Matter which is how much risk could the u. S. Government take in building out broadband and any sort of utility and is it acceptable for the u. S. Government to build Internet Access and communities knowing that it might fail sometimes and that millions of dollars might be lost . Potentially. It could happen. In other communities its wildly successful and thats what members of congress havent figured out just yet. What comes next with your story . What are you watching for . Were watching to see if members of Congress Bring down the hammer on the agency. The 2014 farm bill that was passed while the stimulus was going gave the agency more money to continue lending and failed to provide loans and grants to rural communities. Not most recent bill the rules were tightened to affix some of the problems and folks werent sure if the lessons had been learned from the federal stimulus. Already some members of congress are talking about it. Congressman greg walden has brought up this issue and dee heller has as well raising the concerns that the u. S. Isnt up to the task and we havent heard anything from the house and Senate Agriculture committees and those are responsible for ensuring that the money is spent appropriately. Seeing out the oversight many years after the stimulus is done and thats the case with the stimulus and its ensuring that the money was spent to see if those hundred his of thousands of americans got the Broadband Service they were promised in 2009. The story is wired to fail. You can find it on politico. Com. Tony rom, Senior Technology reporter. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me. Shooting overnight has drawn the reaction from attorney general Loretta Lynch reported on the hill. She said i strongly condemn the violence against the community including Police Officers in ferguson. She told the fraternal order of Police National conference, an exposition in pittsburgh, quote, as we have seen over the recent months and years, not only does violence obscure any message of peaceful protest, it places the community as well as officers who protect it in harms way. Lynchs comments are the First Response from the Obama Administration to an outbreak of violence in ferguson that included a policeinvolved shooting and that reporting from the hill. More on thehill. Com. Coming up on cspan3. We begin our afternoon of programming and a look at women in the politics, Ruth Bader Ginsburg leads off at the american constitution society. After that, former state senator wendy davis and her observations on women in politics from the university of california berkeley. Also a look at women in combat, part of a conference hosted by women in national security. And tonight at 8 00 on cspan, the reverend al sharpton, education secretary arne duncan and civil rights activists are part of the urban League Annual conference in fort lauderdale. Heres al sharpton. We must begin to prepare now whether its National Urban league or whether its the Action Network or the naacp that we are on the brink of a postobama era. Weve had for seven years a black president and a black first lady and a black first family. Whoever wins this election will be the first whites in the history of this country to succeed a black president. Weve never been there before. [ applause ] so we need to see who is the one who we feel is qualified to follow eight years of a person sensitive to us that come from us that will not turn around what he has began. We dont intend that when the black family leaves the white house that black concerns leave the white house with them. [ applause ] that National UrbanLeague Conference includes discussion on africanamericans killed by police. The 2016 elections and the Voting Rights act of education and thats coming up at 8 00 eastern over on cspan. News from congress and members of congress traveling, tweet from representative, bradley burn in israel. I enjoyed meeting a young member of the Israeli Defense forces today. Hes 21 and a native israeli. Hes part of a delegation of a congressman visiting israel along with House Minority leader Kevin Mccarthy and steny hoyer. Leadership will reportedly meet with israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu to discuss the Iran Nuclear Agreement ahead of the september vote on the deal. The trip was organized by the american israel foundation, a nonprofit Charitable Foundation affiliated with a. P. E. C. , the American Israel Public Affairs committee. Ruth Bader Ginsburg who will soon be the subject of a film portrayed by Natalie Portman. They took part in a discussion on Justice Ginsburgs life, her thoughts on gender equality and being the notorious rbg. This is hosted by the american constitution society. [ applause ] good afternoon. My name is Kelsey Brown Corcoran and a longtime member of acs dating back to decades when i was a student at the university of chicago law school. I first became involved with acs because i believe in its mission. Like acs, i believe that law should be a force to improve the lives of all people and it is a privilege to support acs in its efforts to make that happen. Over the years ive also developed a deeper appreciation for everything my acs membership has given me including countless professional Development Opportunities and a fantastic network of colleagues and friends. At this particular moment i am deeply grateful to acs for the opportunity to introduce our final featured speakers of the convention, two extraordinary jurists. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs biography is well known. Before her im going to give a little bit of it anyway. Before her appointment to the u. S. Supreme court she served on the u. S. Court of appeals for the d. C. Circuit and prior to becoming a judge, she was a law professor at rutgers in columbia university. Over her decades of Service Justice ginsburg has been unwavering advocate for women both on the bench and as one of the founders of the aclu where she served as National Council and on the National Board of directors for nearly a decade. I had the extraordinary honor of clerking for Justice Ginsburg which was as amazing and life changing an experience as you would expect. Among my fondest memories of that year were the champagne and cupcake birthday parties that the justice would host for each of her clerks and secretaries. And so fully aware of just how crazy it is to have a Birthday Party with Ruth Bader Ginsburg [ laughter ] my coclerks and i would plan for days in advance trying to come up with a perfect list of questions to ask her and we did pretty well. We heard Amazing Stories about her summers in sweden where she was learning and writing about swedish civil procedure. We heard about her First Supreme Court argument, her confirmation hearings and her beloved husband marty, a distinguished tax attorney and chef supreme whose love and support for the justice is legendary. If tumblr had existed before he passed away theres no doubt that he would have started the notorious rbg block himself. [ applause ] but even when the clerkship ended i had the deep sense of remorse about the questions we didnt get to ask and the stories we didnt get to hear. This next hour is one more chance to hear about the incredible life and career of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with california Supreme CourtJustice Goodwin lew. Justice lew was a law professor before joining the bench. Hes a widely published expert in constitutional law and education policy in the Supreme Court. He was a popular and acclaimed teacher winning the uc berkeley laws distinguished Teaching Award and he became associate dean and he was on the board of directors for acs for a number of years. [ applause ] but long before that, justice lew was a law clerk first for judge david tidel, and a longtime acs for whom i also clerked and he is perfect for this job because i know that he, too, has a long list of questions left over from the chambers birthday parties and i am so excited to listen in as he asks them. Please join me in questioning Justice Goodwin lew and justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [ applause ] welcome, everybody. Thank you all for being here on a saturday afternoon and most especially thank you to Justice Ginsburg. Its obviously a busy time at the court as june often is. So thank you for spending a few minutes with us here. So you are now finishing your 22nd term on the Supreme Court. A lot of people noticed in recent years youve had quite a substantial public presence. You have a huge fan base everywhere you go [ cheers and applause ] people call you a rock star, an icon. Theres an opera about you and Justice Scalia [ laughter ] there is an emoticon that looks like you. There are the tshirts with the notorious rbg name. Some of them also say i love rbg and my personal favorite which is you cant spell truth without ruth. [ cheers and applause ] and then there are even the young women who have tattoos of your likeness. Now thats love. Thats real. All of those, i think, is pretty unusual for a Supreme Court justice. Justice scalia gets out a lot, too, but i dont think theres anyone with a Justice Scalia tattoo, not even at the federalist society. So [ laughter ] i guess i just want to start by asking you, how did this happen . Its amazing. To think of me an icon at 82 . I attribute it to an nyu law student who started a tumblr, the notorious rbg. At first, i didnt know quite what to make of this because i didnt know who notorious b. I. G. Was. [ applause ] and then my law clerks explained to me when you two have something in common, we were both born and bred in brooklyn, new york. [ cheers and applause ] Scalia Ginsburg, the opera, i should explain right away a criticism a number of my feminist friends have raised, ginsburg comes before scalia alphabetically so why is it Scalia Ginsburg . [ applause ] the answer, goodwin, im sure you know how important seniority is in our workplace. Im getting a sense of that. So scalia was appointed some years before ginsburg so the opera is Scalia Ginsburg. So theres also going to be a biography of you in the near future called the notorious r. B. G. , the life and times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by the msnbc reporter aaron carmen and there is a biopic, on the basis of success with Natalie Portman starring as you. Are you in on these projects . Do you know much about them . Are you a cooperative conspirator . I cant be responsible for notorious r. B. G. , but i like it and so do my grandchildren. On the basis of success, the biopic is called and this is how it began. I have a nephew, a son of my husbands sister who is a script writer and he asked if he could write a script about a case in which marty and i were involved in 1971, and i said, if you would like to spend your time doing that. The case is interesting because it was the case that i hoped would be paired with read as