Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ginsburg sat down with David Rubinstein, co founder of the Carlisle Group and host of the Bloomberg television show Peer to Peer Conversations, to discuss her health, that ascent that earned her the nickname of the Notorious RBG, and politics on the Supreme Court. Let me ask you a question at the beginning, how does it feel to get up in the morning and know that three thirty million Americans want to know the state of your health that day?

How does it feel encouraging? As Kansas survivors know that dread disease is a challenge, and it helps to know that people are rooting for you. Now, it's not universal. When I had pagriat a cancer. In two thousand nine, there was a senator whose name I don't recall, but he said I would be dead within six months. That senator is now no longer alive. But you can't remember

his name? No, I don't remember you. Um. But your current view is that as long as you're healthy and able to do the job, you intend to stay on the court. Is that correct? As long as I'm healthy and mentally agile. Right? So now, Justice Stevens and later and previously Justice uh Oliver winder Holmes, they were tired when they were ninety. Would you like to break their record or any thought about that? I spent the first week in July with Justice Stevens what turned out to

be the last week of his life. He was remarkable. He was nine years old. Since he left the Court at age nine, he's written four books. So yes, he's my real model. So UM. Today, many people think that the Court is very political, that people appointed to the Court by Democratic presidents and those appointed by Republican presidents tend to follow the political desires of the Republican or Democratic party. Do you think that's a fair assessment? And why do you think If it's not fair? People have

that view. People have that view because agreement is an interesting disagreement is so the press tends to play up our five four or our five three decisions. But if we can take just the last term as a typical example, we had sixty eight decisions after full briefing and argument of those twenty world five four or five three divisions, but twenty nine were unanimous. So we agree more often

than we sharply disagree. And that's something I would like the audience to take away that the divisions, yes, they are on some very important questions, but our agreement rate is always higher than our disagreement rate. So if you have a five to four perspective decision, there's one of the justices go to the another justice and say, why don't you change your mind? Does that work very much? Or there's no more upstrating at the court what he says, if you vote for me on this one, I'll vote

for you on that one. That doesn't happen. It never happens. But we are constantly trying to persuade each other, and most often we do it through our writing. Every time I write a descent before I am hopeful that I can pick up a vote many people are surprised that the civility that exists between justices even though they write not such favorable things about each other. So, for example, Justice Scalia used to say not such wonderful things about your views, and you then still went to the opera

with him. Was that a little awkward or hard to do? And not at all? And Justice Lean and I became friends when we were buddies on the d C circuit. What did I love most about him? His infectious sense of humor. When we were three judges on the Court of Appeals, he sometimes whispered something to me. It would crack me up. I had all I could do to

contain hysterical laughter. But we had much in common. True, our styles were very different, but both of us cared a lot about writing opinions so that at least other lawyers and judges will understand what we were saying. Both of you were and you still are a great opera lover. Where did you get your love of opera to begin with? And where did the opera Scalia Ginsburg come from. I'll take you the first question first. My love of opera began when I was eleven years old. I was in

grade school, in Brooklyn, New York. My aunt, who was middle school junior high school English teacher, took me to high school in Brooklyn where an opera was being performed. It was La Gia Conda, not a likely choice for first opera. There was a man at the time named Dean Dixon whose mission in life was to turn children onto beautiful music, and he had an all city orchestra. He took opera performances around to various schools, condensed them

into one hour, narrated in between. They were costumes bear staging. So of my introduction to opera was thanks to Dean Dixon in ninety four. So the Scalia Ginsburg Opera was written by a law school student. He was then a law school student. He was a music major at Harvard and the masses in music from Yale. Dirk Wang is his name. He decided it would be useful to know something about the law, so he enrolled in his hometown law school with University of Maryland, and in his second

year he took a constitutional law course. He read these dueling opinions Scali on one side, Ginsburg on the other, and decided this could make a very funny opera. So I'll just give you a taste of Scley Higginsburg. It opens with Scalia's rage aria. It's an a very Handelian in style, and he sings the justices a blind how can they possibly spout this? The Constitution says absolutely nothing

about this. And then, in my color of true a soprano voice, I answered, dear Justice, Scalia, you are surging for bright line solutions the problems that don't have easy answers. But the great thing about our constitution is that, like our society, it can evolve, so that that sets up the difference between us. The plot of Scalia Agginsburg is roughly based on the Magic Flu and Scalia is locked up in a dog room. He's being punished for excessive dissenting.

I then emerged through a glass ceiling and to help him pass the tests he needs to pass to get out of the dog room. Then a character left over from Don Giovanni the commentatory it is astonished. He said, he's your enemy, why would you want to help him? And I sing, He's not my enemy, he's my dear friend, and then we sing a wonderful duet that those we are different, we are one different. Enough approach to reading legal texts, but one in our reverence for the Constitution

and for the institution we serve. So most justices of the Supreme courter relatively not recognized by the public. I would say maybe in recent years that changed a little bit. But you are extremely well known around the country now, but you weren't when you went on the court. But now you've become more or less a rock star um RBG, and you have movies about you on the basis of sex and other things. So why do you think this has occurred? And is this something you don't really enjoy

that much or something you just think comes with the territory. Now, how is the notorious on BG created? It was the idea of a second year student at ny U Law School who was very disappointed in the Court's decision in

