A biography for Ruth Bader Ginsburghasn’t been written yet.
“You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don't consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.”
“Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.”
“The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.”
“I think a law clerk told me about this tumblr and also explained to me what Notorious RBG was a parody on. And now my grandchildren love it, and I try to keep abreast of the latest that's on the tumblr.”
“America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus' famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.”
“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.”
“In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.”
“When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.”
“A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.”
“Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.”
“The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.”
“Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?”
“I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972; every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program.”
“All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.”
“It's hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.”
“My biographers... would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided... to flip the order.”
“How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.”
“It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.”
“I would not like to be the only woman on the court.”
“I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.”