Transcripts For CSPAN2 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg My Own Wo

I hope youre all enjoying yourselves this morning but we have a rather large crowd and thats why i am thrilled to introduce the next program at the library of congress. You may sit down. For the past year at the library of congress we have been celebrating changemakers and the favorite is ruth bader ginsburg. [cheers and applause] a hero at 4 00 a. M. This morning students from american university. [cheers and applause] camped out in front of this facility and they are here. Talking about graduation from Columbia Law School. And all of these things and now being called the fiance of jurisprudence. [laughter] and she said id rather you say the j law. [laughter] so, without further ado she is joined by her coauthors of the bestselling memoir and with georgetown law and Professor Emeritus at georgetown law. And the interviewer today and the person that you know very well from npr. [cheers and applause] are bg. [cheers and applause] please be seated. Before i leave this day i want to shake her hand. [cheers and applause] this is quite an Amazing Group and i am very admiring of all the people who have been online for so many hours waiting to see the justice. She is quite a little person. How did that happen quick. I was called about a month ago by Jennifer Lopez and said she would like to meet me to introduce her fiance. So they came to chambers and we had a very nice visit she mostly wanted to ask if i had a secret about a happy marriage. But now a rods is traveling with her all over the world. So what was your secret . Did you tell her your motherinlaws secret . [laughter] on the tao was married my motherinlaw took me aside and said the secret to a happy marriage and i said im glad to hear it. She responded it helps sometimes to be a little death detents with a thoughtless word is said you just tune out. [applause] and now calling you justice ruth went to have some Health Challenges over the last year or the last month so let me ask the question that everybody wants toch ask. How are you feeling, why are you here instead of resting up. [laughter] are you planning on staying in your current job . [laughter] first as his audience can see is that i am alive. [cheers and applause] and i am on my way to. [applause] why are you here . [laughter] we have more than a month left to go. I will be prepared when the time comes. [cheers and applause] so hard you just keep trucking . For one thing i love my job. Its the best and the hardest job i have ever had and it has kept me going through four cancer battles instead of concentrating on makes and pains i just know i have to draft an opinion for whatever is going on in my body. So in your book in the first one to have a lot of my own words from the time you were in grammare school and the Opinion Pieces and later an authorized biography. So let me turn to for a moment and ask you i hate to ask this because i will because i have 4000,0 witnesses so my official biography it was 15 years in 2004 and then to be followed by a selections and speeches that then go on and on and then it came to me that i would be on the court for some time into the future so to make the book complete they wanted to wait. And that was a marvelous ide idea. We still have not said when. [laughter] its my job. This justice keeps going and we are very happy about that. [cheers and applause] before she was notorious. And to be the full story. And then hopefully knock them out. [applause] we talk about the upcoming book you will not tell me much but i do know theres a whole chapter about Justice Scalia. You were great friends and a sparring partner and an entertainer in some ways. So tell me why there is a whole chapter about him and your interview withhe him. Also a whole chapter about him in my own words and the reminiscence of Justice Scalia. And interviewing Justice Scalia was a treat for the book and for the biography that part of that is in my own words and as they are so different in so many ways and with hundreds of pictures and going into those chambers there is a big dead animal looking down so as we interview we go we watch how he goes from who we all love and then his face would lightenoo up and he told several stories when they traveled to india together and to visit the taj mahal. And to describe how he watched Justice Ginsburg listen to the tourur guide with the love story behind the taj mahal and said when the 98 percent sure. Not to have an opinion or a defense. [laughter] in the other story that he likes to talk about was Justice Ginsburg as a young 70 yearold with a Legal Exchange and is standing and looking at the water from the hotel and all these people parasailing and turns to her husband and says that looks like fun we should do that. Marty looked horrified and said are you crazy . The host said i will go with yo you. And his wife was equally horrified and said if there is an accident and they can only save one of you it better not be you. [laughter]. There was no chemotherapy in those days. The judge took each day as it came and my routine is i would attend my classes and i had no takers. I would then go to mass. General, the hospital where he was in the afternoon 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 he ingested that g he would have my not very good cooking. [laughter] and then about 2 00 in the morning he was also dictating his senior paper to me. He went back to bed about two in the morning and thats when i get the book. In between, there was a then two and a half year old daughter. So, i for many we weeks of sleep maybe two hours a night and that is how i became a night person. G i appreciated