, he has a wife and two children to support. >> oh, my gosh. >> and marty has a good-paying job with a law firm. so i met with some other women at the rutgers new campus. and we didn't bring a title 7 -- well title 7 wasn't on the books till the year after i started at rutgers. but there was the equal pay act the very year that i was offered this rather modest salary. so the women at the rutgers campus got together and brought an equal-pay case, which after many years was settled. every woman got a substantial raise. i think $6,000 was about the lowest raise that people got. and in those days, in '63 that was real money. >> and did that experience cause you to focus in on gender equality cases after you started teaching? >> i didn't set my own agenda at all. there were two forces operating on me. one was the students. the women students wanted to have a course on women and the law. and i thought that was a pretty good idea. so i went to the library. and in the space of a month, i think i read every federal decision that had ever been written involving women's rights or the lack thereof. that was no mean feat because there was precious little, less than today would be generated in a month, i think. so that was the women students pushing me in that direction. and then there were new clients coming to the aclu office in new jersey with complaints that the aclu had never heard before. one group were pregnant school teachers who were forced out on what was called "maternity leave" which meant you go as soon as you begin to show because after all, the children must not think that their teacher swallowed a watermelon. and then if the school system wants you back they'll call you back. but there was no guarantee right to come back. so women were complaining. the complaint was we are ready willing and able to work. there's no reason why we should be forced out the fourth month. and they thought that maybe the new anti-discrimination laws would be helpful to them. and there were blue-collar women who worked at places that had good health insurance packages. one of those women worked for the lipton tea company. she wanted to get family health insurance and was told that family insurance is available only to a male worker, not to a female worker. so there were those complaints. rutgers itself in those days, the undergraduate school was all male. there was a much smaller and very fine women's college douglas college. but people on the rutgers faculty wanted to admit women. it was kind of what columbia went through. and so we had a lead plaintiff in the case. he was a gardener who had a son and a daughter. his son had gone to rutgers. his daughter couldn't go to rutgers. and thank goodness we did not have to make a federal case of it, because the rutgers faculty was so keen on the idea -- what they thought immediately was if we can accept women students, we will upgrade our academic standing. so there was a complaint coming into the aclu. there were students. and this was beginning to happen at law schools kroos across the country. there was a "women in the law" conference i attended. i think the first one was at yale. and we were getting out materials to -- i wrote with my friends one of the first -- well, the first published case on sex discrimination and the law. but we came to see -- oh, by the way. i should say who the "we" was. a brilliant lawyer, marvin, who worked for the -- he didn't work for pay for the aclu but he was one of the general counsel. he spotted in law week what he said was going to be the turning point in the gender discrimination case. the year is 1970. the supreme court had never seen a gender classification that it thought was unconstitutional. this case was decided by the supreme court of idaho. it was about a woman named sally reed. she was divorced when her son was -- of tender years, so sally got custody. when the boy got to be a teenager, the father said he now needs to be prepared for a man's world, so i want him to live with me. sally thought that was a bad idea. to cut part of the story short, the boy one day took out one of his father's many rifles and killed himself. so sally wanted to be appointed administer of his estate, not because there was any monetary gain, but for sentimental reasons. he had a guitar, some clothes, a record collection, a small bank account. that was it. her former husband applied to be administrator a couple of weeks later. and sally thought she would get the appointment, because she applied first. but the probate court judge said the law leaves me no choice. it reads as between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent's estate, males must be preferred to females. just that simple. well, let me compare 1971, when sally's case was decided by a unanimous court headed by chief justice berger with a case in 1961 when earl warren, who was known as a quote liberal justice, had gwen's case. she was what we would call a battered woman. she was abused by her husband and one day he humiliated her to the breaking point. she was beside he is. it was kind of -- beside herself. it was kind of like billy when he's unable to speak so he strikes the lieutenant. gwen saw her son's baseball bat. she took it and with all her might, hit her husband over the head. he fell to the ground. it was the end of his life and the beginning of the murder prosecution. gwen's idea was it's important to me to have women on the jury, because women would better understand my state of mind. the rage that i felt. but hillsboro county, florida in those days did not put women on the jury rolls. that was supposed to be a favor to women because as the supreme court said, in gwen's case, women are the center of home and family life. therefore, they don't need to be distracted by serving on juries. gwen's lawyer tried to