Thank you, i want to thank stephanie and skip for the clinr and Clinton School of public service, i want to thank the family for sponsoring this lecture series and thank you [laughter] [cheers and applause] i want to thank i want to thank all of you. I tried to entertain Justice Ginsburg for a few moments before we came over here by telling her stories of my adventures and misadventures in arkansas politics. [laughter] back when we all thought of each other as people, 3 dimensional human beings before we realized we were [cheers and applause] and its fairly well known, not actually met Justice Ginsburg until that memorable sunday evening in june of 1993 when she came to see me at the white house residence. I had only interviewed two other people and immediately leaked to the press and i had a lot young age, they worked hard and reporter called them, they were more afraid to say i dont know than anything else, so i got a good kick out of it. One of the most famous people in the entire world into the white house and nobody knew. Ive been president for less than a yearnt and i already hada Supreme Court appointment to make i wanted to do a good job judge ginsburg was one of 3 thople still in the running, they were all excellent candidates and i carefully reviewed their resumes but also their life stories. Hillary and a lot of other people had already told me i needed to take hard look at ruth bader o ginsburg, hillary had mt her granddaughter because she went out to preschool event long before i announced her appointment and she thought her granddaughter was a pretty good advertisement for her mother. [laughter] but she told me, you need to know about this person because you like people who have good life stories, who have actually lived what they say they believe. For those who havent seen film about her remarkable life, a very short version, she grew up in brooklyn, family of modest means and as you heard stephanie say thanks to her mother relentless early encouragement she attended Cornell University and then har harvard law whie helped her husband through Cancer Treatment and raising her and working toward a degree, she left harvard, that was a big sacrifice, there were then 500 people at Harvard Law School and she was one of 9 women. [cheers and applause] today today most students in law school are women. [cheers and applause] after she graduated from law school she went onto cofound the project at the aclu and began her career as a judge. Still when the legal field was not particularlyar open to wome, from the start of our first conversation in 1993, i got why so many people, she was both brilliant and had good head on her shoulders. She was rigorous but warm hearted, she had aea great sense of humor and sensible, achievable judicial philosophy. She also kept the moral campus and the mental toughness that guided her from humbled beginnings, i was in her story and i just kept covering her with questions that i sudly felt suddenly that i was not interviewing somebody for Supreme Court at all, that i was talking to somebody that i really liked and that i hoped could be part of our future. I had once taught constitutional law and i knew how much the Supreme Court mattered even to people who didnt know it, i knew that it affects all americans, sometimes very personally and deeply. I always thought Supreme Court justice should have heart, spirit, discipline, knowledge, common sense and wisdom to translate the hopes of the American People, legitimate desire for fair and equal treatment in all the cases prevented to it into an enduring body of constitutional law that would preserve our most cherished values and enable to American People to move forward. When i ran for president , i promised the American People that kind of justice, i think i keptd that promise. [cheers and applause] i appointed Justice Ginsburg for 3 reasons, first she proved to be one of the nations best judges on the bench, judgment, balance and fair opinions, second, she had a lifetime of pioneer andfe work on behalf of women and she had record of achievement there, before she was a judge she argued 6 cases involving gender discrimination before the Supreme Court and won 5 of them, thats a better average than most people have. [cheers and applause] finally i thought she had the ability to build Common Ground in a country that was already becoming increasingly polarized. Find ar way whenever possible r the court to be an instrument of common unity in fidelity to the constitution. She had already proved herself to be a hero, her moral imagination had cooled fires of colleagues discord and ensured that jurists kept their right to decentur without entangling the court in endless animosities. In short, i like her and i believe in her. I just knew that she was the right person for the court but i had to say in the last 26 years she has for exceeded even my expectations. [cheers and applause] ge landmark opinions advancing gender equality, marriage equality, right for people of disabilities and right of immigrants and shes almost as well known for her amazing descending opinions. [cheers and applause] and in every case she offers an alternative vision about how america ought to work for everybody, how it ought to be, how both ought to be counted and not t discarded, how districts should be fair. [applause] i could go on and on, i read every now and then when im bored, want to be reminded why i still believe in america and the constitution. [cheers and applause] but i have to say this, one thing i did not see coming when i nominated her is her pop culture icons. [laughter] her workout routine is marveled