Good morning [cheers and applause] im carla hayden, the librarian of congress, and i hope you all have been enjoying yourselves this morning. [cheers and applause] now, we have a rather large crowd this morning for this particular session. And thats why im very thrilled to introduce our next program. For the past year at the library of congress you may sit down. [laughter] because i have a few more things [laughter] for the past year at the library of congress, we have been celebrating change makers. And i can think of few people who more than aptly fit that description than the United StatesSupreme Court justice ruth ruth bader ginsburg. [cheers and applause] okay, im going to hurry up. She is [laughter] a hero and an inspiration to so many of us. In fact, at four a. M. This morning students from American University were right over there [cheers and applause] camped out in front of this facility, and they are here. She says and i said, justice, you know, im going to talk about your graduation from Columbia Law School and taught at rutgers and columbia, spent most of your career advocating for womens rights, all of these things, and youve been called recently the beyonce of jurisprudence [laughter] [cheers and applause] and the joke, i said, could i say that, and she said rather you say the jlo. [laughter] so without further ado, she is joined by her coauthors of her best selling memoir, my own words, coauthors mary hartnet, georgetown law, wendy w. Williams, a Professor Emeritus at georgetown law, and her interviewer today and the interviewer, the person you know very well from npr, ms. Nina totenberg. So [cheers and applause] the notorious rbg [cheers and applause] please be seated. [applause] and i have to tell you before i leave the stage, i want to shake her hand. [cheers and applause] well, i want to give her a hug, but that would be very unprofessional. So this is quite an amazing group, and im very admiring of all the people who have been on line for so many hours and waiting to see the justice. Theres a lot to see even though shes a pretty little person. [laughter] so how about jlo . What was how did that happen . I was called about a month or so ago by jennifer lopez, and she said she would like to meet me and introduce her fiance e, alex rodriguez. [laughter] so they came to chambers, and we had a very nice visit. She mostly wanted to ask if i had any secret about a happy marriage. But now arod is traveling with her to concerts all over the world. [laughter] so what was your secret to a happy marriage . Did you pass on your motherinlaws secrets . [laughter] on the day i was married, my motherinlaw i was married at her home. She took me aside and said she wanted to tell me what was the secret of a happy marriage. And i said id be glad to hear it, what is it . And she responded, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf. [laughter] and thats advice i have followed in every workplace [laughter] including the good job i now have. [laughter] so if an unkind word is said, you just tune out. [laughter] [applause] i was personally advised that instead of chairman mao, you listen to justice ruth. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg, we all know you have some Health Challenges in the last year, the last month. You had radiation the month of august, so let me ask you the question that everyone here wants to ask, which is how are you feeling, why are you here instead of resting up for the term [laughter] and are you planning on a staying in your current job . [laughter] how have i been . Well, first, this audience can see that i am alive. [laughter] [cheers and applause] and im on my way to being very well. [applause] and why are you here instead of resting up for the term . [laughter] the term, we have more than a month yet to go, so ill be prepared when the time comes. [cheers and applause] so how do you just keep trucking . [laughter] for one thing, i love my job. Its the best and the hardest job that i ever had, and its what it has kept me going through four cancer bouts. Instead of concentrating on my aches and pains, i just know that i have to read this set of briefs, go over the draft opinion, and so i have to somehow surmount whatever my, whatever is going on in my body. I concentrate on the courts work. So your book, in my own words, its the first, essentially, of two by mary hartnet and Wendy Williams and you in some in the first one because it has a lot of your own words from the time you were in Grammar School and writing for the school paper and Opinion Pieces as to your Supreme Court opinions. And then theres going to be a later authorized biography. These two ladies have been working on it for some time. So, mary hartnet, let me turn to you for a moment and is ask you about and ask you about the upcoming book. I hesitate to ask this, but im going to do it, because at least i have 4,000 witnesses. When. [laughter] can i just say preliminarily e that my own words was to be second. My official biography, mary and wendy have been at work how many years . Fifteen years. Fifteen years. 