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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes
1933–2020 United States
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993.
United States Academics Activists Feminists Lawyers Also known as: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Notorious R.B.G., Notorious RBG
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This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution — ideas that have long since been discredited.
The arc of the moral universe is long, … but it bends toward justice, if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.
You're saying, no, State did two kinds of marriage, the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.
She said, Dear, in every good marriage it helps sometimes to be a little deaf. And I followed that advice in dealing not only with my dear spouse but in dealing even with my colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court."
Abortion prohibition by the State, however, controls women and denies them full autonomy and full equality with men. That was the idea I tried to express in the lecture to which you referred.
Inevitably, the shape of the law on gender-based classification and reproductive autonomy indicates and influences the opportunity women will have to participate as men's full partners in the nation's social, political, and economic life.
It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling. If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.
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?
The Place of Women on the Court (2009)
It was lucky that I met Marty at a time when the best degree that a girl could have not her BA or her JD, it was her M-R-S.
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.
Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.
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?
The Place of Women on the Court (2009)
Q: We started by talking about the idea of three or four women on the Supreme Court. Could you imagine a Supreme Court that had five or six or seven women on it?
The Place of Women on the Court (2009)
Q: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being “bullying” or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?
The Place of Women on the Court (2009)
In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent.
"The women going to this law school, you will have many opportunities. What about the girl who is undereducated, drops out of school when she's a teenager and pregnant? Helping raise the level of all women is something I think women should care about.
Think back to 1787. Who were 'we the people'? … They certainly weren't women … they surely weren't people held in human bondage. The genius of our Constitution is that over now more than 200 sometimes turbulent years that 'we' has expanded and expanded.
It's a facet of the gay rights movement that people don't think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn't until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana's "head and master rule," that the husband was head and master of the house.
My Own Words (2016)
When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?’ and my answer is: ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.
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