the turning point case in the Supreme Court. The case was charles martz, the commissioner of internal revenue. Charles e. Martz was a man who took good care of his mother though she was 93 at the time. We argue the case in the 10th circuit. This was his story. There was in those days, a babysitters deduction available to any woman or widowed or divorced man. A babysitter deduction covered elder care, as well. Charles e. Morris didnt get the deduction because he was a nevermarried man and hed been left out. So he appeared prose in the tax court. If i were a dutiful daughter i would get this deduction. Im a dutiful son. It makes no sense. So one day marty came into a room where i was working away and it was something i was writing and said, ruth, read this and i said marty, thats a tax advance sheet. You know i dont read tax cases. He said you read this one and it told the story of charles e. Morris and he said lets take it and marty would write the tax part and i would write the constitutional law part. So a part of this is about the case and about our argument in the tenth circuit in denver and then it includes the aclu and some women who were saying the same things that i was saying in the 70s, but at a time when no one was prepared to listen. So dorothy has a role in this. I think it will go into production in the beginning of 2016 and maybe by the end of the year it will be out. Natalie portman came to talk to me about this. We had a very good conversation and one thing interesting that she insisted on and it held on the project for a while, i want the director to be a woman. There are not enough women in this industry. There are many talented out there and now they do have a woman director. [ applause ] sfa. We look forward to it. You mentioned marty many times. Youve been described as shy and reserved especially compared to your grow garius and very loving husband marty who was as kelsey said an outstanding chef and always very quick with a joke and some people called him a surreal wisecracker, but first of all, do you think marty would be surprise said at your celebrity today . I think he would be tlieted. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]ded. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]ed. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]led. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]ied. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]ged. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]hed. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ]delighted. He was always my biggest booster. [ applause ] the audience just saw a picture of you and marty in fort sill which was not long after you were married. You met marty during your first year of college at cornell, is that right . Youve said in the past that he was the first boy you ever dated who cared that you had a brain. Yes. I like that. And the two of you had two kids, jane and james, and you also had a twocareer marriage. Two lawyers, in fact, which was unusual at the time. Can you describe a little bit about that period and what kind of social pressures you faced with respect to your marriage, your family life and career . It was a big change in the climate of my first child, and the second one, james in 1965. When jane was small there were very few women who worked outside the home. By the time james was home it wasnt unusual to have a twoearner family. What was it like . Well, its hard for todays students to imagine what the world was like for women not that long ago. When i started teaching in 1963 maybe 3 of the lawyers in america were women. There was no title 7 when i graduated from law school and they didnt want lady lawyers and they had one one time and she was dreadful. Ill tell you a Sandra Day Oconnor story. She graduated from law school, top of her class at stanford. She was a few years ahead from me. She couldnt get any job so she volunteered to work for a county attorney and said if you think im good enough, after four months you can put me on the payroll. Thats how she got her job. My first job was as a District Court law clerk. How did i get that job . Jerry gunther who later went off to stanford and was at the law school at the time was in charge of clerk ships. He called every judge on the second circuit, every judge in the Eastern District and the Southern District of new york. The answer was, well, we might take a chance on a woman, but we cant risk a mother. Her daughter is 4 years old. So jerry called and edmund always took his clerks from Columbia Law School and judge explained her record is good, but sometimes we work on saturdays, and even on a sunday. How could i count on her . And jerry said give her a chance and if she doesnt work out then theres a young man in her class who will leave his wall street law firm and finish up the clerkship. So thats the carrot, and then there was the stick and the stick was if you dont give her a chance i will never recommend another columbia law student to you. Armed with that, i got the job. [ laughter ] and all of the women of my generation, when you got the job you did as well, probably better than anyone else so the second job wasnt hard, but opening that first door was awfully difficult. And now, of course, you have had many clerks yourself who were parents at the time, is that right . Is that up usual today, do you think . Not today. Ive had a number of clerks with two children. The first law clerk i hired who was the