that in those Early Morning hours, the telephone and bring. There were no emails during that time. There were no emails and i could concentrate on the book. While, i hope that you get more than two hours these days. I do know that if you want to call the ginsburg residence, you do not on a day like a weekend day, you do not call before noon. Thats not true on sitting days. So, today, when and to some extent take for granted their quality in the workplace, but that isnt the case when you were a young lawyer. You couldnt get a job in the law firm. You didnt have one, but two strikes against you. Three strikes. There were wellknown firm is in new york that were not yet to welcoming. Next, i was a woman and that is a barrier. Butle the absolute killer is i have a 4yearold daughter when i graduated from law school. You were a mother. If they would take a chance on a mother with more than they were willing to risk. So, you had top grades at harvard and in your y last year when he moved to new york with her husband you were tied for first place at Columbia Law School and you were applying for clerkships. Tell us how you finally did get a clerkship because nobody by and large would even interview you for the most part. Those were the titles within days, so they were about saying women are not welcome at this wyplace and we had a lawyer that was dreadful. Jerry was in charge of the columbia students and he called every federal judge in the Second Circuit in the 70s for the Eastern District of new york, and he was not meeting with success. So, he called a columbia graduate who was a columbia undergraduate, Columbia Law School graduate and he would say i strongly recommend that you engage with ruth bader ginsburg. The response was i have had women law firms and i know shes okay, but she is a mother and a sometimes we have to work on weekends and even on sundays. So, she said give her a chance and if she doesnt work out, a young man in her class who was going to bel Downtown Firm would jump in and take over. So that was the caret and it was also the stick. If you dont give her a chance, i will never recommend another columbia graduate as your law clerks. [applause] thats the way it was in not so ancient days foror the women. The big hurdle was to get that first job the second job wasnt the same obstacle. There is a wonderful book let me mention, it is a biography of Sandra Day Oconnor. She was very high in her class and stanford law school, but no law firm would hire her. Shesh was asked do you type . And maybe there will be a place as a legal secretary. So, what did she do . She went to the county attorney and saihad said i will work foru without pay and then if you think im worth it, you can put me on the payroll. But she finally got her first job. Even after that you couldnt get a job in a law firm. You ended up being a law professor. How would you like to write a book about the swedish judicial system . This is a part of her life that you will not hear generally discussed in the question that normally doesnt come up. This was an irresistible offer because here i was in my 20s before i turned 30 i had a book between hard covers. We married the same month i graduated from cornell. So i never lived on my own. Ng i went from a College Dormitory to being married and had what might be called the hd her inch date 8year itch. My daughter was being taken care of by her father for six weeks and when she finished school she came and joined me in sweden. I got that out of my system and i never again yearned to live on my own. It was a language that i knew nothing at all about. Did you go to sweden with her . Y, she went back to sweden this year. Was the 50th anniversary of my Honorary Degree from the university. The we kept trying to see the car booming through the streets and it was like that scene in the movie french kiss where theyey never see the eiffel tow. Finally, driving to the airport we turned, and there it was. You have been working on this book for 15 years. Did you interview all of the justices ask how often did you interview her . What can you do when you have 15 plus years what is your agenda . Before you ask, let me tell you how it began. [laughter] they came to see me and they said inevitably people are going to write about your life, so why dont you make as your official pbiographies people you really trust. And when for the first time in history it became possible for courts to accept the equal protection clause meant that women were people equally and stature today. [applause] so, i knew this strategy was pretty much the same and they knew that she understood what we were trying to accomplish. So i said yes to that. It in fact, when he 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 and she said here is a Little Something that you might want to look at. Thats how we knew, so to speak. [laughter] du impact interview ofdid you ie justices that she served with . I did not interview any of the justices that she served with. Ar there were some new additions that we still plan to interview, but most of them. And how often did you sit down with her for an interview . It 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 terms we sat down with her for three days in a row in the late afternoon, so we have our own big stack from that. And this year it was a little different. We went up to new york where she was getting her radiation treatment. We sat with her twice with she remembered everything. She was perfectly normal except she was tired which she never let it stop her and she wasnt letting it stop her then. That was a new experience for us. Then we came back down for one day and every year we do that. Then we do a lot