Supreme Court Justice & Feminist Badass Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is Not Going Away

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 12, 2017 2:20PM

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, via Getty Images

The Supreme Court’s most cultishly beloved Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Notorious RBG herself, was in vintage form on Monday night, when she spoke in front of a packed, noticeably amped crowd at Roosevelt University's Auditorium Theatre. The feminist icon grieved for the death of bipartisanship, made it clear that she’ll be sticking around the Court, and recounted myriad instances of discriminatory bullsh*t she’s overcome—and what remains to be achieved.

When asked by her interviewer, Judge Ann Claire Williams, if three or four female justices on the highest court were enough, Ginsburg said, with a fiery composure on display throughout the hour-plus chat, “There will be enough when there are nine.” With much of the discussion devoted to Ginsburg’s personal and professional biography, the topic of gender rights and progress was a noticeable through line.

When the conversation turned explicitly toward the contemporary moment, Ginsburg lamented the fierce (but not intractable, she hopes) political divide that grips Washington. She spoke warmly of the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom she shared a friendship despite the ideological gulf between, and referenced the opera about their relationship that has since emerged. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Alito should have received more confirmation votes than they did, she said. “The bipartisan spirit that had prevailed in the 1980s and ‘90s failed. And people voted along party lines… That’s a very dangerous thing for a judiciary,” she warned.

“I have hope that I will see this in my lifetime: that our Congress will get over this nonsense and go back to the way it was,” Ginsburg said. Her comment was met with applause.

As for her long tenure on the Supreme Court—stretching from the Clinton administration now into the far different political landscape of the Trump era—Ginsburg let it be known that she won’t be filing for retirement in the foreseeable future. “There’s still work to be done,” she said, and Ginsburg will continue to work “as long as I can go full steam.”

It was another big applause line, one of several from the capacity crowd, as the extent of Chicago’s RBG affection was in full relief. The childhood Nancy Drew fan ("She was a doer, and her boyfriend kinda trailed along") remains, to our knowledge, the only Supreme Court Justice to inspire coloring books and devoted Tumblr accounts. And to hear her look back on the gender-rights landmark cases she helped spearhead and the discrimination she overcame in her own life—as a woman, as a Jew, as a mother— and is to re-up one’s fan-club membership. The fight stretched from her early life (having difficulty landing a job out of law school, despite having graduated first from Columbia’s law program) all way to the highest bench. The National Association of Women Judges made shirts for Ginsburg and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor with their names, so certain were they that counsels would mistake the two women despite their looking nothing alike. They were right.

But RBG was all graceful steadfastness as she looked back, and forward. As she has in the past, Ginsburg reiterated the importance of not becoming beholden to the time- and energy-suck emotions of anger, envy or remorse. It's advice we'll do well to remember in the tough travels ahead. At least we still have a good lodestar.