primary custodian of his children was a man. This was david post who is now teaching at temple law school. In his application he explained that he was going to georgetown at night. His wife was an economist, i think, for the International Monetary fund for the world bank so she had a fulltime day job he. He took care of the children during the day. So that, i mean, thats my dream for the world that fathers should care about children as much as mothers. There was Something Else about david post that made him irresistible. His writing sample was not his draft of his law review or his clerk brief. It was his first year writing section essay, and it was on the theory of contract as played out in his ring cycle. [ laughter ] so thats actually a good segway to the next question. Youve seen feminism change and go through transformations from the time you were you cofounded the womens project four decades ago until today and because of the work you did there we now have the elimination of most overt forms of gender discrimination. From your vantage point, what do you think are the most pressing challenges left now for gender equality . First, i want to say i dont think the meaning of feminism has changed. It has always been that girls should have the same opportunity to dream, to aspire and achieve, to do whatever their godgiven talents enable them to do as boys. And there is no place where there is a welcome mat for women and people need to understand what feminism is and if some corners its called the f word. Women and men working together should help make the society a better place than it is now. [ applause ] current challenges . Well, as you said, goodwin, all of the overt gender classifications and almost all, there are a couple that the Supreme Court has left standing and thats unfortunate, but for the most part the statute folks that were once riddled with overt sexbased classification in the decade of the 70s, almost all of them were gone and it was a combination of legislative change plus litigation to push that change along whats left and is harder to get at is what i call unconscioused bi unconscious bias and sometimes it works to overcome unconscious bias and my example of that is to the orchestra. When i was growing up, you never saw a woman except for playing the harp. Someone had the idea to drop a curtain so that people conducting the audition didnt know if it was a woman or a man and with that simple change, the dropped curtain almost overnight women started to show up in symphony orchestras in numbers. I was telling this story last summer at the festival, and scalia, ginsburg will open and a young violinist said to me, but youre not pointing out, not only do we audition behind a curtain, but we audition shoele shoeless. That device cant be duplicated in every area, but its hard to get at. My favorite case in that line was a title 7 case from the 70s. The lawyer was Harriet Graham which was against at t, and not promoting women to middle management jobs. There were several criteria. The women did at least as well as the men up to the last test and that was called the total person test that consisted of an interviewer, meeting the candidate and then doing an evaluation. Women fund disproportionately at that stage. And why . Because the person conducting the interview was generally a white male and anyone who was different made the interview appear slightly uncomfortable and they looked at a person who looked like him and it was comfortable and it was a member of a Minority Group and they were strangers and it was in the case of im deliberately setting out to avoid promoting women. It wasnt that at all. It was this unconscious bias that operated. You know, so you now sit on a court that has three women on it. I actually sit on a court that has a majority of women on it including a woman as chief justice. Do you think that the law would be much different if there were, say, four or five women on the u. S. Supreme court . I think its pretty good that we have three now and we make a big difference because were all over the bench and i sit toward the middle because ive been around so long and Justice Sotomayor to my right and if any of you have come to watch the show at the court, you know that my newest colleagues are not shrinking violets. Theyre very active in the questioning. Gene coin from the minnesota Supreme Court said that in the end of the day, a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same judgment, and yet there are some cases that, at least i think, would have come out the other way if there were five women or more and one of them is lily leadbetters case. Every woman understood lilys problem. Now there is the carhart case and the partial birth Abortion Case, and the two cases involving children whose parents were not married and they could become citizens if their mother was a u. S. Citizen and not the father. The Supreme Court was wrong about that twice. So there are cases where i think its fair to predict that the result would have been different, but for the most part in the years that david suitor and i worked together they were on the other two justices and Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia. [ laughter ] i look forward to the suitorginsburg opera next. Well, a couple months ago you appeared on time magazines 100 most influential people in the world list which is quite an honor. We have some pictures of that. These are the oh, yes. [ laughter ] you