of things in ebetween to keep track. [laughter] let me just say this to you here in front of god and everybody. Justice brennan famously got Writers Block and somebody else eventually have to take over the project. And im getting old. Is that what you are saying . [laughter] im saying to you you better not get Writers Block. [laughter] everybody here, some of whom are a great yeare, younger than he, want to be ablee to read the product of your labor. Well, we do too. [applause] im taking for granted this is a very educated and curious audience. Im taking for granted everybody in this room has seen rpg at least once. On the basis, im not going to go through all of the cases and strategy and all that are there other places you see this but also a lot of younger people in this audience men and women, and i wanted to ask Justice Ginsburg in light of that and in light of all of the conversation that he had between work and family life to tell us the story of the elevator teeth. Elevator thief. The elevator thief was my lively son. It was when he was in the sixth grade. I called him wryly and his teachers called him hyperactive. I would get tha the call once ey month to come down to the school to talk about my sons latest escapades. So one day i was sitting in my office at Columbia Law School. The phone rang. It was the headmaster. We need to see you immediately. I have been particularly weary that day because i stayed up all night writing a brief. So i said this child has two parents, please also make calls it is his fathers turn. [applause] so, they called him as the head of a Tech Department at a law firm. He came down and was told your son stole the elevator. In his Immediate Response was he stole the elevator . How far could he take it . [laughter] i dont believe it was his sense of humor by the way, the staff was one of those oldfashioned handheld elevators. The operator went out to smoke and one of hisle classmates challenged him to take the kindergarten class up to the top floor, which he did. [laughter] so, after that episode, the polls came barely once a semester. There was no quick change in my sons behavior, but the school was much more reluctant to take a father away from his work van and other. So, this is just an the suggestion to alternate calls did the trick. [applause] so, i want to let me just add that today he is a fine human. [laughter] ot in prison anywhere. He is a great appearance to his two girls. And he runs a thing called cedile records and they producec magnificent classical recordings. Okay, that would be inappropriate for you to do but not me. [laughter] so, lets talk about your time on the Supreme Court. You are appointed by president clinton, and then within three years of getting to the Supreme Court, you are still a very junior justice, you are assigned to write the Virginia Military Institute Case striking down their policy of exclusion of women. You would not have gotten that assignment but for your female colleague, Justice Oconnor, right . Right. Seniority is a very big workplace. Justice oconnor would have been way ahead as he chose an opinion writer. But shes a groove should write this opinion so it is thanks to Justice Oconnor that i got to write the decision in the Virginia Military Institute Case. You wrote in that case that most women, indeed most men would probably not want to meet the rigorous demands, but those extraordinary individuals that can and wants to meet those demands should be permitted to. So, you are invited a little over a year ago i think to give a speech. How did that go . They invited me toto come and the 20th anniversary of the decision. My calendar was too crowded, so it turned out to be the 21st anniversary, and you were with me for that change and the school has been enormous. The Commanding Officer was so proud. They were in the same quarters, but they were so enthusiastic. Many of them were in the Engineering Program and one wanted to be an atomic scientist for the school. Via many women they were able to to. [applause] she left out a Ginsburg Scalia moment to begin with, because what Justice Scalia found the opinion outrageous and was very upset about the whole thing. The last sentence of the opinion said Something Like this is going to destroy. I ask Justice Ginsburg about that later and this wasnt so long after the opinion, i think. She said to me with the utmost confidence it will be a better place if there are women, and it wont be destroyed. The wonderful thing about that is when we were there for the 21st anniversary, people were so proud and excited to have a person come there after you have transfigured the place that there was an audience almost as big as this, and back there there were what do you call them, bleachers. They all stood up and applauded and it was just remarkable. [applause] it also turned out she was the sole dissenter of the case so chief Justice Rehnquist didnt join my opinion that he did join the justice. Thomas was accused because his sons attended. [laughter] Justice Scalia knew i felt deeply about the case and came to my chambers when they, took down a sheet of paper and said this is an ultimate draft of my dissent in the case. I am not yet ready to circulate through the court, but the clock was ticking and he wanted to give me as much time as he cou could. You were going to the second meeting. I was on the plane and opened up the dissent. Absolutely ruined my weekend. [laughter] but i was certainly glad to have the extra time to respond. This reminds me when you get to the court, Justice Oconnor of course was the first woman justice. She has been there for quite a while by herself, and as he would later learn that is no fun becaus