Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her own words
The body of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lies in state at the Supreme Court Wednesday and Thursday. She died Friday at the age of 87.
In Sept. 2019, she spoke at the Clinton Foundation and Clinton School of Public Service’s Frank and Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture series.
Longtime NPR legal affairs reporter Nina Totenberg conducted the hourlong interview on stage in the Verizon Arena in Little Rock, Ark., better known for hosting major concerts and sporting events. Ginsburg, then 86, had finished a round of radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer the prior month, and told the audience of 15,000-plus people of all ages that “my work keeps me going.”
Ginsburg spoke about her experience at Harvard Law School, where she was one of just nine women in a 500-person class, and her daily life as a law student, young mother and wife to her husband Marty who had cancer when they were in law school. She later became an appellate judge and an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
She was the second woman appointed to the nation's highest court after Sandra Day O'Connor had been the lone woman on the court for 12 years.
"It's a habit ... you don't 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 the law faculty, as a member of the court of appeals, now that I have two sisters-in-law, it doesn't happen." Ginsburg referred to Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor as her “sisters-in-law.”
Former President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg for the Supreme Court in 1993, and she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on a vote of 96-3 — A number she specifically recalled during this interview. Clinton gave introductory remarks, and said that during his first conversation with Ginsburg “I just knew she was the right person for the court.” It was a decision he said he never regretted, and that she exceeded his high expectations, but he never imagined she’d become a pop icon.
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