BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday advised young women to fight for things they care about, but to do so in a way that inspires others to join their cause.
“Young women today have a great advantage, and it is that there are no more closed doors,” the 82-year-old justice said in a speech at Harvard University, in Cambridge. “That was basically what the 70s was all about. Opening doors that had been closed to women.”
Ginsburg, once a prominent women’s rights lawyer and now the oldest active justice on the nation’s highest court, spoke at an outdoor luncheon at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The institute gave her the Radcliffe Medal, which is awarded annually to an individual who has had a “transformative impact” on society.
Ginsburg “knocked on closed doors, opened them and then held them open for others,” Lizabeth Cohen, dean of the institute, said in her introductions.
Ginsburg, in a conversation with former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan, reflected on her work on landmark women’s rights cases.
The Brooklyn native rose to prominence in the 1970s arguing a number of cases dealing with gender discrimination before the U.S. Supreme Court as an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.
“The object was to get at a stereotype that held women back from doing whatever their talent would allow them to do,” she said. “The notion was that there were separate spheres for the sexes. Men were the doers in the world and women were the stay-at-home types.”
Ginsburg said she also looks forward to seeing “Scalia/Ginsburg,” a comedic opera based on her epic legal battles with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a longtime friend and fellow opera enthusiast.
The opera is reflective of the pop culture notoriety she’s received in recent years.
Justice Ginsburg outfits are popular Halloween costumes for babies and a Tumblr page in her honor is called Notorious R.B.G., a reference to another famous Brooklynite – the late rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
Ginsburg, who attended Harvard Law School before transferring to Columbia Law School, has served on the court since 1993 after being nominated by President Bill Clinton. She became the second woman on the court, after Sandra Day O’Connor, and its first Jewish female justice.
Radcliffe College was the all-women’s counterpart for the once all-male Harvard College. It was fully merged with the university in 1999 and became the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.
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This story has been corrected to show that Ginsburg attended Harvard Law School but did not graduate from there.
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My first reading (in haste) was that Ginsburg told the grads to do something about wages. That would have been a more useful message than what sounds like the usual soaring but vague rhetoric of these things. The women’s movement pays only lip service to the wage gaps exists for for female wage workers–the hotel clerks and housekeepers, most retail employees, the cleaners in your office building. yes, they talk about wage gaps, but they have no outreach to these women. people lose faith and commitment to the system because it never seems to be about them. Don’t quote me about liberal good works–they’re at best band-aids on fundamental problems that draw rhetoric, rather than solutions.
Well said. I sincerely hope that the following posters are variations on this needed theme,
““Young women today have a great advantage, and it is that there are no more closed doors,” the 82-year-old justice said in a speech at Harvard University, in Cambridge. “That was basically what the 70s was all about. Opening doors that had been closed to women.””
Oh, oh. With that type of radical rhetoric, how much longer before the mullahs in Alabama call for her impeachment…again.
The first big one after this speech may be the election of the first woman President.
Despite anyone’s particular political feelings regarding Hillary, the most likely winner of that honor, the deep meaning of finally electing our first female President is no less meaningful than electing Barack Hussein Obama.
Elizabeth Warren is not nearly as experienced but is popular and popular for the right reasons, she too would make a great first female President but isn’t running.
Politics is politics unless it is coming from a woman’s perspective and that is exactly the difference that a woman will make. I believe that politics coming from a woman leader will be a true eye opener for the US and will change the game for the better forever. And, we need a change, the change that President Obama hoped to bring but has been stifled by the very people that have made the system the massive disappointment that it is, the exclusionary, openly bigoted Party, The GOP.
Young women helping to elect a roll model as big as the POTUS has to be inspiring and it also puts much pressure on that President to perform. They need each other.
Look at Ginsburg and her POV, a woman President would surely replace her with another woman who fights the same and inspires the same.