Our next speaker will be one of the justices biographers, professor Wendy Williams of the georgetown law faculty. Professor williams . Ok, i think were having some technical problems. So just for a moment actually, f i could, call on professor bernstein, one of the justices clerks. Professor, youre a member of the georgetown law faculty, director of our Supreme Court institute. I clerked for her on the d. C. Circuit, i didnt get the job in a typical way. In 989, i was working as a staff attorney watching memos for motions and pro se appeals. I was seven years out of law school, living with a 1yearold insomniac. I got a call from r. B. G. s chambers, the judge wanted to speak to me. The judge picked up the phone said she noticed my writing and wanted to know if i wanted to clerk for her. To my eternal mortification i didnt immediately say yes. I said i wasnt sure i could work the hour she is expected of her clerks because i had a young child. What followed was a prolonged silence from the person who devoted years fighting for gender equality and parents. Then she asked me, what are your hours like now. I told her i usually arrive around 8 30 in the morning and i have to leave by 5 30 to get to the Day Care Center by 6 00 or hay start charging 10 a minute late fees. Once i got home i couldnt work until the baby was fed and cajoled into sleeping which usually took hours. She said she thought she could accommodate my schedule and she hired me. So as a mom in my 30s, i joined the cadre of mostly male, newly minted, harr varrd and yale law grants clerking on the d. C. Circuit in 1991 and 1992. Then i got pregnant and it wasnt pretty. I was hospitalized were dehydration because i couldnt keep anything down. I stayed home in bed in the courts Winter Holiday recess. The judge called me to keep me in the loop about what was going on. When i returned to chambers after the new year, she put me right back to work, assigning me cases just like the guys. I didnt apply to clerk for the d. C. Circuit right out of law school. I wouldnt have scored an interview. But Justice Ginsburg saw in me potential i didnt know i had. Her belief in me and the opportunity to work for her changed the entire trajectory of my career. R. B. G. Didnt just fight for equality and opportunity in court, she lived it every day as a lawyer, a mother, a judge, and a boss. And if i could just add one last thing, r. B. G. Died on the eve of rosh hashanah, the jewish new year. The justice wasnt at all observe ant but her entire life embodied the commandment central to the torah. Justice, justice, we shall pursue. That pursuit will was her lifes passion an purpose and she retained an unshakeable belief that justice would ultimately prevail. Thank you. And now well hear from another one of the justices clerks. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. Not surprisingly, my first memory of Justice Ginsburg involves my daughter. I went to law school after completing jadge watt school and working for a while. My wife nancy and i had rebecca midway through law school. I vividly recall in my interview with the justice we spoke as much about being a parent while going to law chool as we did about the law. She asked how januaryity ancy and i cared for rebecca while rebecca worked full time and i went to law school. Did my best to exaggerate my responsibilities. She shared her experience of nappeds of being married. Only later did i learn was also caring for marty when he had cancer at the time. I later brought rebecca, then 3 years old, into chambers to eet the justice. She was shy and the justice, perhaps seeing some of her shyness in rebecca, was deliked when she finally blurted out, my teacher let us have ice cream at snack time. The justice smiled and said her teachers never allowed that. Later when rebecca was in middle school, the justice graciously sat with her for an hourlong interview far school project. A few years later the justice spoke at her high school graduation. Theres no doubt that many of the opportunities rebecca has had would have been denied to her if not for the work of Justice Ginsburg. The justices pioneering work on behalf of women therefore has always had a deeply personal meaning for me. When my wonderful son ben was born a couple of years after my clerkship with her, the justice sent a gift to him and also to rebecca. So as the justice wrote she wouldnt feel left out. This was enormously thoughtful. As we told the justice jaff wards, we also took it as evidence that she could not help but strive for equality between males and females in every sphere of life. When i clerked for the justice, i confess that it could be a bit unnerving sometimes to offer my analysis of a case, to wait for the initial silence that was common in conversation with her, as those who knew her were aware, and then to hear her quietly utter a complete paragraph that would not require the slightest revision if transcribed into print. That paragraph el fwantly got to the heart of the issues in the case. It invariably sent me back to my desk with greater clarity and with a commitment to live up to her example. The justice is well known and rightly sell brayed for her work in holding the law accountable for its commitment to equality. What also made a deep impression on me when i worked for her is something that many may not fully appreciate. This was her deep commitment to the idea of law itself. To its integrity, to its promise and her awareness of its fragility. This led her to approach the law with both vigor and compassion. In terms of vigor, the justice was what we call a lawyers lawyer. She gave close attention to the language of the law, its logic, and the meanings it could plausibly bear. She honored these elements. And would not interpret the law in a way that would do violence to them. On occasion this led her to conclusions she would not have preferred. She