should see this lovely picture they have of you from your first year of cornell. Its just a beautiful picture. The inscription that accompanied your listing was written by your colleague Justice Scalia who said this. I quote, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had two distinguished legal careers and either one of which alone entitled her to be one of times 100 and first was a judge on the d. C. Circuit and the now on the Supreme Court and the other in your earlier career as a professor and lawyer. I guess ill ask you, what did you learn from your experience as a lawyer that best prepared you for your role as a judge. The importance of having a sense of humor and then some advice ive told many audiences, the advice that my motherinlaw gave to me on our wedding day. Marty and i were married in the home in which he had grown up and his mother said dear, id like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage, and that is it helps sometimes to be a little hard of hearing. [ laughter ] [ applause ] and i found that was such good advice. Not simply in dealing with marty who was a very funny fellow, but in dealing with my colleagues. [ laughter ] so president clinton nominated you for the Supreme Court in june of 1993 to fill the seat that was vacated by Justice Byron white. Some pictures of that, and you were confirmed by the senate exactly 57 days later on august 10, 1993 by a vote of 963. It must have been nice. Im just im just saying. [ cheers and applause ] other than the happy outcome, what do you consider the most memorable part of your confirmation process . The bipartisan spirit that existeded in that congress. Probably my biggest supporter was orrin hatch. My biggest problem, the white house handlers preparing me for the confirmation process and they would put questions like you are on the aclu board in the year soandso and that was the year they passed resolution x. How did you vote and would you defend that position today . And my answer was stop. There is nothing that you can do to persuade me to badmouth the aclu. I think they are a Vital Institution in our society. [ applause ] and then it would never happy today and not a single question was raised about my aclu connection. Justice byron was the next year and how do we get back to that . I dont know what the magic will be. The i was the beneficiary of what had happened with the Clarence Thomas nomination. The committee was embarrassed and we had the thomas nomination and we had a meeting with the committee before the public hearing and it was supposed to be that if there is anything bad in my record they could bring it out and id have a chance to answer before we went public. In all of my record nothing in the fbi file, there wasnt one thing questionable. So they said, now tell us what you think we should do to improve the confirmation process. At that point i hadnt yet been confirmed. So i was somewhat hesitant. I still have, to this day, a supply of strong key chains and they voted against me when i was nominated for the d. C. Circuit and he was in my corner for the Supreme Court nomination. So since being on the bench on the u. S. Supreme court, youve been a very vigorous voice in a whole range of equal protection cases and not only sex discrimination, but in the Racial Discrimination area and the disability cases, and most recently in the Shelby County case you penned a very lively descent about the Voting Rights act. I want to stop and ask you, youve at times compared the interesting progress thats been made so rapidly on questions of discrimination based on Sexual Orientation contrasting that with our more enduring difficulties with racial inequality. What do you think explains the difference in how sticky the issue of racial inequality has been . I think that when gay people began to stoond up aand up and is who i am, when that happened people looked around and it was my next door name of whom i was very fond, my childs best friend and even my child, they were people who belong to our community. It wasnt and still today there is a high degree of segregation in Living Patterns in the United States, in schools. So i think its the difference that is this we they picture when it comes to race, but for gay people, once they find out that they are people we know and we love and we respect and they are part of us, i think thats what accounts for the difference, during the years when gay people knew there was a kind of discrimination that began to break down very rapidly once they no longer hid in the corner or in a closet. Can you tell us a little bit about what went into your thinking process of the Voting Rights case . That was a muchquoted dissent. Your famous line about throwing an umbrella away in a rainstorm because youre not getting wet. Tell us a little bit about your thinking process in that case . It was very much the view that i had of a School Segregation case seven years before. I think it was about jefferson, kentucky that the years and years had been under a federal court decree to desegregate, and then the court said now that the county is up to speed, they dont have to be under the thumb of the federal judge anymore. So im going disarm the injunction. The people in that county said we liked the plan that was kept in place by the injunction. We would like to keep it and the Supreme Court said no, you cant because thats deliberate discrimination on the basis of race. In the Shelby County case it was