The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg: How to Fight for Equality

the process. I've often said that nominating Justice Ginsburg to the Supreme Court was perhaps the best decision I've made as president. I'll never forget the first time we met, when I invited her to the White House for an interview as I weighed my decision about the Supreme Court nomination. Just about ten minutes into our talk, it was already clear to me that she had the best combinations of skills and instincts of any of those I was considering.

I wanted to appoint someone who was open minded, passionately committed to equality, and determined to work with the other judges to try to forge consensus when it was possible, and also willing to stand up for them when it wasn't. For more than twenty seven years on the Supreme Court, she went above and beyond even my highest expectations. So

why am I telling you this? Because as we celebrate Women's History Month, Ruth Bader against Bird's remarkable story is an important reminder of the barriers she faced in her life and career, systemic obstacles that her male counterparts were not subject to and often didn't even consider. She didn't just overcome those barriers, she tore many of them down, and use your own experiences to in former decades of work on behalf of others whose voices weren't being heard today.

I want to share a part of that story is told by Justice Ginsburg herself. In Justice Ginsburg joined NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Needa Totenberg for a special conversation hosted by the Clinton Presidential Center as part of the computer's

Distinguished Lecture series. I often wonder if, as a young lawyer, she could have even imagined that the eighties, six year old Supreme Court justice version of herself wouldn't be filling arenas normally reserved for concerts and sports events and acting as a role model for girls and boys who dreamed of living in a country dedicated to genuine fairness and equality.

As you listen to this episode, I asked that you do so not just with a heavy heart that Justice Ginsburg is no longer with us, but with a sense of gratitude for the many years of wisdom, guidance, and inspiration she gave us. Her work made America stronger, fairer, more just, and we're all better because of her service. That is a gentleman, just a Skinsbourg. The need to talking bird. Thank you, thank you. Need everyone need be ceded, need be ceded, Thank you, thank you, thank you, um,

thank you all for coming. I think Justice Skinsburg and I have never ever appeared before an audience this large before war, and uh, I understand that normally this is I guess recently the worldwide wrestling entertainment. We are not going to wrestle each other. We're going to try to entertain you a bit and inform you. UM you've heard President Clinton describing his why he picked Justice Ginsburg. But I think I should start this interview asking you about

that interview. UM, So let me set the stage. The year is the new President is flirting with all manner of potential Supreme Court nominations, and uh, the names keep getting leaked to the likes of me Um and behind the scenes, the inimitable Martin Ginsburg is doing everything in his power to promote his tiny but auspicious wife. Uh. And finally you get a call from burning us Baum the White House Council, and it's a call that you had long hoped for. But you are in something of

a fashion dilemma. So tell us about how you got the call that day calling you to the White House and what your fashion dilemma was. I was called on a Saturday in Vermont, where I was to attend a wedding, and Bernie Nus said, the President wants to meet you. Please come back to d C. And I said, well, I've told all this way to attend the wedding. Can I come tomorrow morning? And he said fine, We'll go right from the airport to the White House. And I said,

but I'll be wearing my traveling clothes. Oh that's okay, because the President would be just coming off the golf course. So I arrived in by playing clothes and incomes a very handsome president wearing his Sunday best because he just comes from church. So what was the conversation with the President? Like what kinds of things did he ask? And did you have a good time or were you in interview agony? Though it was very easy to talk to the President.

We talked about constitutional law, after all, he was a constitutional law professor. We talked about family, have we talked about many things. And I've had the experience with some men that they have a certain discomfort talking to a woman. That was not that way with President Clinton. So I was told after that interview by a number of White House aides, but he just felt for you, hook line

and sinker. And this afternoon when we were talking, he said, in five minutes, I had just fallen for her hook line and sinker. Um, but when did you get the word? Do I recall that you got a call from burning us down when you were in the bathtop or something like that. That night it was rather late on Sunday night, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

I was absolutely on cloud nine. And then the President said, and tomorrow morning, we will have a little ceremony in the Rose Garden, and we'd like you to make a few remarks. I had to come down from the cloud sit at my writing table. I liked the remarks. It was the only time in that entire episode when there was no time from White House handless to go over what I was going to say, my own words, unedited.

