Q: From your point of view, does having another woman on the court matter primarily in terms of the public’s perception, or also for what it feels like to be in conference and on the bench?

Our system of justice is surely richer for the diversity of background and experience of its judges. It was poorer when nearly all of its participants were cut from the same mold.

Q: I wanted to ask you about the academic research on the effect of sex on judging. Studies have found a difference in the way male and female judges of similar ideologies vote in some cases. And that the presence of a woman on a panel can influence the way her male colleagues vote. How do these findings match your experience?

Women know that only a judge with a keener sense of the importance of women's rights to decide their own destinies, a judge that has demonstrated a commitment to women's right to choose, is entitled to the highest privilege of occupying that pivotal Supreme Court seat.

I think gender, racial, and ethnicity representation on courts and on boards is extremely important, because of its impact on inclusiveness and on the understanding that we are all part of the same world and need to have our group represented. Having said that, the more important thing for me in terms of diversity on courts is the diversity of viewpoints.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women.

I listened to a panel of judges and I'll comment on that — I will not comment on the statements made by, um, certainly one judge — but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they'd do what they should be doing. I mean it's so sad, they should be, you know, when you read something so simple, and so beautifully written, and so perfectly written — other than the one statement, of course, having to do with "he" or "she" — but when you read something so perfectly written, and so clear to anybody, and then you have lawyers and you watched, I watched last night in amazement, and I heard things that I couldn't believe, things that really had nothing to do with what I just read, and I don't ever want to call a court biased, so I won't call it biased, and we haven't had a decision yet, but courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think back to the days when — I don’t know who it was — when I think Truman suggested the possibility of a woman as a justice. Someone said we have these conferences and men are talking to men and sometimes we loosen our ties, sometimes even take off our shoes. The notion was that they would be inhibited from doing that if women were around. I don’t know how many times I’ve kicked off my shoes. Including the time some reporter said something like, it took me a long time to get up from the bench. They worried, was I frail? To be truthful I had kicked off my shoes, and I couldn’t find my right shoe; it traveled way underneath.

Q: At your confirmation hearings in 1993, you talked about how you hoped to see three or four women on the court. How do you feel about how long it has taken to see simply one more woman nominated?

Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

That's why we train women judges here at Temple. It is the nature of men to make rules for everything and to play complicated games with them. For them, the game is more important than justice.
"Ordinary people prefer justice. They prefer that things be taken case by case, they prefer an attempt at justice over the rules of law, for they know that pure law is often used by the clever to victimize the innocent.

Like Mildred Loving, I have lived long enough to see big changes. Who would believe, for example, in the 1950s when Justice O’Connor and I graduated from law school, that two women no law firm would hire simply because we were women, would one day be seated on the highest Court in the land?

Over the years, I have asked myself what I can do about the problem of too much law. Ultimately, I always circle back to the same answer: not much. As a judge, my job is to apply the law. I cannot change the underlying impulses that have led us to a society to regulate ever more, criminalize ever more, and punish ever more. The best I can do is share with you what I have seen from my unusual vantage in our legal system. Judges are not supposed to live "isolated from... society" but are encouraged to engage in a "wide range" of life's activities and "contribute to the law, the legal system, and the administration of justice." Many of my colleagues and predecessors have done just that, offering thoughtful books on an array of topics. It is in that same spirit that I offer this book.
But if any real and lasting change is possible, it will not come from judges like me. It will come from people whose stories are recounted here. As Havel witnessed during the fall of communism, many of the deepest changes in his own society came from "unknown... people who wanted no more than to be able to live within the truth, to play the music they enjoyed, to sing the songs that were relevant to their lives, and to live freely in dignity and partnership... They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo... Yet they decided on a different course."

It is true, as Jeanne Coyne of Minnesota’s Supreme Court famously said: at the end of the day, a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same decision.