L
ate in the evening of the Jewish
New Year Rosh Hashanah on Sept.
18, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
passed away from complications related to
pancreatic cancer.
Upon hearing the news of her passing, it
is understandable why so many responded
with punditry on the upcoming battle over
her replacement on the Supreme Court of the
United States and its intersection with the
upcoming election on Nov. 3. Recognizing the
possibility that Trump could appoint a nomi-
nee to tip the balance of the Supreme Court
to a 6-3 conservative majority, Ginsburg said
just days before her death, “My most fervent
wish is that I will not be replaced until a new
president is installed.”
Of course, some have criticized her for
years about refusing to step down while Presi-
dent Barack Obama, along with the Demo-
cratic-controlled Senate, could appoint her
successor before the 2014 midterm elections.
Nodding toward the increasingly partisan na-
ture of Senate confirmation votes since her
own 96-3 confirmation in 1993, she often re-
sponded with the argument: “anybody who
thinks that if I step down, Obama could ap-
point someone like me, they’re misguided.”
To carry out her final wish, there is so
much of all us can do — donating to Senate
candidates in swing states, making sure our
friends have requested their absentee ballots
or phone banking for the Biden-Harris cam-
paign to turn out the vote, to name a few. Here,
though, I want to take a moment to appreciate
the legacy of her life, work and jurisprudence.
Ginsburg was a trailblazer, especially so for
women, but also for men — many of the cases
she argued involved male clients who claimed
damages as a result of laws written based on
traditional gender roles. In Weinberger v. Wi-
esenfeld (1975), Ginsburg successfully argued
on behalf of her male client who had been de-
nied Social Security benefits because he was
a man and the law only provided benefits for
widows who were the sole caregiver of their
child.
As a professor and founder of the Ameri-
can Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights
Project, Ginsburg helped establish the first
case law that extended the Fourteenth
Amendment’s equal protection clause to pro-
tect women from discrimination on the basis
of sex in Reed v. Reed (1971). Indicative of
her place in a long line of women who fought
for women’s legal rights, she credited Doro-
thy Kenyon and Pauli Murray as co-authors
of the case’s brief in acknowledgment of the
work they had done in laying the foundation
for legal protections for women.
Ginsburg’s unique approach of expanding
legal rights for women by taking on laws that
also hurt men didn’t end there. Disagreeing
with many feminists at the time, she took
issue with the legal basis of the rule estab-
lished in Roe v. Wade (1973). Instead of bas-
ing abortion rights on the right to privacy as
included in the Tenth Amendment’s penum-
bras, Ginsburg believed the case should have
been argued on the basis she helped establish
in Reed. Specifically, she argued that laws
criminalizing abortion violated the Four-
teenth Amendment’s equal protection clause
because they discriminated on the basis of
sex, meaning they should be subjected to a
strict scrutiny review by the Court. Under
this heightened and more stringent review,
she believed, laws banning abortion would
almost certainly be struck down.
Throughout her career and her work as
the second woman to serve on the Supreme
Court, Ginsburg helped establish legal rights
for women that seem basic now but were
quite revolutionary in the late 20th century.
Women today owe the following rights in
part to her work: the right to sign a mortgage
without a male co-signer, the right to open a
bank account without a male co-signer, the
right to pursue redress if employers discrimi-
nate on the basis of sex, be employed without
being discriminated against based on gender
and the right to be employed while pregnant
and caring for children.
Her work paved the way for these funda-
mental rights, but it was the way she lived her
life that paved the way for generations of fe-
male lawyers, judges and justices beyond her.
Her jurisprudence became so influential that
she was nicknamed the “Notorious RBG” by
NYU Law student Shana Knizhnik for her
powerful dissent in Shelby County v. Holder
(2013) after pointing out the absurdity of
Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion.
As the nickname was popularized and
plastered on tote bags and mugs, the meme-
ification of Ginsburg took on a life of its own.
Kate McKinnon even portrayed her on “Sat-
urday Night Live” but after seeing the video,
Indie Wire reported that Ginsburg found “the
comedian ‘marvelously funny, even if the im-
pression resembles her ‘not one bit.’” In fact,
many, including her longtime friend and law
professor Jeffrey Rosen, at first find her “aus-
tere” and mistake her silence for “inaccessibil-
ity.”