get the court to understand that citizens have obligations as well as rights. and one obligation is to participate in the administration of justice by serving on juries. the law said women are expendable. we don't need them to serve on juries. well the supreme court rejected gwen hoyt's plea in 1961. and what happened in those ten years in between? there was an enormous change in society. women were entering the work forsworkforce in increasing numbers. women were living many years longer than the day that the youngest child left the nest. birth control was more freely available. all of those changes in society led the law to catch up. and that's what was happening in the 1970's. so i was fantastically lucky to be born when i was and to have the skill of a lawyer. in that brief, the names of two women on the cover polly murray and dorothy kenyan, these were women who were saying the same things that we were saying. dorothy's mission was to put women on juries in every state in the country. and polly murray was an african-american woman who had herself -- she wrote an article called "jane grow and the law" in which she compared the disadvantages that african-americans faced with the disvaptiondisadvantages that women faced for women as well as members of minority groups. there were closed doors, doors you couldn't enter, for reasons that had nothing to do with your ability, just because of your skin color your gender. we put their names on sally reed's brief as if to say they're too old now to be working with us, but we're stand on their shoulders. we are saying the same things that they said, but now, at last, society is ready to listen. >> and then there's six cases that you -- historic cases that you argued before the court. did you have an overall strategy about what you were trying to do? >> none of the cases that the aclu women's rights project handled were test cases in the sense that we went out and tried to manufacture a case or find plaintiffs. these were people -- everyday people like sally reed. what we wanted, we wanted to have cases with people, everyday people, so the court could see the arbitrariness of the gender language in the law. one of those important cases was steven wisefield's case. some people criticized me for bringing men's rights cases. well, this is -- let me describe steven's case to you and you decide whether it's a men's rights case or a women's rights case or a people's rights case. steven was married to a high school math teacher. she had a healthy pregnancy. she taught into the ninth month. she went to the hospital to give birth. and the doctor came out and told steven you have a healthy baby boy, but your wife died of an embolism. so steven vowed that he would not work full time until his child was in school full time. and he figured he could make it between social security benefits and what he is allowed to earn on top of those benefits. he went to the local social security office to apply for what he thought were benefits for a sole surviving parents with a child under 12 in his care. and he was told, we're very sorry. these are mother's benefits. they are not available for fathers. so in his case, we argued, first, it was discrimination against women, because women were required to pay the same social security taxes that men paid, but their families did not get the protection that male workers' families got. and then it was discrimination against the male as a parent, because men would not have the opportunity to care personally for their children. and then -- well, it was a unanimous judgment for steven. the majority thought it was discrimination. the discrimination started with the wage earning of women. a couple of them thought it was discrimination of the male as parent. and one, who was then a justice later became my first chief then-justice renquist, said this is totally arbitrary. why shouldn't the baby have a chance to be taken care by a sole-surviving parent? that was our illustration to the court. gender discrimination is bad for everyone. bad for women, bad for children, bad for men. the idea was to break down this stereotyped division of the world into home and child caring mothers and work outside the home fathers, that pattern. and so with great rapidity, states and congress changed laws that had once been based on this model of home-caring mother, working father. and they took away those gender labels and made it a worker, a taxpayer a parent. >> was there -- was the court receptive to your arguments? and specifically, and i'm thinking mostly or right now, in terms of the oral arguments. >> they didn't ask as many questions as the court on which i served. you could get out a whole paragraph. and even -- there was one case, it was the one that i lost. we won't go into the details of that. [laughter] but anyway, my precious half hour was up. and maybe there was a half a minute left. and justice blackman asked a question. and i answered it. and the chief justice let me go on for five minutes beyond the half hour. that wouldn't happen today. [laughter] >> and -- >> oh. when you said, were they receptive, yes to a point. but the very last case i argued was in 1978. and it was another one of the women on juries cases. this was from missouri. i had just finished my argument, was about to sit down, consent that i had made all the essential points, when then-justice renquist said and so mrs. ginsburg, you won't be satisfied with susan b. anthony's face on the new dollar? so he still made jokes about treating women as less than full citizens. >> and did the presence of women on the court have a profound influence in terms of changing that? >> i think now that we are one third of the court makes -- well justice o'connor was the lone woman on the court for 12 years. and when i was appointed, there was