Started. Welcome to politics and pros. I am justin, the programs manager at the store, i receive classrooms, books, and clients and i can try to speak closer. So thank you all for coming out tonight. Were honored to have Linda Hirshman speaking about sisterinlaws. Now would be the time to turn off any Electronic Devices that may be tempted to beep or buzz throughout the proceedings. Next, linda will be taking questions during the second half of the event. For that we ask that you use one of two microphones. Looks like theres just one tonight on my left. That way everyone here can hear it and it will be on recordings. At the end if you could help us out by folding up your chairs, that will help the cleanup process greatly. Linda hirshman, former professor and law degree from the university of degree and ph. D. In philosophy and practiced law for 15 years, during which she appeared before the u. S. Supreme court for three different cases. Since she has published several nonfiction works, including but not limited to victory, the triumphant revolution and get to work and now she has published sisterinlaws how Sandra Day Oconnor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to the Supreme Court and changed the world, the latest work highlights a pair of women who started their careers in an era when women were not assumed to be fit for much at all. While suffering discrimination in the early days and more after posting impressive remarks at Harvard Law School they eventually, which jumps over a bit of material, eventually president reagan saw in Sandra Day Oconnor the means for fulfilling a Campaign Promise he made to appoint a female justice and later president clinton, skeptical at first, was won over quickly after meeting Ruth Bader Ginsburg and she has since won over the hearts of many more, of course, and now at a point in her career where shes being asked about retirement and her peaking popularity. Anyway, from the books opening readers see the type of humility and determination they each displayed in different ways throughout their careers, to as the subtitle states, to change the world. I will get out of the way and let linda tell more of the story. Help me in welcoming her. Thank you, politics okay. Thats right. My next life im coming back as a large man. Thank you, politics and pros for having me and welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for coming out on this hot night. Its i regard each of you as my own very special friend. Thank you to my sister judith and my daughter sara, both of whom are in the audience tonight and both of whom came from far away to be here tonight. Thank you. Sisterinlaws is the story of the two most important women in america to date. The first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sandra Day Oconnor, and her sisterinlaw, the second female justice of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is the story of their private and public lives and how they got legal equality for women and as the book says, changed the world. The book opens in 1996 when they are at the pinnacle of their power. If youll tolerate, ill just read you a bit. I love this part. By the time the nation celebrates the birth of its democracy each 4th of july the nine justices of the Supreme Court have mostly left town. Before departing the capitol for their summer recess they must first decide all the cases that they have heard since their current term began the previous october. The hardest, most controversial cases where the unelected court orders a society to change in a big way are often left to the end, as the days for decision tick away in late june, the tension in the courtroom is as hot and heavy as the washington summer air. And the morning of june 26th, 1996, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman appointed to the High Court Since its founding, slipped through the red rel vet curtain behind the bench and took her seat at the end. Five places along the majestic curve sits Sandra Day Oconnor, since 1981, the first woman on the Supreme Court. Each woman justice sported an ornamental white collar on her somber black robe, but otherwise there was no obvious link between the two of them anymore between there was any other link between any of the other justices. That day, however, the public got a rare glimpse of the ties that bound. The two most powerful women in the land. Speaking from the depths of the high back chair that towered over her tiny frame, Justice Ginsburg delivered the decision of the court in United States v. Virginia. From that morning in june 1996, virginias staterun Virginia Military institute, which had trained young men since before the civil war, would have to take females into its ranks. The constitution of the United States, which required the equal protection of the laws for all persons, including women, demanded it. Few people listening knew that ginsburg got to speak before the court that morning before her sisterinlaw Justice Oconnor had decided that she should. After the justices voted at conference to admit women to vmi, the most senior justice in the majority or the chief justice if he is in the majority, gets to assign the opinion to anyone who agrees with the majority. Thats how it works. He assigned it to the senior woman, Sandra Day Oconnor, but she would not take it. She knew who had labored as a Supreme Court lawyer at the