RBG, notoriously honorable
28th September 2020 · 0 Comments
Cruel words came from countless conservative critics upon the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Cheers that Trump would appoint an originalist justice to replace the progressive icon were joined by horrendous statements of hate fired at the recently departed 87-year-old jurist — merely because of contemporary political disagreements.
And that’s part of the point. The irony is that even many of Ginsberg’s conservative detractors would be the first ones to agree that women should have the right to have an independent checking account, possess the option to deduct caregiver expenses for a sick loved-one from their taxes, or be allowed the choice to follow their professional dreams.
It stands as a testament to how consequential Ruth Bader Ginsburg has proven for the advancement rights of women and those forgotten that overturning her earliest victories in court do not even enter the political discourse today. Americans nearly ubiquitously accept that the gender equity rights that she won for us in court in the 1960s and 1970s are our common inheritance. Interestingly, she began her tireless crusade because no large firm would hire her as an attorney, despite the fact she graduated at the top of her Columbia Law School class.
In fact, RBG numbers as one of the few Supreme Court justices who would have gone down with a prominent place in American legal history even if she had never been appointed to the United States Supreme Court. The Lilly Ledbetter Law, President Obama’s first signed piece of legislation, was a statutory confirmation of the very rights for which Ruth Bader Ginsburg had fought her whole career.
Disagree with her current politics, but Justice Ginsburg deserves respect for the America that she fashioned — rights defended by the vast majority of people, regardless of party.
The irony, though, is that one of her closest friends would be the first to tell the pathetic partisan posturer that ideological disagreement stood as no reason to withhold respect, or even love, from an exceptional human being.
In fairness, there were those on the left who also cheered the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Their comments of condemnation and glee for his demise were equally unfair to a towering intellectual giant, yet, all across the political spectrum should respect the examples of comity that Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave to us.
The two late Justices were the closest of personal friends. They shared a love of opera, went souvenir shopping together when they traveled, and rode an elephant in India with Scalia up front. Their families kept company every New Year’s Eve, and when Chief Justice Roberts announced the death of Ginsburg’s husband, Marty, Scalia wept on the bench. When Scalia passed in 2016, Ginsburg lamented, “We were best buddies.”
Scalia defended the camaraderie, noting, “if you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake.”
On her part, Ginsburg said of Scalia, “As annoyed as you might be about his zinging dissent, he’s so utterly charming, so amusing, so sometimes outrageous, you can’t help but say, “I’m glad he is my friend.” She said she sometimes had to pinch herself to not laugh when he would say something audacious in the courtroom.
As one writer recently put it, “In an era when we are being purposefully divided over political and social differences, and friendships and families are being ripped apart in the process, Scalia and Ginsburg were The Odd Couple. They held the deepest respect for each other and kept their disagreements intellectual, not transactional. (Little known fact, it was Scalia that begged Obama to appoint Ellen Kagan to the Court. He wanted her there so he would have someone to argue with in an intelligent manner.)”
When he learned of Ginsburg’s passing, Scalia’s son, Christopher, shared the following story from Judge Jeffrey Sutton about an encounter late in his father’s life.
“During one of my last visit with Justice Scalia, I saw striking evidence of the Scalia-Ginsburg relationship. As I got up to leave his chambers, he pointed to two dozen roses on his table and noted that he needed to take them down to ‘Ruth’ for her birthday.
“Wow,” I said, “I doubt I have given a total of twenty-four roses to my wife in almost thirty years of marriage.”
“You ought to try it sometime,” Scalia retorted.
Unwilling to let him have the last word, I pushed back: “So what good have all those roses done for you? Name one five-four case of any significance when you have got Justice Ginsburg’s vote.”
Scalia replied, “Some things are more important than votes.”
This article originally published in the September 28, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
