To judge by the measures that matter most—the quality of her reasoning (her opinions are as skillfully wrought and compelling as ever), her mental acuity (apparent in her questioning at oral argument and in her public appearances), her stamina (she remains probably the most efficient and timely producer of opinions for the Court; when need be, she still stays up all night to get the job done), and her public engagement (she still indefatigably travels the country and the world, teaching and learning)—there is no question that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues to “do the job full steam.”
(1) Photograph of Ruth Bader taken when she was two years old.
(2) Ruth Bader walks down the aisle as the maid of honor at the wedding of her cousin Seymour “Si” Bessen and Roslyn Bessen, October, 1951.
(3) Teenage cousins Ruth and Richard Bader skiing at Balfour Lake Lodge in the Adirondacks, circa 1946.
(4) Professional bridal photograph of Ruth Bader taken in June 1954.
(5) Columbia Law Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, photographed in the spring of 1980 shortly after President Carter nominated her for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
(6) Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her husband, Martin Ginsburg, and their children, James and Jane, off the shore of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, December 1979.
(7) Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Marty Ginsburg travel by bus from Charles de Gaulle Airport to downtown Paris, circa 1988.
(8) Marty Ginsburg in his office at Fried, Frank law firm in Washington, D.C., in August 2004.
(9) Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the steps of the Supreme Court on November 1, 1978, following the oral arguments for Duren v. Missouri, the last case she argued before the Court. Son James Ginsburg is on the right, and brother-in-law and nephew Ed and David Stiepleman are on the left.
(10) Official informal group photograph of the Supreme Court as composed under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, taken in the West Conference Room on December 3, 1993. Seated in the chair on the left is Justice John Paul Stevens and in the chair on the right is Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Standing from left to right are Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
(11) Justice Ginsburg with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House.
(12) Justice Ginsburg with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the Department of State on January 28, 2005, the day Justice Ginsburg swore Rice in as Secretary of State.
(13) Justice Ginsburg meets with a Buddhist abbot at the Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, during a 2005 trip to China.
(14) Formal group photograph of the Supreme Court as comprised from 2010 until Justice Scalia’s death on February 13, 2016. The Justices are posed in front of red velvet drapes and arranged by seniority, with five seated and four standing. Seated from left are Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Standing from left are Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito, and Elena Kagan.
(15) A photograph of Justice Ginsburg’s family taken in the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court following the wedding ceremony of her son, James Ginsburg to Patrice Michaels. Standing, from left to right: George Spera, Clara Spera, Paul Spera, Jane Ginsburg. Seated, from left to right: Satinder Bedi, Justice Ginsburg, James Ginsburg, Patrice Michaels, Harjinder Bedi. Seated on the floor, from left to right: Abigail Ginsburg, Miranda Ginsburg.
(16) The only women who have become Supreme Court Justices pose in the Justices’ Conference Room on October 1, 2010, the day of Justice Elena Kagan’s investiture. Standing, from left to right, are retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan.
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST WE would like to thank the bright, incredible, and unflappable Kim McKenzie, who manages Justice Ginsburg’s chambers, and the Justice’s talented assistants Lauren Brewer and Andrew Schlegel, for their cheerful, able, and tireless assistance every step along the way to publication of My Own Words. Huge appreciation goes also to Daniel Hartnett Norland, who has helped captain and corral the manuscript and has lived, breathed, and edited this book with us to completion. A big shout-out to Justice Ginsburg’s Term 2015–16 law clerks, Payvand Ahdout, Joshua Bone, Samuel Harbourt, and Amy Marshak, and to Sam Rothschild (on loan from retired Justice David Souter), whose thoughtful review and suggestions were extremely helpful in our effort to “get it right and keep it tight.” We would also like to thank profusely two terrific Georgetown Law student research assistants, Lindsey Stearns and Eric Kay, now newly minted lawyers, who supported our efforts with enthusiasm, skill, and elbow grease.
We are most grateful for the indispensable assistance from the U.S. Supreme Court’s gifted and agile photographer Steve Petteway, who is willing to share the fruits of his labor, and for the proficient assistance of the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office. Immense thanks also to Georgetown University Law Center Dean William Treanor and Vice Dean Jane Aiken for providing a warm and generous academic home, as well as intellectual and administrative support without which this book would not have been possible. We are deeply appreciative of key Georgetown Law staff members including Mary Ann DeRosa, who has patiently, professionally, and accurately transcribed thousands of pages of interviews and speeches; Chris Critchfield, an audio-genius who expertly records interviews with even the most soft-spoken of Justices, and Steve Eckhoff for able and repeated AV office support; the entire Faculty Support team, especially Monica Stearns and Anna Selden; and Associate Dean for Library Services Michelle Wu, Associate Law Librarian Marylin Raisch, and Special Collections Librarian Hannah Miller-Kim.