Supreme Court for the American Civil Liberties union from 1971 to 1980 to get the court to call women equal. This should be ruths, she said. On decision day justices do not read their whole opinions, which can often run to scores of pages. That morning ginsburg chose to include the her summary reading a reference to Justice Oconnors 1982 decision in hogan versus mississippi. Oconnors opinion from 15 years before, for the closely divided court in hogan, ginsburg reminded her listeners, had laid down the rule that states may not close entrance gates based on fixed notions concerning the roles and ability of males and females. End quote. And then ginsburg, the legendary demonstrative justice, lifted her eyes from her text, and paused and meeting the glance of her sisterinlaw from across the bench, she thought of the legacy the two were building together and she nodded at Sandra Day Oconnor and resumed reading. [ applause ] its not me. Its a great story. What inspired me to write it . How could you not write it . Three years ago, long before rbg had become an internet icon, i realized that no one had written a book about her heroic career. Be still my writers heart, i had found a subject that was brilliant and wonderful and no one else had thought to write of. Why do we care about her story . Not just because she became a Supreme Court justice, lots of Supreme Court justices whose lives we dont care about, nonetheless are the subject of incredibly boring biographies. We care about Ruth Bader Ginsburg because she changed the world, and if youre thinking about female Supreme Court justices who changed the world you cannot leave out the one who came first, Sandra Day Oconnor. One of the many great discoveries i made when i was writing the book was how much of the law making women equal, actually came from oconnor when she said when she was the only woman on the Supreme Court from 1981 until 1993, so we think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as this Thurgood Marshal of the Womens Movement as president clinton called her but a lot of the Sexual Harassment law that has made the world a better place for women actually came from the court when oconnor was on it and a lot of it came from oconnor, including her crucial fifth vote she cast in hogan, just months after she arrived as the first woman on the Supreme Court. The icing on the cake is that they not only made the change, they lived the change they were making, so their lives, including their work, were actually very interesting and this similar to Thurgood Marshal. They lived in the hostile world. They changed it. They lived in the world they had changed. They used the powers that they had gained through the change to make more change. Rbg is still doing it, right. I think thats why people are saying, with a tone of surprise, which i, of course, resent, that this Supreme Court biography is actually a page turner. My god, this book is actually a page turner. A readers blog called read early, i love that, tuesday published a column called eight books we love and said, hirshmans book may look imposing, but she presents the subjects in such a rich and engaging manner that the pages will fly. What an engaging story i had, republican, democrat, isolated cattle ranch, flatbush, antimccarthy liberal, blonde, brunette, what could be a deeper divide than that . I am not going to tell you all the cool things i found in the three years i worked on the book looking at their letters and stuff, including some letters that had never been looked at by a writer before, unpublished letters like something from henry james short story, and interviewing everyone who had a pulse. But just consider the bare facts. Consider the bare facts. Sandra day oconnor was born in 1930, famously on a ranch in southeast arizona. The nearest school was three hours away and there was, for some time, no running water. For eight years she was an only child. One day when she was around 15 her father asked her to drive the ranch truck and bring lunch to the cattle crew who were rounding up some cattle in a remote part of the giant ranch. She said out partway there, she he got a flat tire. I live in arizona and im telling you, you can die from that. She was in the middle, no, you can die from that from heat or thirst, she was in the middle of a place that had no roads and there was nobody else coming by. She had to change the tire. She got out and started trying to change a tire and she wasnt Strong Enough to get the lugnuts loose, so she took the lug wrench, put it on the lugnuts, jumped on the wrench with the full weight of her body to loosen the nuts so she could take them off and put the spare tire on and drive the truck with the lunch to where the cattle crew and her father were waiting and her father said, youre late. And she said, i had a flat tire. And he said, you should have left sooner. And she learned that already no excuses. Even if you had a good excuse, you didnt have an excuse. You simply had to, as she said so often to herself and Ruth Bader Ginsburg when asked, just do it. And she also learned that you get no quarter from a more powerful man. You have to satisfy him, however unreasonable his demands are. A year later, i think unrelated to the tire changing incident, she left and went to stanford. She was 16. Right. Where would you rather be, on the ranch or stanford . She was 16. She met a