Ginsburg praises Kavanaugh and reflects on gender equality
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Supreme Court justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Tuesday praised newly-confirmed Justice Brett Kavanugh for appointing an entirely female staff. Ginsburg spoke about her own history in the fight for gender equality to a packed auditorium at Georgetown Law School.
"There is a very important first on the Supreme Court this term and it's thanks to our new justice, Justice Kavanaugh," Ginsburg said.
Ginsburg made history herself as being only the second woman in history to be added to the Supreme Court after being nominated by former President Clinton in 1993. Since her confirmation, she has become a leading voice for women's rights and a cultural icon. Ginsburg is often referred to as the "Notorious RBG" and her face has adorned scores of t-shirts and posters with that slogan.
"I should say what we were doing in the 70s — we were getting rid of all of the over-explicit gender-based classification," Ginsburg said. "There was nothing subtle about it. It was women can't do this, women can't do that."
Ginsburg said that while the "explicit barriers" women faced are largely "gone," many still continue to face "unconscious bias." She cited the 1994 lawsuit against AT&T where nine female employees argued that the AT&T Corporation gave them smaller salaries or denied their promotions because of their gender.
Two of Ginsburg's former law clerks — Supreme Court Institute director Dori Bernstein and law partner Ruthanne Deutsch — questioned the justice.
Some of Ginsburg's most prominent Supreme Court cases demonstrate her attention to issues of gender equality. In the 1996 case of United States v. Virginia , Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion affirming that the Virginia Military Institute could no longer restrict admission to men.
On Tuesday, Ginsburg recounted her difficulty landing a job after her graduation from Columbia Law School in 1959. She detailed how a law professor threatened that he would never recommend another Columbia student to a judge of the Southern District of New York if he did not provide Ginsburg with a clerkship.
Ginsburg also spoke of her own marriage with prominent lawyer Martin Ginsburg, who she called "extraordinary." Ginsburg noted that she and her husband had equal roles in the household during a period when a woman was considered responsible for domestic care. Martin Ginsburg died at 78 years old in June 2010.
"It was lucky that I met Marty at a time when the best degree that a girl could have not her BA or her JD, it was her Mrs.," Ginsburg said.
"Marty was the most unusual fellow," she added. "I've said many times he was the only boy I ever knew up to that time who cared that I had a brain."
Ginsburg said that her husband was her "biggest booster" who never regarded her success in the law as a "threat." She described their divvying up of chores and responsibilities, even joking that she was eventually "phased out of the kitchen" by her daughter.
A panel of legal experts followed the discussion between Ginsburg and her clerks. The panel focused on the justice's legal philosophy and writings throughout her career.
"Her legacy teaches us that the rhetoric of feminist jurisiprudence is inherently disruptive, that discursive traditions, norms of erasure, scripts of objectivity must be confronted and challenged to create space for feminist judgment in the law," said Katie L. Gibson, a professor of rhetorical studies at Colorado State University.
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Who knew........ Pigs just might be able to fly.
Incredible - a slap in the face of the Democrats and other liberals who slandered, libeled, and tried to blacken his name with phony sexual assault charges.
His reputation will always be, and should always be questioned. Just like that of Clarence Thomas.
Given what has been presented, and how it was responded to, Kavanaugh is just another privileged pig. Let's hope he has had a change of mind when it comes to women and women's rights.
Because of unsubstantiated claims from decades ago?
That is freaking ridiculous.
What views does Kavanaugh hold regarding women that you object to so much?
Yes.
Yes.
Since when did shit have to make sense to angry partisans?
The plain simple fact is that no matter what good Justice Kavanaugh may accomplish on the bench of the SCOTUS in the future, many on the progressive liberal left will never accept it simply because they lost and he was in fact appointed to the court in spite of their hateful bias. I applaud Justice Ginsberg at this time for doing what so many others on the left refuse to even contemplate, which is to give Justice Kavanaugh the benefit of the doubt.
I think he's a drunken rapist.
That seems to be his past. Now let us hope his moment in review of his past leads him to a better future.
Kavanaugh is the lying drunken slut.
Kavanaugh never accused someone decades later of anything like rape, Kavanaugh wasn't the one who couldn't remember when or where the ALLEGED assault took place, and Kavanaugh didn't fail to have any witnesses.