We are tremendously fortunate to be represented by Agent Extraordinaire Esther Newberg with ICM and extremely grateful for her vigorous advocacy on our behalf, and we also wish to thank her team, especially John DeLaney and Zoe Sandler. At Simon & Schuster, our hearty thanks to an incomparable editor, the legendary Alice Mayhew, for her wisdom and guidance, and to assistant editor Stuart Roberts for his steady, talented, and professional hand in every phase of production. Thanks also to Simon & Schuster’s Lisa Healy, Tom Pitoniak, Julia Prosser, Richard Rhorer, Ellen Sasahara, Jackie Seow, and Dana Trocker for their very able assistance.
Saving the very best for the very last, we wish to thank, from the bottom of our hearts, our incredibly supportive families, especially our spouses: Martin D. Ginsburg in memoriam, Richard Diamond, and Richard Norland; our children and their spouses: Jane Ginsburg and George Spera, James Ginsburg and Patrice Michaels, Luke Diamond and Penelope Crocker, Ethan Diamond and Kristen Danforth, Daniel Hartnett Norland and Jennifer Barkley, and Kathleen Norland List and Phil List; and all of our grandchildren.
With deep gratitude,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wendy W. Williams & Mary Hartnett
An important postscript
To all those institutions and individuals who have provided support to biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams for our forthcoming biography of Justice Ginsburg, including at Georgetown Law, the Library of Congress, the Wilson Center and numerous other institutions; a generation of research assistants at Georgetown Law and elsewhere; the hundreds of individuals whom we have interviewed, including Justice Ginsburg’s friends, family, colleagues, clerks, and others; and the many who have provided varied and sundry support (like David Norland for providing us use of his New York apartment for over a decade): We have not forgotten you—thank you, thank you, thank you, and—please stay tuned for the next book!—MEH, WWW.
About the Authors
Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by President Bill Clinton as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in June 1993 and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. Prior to her
appointment to the Supreme Court, she served on the bench of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for thirteen years. She was a law professor before that, teaching at Columbia University School of Law (1972–80) and at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (1963–72). In 1972, then-Professor Ginsburg was instrumental in launching the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Throughout the 1970s she litigated a series of cases solidifying a constitutional principle against gender-based discrimination. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. (J.D.) from Columbia Law School. After law school she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. She then served as a research associate and associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She holds honorary degrees from more than thirty universities, including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Lund University (Sweden). Justice Ginsburg’s late husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, was a professor of tax law at Georgetown University Law Center; her daughter, Jane C. Ginsburg, is a professor of literary and artistic property law at Columbia Law School; and her son, James S. Ginsburg, is a producer of classical recordings.
Courtesy of photographer Holly Eaton
Mary Hartnett has been at Georgetown Law since 1998, first as Executive Director of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program (WLPPFP), and now as an Adjunct Professor of Law and Advisory Board Member of WLPPFP. She has also served as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, as a Visiting Professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law (Latvia), and as Vice-Chair of the ABA Committee on the Rights of Women. Prior to 1998, she was of counsel to the international law firm Coudert Brothers, represented low-income clients in federal court through her service on the Civil Pro Bono Panel for the U.S. District Court, D.C., and counseled victims of domestic violence. She is a recipient of the ABA’s Rasmussen Award for the Advancement of Women in International Law, and the Grinnell College Alumni Award. She attended New York University School of Law for her first year as a Root-Tilden scholar, and graduated from Georgetown University Law Center magna cum laude.
Courtesy of Georgetown University Law Center
Wendy W. Williams, Professor Emerita, Georgetown University Law Center, is best known for her work in the area of gender and law, especially concerning issues of work and family. She is coauthor of a 1996 casebook on gender and law and a 2016 book on gender in American legal history. She helped draft and testified before Congressional committees on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Before joining the Law Center faculty in 1976, she was a law clerk for California Supreme Court Justice Raymond Peters, a Reginald Heber Smith Poverty Law Fellow, and a founder of Equal Rights Advocates, a public interest law firm in San Francisco. She received her A.B. and J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a past president of the Society of American Law Teachers and served as Associate Dean of Georgetown’s Law Center from 1989 to 1993. A cofounder of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship program, she has been a member of its board since 1993.