2004. And the idea is the book would come out, the biography would come out x it would be followed the by the lectures and speeches that ive given on opinions ive written. But the years were going on and on, and then the it came to me that mary and wendy expected that i would be on the court for some time into the future. So they, to make the book complete, they wanted to wait, and i said, okay, lets flip the order. Lets have my selected writings first and then the biography. And it was a marvelous idea. [laughter] so you still havent said when. [laughter] that is my job, asking questions, you know. This justice keeps doing things, and were very happy about that [laughter] [applause] and so it will be, the idea originally was that it would break the story of Justice Ginsburg. It was before she was notorious. But now [laughter] it will be the complete, full story. And so we want to wait until we have that and, hopefully, it will not come out very soon. [laughter] [applause] well done, mary. I talked to you a little bit about the upcoming book. You wont tell me much, but i do know that theres a whole chapter about justice antonin scalia. Justice ginsburgs great friend, sparring partner and entertainer, in some ways. [laughter] so tell me why there is a whole chapter about him and about your interview of him . Sure. So theres also a whole chapter of him about him in my own words including Justice Ginsburgs reminiscences about Justice Scalia. And everyone i think in this room knows about the unlikely friendship between the two. And interviewing Justice Scalia was a real treat for the book, and we interviewed him for the biography, but parts of that interview are in my own words. And as they are so different in so many ways, going into his chambers is very different. Justice ginsburgs chambers are light, airy, modern art, dozens or hundreds of pictures of friends, family, colleagues. And going into Justice Scalias chambers, dark, leathery. Theres a big dead animal looking down on you [laughter] so as i sat there interviewing Justice Scalia, i watched how he went from the kind of tough jurist that we all know, and his face just softened and lightened up as he talked about his good friend ruth. And he told several stories. One was when they traveled to india together, and they went to visit the taj mahal. And Justice Scalia described how he watched Justice Ginsburg listen to the tour guide describe the love story behind the building of the taj mahal, and he said he saw tears start to stream from her eyes. And as he told me that, im 98 sure i saw a tear not related to an opinion or a dissent come out of his eye. [laughter] and the other story that he likes to talk about was parasailing. Justice ginsburg, as when she was a young 70yearold, was in nice for a Legal Exchange and was standing in the hotel looking out at the water and saw all these people parasailing s. And she turned to her husband marty and said, marty, that looks like fun, we should do that. [laughter] ty looked hour marty looked horrified and said, are you crazy . If you do that, ill remember you to our grandchildren. [laughter] the host said ill go parasailing with you, dean yellen, and his wife was equally horrified, and she said if theres an accident and they can only save one of you, it better not be you. [laughter] so they went parasailing. They had to adjust for weight because dean yellen was a normal sized human being [laughter] and there was Justice Ginsburg. And off they went, and they went up and down, up and down, flopped into the water. And wendy and i asked Justice Ginsburg about this experience a few years ago when we were interviewing her and said what was it like . Did you like it . And Justice Ginsburg said it was marvelous, glorious, and then she related it, of course, to a greek myth and said it was like icarus, but we didnt get too close to the sun. [laughter] the weight was also a problem when we took a ride on a very elegant elephant. Theres a photograph of it. Some of his friends asked why are you sitting on the back of the elephant . [laughter] and i explained it had to do with the distribution of weight. [laughter] Justice Ginsburg, youve always been a rather determined person. When you were in law school, your husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Doctors told you his chances of survival were extremely slim, but the two of you just carried on. And, as we all know, he survived. But i thought people here might be interested in what your days and nights were like in that year and how in some ways it set up your sleep patterns for life. Yeah. It was my second year in law school, martys third year, and there was massive surgery followed by massive radiation. There was no chemotherapy in those days. We just took each day as it came. My routine was ill attend my classes i would attend my classes. I had notetakers in all of martys classes. I would then go to mass general, the hospital where he was, in the afternoons. And then when he was released from the hospital and was having daily radiation, he was, first, very sick, and then he would sleep. Until about midnight when whatever food hed ingested that day, he would have not very good cooking [laughter] and then about 2 00 in the morning he was also dictating his senior papers to me. He went back to bed at about two in the morning, and thats when i hit the books myself. And in between there was our then2andahalfyearold daughter. So for weekes, many weeks, i was sleeping maybe two hours a night. And thats how i became a night person. I appreciated it in those Early Morning hours. The telephone didnt ring, there were no emails in those days. It was a quiet time i could concentrate on the books. Well, i hope youre getting more than two hours these days. I do know that if you want to call the ginsburg residence, you do not on a non, on a day, like a weekend day, you do not call before noon. Not true on sitting days. Not true on court days at all. [laughter] so today women, to some extent, take for granted their equality in the workplace, but that was not the case when you were a young lawyer. You couldnt get a job in a law firm, you had not one with, but two strikes against you. You were well, i was, first, a jew, and there were many three strikes. Well known firms in new york that were not yet up to welcoming jews. The next, i was a woman. That was a higher barrier. But the absolute killer was i had a 4yearold daughter when i graduated from law school. You were a mother. So if they would take a chance on a woman, a mother was more than they were willing to risk. So you had top grades at harvard, and in your last year of law school when you moved to new york with your husband, you were tied for first place at Columbia Law School. And youre applying for clerkships. And tell us how you finally did get a clerkship, because nobody, by and