saw this, however, as a way of being faithful to the fragile achievement that is law. Which requires constant and patient nurture. In the spirit of humility. The justice is well aware that legal interpretation is a human enterprise. Caring for the law also means the aspirations embedded in its language, its logic and layers of meaning. She knew that legal meaning is rarely selfevident. This required approaching the law with compassion. With empathic imagination and with deep appreciation of the human beings for whom law is created. It reflected commitment to words that those in the Georgetown Law Community know are incribed on our library. Law is but the means, justice s the end. She called upon us to meet her impossibly High Standard with the same combination of rigor and come passion she modeled for us. I feel a personal sense of grief and pain with squssties ginsburgs death. It is a remarkable testament to the legacy of a quiet, soft spoken woman who i never heard raise her voice, who believed in the power of reason, the promise of respectful persuasion, and the integrity of the law that shes mourned deeply by countless others who feel a personal sense of loss even though they never met her. I hope that we are all consoled and inspired by the words of a poem that my coclerk, susan williams, sent to me over the weekend by maya an yes lou, when a great tree falls. In lines that seem to have been written with Justice Ginsburg in mind, an yes lou says out of grief for the death of great souls we can move ahead by remembering. He last thrivense poem are, it existed. It existed. Can be, be, and be better for they existed. Thank you. Lovely. Professor Wendy Williams are you there, very good. Professor Wendy Williams, one f the justices biographers. California on fire, alabama under water, the climate changing, the movement for the dignity and equality for the lives of black people in this country, and the most important president ial election at least in my lifetime, probably in yours, and now we have lost r. B. G. With significant implications for the Supreme Court and the most significant issues of our ime. Theres so much to say about her and her life and her work. I had the privilege of knowing er since 1981 so i i and i was part of that movement that she was part of, which was in the law equal of the land. I watched her in action. So i thought id talk a little bit about what that looked like and what she achieved. You can use the words truly awesome. So im going to talk about the time before she became a judge. And before she game a justice. And before she became i would never have thought, back then, knowing her personally, a public icon with songs written about her, plays and movies done in her honor. Books written about her life and work. Murals on city walls. Mugs and bags and tshirts. Even little onesies for babies all with her face etched on them. Boston of my grandchildren wore their onesies in their young day. There was even a grasshopper named after her. She was an extraordinary bright brave, principled, focused, persistent person. Plus she didnt require as much sleep as the average person. She couldnt have achieved what she did had she not had all those qualities in abundance. And against the odds, which notably included as she said of her early adulthood, she had three strikes against her. She was a woman. A jew. Nd a mother. Woman and mother proved to be the most significant. Heres what she dealt with and learned from as she entered the egal profession. Against the odds always, she was admitted to Harvard Law School which just a few years earlier had begun admitting women. Georgetown law was slow to open its doors to women of color and people of color and women. At harvard she was one of nine women in a class of 500. She was married to marty ginsburg. Later on our faculty. And in 1955, gave birth to a daughter. She had chosen her spouse, or as she called him, her life partner, very wisely and id love to talk about marty as well. I hope somebody else might do that. She applied to a dozen or so new york law firms for a job when she graduated but not one would hire her even when she was near the top of her class at harvard and tied for first in her class at columbia where she did her third year and she with she got a clerkship a Federal District court judge in the Southern District of new york only because one of her teachers at columbia went all out for her. Promising the judge that if he hired her and was displeased he had, he himself had lined up a male graduate who was ready to replace her. And if he didnt hire her Columbia Law School would send im no more clerks. She was hired by him and she shone. The she was recommended by one of her harvard professors for a clerkship with justice frankberger, the justice declined to hire the mother of a mother of a small child. Fortunately, she then got a job at Columbia Law School for a special twoyear project on international procedure, spent time in sweden, learned swedish. She even coauthored a book on swedish legal procedure with a swedish coauthor and was nonhor honored with an Honorary Degree from a university in sweden. And next she became a law professor. Again, against all odds. In 1963, the year she was hired at rutgers, she was only one of two women hired on law faculties that year in the entire country and that was not an unusual number. The dean who hired her said she did not get the same salary a man would have gotten because shes married to a guy making a good living at a tax lawyer. In 1965 she had a second child, james, disguising her pregnancy in her motherinlaws larger clothes. Most women who got pregnant in those days got sent home. T had happened the baby was born in Early September just before the school smest started that term. She gave birth and went back to teaching. In the fall of 1969, she finally got tenure. Having taught and written about and she got a substantial ra ot ise. Then the tide turned . 