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Notes
A Note on Sources
My Own Words includes a variety of materials, including speeches that have no citations, and legal briefs and law review articles that are rife with citations. Our publisher recommended that instead of including the full citations in the print edition of the book, it would benefit the environment and most of our readers to instead house the majority of the legal citations from briefs and articles on the book’s website MyOwnWordsBook.com. We have retained notes from the introductory text and the Scalia/Ginsburg opera excerpt in the print edition.
Part One: Early Years and Lighter Side
1. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 12, 2010) (on file with authors).
2. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 27, 2009) (on file with authors).
3. “Justice Ginsburg Grade School Tour,” C-SPAN, June 3, 1994, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/57503-1 (quote begins at 1:22:42 mark of video clip).
4. Interview by Maeva Marcus with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 10, 1995) (on file with authors).
5. Ibid.
6. Interview by Mary Hartnett with Beth Amster Hess (Apr. 11, 2005) (on file with authors).
7. Letter from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams (Aug. 16, 2004) (on file with authors).
8. Interview by Larry Josephson with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Only in America—Celebrating 350 Years of the Jewish Experience,” NPR, Sept. 2, 2004, http://www.onlyinamerica.info/ginsburg.shtml.
9. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 27, 2009) (on file with authors).
10. Interview by Ron Grele with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 17, 2004) (on file with authors).
11. Interview by Larry Josephson with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Only in America—Celebrating 350 Years of the Jewish Experience,” NPR, Sept. 2, 2004, http://www.onlyinamerica.info/ginsburg.shtml.
12. Interview by Ron Grele with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 17, 2004) (on file with authors).
13. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Sept. 5, 2008) (on file with authors).
14. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 27, 2009) (on file with authors).
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
2. One People
1. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 27, 2009) (on file with authors).
2. Interview by Larry Josephson with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Only in America—Celebrating 350 Years of the Jewish Experience,” NPR, Sept. 2, 2004, http://www.onlyinamerica.info/ginsburg.shtml.
3. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 5, 2005) (on file with authors).
4. Interview by Sarah Wilson with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Sept. 25, 1995) (on file with authors).
5. Interview by Larry Josephson with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Only in America—Celebrating 350 Years of the Jewish Experience,” NPR, Sept. 2, 2004, http://www.onlyinamerica.info/ginsburg.shtml.
6. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Tribute to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise,” East Midwood Jewish Center Bulletin, June 21, 1946, p. 2 (on file with authors).
7. Interview by Research Assistant Leila Abolfazli with Seymour “Si” Bessen (Mar. 17, 2007) (on file with authors).
8. Interview by Mary Hartnett with Anita Fial (May 12, 2006) (on file with authors).
9. Interview by Mary Hartnett with Ann Burkhardt Kittner (May 22, 2006) (on file with authors).
3. Wiretapping: Cure Worse than Disease?
1. Interview by Maeva Marcus with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 10, 1995) (on file with authors).
2. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 5, 2004) (on file with authors).
3. Ibid.
4. Conversation between Mary Hartnett and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Feb. 3, 2010).
4. Marty Ginsburg’s Favorite Subject
1. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Martin Ginsburg (Aug. 2, 2004) (on file with authors).
; 2. Interview by Maeva Marcus with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 10, 1995) (on file with authors).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Martin Ginsburg (Aug. 2, 2004) (on file with authors).
6. Interview by Maeva Marcus with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 10, 1995) (on file with authors).
5. Law and Lawyers in Opera
1. Interview by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Aug. 12, 2010) (on file with authors).
6. Remembering Justice Scalia
1. Interview by Mary Hartnett with Antonin Scalia (Aug. 1, 2007) (on file with authors).
2. Ibid.
7. The Scalia/Ginsburg Opera
1. Cf. St. Mary’s Honor Ctr. v. Hicks, 509 U.S. 502, 512 (1993) (“Only one unfamiliar with our case law will be upset by the dissent’s alarum that we are today setting aside ‘settled precedent,’ . . . .”); Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305, 312 (2009) (“[W]e must assure the reader of the falsity of the dissent’s opening alarum . . . .”).
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