charismatic mentor, harry ratbun, who motivated her to go to law school. She went to law school, college and law school in six years. Made law review. And nonetheless when she got out of stanford second or third in her class at stanford, she couldnt get a job. She couldnt get a job practicing law. Gibson offered her a job as a legal secretary. While she was in stanford she met and married john oconnor and had over their early marriage three children. She got her first job agraeg to work for nothing. She went to a county attorney and said, you hired a woman once, i hear, hire me, he said i have no money. She said i will wait until you get an appropriation. She said i have no room. She said ill put my desk in with your secretary. She seems to like me. Everybody liked the young and very charismatic and very beautiful Sandra Day Oconnor. She and john moved to phoenix and she rose to become the vice chairman of the county, the county where phoenix is, the republican party, her republican credentials are crucial to her story as i explained in the book. From there she became an arizona appellate judge. Her break point came when a friend decided he would take chief Justice Warren burger on a boat trip. The brotherinlaw was Justice Bergers Administrative Assistant and berger was in arizona going to a conference in flagstaff, so when oconnors friend found out that berger was in arizona he decided that chief justice of the United States needed to go on a houseboat trip on lake powell up near where the near the grand canyon. So to everyones surprise Justice Berger said he would like to go but the host realized he had nothing to say to the chief justice of the United States. He himself was not even a lawyer. So he and his wife and the brotherinlaw decided they would invite the neatest people they knew which was john and Sandra Day Oconnor and it is evidence of the world she lived in that host pick up the phone and call john oconnor, not judge oconnor. Call john oconnor at his law firm and said you want to go on a boat trip with warren. In 1980, president Ronald Reagan decided that he would campaign in part on offering to put a woman on the Supreme Courts the next time a vacancy came open, and people speculate that Warren Berger played a very big role in getting her that appointment. He flipped over her. In the houseboat they used to disappear after dinner and i interviewed the host before he died, i have hours of tape, this is all new material, they would look for them and berger and oconnor would be sitting in a corner of the houseboat chatting away like great old friends. She knew how to get along with more powerful men. She was terrific at that. Across the country in 1933, ruth bader, well ruth, was born to a modest family. Her father was an immigrant and she went to school and the day before she graduated from high school her mother died. She was an only child. Her sister died of meningitis many years before. She like sandra was raised during critical years as an only child. She went to cornell, where they have the really wonderful habit of treating women like equals, i should know that because i went there myself, and she, too, found a mentor robert cushman, a very famous antimccarthy voice in the dark, dark days of the mccarthy period was her mentor. She met and married Martin Ginsburg and they had two children in the ensuing years. She followed marty to harvard and when he went to new york she left Harvard Law School and followed him to columbia. When her High School Classmates from flatbush, many of whom were in that class at Columbia Law School, right, found out that ruth, keke bader, was coming to their law school to finish up with them, they heaved a collective sigh and knew that each one of their class ranks would now go down by one. And they did. She graduated first in her class at columbia. Her teachers tried to get her a Supreme Court clerkship. She arguably is one of the smartest people who ever sat on that court. Her teachers tried to get a Supreme Court courtship but there was not a Supreme Court justice who would take a woman into his chambers nor would the court of appeals judges take her into their chambers. No women. She wound up as a District Court clerk and then she ultimately started her real career as an entrylevel professor at rutgers law school. Her breakpoint came when some of her women students came and asked her to teach a course in women and the law. She did a typical ginsburg thing, went to the library to say what is this women in the law thing and found all these laws about treating women badly and started taking cases from the local new jersey aclu. Within months she was offered a job on the faculty at columbia which had just figured out they had no women on their faculty, and the american civil the national American Civil Liberties women started its womens rights project and invited her to run it and she ran it for nine years. In nine years, she had six cases that she argued and one that she did the brief but didnt get to argue because the local lawyer wouldnt let it go. She had six cases that she argued. She lost one. She had five victories and won case she did the brief. I like the five cases number because mozart had five great operas and jane austin had five great novels, so i like to think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had five great cases, but its really six. In the circular firi