Diminutive pioneer
US Supreme Court justice, liberal, hard- knuckled lawyer, women’s rights champion. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away from cancer at 87, has left a legacy to be cherished by all. She was at the forefront of the movement of second wave ( classical) feminism, and did her bit to further its cause.
Ginsburg had many avatars — a valedictorian who lost her mother a day before her graduation, a cheerleader, a typist — because back then, in the 1960s and 1970s, women were restricted by law — hundreds of them — from participation in the professions and public life. For more than a decade until her first judicial appointment in 1980, she led the fight in the court for the equality of the sexes in terms of opportunity and freedom. As expected of a person fighting under terribly challenges, Ginsburg’s strategy was cautious, precise and singlemindedly devoted to one goal — winning. In close contests, she was the definitive winner.
Ginsburg drew first blood in Supreme Court in 1971 when she got it to strike down a state law preferring men over women as estate executors. Giving the lie to the misogynists masquerading as men’s righters, masculists and today’s “meninists”, Ginsburg often chose male appellants to illustrate systemic injustices. For instance, she chose to represent a man who had lost his wife, the principal breadwinner, at childbirth. He applied for social security, but was not entitled as a widower. This absolute exclusion based on gender per se operates to the disadvantage of female workers, their surviving spouses and their children, argued Ginsburg. The bar was overturned.
In 1996, as a relatively new Supreme Court justice, Ginsberg wrote a 7- 1 opinion declaring that the prestigious Virginia Military Institute could no longer exclude women: “Reliance on overbroad generalisations, typically male or typically female tendencies, estimates about the way most women or most men are will not suffice to deny opportunity to women whose talents and capacity place them outside the average description.” The intrepid Ginsburg went on to spend 27 years in the court, courting celebrity along the way. It will be an insult to her transcendental legacy and philosophy if President Donald Trump goes to nominate, as promised, a woman to fill her seat, for tokenism sake.