You know, you then went into a confirmation process. I think in the end you got I'm not sure about this. I think there were only three Thank you. Republicans today all often cite the Ginsburg rule, And when I go back and I read the transcript, I read about what your rule was. But it strikes me that in light of modern confirmation hearings, more modern confirmation hearings, UH nominees are considerably less responsive of all political strikes, not just

Republican nominees. You actually answered questions about abortion and the death penalty and all kinds of things. The Ginsburg rule was that you please do not ask a question that may come before the court, because then I would have to disqualify myself if I gave an answer, because the judge is not supposed to react just off the top of her head when a question is presented to us.

We read first of all the decisions that were written by the courts below, the trial court, Court of Appeals, and then we read the briefs that are anything but brief filed by the lawyers, and we read the relevant President. So to give an answer to a question without the benefit of all that reading and briefing is not what a judge to do. Still, there was a lot out there that I could be asked about. Because I was seventeen years of a law teacher, thirteen years a judge

on a Court of Appeals. I had written hundreds of opinions, many articles, and anything that I had already written was fair game. So you arrived at the court. You're the second woman, and Justice O'Connor had been there for twelve long years without you. Right, what advice did she give you? She told me just enough to enable me to navigate those early weeks. She didn't douse me with a bucket full of information, just enough to get by. She was, I think, very pleased at a change the court made

when I was appointed. Justice O'Connor was a lone woman on the court for twelve years. In our robing room, there is a bathroom and it says men for Justice O'Connor, when the need a rose she had to go all the way back to her chambers. When I came on board, they rushed a renovation. They created a women's bathroom equal in size to the men's. Your first opinion assigned to you, it was not quite what you expected, and you went

to her. Yes. The legend is that the new justice, the junior justice, will get a single issue case in which the court is unanimous. Her Chief Justice Frienklis gave me as my first assignment a Miserable Orissa case. Arissa is the Employee Retirement Security Act. It is one of the most complex statutes Congress ever wrote. The quote was not unanimous, divided six to three, and Justice O'Connor was on the other side. She was one of the three. So I came to her and I said, Sandra, he

was not supposed to do that to me. Her response, and this is typical of Justice O'Connor. She said, Ruth, you just do it. Just do it and get your opinion draft in circulation before he makes the next set of assignments. Otherwise you will risk getting well the miserable case. I could never understand why lawyers that appeared before the court, who appeared before the court and not people who were not accustomed to the court, but some very seasoned lawyers

would get these two women mixed up. And Sander Day O'Connor was about five seven or eight. You claimed to be over five ft tall. Uh. She was a Western ranch girl with a Western twang. You were a New Yorker, a Brooklyn girl. I don't know that it was a Brooklyn twang, but you were clearly an Easterner. Uh. She didn't wear her hair the way you do. Um. And still people kept calling you Justice O'Connor and her Justice Ginsburg.

Why more much more often? I always called Justice O'Connor. Oh. The lawyers had learned there was a woman on the court and her name was Justice O'Connor, so when they heard a woman's voice, it had to be Justice O'Connor that she would sometimes respond, I'm Justice O'Connor, she's Justice Ginsburg. There was a lot of attention paid to the two of us and how we interacted, and one day, I think it was in USA today, there was a headline. The headline was rude Ruth interrupts Sandra. Sandra had asked

a question at argument. I thought she was finished, and she said, just a minute I have follow up questions. I apologize to her and she said, Ruth, don't give it another thought. The guys knew it to each other all the time. There even was a T shirt presented to the two of you, I think by I think it was the Radcliffe somebody, some group of women from Radcliffe and one side said I'm Sandra, I'm Sandra, not Ruth.