He was never accused of rape.
Of course he was. Attempted rape/rape are the same thing.
Do try to follow along
Trump has never been charged with either rape or attempted rape.
Just some flapping gums who CLAIM stuff "happened" decades later.
Phhhfffftttttt.
I wasn't talking about the 'president' I was talking about drunken rapist Kavanaugh.
Do try to keep up
The 'president' has been charged more than a dozen times with sexual assault and rape of 13 year old girls.
Your rabid defense of a rapist is duly noted
Kavanaugh has never been charged with either rape or attempted rape.
Just some flapping gums who CLAIM stuff "happened" decades later.
Phhhfffftttttt.
Well, then, it should be quite easy for you to provide the dates and jurisdictions that charged him, but we both know you can't.
He may have been accused, but he was never formally charged nor convicted. That's the big kicker right rhere!
They are not the same thing, any more than murder and attempted murder are the same thing.
Incredible - a slap in the face of the Democrats
Possibly.
It depends..depends upon what his motives were for doing this.
Kavanaugh has a long history of hiring women.
I have never heard of any complaints from any of them, in fact, some were more than willing to vouch for him during his confirmation hearings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/us/politics/kavanaugh-supreme-court-clerks.html
Jul 11, 2018 · Judge Kavanaugh’s Former Clerks: Diverse, and Deployed to Vouch for Him ... An endorsement letter signed by 34 former clerks — “every single one of Judge Kavanaugh’s clerks …
Author: Elizabeth Williamson
www.memeorandum.com/180711/p47
LOL. You're insinuating that he keeps a harem? Maybe a bordello?
A nice lesson in perception vs reality. Kavanaughs entire career has been marked by this type of behavior and the liberal crazies and their media stooges responded to his nomination with asinine charges that he led a high school rape gang. Think back and remember how crazy they were those least few weeks. It’s remarkable. McCarthyism for the 21st century, they knew it had to be true, damn the evidence.
ginsburg is, of course, untouchable to those same partisan hacks who lost their minds over kavanaugh. They make fawning documentaries over her and fawn over her pedestrian jurisprudence that is interchangeable with any other far left water carrier becuase she inserts herself into the political process by attacking trump. She’s the ideal progressive.
Yet ginsburg has hired exactly one Black person to clerk for her In 25 years on the court, and zero in her 13 year tenure on the DC Court of Appeals. That’s inexplicable given the importance of blacks numerically. to the progressive coalition. I shouldn’t say it’s inexplicable because it’s totally explicable, but those sort of behaviors are Happily ignored by progressives when discussing the “notorious RBG” who’d Rather invent and publicize a fake narrative that Kavanaugh raped women.
They are monsters who excuse the inexcusable and do their damndest to destroy the innocent in the name of politics,
Yes.
Yes.
You are using past tense....as though they don't still believe it to be true.
Of course. She is on their "team".
The level of vitriolic rhetoric and hatred coming from some on the left on this is unfounded really.
The guy made an unprecedented move, is being praised by RBG for doing it and its still not enough for these hateful buffoons.
When one person comes forward with decades old accusations, that can not be proven and they all believe it for largely partisan reasons?
There is no hope for them ..... none at all.
As I said, now let us hope his moment in review of his past leads him to a better more understanding future with respect to women's issues.
It would be much more beneficial if Kavanaugh's critics reflected on their willingness to throw away all standards of evidence to destroy a man. That type of group insanity is what causes lynch mobs.
Let us also hope it in imbues us all with a healthy dose of skepticism large enough to ward off believing unverifiable or wholly fabricated assertions simply because they satisfy our partisan fuckwittery.
Justice Ginsberg in the window above does not speak to Justice Kavanaugh's past. She is simply commenting and approving of a good work done by this Justice on the court to the court. Yes?
Justice Kavanaugh skated through his hearings, despite a charge being leveled against him and it almost broke the Senate. We were privileged to the struggle there. He was not cleared of anything; procedurally he was passed through by a partisan selection board and a partisan senate majority.
Still, back to Justice Ginsberg and Justice Kavanaugh. Good on him for doing a good work which gives a liberal justice hope in him.