a renovation in our robing room. up until then, there had been a bathroom and it said "men." they rushed through this renovation and created a women's bathroom, equal in size to the men's. and that was a way of the court saying, yeah we know that women are going to be a part of this institution. during the years that sandra and i served together invariably, one or another would respond to my question "justice o'connor." and occasionally, they would say "i'm justice o'connor, she's justice ginsburg." it doesn't happen now with the three of us. i think the worst time was when i was all alone, after sandra left. the public perception thought eight men and then there was this little woman, hardly to be seen. but now, because i'm so senior, i sit toward the middle. i have just kagan on my left, sotomayor on my right. and if you watch proceedings in our court -- you really should it's quite a show -- [laughter] -- my newest colleague not a shrinking violet. so the public will see that women are all over the bench. they are very much a part of the colloquy. yes. people ask me sometimes when do you think it will be enough? when will there be enough women on the court? and my answer is, when there are nine. [laughter] some people are taken aback until they remember that for most of our country's history there were only men on the high court bench. >> now, i want to open the floor for questions. but just one last question. as you're about to -- all of our students here are about to start their legal career, and you've had just such an extraordinary career. is there one or two pieces of advice that you'd like to give them as they're about to begin? >> i have loved everything that i've done in the law. i think it's a great profession. but i will say that if all i was in the law business for was to turn over, i don't think i would have had nearly the satisfaction that i have. yes, you need a job. but if you don't do something outside yourself, something that will repair the tears in your communities, that will make life a little better for other people you're not really a true professional. then you're like a plumber, who has a great skill, but that's all you are, if you think of yourself as a true professional you will take talent, education that you have and use it to make things better for other people in your local community, your state, your country, your world. >> thank you. that's powerful and inspiring. and your career has been so inspiring for each of us, what you've done has just been transformative. and so we'd like to take an opportunity to give you the chance to ask the justice questions. so... okay. while we're waiting -- [laughter] -- how does it feel to be an icon? [laughter] >> when all this started i had to ask my law clerks what is this notorious "rbg" and now i have no competition, because notorious "rbg" is no longer a part of this world. [laughter] >> i think we have a question now. ha ha! please say your name. >> justinjustice ginsburg, thank you for coming. my name is chloe. i'm the copresident of the reproductive rights. with the hobby lobby ruling, with some of the rulings coming out of texas are you pessimistic about the direction of reproductive rights in this country? that includes abortion, contraception, parenting and so on. >> you ask am i pessimistic? i think it will depend upon women of your age, if you care about this. there will never be a time when women of means will lack choice, because take the worst case scenario, rowe v. wade is overruled by the supreme court. there will be a sizeable number that will not go back to the way it was. at the time of row vs. wade, there were four states that gave women access to abortion, without any questions asked, in the first trimester. so those states are not going to change. what it means is a woman who can afford a plane ticket, a bus ticket will be able to decide for herself. whether to have an abortion. but the women who won't have that choice are poor women. and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense i think. so if the women of your generation care about this issue, they will -- that's a message that i don't see talked about a lot, who will bear the brunt, i suppose if rowe vs. wade were overruled, who will bear the brunt. so if we care about our sisters who are less fortunate than we are, we will do what we can to see that they have roughly the same choices in life. >> thank you. in the back? please state your name. >> my name is malai. i'm an african-american. for those of us, as women who have been inspired by you justice ginsburg, for opening the doors for women over the course of the last few decades there's another group of us who are inspired to do work for women overseas. and whether it's in afghanistan throughout the middle east, and i'd like to hear from you, what advice you might have for those of us who wish to see the role of women growing to a place where they could look at their sisters in the united states or in the western countries and say we're getting there. what advice would you give for lawyers who would like to dedicate their lives to women's economic empowerment and social empowerment in developing countries? >> i would say first, don't go there to preach to people about how they should do things. you should try to get to know the local community, to understand what their priorities are, and to help them accomplish an agenda that they set. there have been some great strides made. what is the name of the man who is setting up -- funding women who are starting small businesses, making loans to them? he was amazingly successful. the women paid back. so when they got the resources -- they worked very hard. but that's the main thing. i worry about some people who went off to various places and wrote constitutions. and they had no kohr