It was the National Association of Women Judges. They had a reception for the two of us and they gave her a T shirt that said I'm Sandra, not Ruth. Mine I'm Ruth not Sandra. But if we can fast forward, I can tell you that doesn't happen anymore now that we are three. They're kind of a difference. Does it make to have three? One is the public perception. We have a line, a ten minute line, often school children coming in and out of the court and if they

see three women. Because of my senior already, I sit next to the Chief Justice, so to my horis on one side, Justice Kegan on the other. So where one third of the court where all over the bench And as you will affirm, my sisters in law are not shrinking violence. They have very active in the colloquy that goes on at at an oral argument. For the years

of Justice Scalia was with us. There was kind of a competition between Justice so to my art, and Justice Scaliah, which one could ask the most questions at all argument. You were, um, the lone woman justice after justice so kind of retired from two thousand and six. I think the two thousan pretty near the end of two thousand nine, and I had the sense that you were not a very happy camper at that time. It was a lonely position and viewing the court, it was something raw with

the picture. The public would see these eight rather wealth and men coming on the bench, and then they were this rather small a woman. M And did you find that even there on occasion when you were just one, did you occasionally see that phenomenon of you say something and nothing happens, and then ten minutes later or five minutes later, one of your brethren says the same thing, and everybody goes, oh, that's a very good idea. Well, that happened at conference, um more than more than once.

But I would make a comment, no reaction. Then one of my male colleagues would say basically the same thing and people would react. That's a good idea. Let's discuss it. It's a habit that had developed that you don't expect very much from a woman, so he kind of tune out when she speaks, but you listen when a mail speaks. Now I can tell you that that experience which I had as a member of the law faculty, as a member of a quote of appeals, now that I have

two sisters in law, it doesn't happen. I'm gonna pause here and ask you the question on people's minds. You've had a lot of serious threats to your health this year. Uh, you were operated on for lung cancer in December. You have just completed three weeks of radiation treatment for an additional cancer. So how are you feeling? And excuse me, I'm really thrilled that we're here, But why are we here?

You you finished radiation treatment at the end of August. Yes, and August twenty three was the last and it was the last session. But I had promised the Clinton Library that I would be here and I just was not doing too h Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, And I'm pleased to say that I am feeling very good tonight. How do you keep going? I mean you you have. I've took a ton of briefs with me on the plane here, and I managed about an hour and a half's worth, and then I was ready for

a break. You do this when you're sometimes feeling really rotten in the last year, How do you keep going? I think my work is what saved me because instead of dwelling on my physical discomforts, if I have an opinion to write, or I have a brief to read, I know it's I've just got to get it done, and so I have to get over it. Well, my This is another instance where I got very good advice from Justice O'Connor. Justice o'conna had a mastectomy and she

was on the bench nine days after her surgery. She told me in my first chance about it was colorectal cancer. Ruth. You schedule your chemotherapy for a Friday, then you can get over it a Saturday and Sunday and be back in court on Monday. But you have done this really all of your life. Cancer is not a stranger to you. Your mother died the day before your graduation. Your husband

was diagnosed with testicular cancer. When you were both at Harvard Law School, and you had an eighteen month or two year old child at the same time, and you're on our review. I think I often get Justice Ginsburgh just to describe what a day in her life, that awful year was like. Before Marty survived and beat the odds, we took it day by day. We always believed that we would we would prevail, that we would beat the cancer. It was not an easy time after he had surgery.

He had massive radiation because there was no chemo therapy in those days. So he would come home, be sick, go to sleep, get up about twelve midnight, and whenever he ate for the day, he would eat then he then he would dictate his senior paper to me. I had no takers for all of his classes. My routine was I would go to my classes in the morning, go to the hospital in the afternoon, come home, play with my daughter, who was then two, you know, Jame was three. UM put her to bed after dinner, which

was at midnight. I would then go back to the books and prepare for the next day. So I was getting along on two hours of sleep a night for a week. On end. We always had a positive de attitude that we would and that we would live. So, for your last year of law school, because Marty was a year ahead of you, you moved to New York to be with him for his job. Um, you graduated tied for first in your class at Columbia Law School. Uh,

