Ruth Bader Ginsberg Comes to Buffalo

I was one of the “fortunate few” (5000 filled Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, New York, with overflow) privileged to see and hear United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on August 26, 2019 in the event “A Conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsberg,” sponsored by several local legal groups. The University of Buffalo had honored her with an honorary law degree earlier in the day. The event was dedicated to the memory of Wayne D. Wisbaum, a personal friend of Justice Ginsberg’s and a long-time Buffalo lawyer and benefactor of Kleinhans. Its purpose was to honor and pay tribute to this great lady.

Despite being held in a large auditorium, there was an intimate feel to the event, with its question-and-answer format, as if we were all sitting together in someone’s living room. On the stage, Justice Ginsberg sat in a comfortable chair, with leaders of the various local sponsoring groups (the Bar Association of Erie Co., the Minority Bar Association of Western New York, and the Western New York Chapter of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York, the University of Buffalo School of Law, and the UB Law Alumni Association) asking her questions. Her replies were wise, heartfelt, and thoughtful. She had just finished three weeks of radiation treatment for cancer, but had not cancelled. Indeed, from her appearance, you would never have known. She was nicely dressed in a white-and-black blazer, dark pants, and dress heels, with her hair pulled back in its now-iconic style, attractively burnished under the lights.

The press has reported on the event: e.g., Mark Mulville, “Ruth Bader Ginsberg Visits Buffalo,” The Buffalo News (Sept. 3, 2019), https://buffalonews.com/2019/08/26/gallery12651/. I would like here to share my personal response. No doubt many in attendance were doing just as I was as she spoke: remembering their own personal struggles to overcome societal obstacles, silently thanking her for opening doors for them.

When Justice Ginsberg started law school at Harvard in the late fifties, she had a fourteen-month-old daughter, Jane (A son, James, came later). Her husband, Marty Ginsberg, was in his second year at Harvard.  She spoke of him as her constant supporter throughout their marriage. Justice Ginsberg was one of nine women in a class of five hundred (I think when I started law school in the early eighties, our class was about one-third women.). Not to mention, her husband had developed testicular cancer, and she also cared for him and helped him keep up with his studies during her first year.

Always positive, Justice Ginsberg said her family tasks and joys taught her how to be organized and efficient, qualities which have served her well. When asked why she thought she had become something of a popular idol, she said she thought it was because people were looking for something to give them hope, to feel hopeful about, when there was so much bad news abroad in the world. She spoke about the importance of balancing family and work time, of regularly having dinner together as a family. A strong woman once told me, “I think women are just about as strong as they make up their minds to be.”

When Justice Ginsberg graduated, at the top of her class at Columbia School of Law, no New York law firm would hire her!  Forty years later, I was offered a job early on by a former boss; however, I would have had to move back to Illinois, and there were family reasons for staying put. I chose instead to set up my own law practice at home. Twenty years ago, two retired businessmen I consulted  from the Small Business Administration had no advice whatsoever for me, a woman lawyer setting up her own practice. Hmm…. Times have changed, and they keep changing.

When Justice Ginsberg went to law school, she did not know of any women mentors in the law. Later, she learned of Myra Blackwell and Belva Lockwood’s achievements, http://wlh-wiki.law.stanford.edu/index.php/Women_Lawyers_History_and_Individual_Biographies, and she mentioned one influential woman lawyer (whose name escapes me; others would recognize it) in the D.C area. Myra Blackwell had inspired me, too. For years, I’d had a card with her picture on it on my refrigerator door. Unlike Justice Ginsberg, I was fortunate to have had two women law professors as real-life mentors, Taylor Mattis and Winona Whitfield. as well as English Professor Jewell Friend, former Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at SIU. I’d had Prof. Mattis for first-year Property, and Prof Whitfield had interviewed me for admission (to Southern Illinois University School of Law). Neither treated the women students any differently than they treated the men. They were tough on all of us! But kind.

Justice Ginsberg explained cogently her reasoning in several of her famous dissents in important cases.  Would she recommend the law as a profession? Yes, definitely. You could hear the pride in her voice as she spoke of her children’s and granddaughter’s accomplishments, in the law and otherwise.

She also spoke about her relationship on the Bench with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman United States Supreme Court Justice and about how good it was to have other women on the Bench, Justice Sonya Sotomayor (whose autobiography, My Beloved World: A Judge Grows in the Bronx (New York: Knopf, 2013), is also inspirational) and Justice Elena Kagan. Justice O’Connor had told Justice Ginsberg not to apologize if she had interrupted her on the Bench: “The men do it to each other all the time.” She advised Justice Ginsberg not to even try to answer all the mail she would get, but just to focus on the Court’s work.

I don’t remember Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s name making an impression on me in law school, thought it should have, even forty years ago. It was only when I was writing Francis Bacon’s Hidden Hand that I learned that she had played Portia in The Merchant of Venice (Rachel Donadio, “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg Presides Over Shylock’s Appeal,” The New York Times (July 27, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/theater/ruth-bader-ginsburg-rbg-venice-merchant-of-venice.html).

Two good movies about her have come out recently; I’ve seen them both: RBG (2018) (e.g., “The New Film, ‘RBG,’ Reveals How Ruth Bader Ginsberg Became a Meme,” The Washington Post (May 3, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/the-new-film-rbg-reveals-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-life-before-she-became-a-meme/2018/05/03/794a881a-4c9f-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html); and On the Basis of Sex (2018) (see, e.g., Irin Carmon, “Ruth Bader Ginsberg: What the Movie About Her Life Gets Wrong,” The Cut (Dec. 17, 2018), https://www.thecut.com/2018/12/ruth-bader-ginsburg-on-the-movie-about-her-life.html).

May I highly recommend to you her book, Ruth Bader Ginsberg: My Own Words (with Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams; New York: Simon & Schuster, p.b., 2016).  You will feel like you really know her after you read this book. She writes as if you were two friends talking over a cup of coffee, and there are plenty of great photographs.

Four hundred years ago, if Shakespeare could have imagined that one day there would be a Portia who did not have to pretend to be a man, whose entry into court was not dependent upon the pretense of a legal fiction, a teacher and jurist (like Portia) who would reach the  pinnacle of her profession while championing real justice for all–he might have imagined Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Thank you, Justice Ginsberg, for your hard work, your sacrifices, your love of the law and humanity. Thank you for the doors you’ve opened for so many. I am one of many benefactors. As you’ve expressed it, there are many miles to go, but look how far we’ve come!

Suggested for further reading: “Ruth Bader Ginsberg: Louis Brandeis inspired my work for women’s rights,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Jan. 29, 2016), https://www.jta.org/2016/01/29/united-states/ruth-bader-ginsburg-louis-brandeis-inspired-my-work-for-womens-rights;“Ruth Bader Ginsberg,” Academy of Achievement (1996-2019), https://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/; “Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and WRP Staff,” ACLU (2019), https://www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff;and Mark Curriden, interview, “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg: August 29-30, 2011, Jurist-in-Residence at SMU Dedman School of Law,” SMU Dedman School of Law: The 2011 Alumni Magazine (pp. 6-11), https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=quad.

Also: Liz Mineo, “If at First You Don’t Succeed…Elena Kagan Offers New Law Students Advice…,” Campus & Community, The Harvard Gazette (Aug. 30, 2019), https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/08/supreme-court-justice-elena-kagan-dispenses-advice-to-harvard-law-students/.