at. [laughter] hillary got me a book, rbg workout, and she said i bet you cant do it, i said yeah, i can, 73, i can do this, i had to work out on my weight machine and do other stuff for two months before i could complete her workout. [laughter] saturday night live delivering her ginsburg and you can see her quote on tshirts, coat bags, in coffee mugs, the world over. You could become resentful of such a person but youre not. [laughter] we like her because she seems to totally on the level, in a world hungry for people who arent trying to con you, who [cheers and applause] spent a lifetime trying to give other people from the getgo the opportunities she spent her early life struggling reach and one of the law review articles she wrote, the greatest figures of american judiciary have been independent thinking individuals with open but not empty minds. Individuals willing to listen and learn, they have exhibited a readiness to examine their own promises liberal or conservative as thoroughly as those of others shes lived her life doing that and somehow she has found the time, not only to attend just about every opera ever produced but to appear on stage on some of them as well. Not very long ago i had the honor of going to the university of virginia and i said it seems to me you could define the presidency of every one who has served by how they answer two questions connected to the oath of office, you have to promise though to protect and uphold the constitution and those two questions can be found in the very first phrase of the prologue, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more Perfect Union, same thing can be said of Supreme Court justices, the two questions are who is in we the people and what does the more Perfect Union mean , i believe for Ruth Bader Ginsburg we the people is all of us. [cheers and applause] and i believe that in her more Perfect Union all of us on equal terms will be at home. [applause] interview by npr remarkable Leader Affairs correspondent and i think we reached a stage in her life when i could admit without hurting her career one of my favorite journalists. [laughter] [cheers and applause] now, theres the last thing i want to say and i am confident i speak for everyone in this mass arena, only one person here appointed her and one person voted for her but all of us hope that she will stay on that court forever. [cheers and applause] ladies and gentlemen, Justice Ginsburg and anita. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [inaudible conversations] [cheers and applause] thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you all for coming. I think Justice Ginsburg and i have never ever appeared before an audience this large before. [laughter] and i understand that normally this is recently the worldwide wrestling entertainment. [laughter] we arent going to wrestle each other, we will try to entertain you a bit and inform you. Youve heard president clinton describing his why he picked Justice Ginsburg but i think i should start this interview asking you about that interview, so let me set the stage, the year is 1993, the president is flirting with all manner with potential Supreme Court nominations and the names are getting leaked to the likes of me. [laughter] and behind the scenes the Martin Ginsburg is doing everything in his power to promote tinny wife and finally you get a call from white House Counsel and its a call that you had long hoped for but you are in something of a fashion emdilemma, so tell us about how you got the call that day and what your fashion dilemma was. I was called on a saturday in vermont where i was to attend a wedding and i said, can i come tomorrow morning. [laughter] and he said, fine, we arrived from the airport to the white house and i said, but i will be myaring my the president would be coming off the golf course so i arrived in plain clothes, in comes a handsome president wearing his sunday best as if he just came from church. [laughter] so what was the conversation with the president like . What kinds of things did he ask . Did you have a good time or were you in interview agony . I didnt hear that . Did you have a good time it was easy to talk to the president. We talked about prosecutionial, we talked about family, we talked about many things. They have certain discomfort talking to a woman, that was not that way with president clinton. [laughter] so i would told after after hae interview that he fell foryou for you and said in 5 minutes he had fallen for you, when do you get the word, do i recall that i got a call . It was rather late on sunday night and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was absolutely on cloud 9 and then the president said and tomorrow morning we will have a little ceremony in the rose garden and we would like you to make a few remarks. I had to come down from the cloud. [laughter] head to writing table, it is the only time in the entire eisode when there was no time from white house candidate to go over what i was going to say. [laughter] you know, youve been im not sure about this 9063. [cheers and applause] republicans today often cite the ginsburg rule and when i go back and read the transcript i read about what your rule was, but it strikes me that in light of modern confirmation hearings, modern confirmation hearings, nominees are considerably less responsive of all political sides, not just republican nominees, you actually answered questions about abortion and the Death Penalty and all kinds of things. The ginsburg rule that piece do not ask a question that may come before the court because then i would have to disqualify myself