large, would even interview you for the most part. Yes. Those were pretitle vii days. So employers were up front about saying women are not welcome at this workplace, or we had a lady lawyer once, and she was dreadful. [laughter] so how many men have you had that didnt work out . [laughter] but i had a wonderful professor at Columbia Law School who later moved to stanford, jerry gunther. He was in charge of getting clerkships for columbia students, and he called every federal judge on the Second Circuit, in the southern, eastern districts of new york, and he was not meeting with success. So he called a columbia graduate, judge edmund palmieri, who was a columbia undergraduate, Columbia Law School graduate and always took his clerks from columbia. And he said i strongly recommend that you engage ruth bader ginsburg. And palmieris response was ive had women law clerks, i know theyre okay, but shes a mother, and sometimes we have to work on weekends, even on a sunday. So professor gunther said give her a chance, and if she doesnt work out, a young man in her class whos going to a Downtown Firm will jump in and take over. So that was the carrot. It was also a stick, and the stick was if you dont give her a chance, i will never recommend another columbia graduate as your law clerk. [laughter] [applause] and thats the way it was in notsoancient days for women. The big hurdle was to get that first job. Once a woman got the job, she did it at least as well as the men. So the second job was not the same obstacle. Theres a wonderful book this is a meeting about books, so let me mention it its called with firsts. And its about, its a biography of sandra day to conner. She was very Sandra Day Oconnor. She was very high e in her class at stanford law school, but no law firm would hire her. She was asked do you type, and maybe there would be a place as a legal secretary. So what did she do . She went to a county attorney and said i will work for you without pay for four months, and then if you think im worth it, you can put me on the payroll. Thats how Sandra Day Oconnor got her first job. But even after your clerkship, you couldnt get a job in a law firm. You ended up being a law professor. I could have gotten a job. In fact, i was going to a firm when a professor, another professor from columbia, al schmidt, said how would you like to write a book about the swedish judicial system . Well this is a part of her life you will not hear generally discussed, so youre in on a question that normally doesnt come up. Anyway, this was an irresistible offer because here i was in my 20s, before i turned 30 i would have a book between hard covers. Marty and i married the same month i graduated from cornell, so i had never lived on my own. I went from a College Dormitory to being married, and i had what might be called the eightyear itch. [laughter] i wanted to see if i could manage on my e own. And the deal was i would go to sweden. My daughter jane would be taken care of by her father for about six weeks, and when she finished school, she a came and joined me in sweden. And i got that out of my system. I never again yearned to live on my own. [laughter] oh, and then there was the opportunity to learn about a culture and to learn a language that i knew nothing at all about. Wendy, one of you, did you go back to did you go to sweden with her . I did. Mary, you she went back to sweden this year. This year. It was the 50th anniversary of my Honorary Degree from the university. And you saw there what did you see on the street . Your picture. Yes. [laughter] there were posters up and down the streets of one of the many, many [inaudible] that the justice did in sweden. We kept trying to see the posters. The car was zooming through the streets, and it was like that scene in the movie french kiss where they never see the eiffel tower . We kept looking and looking, and finally driving to the airport, remember . We turned and there it was. Wendy, youve been working on this book for 15 years with mary. Did you interview all of the justices she served with . How often did you interview her . What do you do when you have 15 plus years . What is your agenda . Wendy, before you answer, let me tell you how [laughter] all this began. Youre not going to get wendy and mary came to see me, and they said inevitably people are going to write about your life. So why dont you make it your official biography, people you really trust. And i certainly trusted wendy and i were in the trenches in the 70s when for the first time in history it became possible for courts to accept, the equal protection clause meant that women were people, equal in stature to men. [applause] so i knew wendys strategy and mine were pretty much the same. I knew that she understood what we were trying to accomplish. So i said yes without hesitation. In fact, when we, when we came to her to talk about it, she sat us down at a little table. And on the table, there was a stack of documents and opinions and other things about this high, and she said, oh, heres a Little Something that you might want to look at. [laughter] thats how we knew we were in, so to speak. [laughter] so did you, in fact, interview all of the justices shes served with . I did not interview any of the justices that she served with, but mary did. Between the two of you, you interviewed them all. We did. Actually, not all of them some of them refused to be interviewed. Well, and there are some newer additions we still plan to interview. But most of them. And how often did you sit down with her for an extended interview . Im assuming its a lot. Well, its a lot. We started out in that little moment in time after she was done with her summer and just before she had to knuckle down and prepare for the coming term, and every year in august most often in the last week we sit down with her for three days in a row in the late afternoons. So we have our own big stack from that. And she and this year it was a little d