one of the most successful pieces of Legislation Congress ever passed and had passed by overwhelming majority on both sides of the aisle and the Voting Rights act, most of you know, wrote this way and he had a bad record of keeping people from voting and then any change you made in the system had to be precleared either by a judge District Court in the district of columbia or by the attorney general. There was a mechanism to get out and if you showed you had a clean record for x number of years, you could bail out and the court could tell you you could bail out on a county by county basis and you didnt have to wait until the whole state was up to speed. The Supreme Court held that the coverage formula was outdated, that from 65 until 2000, things had changed and so congress had to redo the formula, but practically, what senator or what representative is going to stand up and say my state or my county still discriminates. That is impossible. It was impossible to come up with a new formula for that reason, and yet there was the bailout mechanism that would work when there had been a genuine change and politically, it wasnt impossible to do the kind of revision that was needed and so this most successful piece of legislation is largely inoperative. So youve written a number of quite memorable, especially in recent years. Ill name a few of them. You wrote a separate opinion in the Affordable Care case, the first one on the Commerce Clause and you wrote a very vigorous dissent in the hobby lobby case and leadbetter, as well, which congress listened to and acted upon. Weve talked about gonzalez versus carhart, the partial birth Abortion Case and there had been title 7 cases like the advance for football stay case about who is a supervisor under title 7. So i think you may know that saturday night live recently did a couple of skits about you on their weekend update. This is slide 9 if you can show them. And the comedian plays you as a hip, sassy judge who is dishing out these feisty oneliners and then dancing after every one. Im not going to ask you to dance for us, but feel free to bring it if you if you if youve got it today. What i really want to ask, is how do you go about writing your dissents in terms of tone and style . Your tone is actually not sassy. Its respectful, but it also makes a point. How do you think about the right balance . We have a lot of colorful writing from the Supreme Court which spans a broad range of styles. How do you think about yours . As you know, goodwin, when its time and im on the dissent side, i try to have the dissent drafted before i get the majority opinion that way i dont get trapped into writing not so, i tell the story affirmatively and the biggest putdown they have for the courts opinion is to deal with the footnotes, but you remember from your term of clerking for me it was quite a term. That was the year bush v. Gore, and all this tshirt business began that year. There were tshirts that said i dissent. People were struck that i didnt say i respectfully dissent, but what they didnt notice is that i never said respectfully dissent. They criticized the courts opinion as being profoundly misguided or from scalia, this opinion is not to be taken seriously, and then after saying that then you end it and showed no respect at all so i never used respectfully. I would say i dissent ormore often, for the reasons stated i would affirm the decision for the court of appeals or reverse the decision. So now because of your seniority on the court, you have thenm power both in majority opinions when you happened to be senior and in dissenting opinions when you happen to be senior. What goes into your thought process with respect to assignments . Goodwin, not majorities yet. When we split 54, i generally make you sign it, so im succeeded to the role that John Paul Stephens had when you were clerking for me. I think this consensus in the case of health care and the Commerce Clause portion, hobby lobby, Shelby County as the most senior person on the dissent side, i should write the dissent and for the rest, i try to be as fair as i can to distribute them evenly and there hasnt been much grumbling for my colleagues about that. When you think about your two decades now on the Supreme Court. Do you think there are things that you feel more surefooted about today than you did when you first began . When i was a new judge i had been on the d. C. Circuit for three years, and so i wasnt too quiet and the very first sitting in october, and i asked a lot of questions, and my then chief for whom i came to have great affection decided id been smart alecy, so at the end of the sitting, instead of giving me what is traditional for the junior justice, but is an easy, oneissue, unanimous decision, he gave me a most miserable case with the court divided 6 to 3. The justice would complain and this is not the place to do it. She said ruth, you just do it. Just do it and get your opinion in circulation before he makes the next set of assignments, otherwise you are likely to get another dull case. That was her attitude toward life. Whatever was put on her plate, she just did it and that was the beginning of my relationship with the old chief. And that first year, it was interesting that you mentioned the supervisor case and my first year on the bench, the question was were nurses supervisors and they were unable to unionize under the lobby, the nlra, and i said of course they are employees, not supervisor, but