but you couldn't get a job. You and Justice. So Connor used to talk about how lucky that was in hindsight, that you couldn't get jobs when you graduated at the tops of your respective classes. Well, that's an example of how something that may seem dreadful, very bad luck turns out to be the most which of the thing that

ever happened to you and Justice. So kind of put it this way, she said, suppose we had graduated from law school at a time when there was no discrimination, when women were welcome at the bar, what would we be today. We would be retired partners from some large law firm. But that route wasn't open to us. So we had to find another path, and that path led us to become Supreme Court justices. You were recommended for all kinds of clerkships, Supreme Court clerkships, court of Appeals clerkships.

Nobody would interview you none of these, because in those days they were all in would would interview you. You finally did get a clerkship back then thanks to the rather assertive intervention of one of your professors, UM, who basically said to your judge, the judge who hired you, if you take her and it doesn't work out, I have a guy who I'll send to you. He's at at a law firm now, but if you don't, I

will never send you another Columbia grad. Um. So you went to work for Judge Palmieria ended up for two years, despite the fact that you had two strikes against you where you were not only a woman, you were a mother. Um. But one of the charming stories of this period of your life is that one of the judges who turned you down and was not interested in you was Judge Learned at Hand, a very famous, famous judge, and he turned you and because she said he couldn't swear in

front of you. So so you pick up the story from here. Gentle Learned Hand lived one block away from the judge for whom my clerk, Judge Palmieri and Judge Promieri often drove Lord a Hand home when I was finished in time I would ride up town with them sitting in the back seat, and this great juris would say anything that came into his head, words that my

mother never taught me. And I asked him, you say you won't consider me as a clerk because you would have to censor your speech, and yet in this car I I don't seem to inhibit you at all. And his response was, young lady, I am not looking at you. UM. For those of you who have not seen RBG or the biopic on the basis of Sex, I recommend both. They provide a pretty good view of your career prior to becoming a judge and then later a Supreme Court justice.

But what used to strike me when I covered your arguments, UH, was how you had tailored your arguments. You had an all male Supreme Court, and you tailored your gender discrimination cases the arguments in those cases to appeal to different justices in different ways, and you often had male plaintiffs, UM. And one of those male plaintiffs was Stephen Wisenfeld, whose wife died in childbirth and who was denied Social Security benefits for his remaining his child, who survived, even though

his wife was the principal breadwinner, and you won. But there were basically three arguments that succeeded, and I wanted you to talk about each how each group of justices saw it. First, let me tell the audience how Stephen Wisenville came to my attention. He had written a letter to the editor to his local paper in Edison, New Jersey, and he said, I've been hearing a lot these days

about women's lib Let me tell you my story. My wife died of an embolism just after our son was born, and I knew that there were benefits available to a soul surviving parent who had a young child to take care of. So I went to the Social Security office to claim those benefits, and I was told, we're very sorry,

Mr Wisenfeld. These are mother's benefits then not available to fathers. Now, it was obvious to me that although the plaintiff was a man, the discrimination was against the woman as wage earner. She paid the same Social Security taxes that a man would pay, but her contributions did not net for her family the same protection. So I think it was the dominant view of the court that this was really discrimination

against the woman as wager. In it, A few of the justices said, no, it's discrimination against the mail as parent. He doesn't have the option to personally care for his child. Under the Social Security you could earn a certain amount and still get the Social Security benefits. If you earned over the limit, the benefits would re reduce stollar for dollar. And why is a felt had figured out I can do part time work, earn a certain amount and keep

those benefits. So some of the justice has said, it's obvious that its discrimination against the mail as parent he has no choice but to work full time, who doesn't have the option to care personally for his newborn. And then it was one who later became my chief, then Justice Frankist, who said, it's totally obitrary from the point of view of the baby. Why should the baby have the opportunity for the care of a soul surviving parent only if that parent is female and not if the