the Shelby County case. And that was a case in which is the Court declared unconstitutional the key provision of the Voting Rights Act of nine, an act that had been renewed time and again by overwhelming majorities both sides of the aisle, but the Supreme Court struck down the formula. The way the Voting Acts Act worked was if you were a state or a city or a county that

kept African Americans from voting. In the NAZA litt old days, you could not make any change in voting legislation m unless you precleared it with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, or with a three judge district court and the District of Columbia. So that advanced check suppress many laws that would have discourage African Americans from voting. The Supreme Court said, well, the formula for who was discriminating

is now out of date. Caylus needs to do it over because jurisdictions that were discriminating in may have clean hands today. The political problem was, what member of Congress, what senator, what representative would stand up and say, my state, oh, my city, or my county is still discriminating. So keep it under the surveillance that the voting writes that provides just wasn't going to happen. The Act itself had a bailout provision, so if a state, city, county indeed had

clean hands for several elections, it could bail out. And that device, I thought was was all that was needed. But in any event, this student was disturbed about the Court's decision. She was angry, and then she said to herself, anger is not a useful emotion. I'm going to do

something positive. And what she did but she took the announcement of my descent that I read from the bench in Shelby County, and she created this blog Hiding at the Notorious Albig, a name she got from a well known rapper who was called the Notorious b I G. And when I was asked, well, what in the world you have in common with the Notorious B I G? I said, It's obvious both of us were born and bred in Brooklyn, New York. So now you were born in Brendon, Brooklyn, you have still a bit of a

Brooklyn accent, you might admit. Um you were played in a movie by Felicity Jones, who was not Jewish, shore from Brooklyn. So how do you think she did? I thought you is fantastic. When I first met Felicity, I said, you speak the Queens English. How are you going to sound like a girl born in bred in Brooklyn. But she listened to many tapes of my speeches and my arguments at the court, and she was wonderful. So in recent years you've also got a lot of attention for

your exercise. Uh. I have been with the same personal trainer since when I had my first stance about I had chelocal cancer and my dear husband said, after going through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, I looked like a survivor of Auschwitz. He said, you must do something to burg yourself up. Get a personal trainer, And that's when I started in. Sometimes I get so absorbed in my work I just

don't want to let go. But when it comes time to meet my train, I drop everything, and as tired as I may be in the beginning, I always feel much better when we finished. Okay, so you met your husband Marty. You were married for fifty six years. You met him at Cornell? Is that right? Yes? I met

when I was seventeen and he was eighteen. And what is the likelihood of a woman at Cornell meeting somebody they marry and that person wants to take care of child rearing and also cooking um as well as sharing all the other burdens of being married. Is that a very common thing in your observation or it was extraordinary at any time, particularly in the nine teen fifties. Cornell, by the way, had a four to one ratio of four men to every woman. It was the place parents

wanted to send their daughters. So you couldn't find your manner Cornel. You were hopeless. So then I met Marty, and he was, in fact the first boy I ever knew who cared that I had a brain. He was always my biggest booster. The cooking that began. I had two years between college and law school, and Marty was in service. Those two years. We spent in Fort Sill, Oklahoma,

the principal artillery base. I got pregnant during the first year, and when I back went back to do Off to give my cousin sent Marty a copy of the Escaper Cookbook in English translation and said, this will give you something to do while your wife is away. So Monty had originally been a chemistry major at Cornell, and he treated this Escofa a cookbook like the chemistry textbook. He started with the basic stocks and worked his way through it.

He gave up chemistry because it interfered with golf practice. Why was a great golfer, And then he switched to government, which is was my major. He attributed his skill in the kitchen to two women, his mother and his wife, his mother. I think was that was an unfair judgment, but he was certainly right about me. I had one cookbook. It was called the sixty minutes Chelf, and that meant from when you enter the apartment until when it's on

the table, no more than sixty minutes. I had seven things that I made, and we got to number seven, we went back to number one. Of Martin's mother, ever give you any advice when you met her, she happily married. She gave me some wonderful advice. We were married in her home and she said, just before the ceremony started, dear, I'd like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage. I'd love to hear it. What is it? Every now and then she said, it helps to be a little death,

which is such wonderful advice. I haven't followed it assiduously to this very day. If I'm dealing with my colleagues as someone a Valontine word is said. I just turned out. So as a result of your marriage to Marty, who was a distinguished law professor and tax lawyer as well, you have two children. Jane, your daughter, It teaches at Columbia. She is the martinel. Jack Low professor of Literary and

Artistic Property Law at Columbia Law School. And as I understand that you and she were the only mother daughter team to ever actually be elected to the Harvard Law Review. Is that true so far? And you have a son who's in the music business. James makes exquisite compact this. James grew up with a passion from music, but no talent as a performer. So when he went to the University of Chicago, he was the classical disc jockey on

the student radio station. Then in the years he was dropping in and out of law school, he was also making recordings. And one day he told us he liked what he was doing much more than his law classes. So we said, fine, that's what you want to do. And today his label is c D and his recordings are Jim's. Do you have any grandchildren? I have four grandchildren, two step grandchildren, and one great grandchild. And what do your your grandchildren call you? RBG or what do they

call you? I'm a Jewish grandmother, so I'm called Bubby. Okay. That was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking with David ruben Stein