if i gave an answer, nsbecause a judge is not supposd to react just off of the top of their head when a question is presented to us, we read, first of all, written by the courts below, the trial courts, court then we read the briefs, anything but briefs [laughter] filed by the lawyers and we precedent and so to give an answer to a question without the benefit of all that reading and briefing is not what a judge should do. Still there was a lot happeningl that i could be asked about because i was 17 years of law teacher, 13 years of judge on court appeals, i had written hundreds of opinions and anything i had already written was fair game. So youre allowed in the court, second woman and Justice Connor had been years without you, what advice did she give you . She told me just enough to enable me to navigate early briefs. Just enough to get by. She was, i think, pleased of the change the court made when i was appointed. Equal in size to the mens. [applause] your first opinion assigned to you was not quite what you expected and you went to her. The legend is that the new justice, the junior justice will get a single issue case in whichthe court is unanimous. But chief Justice Rehnquist gave me in my first assignment a miserable, horrific case. Employee Retirement Security act. It is one of the most complex statutes congress ever wrote. The court was not unanimous, noitdivided 62 3 and Justice Oconnor was on the other side, she was one of the three. So i came to her and i said sandra, youre not supposed to do that to me. My response, and this is typical of Justice Oconnor, 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 another emajor case. I could never understand why lawyers that appear before the court, who appear before the court and not people who are not accustomed to the court but very seasoned lawyers would get these two women mixed up. And Sandra Day Oconnor was about five foot seven or eight. You claim to be over five feet tall. She was a western ranch girl with all western twang. You were a new yorker, a brooklyn girl. I dont know that it was oakland twang but you were clearly aneasterner. She didnt wear her hair the way you do. And still, people kept calling you Justice Oconnor and her Justice Ginsburg. Why . Much more often i was called Justice Oconnor. But they learned there was a woman on the court and her name was Justice Oconnor so when they heard a woman voice, it had to be Justice Oconnor. And she would sometimes respond im Justice Oconnor, shes Justice Ginsburg. The case of the two of us and how we interact it, one day i think was in usa today, there was a headline , the headline was rude ruth interrupts sandra. Sandra had asked the question, and argument. I thought she was finished. And she said just aminute. I have followup questions. I apologized to her and she said dont give it another thought. The guys do it to each other all the time. Even was a tshirt presented to the two of you i think i, i thought it was the red but somebody from women from radcliffe, one side said im sandra, not ruth. Was the National Association of women judges. They had a reception for the two of us and they gave her a tshirt that said im sandra, not ruth. And if we can fast forward, i can tell you that doesnt happen anymore. Now that we agree. [applause] e. What kind of a difference does it make . What kind of difference does it make to have three mark. One is the public perception. We have a line, attend line often schoolchildren coming dr in and out of the courtrt. And if they see three women, because of my seniority isat next to the chief. Justice soto mayor is on one side, Justice Kagan on the other so were all over the bench. And as you will affirm, my sisters in law, im not shrinking violet. Very given that these are and in an oral argument. So there is Justice Scalia with us, there was kind of a competition between justice soto mayor and Justice Scalia , which one could ask the most questions and oral arguments. You were the loan woman justice afterJustice Oconnor retired. From 2006 i think to, pretty near the end of 2009. And i had the sense that you were not a very happy camper at that time. Class it was a lowly position. And hearing the court, it was something wrong. With the picture the public would see these a rather wealthy man coming on the bench. And then there was this rather small older woman. And did you find that even there on occasion, when you were just one, do you occasionally see that annulment on of you Say Something and nothing happens and then 10 minutes later our fiveminutes later , one of your brethren says the same thing and everybody goes bothats a good idea. That happened at conference 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. Thats a good idea, lets discuss it. Its a habit that developed that you dont expect very much a woman. So you kind of tune out when shemuspeaks. You listen when a man speaks. I can tell you that that experience which i had as a member of a law faculty,as a member of the court of appeals , now that i have two sistersinlaw, it doesnt happen. Im going to pause here and asking the question on peoples minds. You had a lot of serious threats to elf this year. You operated on lung cancer in december. Youre just completed three weeks of radiation treatment for an additional cancer. So how are you feeling and excuse me, im really thrilled that were here but why are we here . You finish radiation treatment atthe end of august. Yes. August 23 was the last time. It was the last session. But i had promised that i would be here and i i just was not going to [applause] im pleased to say that i have a feeling very