correspondence to that society. i think, if you are working abroad, you try to work with the women in that culture to accomplish what they see as most helpful to them. >> another question? >> hi, justice ginsburg. i'm tyler. it's an honor. my question is, you have kind of become known as the voice of the powerful dissent over the past few years, perhaps unfortunately. but if you could pick one decision over the past ten years that you could wave a magic wand and overturn, what would it be and why? [laughter] >> i almost have to say citizens united, because i think the system is being polluted by money. it gets pretty bad when it affects the judiciary too. in some 39 states, judges are elected at some level and it costs millions of dollars to fund the campaign for a state supreme court. something is terribly wrong. i think we are reaching the saturation point. a great man that i loved dearly, marty, often said that the true symbol of the united states is not the bald eagle. it is the pendulum. and when it swings too far one way, it's going to go back in the other direction. >> so you think that it will swing back? >> do i think -- i can't say when but that one day, sensible restrictions on campaign financing will be the law of this land. yes, it will happen. it'sit's one of the hard things to explain when i go abroad, and i'm very proud of being a citizen of the u.s.a. but then i'm asked questions like, how do you allow people with money to have access to the lawmakers, to the decision-makers, that ordinary people don't have? how do you have a system where legislative districts in the house are so gerrymandered that people don't vote? and one of the shameful things is the low rate of voting in the united states. many democracies the turnout is much higher. but people have a sense, why bother? it's a foregone conclusion who is going to win. so i think we need to get our democracy where it is a democracy for all of the people and there is important work to be done. >> i think we have time for one last question. on the far side. while we're waiting, do you have any recommendation -- what can lawyers do for fun? [laughter] >> whatever is your passion. now, i told you that i'm a monotone. but still, i do love opera. so i have been a super now three times, for the washington opera. i have also -- well, every year i participate in the shakespeare theater's mood court. >> ha ha! >> and i've been -- i guess my best part as at the shakespeare theater was in henry i.v. i said, i know just the part i want. i want dick the butcher. i want to say the famous line "first thing we do let's kill all the royals." [laughter] lawyers." >> now our last questions. >> my name's alexander and the question i want to ask is if you were back in your role as an advocate, as a civil rights advocate what kind of case would you be looking to bring to the fore to tell to the court, what cause would you want to advocate for? >> i -- i'm glad you asked that question, because i want to tell everybody here that you don't start with the courts. the judiciary is a reactive institution, doesn't set its own agenda. our first effort in the aclu women's right project was try to influence public opinion. the people have to want the change before it's going to be reflected in legislation or in judicial decisions. then you try to get the legislature to write laws that are family friendly and the court is -- serve if there's an audience. and a dialogue going back and forth between, the court would say, decide the sally reid case and the steven walings feled case. the court and the legislature kind of working in tandem at that time. so i -- but i would stress first you need popular support. that's what existed in the 1970's and didn't exist before then. and then while all this was going on and these cases were being brought to court, the states were reviewing their law books to eliminate arbitrary gender cases so don't think about the court as your first audience. people have to want to have a change before it will happen. >> i have to tell you, this has really been extraordinary. we have a small token of our appreciation. we have a plaque. second annual deans graduating class, justice ruth bader ginsburg. i have to say the privilege of listening to you and wisdom that we are all benefiting from, i'm so grateful and we're all so grateful so i'd like to lead us in a round of applause and thanks to justice ruth bader ginsburg. >> that's lovely. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. it's appropriate for my -- >> next, senator thom tillis outlines his goals and agenda. after that, nancy nancy talks about the jobs, the economy and middle class initiatives. then another chance to see supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg talk about life on the court. on the next washington journal, grover norquist will discuss the tax proposals in the 2016 budget. . patrick taurel will talk about immigration. and as always, we'll take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" live on c-span. >> david brooks, columnist for the new york times on writing an article for the times and the awards he gives out at the end of the year. >> it's given for the best magazine essays of the year. and the idea is they always come out around that christmas week, between christmas and new year's. the idea is that's a good week to step back and not read tweets, not even newspaper articles but step back and read something deeper and longer and it's so celebrate those longer pieces. i believe magazines change history. the new republic until its recent destruction was the most influential magazine of the 20th century created a voice for conservatism. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's "q & a." newly elected north carolina republican senator thom tillis, spoke today