Her warmth and care for others, however,
is evident in the way she thought about the
law. She saw her work as building toward
a more “embracive” Constitution, one that
eagerly welcomes previously marginalized
groups — women, people of color, queer peo-
ple, etc. — in order to fulfill the promise made
by the Framers of the Constitution in 1787. For
a woman to set out to fundamentally change
the role of the Constitution to protect vulner-
able people as she did in the 1970s was quite
literally revolutionary.
She believed so deeply in this mission that
even her personal life became dedicated to
working toward her vision of justice; her fa-
mously-egalitarian relationship with her hus-
band, Marty Ginsburg, was aptly summed up
as one in which “(Marty) did the cooking and
she did the writing and he picked up the kids
from school and she did the writing. And, you
know, he went to the meetings when the kids
were bad and she did the writing.”
In my own life, Ginsburg has served as a
guiding light throughout my decision to pur-
sue law school. Applying to law school, which
I have been doing for the last six months, is a
notoriously difficult and exhausting process.
Studying for the Law School Admission Test
(LSAT) alone is a huge undertaking. I’ve of-
ten turned to rewatching “RBG,” the docu-
mentary of her life or “On the Basis of Sex,” a
biopic of her early sex discrimination work. I
referred to reading my favorite passages of “In
My Own Words,” a book-length compilation
of her speeches and writings, for inspiration
to continue on.
For all of us, Ginsburg’s death is a painful
reminder of how much work there is left to be
done. Women have not yet experienced gen-
der equality in the U.S., and progress toward
that end is likely to be dismantled by a 6-3
conservative Supreme Court if Donald Trump
and Mitch McConnell succeed in stealing an-
other seat on the bench without regard to the
outcome of the election in November. With
a case about the Affordable Care Act sched-
uled for arguments a week after the election
and Republicans gunning to overturn Roe v.
Wade outright, along with other cases that
guarantee civil and voting rights, the need for
feminist lawyers is perhaps more exigent than
ever, and alongside all of the women before
me, I plan to follow in her footsteps.
Her life and legacy mean I have the oppor-
tunity to pursue an independent life and ca-
reer in the law, working to advocate for wom-
en and other marginalized people. Her work
is the foundation every feminist lawyer should
strive to build upon, and even in death, Gins-
burg continues to be a trailblazer: On Sept. 25,
she became the first woman to lie in state at
the U.S. Capitol in our nation’s history.
May her memory be a revolution.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
15 — Wednesday, September 30, 2020
statement
FOLLOWING IN HER FOOTSTEPS
MARISA WRIGHT, STATEMENT
DEPUTY EDITOR
Two Tributes: On RBG and her legacy
T
here’s nothing more disorient-
ing than waking up from a dream
that feels like real life. As my eyes
opened from figurative to literal darkness,
sweat dripping down my chest, I counted
heartbeats to calm my rapid breathing.
In for six, out for four.
I grabbed my sheets in my left hand, my
stuffed animal (one of ten) in my right in an
unsuccessful attempt to ground myself in re-
ality. Nothing was working — the nightmare I
just endured felt all too real.
It was sometime in the distant future, the
world filled with gray colors and dreary un-
dertones. I was dressed in a strangely famil-
iar red cloak — one that I had seen before,
but couldn’t exactly remember where from.
I raised my eyes from focusing on myself
and turned to the society around me. I saw
women dressed in this piercing red cloak
everywhere in a uniform manner. Sud-
denly, it hit me. I had seen this off-putting
environment before: it was the dystopian
framework of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” As
the world around me morphed into one by
defined extreme fascism and a lack of au-
tonomy, I felt my stomach drop. The gut-
wrenching feeling triggered my conscious-
ness and pulled me back into the familiar
setting of my room.
Under normal circumstances, I could’ve
easily dismissed this dream as a distorted
fluke of my wildest imagination and car-
ried on with my night. This wasn’t a normal
night. It was hours after the passing of the
revered Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg. My nightmare was a projection of
my anxiety from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s in-
sensitive, opportunistic response to replace
her seat just a few short hours after her
death was announced. It not only scared but
deeply disheartened me that we, the collec-
tive, let the fate of the U.S. fall on the shoul-
ders of an 87-year-old woman — a giant not
only fighting her country’s political battles
but her own medical obstacles as well.