parent is male. So it was such a wonderful illustration of how gender based discrimination hurts everyone, hurts women, hurts men and sol Then there was a case that you had that you wanted to take to the Supreme Court, but you couldn't because the case involving me, I think army or Air Force. Uh, pregnant woman, This isn't Struck case. I had hoped that that would be the first reproductive

choice case that the Court would hear. The case of Rose in when Captain Struck was serving in the Air Force and she was serving abroad when she became pregnant. Pregnancy in those days was a mandatory ground for discharge. The base commander said to her two years before, will we wade, you can have an abortion on base. We provide those for women in service and wives of men in service, and if you do, you can remain in the Air Force. But if you choose to go through

the pregnancy, you are discharged, no exceptions. CITs Instruck said, I'm a Roman Catholic. I cannot have an abortion, but I've made arrangements to have the child adopted at birth. I will cost the um taxpayers nothing because I'll use only my accumulated leave time for the birth. And she said, you know, here we are at Crop Air Force Base where some of my male colleagues get hooked on alcohol

or on drugs, and you don't mandate their discharge. If they report themselves, they can be in a rehabilitation program and you will keep them from much longer than the time I'm going to take off for this birth doesn't make any sense. Pregnancy is a ground, a mandatory ground for discharge. And that was that. Susan Struck brought her case in the Federal District Court. She lost there or by the way, she was very well represented, so she

got a stay of her discharge every month. So she was always is in fighting to stay in, not out, trying to get back in anyway, what happened then then it went to the Court of Appeals. She lost again, but there was a very good dissenting opinion, and then I wrote a petition to the Supreme Court to hear her case. The Supreme Court said, yes, we'll take it. And then the Solicitor General at the time, who had

been dean of the law school Everest, attended. He asked to have a meeting with the top military people and said, this case has lost potential for the government. You should waive Captain Strucks discharge and then changed the rule respectively so that pregnancy is no longer an automatic discharge, and

and the Air Force did. And then immediately the government moved to have the case returned to the Court of Appeals for determination whether it was moot no longer live because she got all the relief she was seeking, she remained an Air Force officer. So I called Captain Struck and said, is there anything you're missing so that we can claim this case is still alive? And she said when I have all my pay and allowances, so nothing there.

But there is one thing this conversation is going on in in two She said, all my life, I've dreamed of becoming a pilot, but the Air Force doesn't give flight training two women. And then we laughed because we knew in two was much too early. It was still an impossible dream to win that case, and the difference between then and now is one of the reasons why I am optimistic about the future. Today, it would be

unthinkable to deny flight training two winning Josh Skinsburg. This maybe a little um two thinking, but I think it's important to talk about um and that is the notion

of originalism versus a living constitution. A majority of the current Court believes, to one degree or another in the notion that justices should interpret the Constitution as it was meant by the founding fathers when it was written in the late seventeen hundreds, that the original intent is what matters, and the text as it was written and what it

was intended. You and most of the justices you have served with, at least until now, have a somewhat different take that the Constitution was written to be elastic enough, as Justice Kennedy, now retired, put it, to accommodate changes in society. Could you talk about your thinking a bit. President Clinton said it so well in his introduction. Our Constitution begins with the words we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.

So think how things were in se Who were we the people? Certainly not people who were held in human bondage because the original Constitution preserves slavery, and certainly not women, whatever the color, and not even men who own no property. So it was a rather a lead group, we the people. But I think the genius of our Constitution is what

Justice Sir good Marshall said. He said, he doesn't celebrate the original Constitution, but he does celebrate But the Constitution has become now over well over you know, well over two centuries, and that is the concept of we the people has become ever more inclusive. So people who were left out At the beginning, slaves, women, men without property,