that was for four people and then coming around the other way now, its very hard to be a supervisor under the decision. So you mentioned Justice Oconnor, when you arrived at the court in 1993 you were only the second woman, of course, ever to serve on the highest court. Your colleague, if we can show slide 10, justice appointed by president reagan 12 years earlier. So when you think back to that time and your experience now for 22 years working with a very wide range of colleagues, what do you think youve learned about the art of persuasion . Is it possible to persuade ones colleagues . And if so, how . Im really interested. Possible, yes. Is it something that happens oft often . No. I can remember one dissent John Paul Stevens assigned to me. The dissent came around, the vote at conference was 72, the opinion came out 63, but the two had swelled to six. Now, that was somebody experience turning dissent into a comfortable majority opinion. Theyre trying to persuade each other all the time. So the conference vote is one way. You try to write your opinion as persuasively as you can and hope youll be able to peel off one or another vote. But most of the time that doesnt happen. Do we try . Yes, we do. I could say that with assurance up to this very term when people, when were closely divided and the author of the majority or of the dissent is trying to pick up one more vote. In your experience, how does that persuasion happen . Is it on paper or in person or how do the justices apart from sitting around the conference table, which happens after argument. It is largely on paper. It is read my dissent. Read it carefully. You should be persuaded by it. [ laughter ] theres no as you know theres no vote trading. Theres no if you side with me in this case ill side with you that never, never happens. So weve mentioned chief justice rindquist at times. Its kind of known you have a relationship with Justice Scalia on perhaps a polar opposite. But you also have a relationship with chief justice upholding the family leave provision of the fmla. Can you describe a little bit about your relationship with chief justice ringquist . How did the two of you have such Good Chemistry . Id say it was cool at first. But it began to improve when several talking about what to do about the ladies dining room. The court is very traditional institution, so there was the ladies dining room. And we came to him with a proposal. We said wed like to rename it the matly cornell justice dining room. The chief had a very happy marriage, his wife sadly died. Well, he couldnt resist. He had seen her suffering from cancer. The year that i had my first bout with cancer, he could not have been more supportive. After the surgery he called me into his chambers and said, ruth, ill give you something light for this assignment. I said, no, chief, not this one. Im okay. Wait until the chemotherapy and radiation start then id like to be kept light. So he said which case do you want, there i had my pick. So i told him which one. And he said thats the one i was going to assign to myself. But he assigned it to me. Then i watched his relationship with his granddaughters when his daughter whod been divorced. And he was kind of a substitute father to those girls. He wanted them to keep in tune with their swedish heritage, so hed take them to the fest at the swedish ambassadors residence. And they loved him dearly. That was a side of him a lot of people didnt see. So i consider me and my as the chief in mid passage, theb he gets to the family medical leave act. I brought home that decision, and what he said, ruth, did you write this . It was the chief, so as long as one lives one can learn. So when you think back across these couple decades, what do you think have been the biggest changes youve seen in the co t court . Whether its Public Perceptions of the court, the lawyers who appear before you or the nature of the docket, what do you think the biggest transformations . Right now the public is down on anything that has anything to do with government. So the Supreme Court has slipped, but not nearly as much as congress, as congress has. Thats a safe statement. The big things in the courts composition came not when we had a new chief but when Justice Oconnor left us. And i have said many times at the year that she left every time i was in four among four rather than five, i would have been five instead of four if she had remained with us. So she was a big loss in many ways. Let me ask you of another sort of big picture question about your approach to judging. I think many observers, and were now seeing some books being written about your corpus of work, many people described your approach to judging as incrementalist. And indeed at your confirmation hearing heres what you said, isnt it terrible people quote your confirmation hearing back to you . In your case its very, very its very good. You said my approach, this is you, is neither liberal nor conservative. Rather it is rooted in the place of the judiciary of judges in our democratic society. So in other occasions youve spoken out against judicial activism noting that the Current Court is one of the most activist in history if you just measure it in terms of willingness to overturn legislation. Youve written long, long ago that row versus wade perhaps went too far too fast in contrast to the step by step approach that characterized much of your litigation approach as a lawyer. So i just want to