Sherry Chandler » Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
If you are a Supreme Court watcher at all — and believe me, you should be — then I recommend this New York Times profile of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Oral Dissents Give Ginsberg a New Voice on Court
To read a dissent aloud is an act of theater that justices use to convey their view that the majority is not only mistaken, but profoundly wrong. It happens just a handful of times a year. Justice Antonin Scalia has used the technique to powerful effect, as has Justice Stevens, in a decidedly more low-key manner.
The oral dissent has not been, until now, Justice Ginsburg’s style. She has gone years without delivering one, and never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court’s collegial norms. “What she is saying is that this is not law, it’s politics,” Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said of Justice Ginsburg’s comment linking the outcome in the abortion case to the fact of the court’s changed membership. “She is accusing the other side of making political claims, not legal claims.”
The justice’s acquaintances have watched with great interest what some depict as a late-career transformation. “Her style has always been very ameliorative, very conscious of etiquette,” said Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, the sociologist and a longtime friend. “She has always been regarded as sort of a white-glove person, and she’s achieved a lot that way. Now she is seeing that basic issues she’s fought so hard for are in jeopardy, and she is less bound by what have been the conventions of the court.”
It becomes obvious from the decisions of this session that the conservative old boys are going to stick together on this court and do exactly that which they were appointed to do. See also today’s NYTimes editorial Injustice 5, Justice 4:
The Supreme Court struck a blow for discrimination this week by stripping a key civil rights law of much of its potency. The majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. The ruling is the latest indication that a court that once proudly stood up for the disadvantaged is increasingly protective of the powerful.
The white man’s solidarity (and yes I know about Clarence Thomas) will be a great blow to liberal causes, but they are there for life and there’s not a lot we can do about it.
We need to heed Ginsberg’s call to take these causes to Congress.
Get passionate and get active, people.
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