Native Americans were not part of we the people. Now all the once left out people are part of our political constituency, and we are certainly a more perfect union as a result of that. The Constitution, the original Constitution, preserved the slave trade till One of the provisions that's an embarrassment is the fugitive slave claws that said if someone held as a slave escapes into a free state and the master asked to get the slave back, the

slave must be returned to the master. That fugitive slave clauses an article for the Constitution where you can still read it today, but there'll be a star next to it saying changed by the four Amendment, which says, you know, when I the first time I'm got uh Justice Ginsburg, it was by phone, and we were both quite young women compared to now anyway, and I was a brand new Supreme Court reporter reading about the first case claiming

that discrimination against women was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the first case in the Supreme Court, and it was ultimately the case that the Court first said it was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. And I didn't understand it. And I because I said, you know, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to cover UH slaves and African Americans, and

it doesn't say anything about women. And I called you up and you gave me an hour long lecture, but I'm going to ask you for a sixty second version. But he said, I thought the fourteenth Amendment was about race, and I said, yes, it certainly is about race. But the fourteenth Amendment reads, nor shall any State denied to any person the equal protection of the laws. No. The first time the Supreme Court heard such an argument was in the eighteen seventies. A woman oh wanted to vote

and she said she was stopped at the polls. And she said, now, I ran the Constitution and it says, no, sha any state denied to any person the equal protection of the law. The Court response to her was, you are indeed a person, and you are a citizen of the United States. But so too our children, and no one would suggest that children should have the right to vote. Court has come a long way since then. The turning point case that you asked me about was called Read

re Read. It was about Sally Read, who had a great tragedy in her life. She had a son. She and her husband divorced when the boy was young. The legal term is of tender years. Sally was appointed custodian of the child. When the boy reached his teams, the father went to the family court and and said, now he needs to be prepared for a man's world, so I should be the custodian. Sally fought that she thought it was would not be good for her her son to live in his father's home, but she lost. Sadly,

she turned out to be right. The boy was sorely depressed and one day he took out one of his father's many guns and committed suicide. So Sally wanted to be appointed administrator of his estate to take care of whatever he left behind, which was precious little small bank account and guitar, some records. That was about it, and she applied. Her former husband applied two weeks later, and the probate court judges said to Sally, I'm sorry, but

the law gives me no choice. It reads this is this was the law of the State of Idaho as between persons equally entitled to administer a decedon's of state equally entitled males must be preferred to females. The thing about Sally Read is she was an everyday woman. She made her living by caring for elderly or disabled people in her home. But she thought an injustice had been done to her, and she also believed that our legal

system would right that role. So on her own dime, she took the case through three levels of the Idaho court courts, and then I got involved in the case and wrote the brief for her Supreme Court case. She

prevailed with a unanimous decision. It was the first time the case was decided in November, first time in history at the Supreme Court ever held agenda based classification on constitutional and and then after that precedent, we were on a roll, case after case challenging gender based classifications and challengeing on the basis of sex and understand more and

RBG and understand yet more. So, speaking of children for a moment, I want to sort of lighten us up before I close with some conversation about your late great friend Justice Scalia and your relationship with him. But first, could I get you to tell the story of the elevator Thief. O The elevated Thief was my Then let's see hell, it was easy. Must have been eleven. My son, My son was a lively child. I called him lively, but his teachers called him hyperactive. His school had a

hand operated elevator. The elevator operator went out to smoke a cigarette and one of my son's classmates dared him to take the kindergartens from the ground floor up to the top floor. M So my son did that, and he was greeted by three stone faces, the room teacher, the school principal, of the school psychologists, and I was called. I was getting calls about once a month to come

down to the school to hear about my son's latest escapade. Well, one day I was in my office at Columbia Law School and feeling particularly weary because I had stayed up all night writing a brief, and I said to the caller, this child has two parents, please alternate calls, and and it's his it's his father's term. So and Marty, my husband, went down to the school, and was told, your son stole the elevator. And my husband, who had a wonderful sense of humans, said, so he stole the elevator, how

far could he take it? Now? I don't know. Is Marty's sense of humor. I suspect it was at the school was very hesitant to take a man away from his work. There was no quick change in my son's behavior, but the cause came barely once a term because they had to think twice before calling a man away from his work. You and the Late Justice School used to spar incessively about this whole the whole subject of originalism versus a living constitution and textualism. But you were great