ask, have your views about gradualism changed at all in the course of your two decades on the Supreme Court . Or has it reinforced your sense that gradualism is the right approach . I dont know if i would use the word gradualism. I do think its healthy for our system if the court and the congress can be in dialogue. I think of some great examples of that. When the court in the 70s said discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is not discrimination on the basis of sex, there was a coalition formed to pass the pregnancy discrimination act. People from all parts of the political spectrum are on board for that. And that was repeated again with lily led better. So if its a question of statutory interpretation, there can be a healthy back and forth between the Supreme Court and the political branches. Let me put it this way. The court is not in a popularity contest. And it should never be influenced by todays headlines, by the weather of today. But as paul thorn said, inevitably it will be affected by the climate of the era. I think thats part of the explanation of why the Gay Rights Movement has advanced to where it is today. The climate of the era. The court is rarely out in front. I mean, even in brown v. Board, which everyone thinks big social change. Well, it was a brief by the u. S. , on behalf of the United States in that case it said essentially, we were fighting a war against onus racism. And in that war until the very end our truths were rigidly segregated by race. A huge embarrassment. And now the soviet union is pointing to the United States this apartheid racist society. Its a constant embarrassment. Its time for segregation of the races in schools to end. That was the position that the United States government was taking, made it easier for the justices. And yet it took them 13 years from brown v. Board until loving, virginia, to declare laws, they had lots of opportunities but they waited until the climate of the era had largely changed. So the court can be important in reinforcing a social change. And it can hold it back as well. But it doesnt initiate change. Do you think thats in some tension with the conventional understanding of the court as a countermajority constitution that the role of the court is supposed to be counter majoratarian. Expect the court to be at the forefront even when individual rights are at stake . It should be counter majortarianism, our constitution has the bill of rights that say these are the rules congress has to abide by. So the court should be vigorous in enforcing the rights in the bill of rights and in the 14th amendment. The court is the guardian. The constitution makes the court the guardian of those rights. So, yes, the court must be vigilant. But we can do say a Political Party can do. Heres our platform. This year were going to try to get through this and that. We have to wait. It has to start with the people. If it doesnt start with the people, its not going to get to the court. So you have to have a concern citizenry to press for these rights. Let me take us out of the law for a second and ask you as our time runs out here. Who are your most important mentors in your life . Ask me what women were my role models. I say in my growing up years one was real and one was fictional. The real one was Amelia Earhart and the fictional one was nancy drew. [ applause ] but i never had in my college years, certainly law school never had a woman teacher. People asked me, did you always want to be a Supreme Court justice . I wanted to get a job in the law. That was my goal. And women werent on the bench in numbers on the federal bench until jimmy carter became president. He deserves tremendous credit for that. He was in office only four years. He took a look at the federal judiciary and said, you know, yall kind of look like me, but thats not how the great United States looks. So he was determined to appoint members of Minority Groups and women in numbers, not as one at a time curiosities. He pointed at least 25 women to federal District Courts. And i was one of the lucky 11 appointed to a court of appeals during his time. If he said in october of 1980 when he had a reception for the women he had appointed to the federal bench even though he had no Supreme Court vacancy to fill, he hoped he would be remembered for how he changed the complexion of the u. S. Judiciary. And no president went back to old ways. President reagan not to be outdone was determined to put the first woman on the Supreme Court. What is reflected on the entirety of your life and career, what do you think what aspects or events have given you the greatest personal satisfaction . I was tremendously fortunate to be born when i was, to be a lawyer with the skill in the 70s to help move that progress in society alone. If i had been born even ten years earlier, it would have been impossible. In the turning point brief we put on the cover of that brief the names of two women, pauline was one. And who was the other one . I already mentioned her the one concerned with putting women on juries. All over the country. We put their names on the brief to say they kept the message alive even when people were not prepared to listen. And we owe them a tremendous debt. How lucky we are, i mean, just think of the, quote, conservative burger court, the first case. Comes out unanimous judgment. And most of the others came out the right way in the 70s. So i thought myself enormously fortunate to be around