Ginsburg was a consensus builder, not a divider
“Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an audience when she received the Radcliffe Medal at Harvard University five years ago. Tributes to her wisdom and warm spirit have filled the air since the 87-year-old jurist died Friday.
In this fractured age, Americans joined in rare agreement this week that the Brooklyn-born
Ginsburg led a life of achievement marked by grace that was notable long before she was appointed to the federal appellate court in 1980 and the Supreme Court 13 years later by President Bill Clinton, at the initial suggestion of former U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch. The Utah Republican admired Ginsburg’s intellect and talent for building consensus on the powerful Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
As a lawyer, Ginsburg fought to eliminate barriers to equality and opportunity in hundreds of cases — often while also teaching and writing. She succeeded. The world she advanced in seems a foreign place today. The legal profession she joined in 1959 included few women. The institutions of the professions — bar associations and law schools — were hostile not only to women but also to the rising cohort of Black, Jewish and Catholic lawyers.
As a lawyer in the 1960s and 1970s, Ginsburg made her arguments before judges who would have appeared to have benefited from the laws she would aim to strike down. She succeeded most of the time. She won five of the six cases she argued before the Supreme Court. Ginsburg knew an essential truth: Equality of opportunity and equal justice under the law enhance the lives of everyone. In 1975, Ginsburg successfully argued that widowed men with minor children should not be excluded from Social Security benefits, a victory that made a profound difference in the lives of bereft families of all genders and races.
In the early 1950s, Ginsburg was the rare young woman who attended college, at a time when professional careers for women were largely limited to nursing and teaching. Whether you are a man or woman, your life is better today than it would have been if Ginsburg had not fought for fairness. Every nation that provides women the freedom to discover, pursue and develop their talents improves the lives of all people.
Ginsburg knew she could not succeed on her own. She required allies — women and especially men. Her generous personality helped. Expressions of sorrow at Ginsburg’s passing have noted that she was a treasured friend of many who did not share her political views. Ginsburg reminds us that a life lived only among people who see the world as we do is a narrow and constrained life indeed.
A Connecticut legislator sounded a discordant note when she issued a venomous tribute to Ginsburg on Facebook. State Sen. Alex Kasser wrote, Ginsburg “was a fearless warrior in the battle to correct the disproportionate power white men have over all other human beings.”
Kasser’s reckless exaggeration diminishes millions of women who have created their own path and have earned increasing amounts of power. Women (of any color) have made enormous gains, thanks in no small part to Ginsburg. One of the wonders of the last 50 years has been the degree to which education has been opened to women — a change so successful that there are now more female than male students in higher education.
Kasser, a Greenwich Democrat who was elected to her first term as Alex Bergstein in 2018, learned little from the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kasser, who funded her last campaign with a quarter million dollars of her own money, early last year declared a war on privilege and patriarchy.
During the July 28 special session of the legislature, Kasser spoke in favor of a police accountability bill by recalling own experiences. She claimed when she first arrived at the Capitol, “many people took a look at me and saw a white woman from a community of privilege and dismissed me.”
Such troubles bedevil those Greenwich politicians. Poor Ned Lamont. What a burden it must have been to spend $50 million of his family fortune on three state campaigns. And the trials of Richard Blumenthal astound. The Greenwich Democrat is one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. Senate.
Kasser said in July that surface qualities “never tell the true story.” “It is,” she said, “incumbent upon us to listen and learn” about others. Ginsburg did that; Kasser has not. Ginsburg’s achievements flowed from an intellect informed by kindness and a belief in the dignity of mankind. Kasser’s comes from a deep well of pernicious nonsense that is often the provenance of the privileged.