Nobody Like Her

by digby

This post by Michelle Goldberg gives tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, something that isn’t done enough, and should be. There has never been a Justice like her, and there never will be again. She’s a true feminist hero, and as much as people believe that those battles are long over, and perhaps now even believe that the victories were inevitable, they’re not and they weren’t.

In the long sweep of history, Ginsburg was at the front lines of a major civil rights movement and spent her whole life protecting the gains that were made. And she’s needed now, more than ever.

Though Obama is in many ways more liberal than Clinton, it’s hard to imagine him nominating someone like Ginsburg. Unlike Sotomayor, who has no real paper trail on abortion or other contentious gender issues, Ginsburg had a long, public record as an advocate for sexual equality. It’s amazing to remember that in 1993, only three Republicans voted against her confirmation—as polarized as the Clinton years were, things are far worse today. A record as a feminist champion is far more likely to hinder than to help future Supreme Court candidates. Not, of course, that Ginsburg is remotely radical. She’s usually been a quiet presence who prizes collegiality. One of the oddest and most charming things about her is her close friendship with Antonin Scalia—apparently she and her husband spend every New Years Eve with him and his wife. But in recent years, as an increasingly conservative court has chipped away at the rights closest to her heart, she’s been a lucid and indignant voice of opposition. In 2007, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on late-term abortions that made no provision for exceptions when a woman’s health is threatened. Clearly outraged, Ginsburg took the unusual step of reading her dissent from the bench. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy made the maddeningly condescending claim that women needed to be protected from a procedure they might later regret. “This way of protecting women recalls ancient notions about women’s place in society and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited,” she wrote. Later that year, the court voted to limit sex discrimination lawsuits in the Lily Ledbetter case. Once again, there was a cold fury in her dissent, which she again read from the bench: “In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.” “[T]his year we are witnessing—what shall we call it?—the radicalization of Ruth Bader Ginsburg?” the columnist Ellen Goodman wrote at the time. “The transformation of the 74-year-old justice who is watching a court undo her life’s work?” Even with Sotomayor to back her up, that undoing will likely continue in the Roberts court. It’s a sad way to wind up a career, seeing one’s legacy eroded. Still, given how public she’s been about her loneliness as the only woman on the bench, at least now she’ll have some company. Hopefully she’ll be able to enjoy it for years to come.

Hopefully.

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