friends for many decades. You served on the same Court of Appeals. You've known each other even I think at the University of Chicago briefly. Um, So let me start with that personal friendship. People seem always so surprised that Justice Scalia, this iconic conservative, uh and Justice Ginsburg, this iconic feminist. We're such good friends. So and I know that you really loved him. So what did you love

about him? He had a marvelous sense of humor. But we were on the Court of Appeals together, and the Court of Appeals has three judges, and he would sit next to me and he whisper something during the argument that absolutely cracked me up, and at all I could do to avoid bursting out into hysterical laughter. And one thing that we come had in common we were both worked very hard on our opinions. We tried to write them so at least judges and other lawyers and hopefully

a lodger public could understand what we were saying. In Justice Galia was the son of a H a lot and professor at Brooklyn College, and his mother was a great school teacher, so he was an expert grammarian. He would sometimes come to my chambers or call me and said, Ruth, you made a grammatical era. I don't want to embar rrass you by sending you a note that would be circulated to all of our colleagues, but you should fix

this up. And I would call him and say, you know, this opinion is so strident, you're not going to be as persuasive as you would be if you would tone it down. He never never took that advice. We we also really really cared about family. We spent every New Year's together, and the two couples plus as many. He had many more children than I did, but whatever children

wanted to come along. And Justice Scalia and I shared a passion for opera, so we were supers extras um and a couple of opera performances the Washington National Opera and by making this upper did you sit on his lap? In one of those No, the soprano sat on his lap, so he knew that she was going to end the song on his lap. But what he didn't know is it was she was going to throw her arms around him and give him a big kiss. And you traveled together.

There's a very funny picture in your chambers, the two of you on to We we traveled to India for a judicial exchange, and the two of us broke away from the pack for a couple of days and we went to Rajastan and to Agara. And it was a famous picture where in the Rambab Palace in Rajastan are very beautiful. It was it was the palace of the

last Maharaja of Rajastan. So there was a very elegant elephant, very beautifully painted elephant, and we were taking a ride on the elephant and I'm sitting in the back and Scalia is in the front. And my feminist friend said, horrors, what are you doing sitting in the back of the elephent And I explained it how to do with the distribution of weight. There is an opera, as you would expect, a comic opera, about the two of us. It's called

Scalia Ginsburg again. Why Scalia first? Because in our workplace, Senior already really counts, and he was appointed some years before I was. So the the opera pries to portray the difference between us and Scalia's opening aria is a rage aria. It goes like this, the justices are blind. How can they possibly spout this? The Constitution says absolutely nothing about this. And then I answer, dear Justice Scalia, would you come in through a glass ceiling? Oh, that's later.

About later? This is I've screwed up the store. This is the beginning, or we set up the different ways we approach a legal text. I said, you're searching for a bright line solution two problems that don't have easy answers. But the great thing about our constitution is that, like our society, it can evolve. And then there's kind of a jazz riff with let it grow, Let it Grow. The plot is um roughly based on the Magic Flute.

Justice Khalia is locked in a dark room. He's been punished for excessive dissenting, and that's when I enter through a glass ceiling to help him pass the tests he needs to pass to get out of the dark room. Then character called a commentatory who is borrowed from Don Giovanni. It's appalled. He said, why would you want to help him? He's your enemy? And I explain, he's not my enemy, he's my dear friend. And then we seeing a wonderful duet.

It's titled we Are Different. We are one different in our approach to reading a legal text, but one in our reverence for the Constitution and for the Institution we served yell Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dear notorious one, We thank you for a wonderful evening. Why am I telling you? This is a production of our Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation, and at Will Media. Our executive producers are Craig Manascian

and Will Malnaughty. Our production team includes Mitch Bluestein, Jamison Katsufis, Tom Galton, Sarah Harrows, and Jake Young, with production support from Tyler Scott and O'tavia Young. Original music by What White Special thanks to John Sykes, Tina Finois, John Davidson on Hell Arena, Corey Gantley, Oscar Flores, Kevin Thurm, and all our dedicated staff and partners at the Clinton Foundation.

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