She deserved better than the reaction of
horrified citizens plagued with crippling
fear. She deserved to be celebrated and hon-
ored for everything she had done for us.
And in order to mitigate my personal anxi-
ety, whether it be manifested in a dream or
in everyday thoughts, I am attempting to
channel my sorrow in a more productive
way — one more fitting of the beautiful life
she lived. Here’s to you, RBG.
R
BG set the path for my life since I
first learned of who she was. I was
introduced to her in my eighth-
grade history class when learning about the
Supreme Court. Though her story wasn’t told
in its entirety, she was described as the sec-
ond female-appointed Supreme Court justice
in the history of the U.S. — a trailblazer and
champion for women’s rights. I was fascinat-
ed by her with just that description.
As I independently researched after school
that day, I learned more about her upbringing
and career. She was a Jewish woman from
Brooklyn — a background that mirrored my
own, as a Jewish girl from New Jersey — con-
stantly challenged by male peers who did not
want her to succeed. Yet she succeeded any-
way, and she did it impeccably. She was one of
only nine women in her year at Harvard Law
School, and successfully maintained the posi-
tion as first in her class. Despite this incredibly
impressive standing, she was denied from 12
law firms following her graduation. She per-
severed and trusted her intellect, working as
first a clerk for a law firm, then a professor and
eventually, became the creator of the ACLU
Women’s Project.
During her time at the ACLU, RBG fought
for gender equality in now considered land-
mark Supreme Court cases such as Frontiero
v. Richardson, in which a precedent was es-
tablished to hold gender to higher scrutiny
than the rational basis standard. She also
argued for gender equality in Weinberger v.
Wiesenfeld, in which she used an instance of
gender discrimination against a man to help
further establish precedents for future cases.
RBG continued dismantling once normalized
discriminatory gender practices throughout
her career, arguing cases with an unparal-
leled eloquence, and landing her a seat on
the Supreme Court with a 96-3 confirmation
vote.
She is the reason I can independently man-
age and spend my earnings without male con-
sent. She is the reason I can independently
seek and own housing without male consent.
She is the reason I cannot be denied employ-
ment based on gender. She is the reason I
cannot be fired for being pregnant or having
a child.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the direct and
sole catalyst for so much progress this country
has made.
The more I learned, the more I was in-
spired to follow in her footsteps. She be-
came the voice in my head; somewhat of
a guardian angel guiding me in what aca-
demic steps to take and career decisions to
make.
I became focused on studying govern-
ment and political science, with hopes of
going to law school — I geared my entire
undergraduate college application toward
that goal. I joined a pre-law organization
because of her. I plastered pictures and
RBG paraphernalia all over my room — like
my Ginsburg socks, a calendar, a mug, three
separate posters, a pillow and a desk plate
that read “Do all the things with the confi-
dence of Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting.”
I saw every movie or TV feature about her.
I couldn’t believe it when I found out
she passed away. It breaks my heart think-
ing about it. And while I mourn, I find
strength in knowing that she never gave up.
She worked tirelessly, without complain-
ing, until her final moments. RBG knew
what she believed in; she had a strong
moral compass, and it was her dying wish
to protect that. So, now I ask myself, what
more can I do to follow in her footsteps?
How can I fight for positive change in the
world?
Thirty minutes after I woke up from my
far-too-real nightmare, I lay staring at the ceil-
ing, tearful in RBG’s honor — for her life, for
her legacy, for all she left behind for us to pick
up. With this in mind, I remember how much
there still needs to be done. I remember her
spirit of perseverance, and how she continued
to hold her head high against all odds. And
while the odds appear intimidating, that’s all
the more reason to continue pushing forward:
Continue signing petitions, writing letters to
government officials, calling local and nation-
al representatives, registering people to vote,
studying law, protesting in the streets for what
is right. If anything, we must do it for her.
Taking a deep breath, I let one more tear
roll down my face. I closed my eyes, slowly
falling back to sleep, seeking solace in the fact
that while I may cry now, I will rally tomor-
row.
CRY NOW, RALLY TOMORROW
ANDIE HOROWITZ, STATEMENT
DEPUTY EDITOR
This dual column was written in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg's passing in September.