Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

[L]egal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.

1869 that Iowa’s Arabella Mansfield became the first female to gain admission to the practice of law in this country.

One was to ‘be a lady,’ and that meant conduct yourself civilly, don’t let emotions like anger or envy get in your way. And the other was to be independent, which was an unusual message for mothers of that time to be giving their daughters.

Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

Q: You are said to have very warm relationships with your colleagues. And so I was surprised to read a comment you made in an interview in May with Joan Biskupic of USA Today. You said that when you were a young lawyer, your voice was often ignored, and then a male colleague would repeat a point you’d made, and other people would be alert to it. And then you said this still happens now at conference.

And I give you this picture because it fairly captures our nearly fifty-year happy marriage, during which I have offered up an astonishing number of foolish pronouncements with absolute assurance, and Ruth, with only limited rancor, has ignored almost every one. A

Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

lawyer, shaped the legal arguments reflected in the Court’s opinions, earning her the honorific “the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s movement.” By the time she left teaching and litigation for a judgeship on the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980, state and federal law had undergone a revolution.

"Once asked how we could be friends, given our disagreemt on lots of things, Justice Scalia answered: "I attack ideas. i don´t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can´t seperate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don´t want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

In Greek mythology, Pallas Athena was celebrated as the goddess of reason and justice.

One is that we were betraying our most fundamental values, and, two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on.” 3

A note on U.S. state courts. Judges in most states, at least at some levels, are chosen in periodic elections. A question I am often asked when traveling abroad: “Isn’t an elected judiciary totally at odds with judicial independence?” How can an elected judge resist doing “what the home crowd wants”? I have no fully satisfactory answers to those questions.

The Supreme Court held in United States v. Virginia that the state had a choice: it could admit women to VMI, or it could close the school.

At Cornell University, professor of European literature Vladimir Nabokov changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.