1 by 1969 it womans Legal Movement had begin to emerge. It increased in number because the vietnam war was siphoning off all the men and they were routed to law school to fill the gap. Older womennote, finally saw the opportunity, and many of those women had been inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and the womens liberation movement. Rutgers school law school put effort into addressing it after the 1968. Ace riots in newark she was probably the least liked there. As for rbg, who finally had tenure, and therefore job security, she turned all her energy towards advancing the equality of women under the law. Here is what she did. 1969 shest days of begin to work with others in the American Association of law adopt to get the aals to that discrimination against women in american law school. Which it did, by a substantial vote. Aals also created a committee to further the project. They turnedlater back to the Permanent Committee of the aals. Role, helpingajor to draft the original policy, and serving on the committees. If i remember, she even shared it for a while. Rbg are bg sponsored sponsored the first in the country. The rutgers woman while reporter. She wrapup she published some of her own work with them. Many such law reviews followed. Three, she taught with the encouragement of her students on women in law in the spring of 1971. One of the first courses on the subject. Which included, in her case, in working with her students on the gender cases showing up in the new jersey aclu office and in the National Office in new york city. She was beginning, for the first time, to become not just an academic, although she remained but a practicing lawyer as well. By the spring of 1970 one she teamed up with her husband and took on the appeal that is featured on the basis of sex movie featured in the basis of sex movie. Read verses read decided in november of 1971 was the first case the Supreme Court had ever, in its entire history, struck down a law discriminating against women on the grounds that it violated the equal protection clause. Four, by 1972 two things had changed in rbgs life. The first had to do with the aclu. Aclutting in 1970 the board altered its position on the equal rights amendment and how the equal protections closet should apply to women. What the aclud tradition viewed as the special need of womens socalled protective laws. Which limited the hours they could work the jobs they would be allowed to perform. The readfter rbg won case in december of 1971, the aclu board created a board to work for womens equality in the agreed to and rbg head it. The second thing that happened in 1972. By got hired with tenure convio all school, which should have hired her in the first place. She could spend half the time in the first year they are working with a womens right project in getting it off the ground. To teach the course she had invented at rutgers, where her students not only studied the law, but worked on cases and legislation of current importance and interest that furthered womens equality. With one of my mentors of berkeley law school, and kim produce the first casebook on sex discrimination and the law and the United States. And as far as i can tell, in the world. Her chapters were the ones on constitutional law and International Comparative law. Casework, isecond bye to mention this, herbertle] and ruth ann were very efficient. I am proud to say that two of those authors have been on our faculty for many years. Two also proud to say that of those authors also were among teachers that even proceeded rbg in teaching women in the law courses. They were among the very first pioneers who taught this. And barbara babcock, who taught atourse on the subject georgetown. Was quite a contribution to the law school, even before people were thinking about it. Participated in numerous cases, either in council in the decade of the 1970s. She did this all while she was teaching and writing and giving speeches. She argued eight pages and lost only one, which she knew she was going to lose. Her careful strategy earn her recognition as the Thurgood Marshall of the Womens Movement, and more than any other person in that decade, change the law of the land with respect to equality between men and women. This was her insight and guiding principle written by a law professor which will go nameless. Which i found quoted in the New York Times two days ago. Her Litigation Campaign succeeded in targeting pervasive Legal Framework that treated yang,as yen and men as and either rewarded them for their compliance or penalize them for deviation from it. She saw that male and female were viewed in law and beyond as a natural duality, polar opposites, interconnected and interdependent by nature or by design. And she understood that she could not tied one half of a knot. Essential. Iffs were sex discrimination hurt both men and women. And both seemed to be liberated by Ruth Ginsburgs vision of equality. You might have heard, as i did, pleading, hang on, ruthy, hang on. Youou have not heard it, might want to hear it. I bet i believe if anybody could do it, she could. She tried her best to hang on. What a difference she has made without one remarkable life she was given. With that one remarkable life she was given. Thank you. Thank you so much for the chance to be here and remember justicend and esteemed Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice ginsburg is so and was justly proud of her opinion in the United States versus virginia, the case that opened the military institute to women students. That was a case i was assigned to when i was an assistant to the facilitator general. It was my task to write for the United States. , as the really hard Principal Deputy general himself was there. It was humbling to see how Justice Ginsburg to get t