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Ruth Bader Ginsburg · The David Rubenstein Show

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: She was first appointed to the US Court of Appeals
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty by President Jimmy Carter, then to the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton. In Ginsburg is the
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  Speaker 1: second out of only four female justices to ever be
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: confirmed to the Court. In nine the American Bar Association
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: gave her its coveted Thurgood Martial Award for her years
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  Speaker 1: of advocacy for gender equality, civil rights, and social justice.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Ginsburg sat down with David Rubinstein, co founder of the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Carlisle Group and host of the Bloomberg television show Peer
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to Peer Conversations, to discuss her health, that ascent that
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: earned her the nickname of the Notorious RBG, and politics
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court. Let me ask you a question
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, how does it feel to get up
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in the morning and know that three thirty million Americans
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: want to know the state of your health that day?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: How does it feel encouraging? As Kansas survivors know that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: dread disease is a challenge, and it helps to know
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that people are rooting for you. Now, it's not universal.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: When I had pagriat a cancer. In two thousand nine,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: there was a senator whose name I don't recall, but
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: he said I would be dead within six months. That
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: senator is now no longer alive. But you can't remember
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: his name? No, I don't remember you. Um. But your
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  Speaker 1: current view is that as long as you're healthy and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: able to do the job, you intend to stay on
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the court. Is that correct? As long as I'm healthy
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  Speaker 1: and mentally agile. Right? So now, Justice Stevens and later
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and previously Justice uh Oliver winder Holmes, they were tired
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: when they were ninety. Would you like to break their
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  Speaker 1: record or any thought about that? I spent the first
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  Speaker 1: week in July with Justice Stevens what turned out to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: be the last week of his life. He was remarkable.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: He was nine years old. Since he left the Court
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: at age nine, he's written four books. So yes, he's
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  Speaker 1: my real model. So UM. Today, many people think that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: the Court is very political, that people appointed to the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Court by Democratic presidents and those appointed by Republican presidents
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  Speaker 1: tend to follow the political desires of the Republican or
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Democratic party. Do you think that's a fair assessment? And
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: why do you think If it's not fair? People have
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  Speaker 1: that view. People have that view because agreement is an
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  Speaker 1: interesting disagreement is so the press tends to play up
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: our five four or our five three decisions. But if
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: we can take just the last term as a typical example,
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  Speaker 1: we had sixty eight decisions after full briefing and argument
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  Speaker 1: of those twenty world five four or five three divisions,
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  Speaker 1: but twenty nine were unanimous. So we agree more often
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  Speaker 1: than we sharply disagree. And that's something I would like
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  Speaker 1: the audience to take away that the divisions, yes, they
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: are on some very important questions, but our agreement rate
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  Speaker 1: is always higher than our disagreement rate. So if you
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  Speaker 1: have a five to four perspective decision, there's one of
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: the justices go to the another justice and say, why
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: don't you change your mind? Does that work very much?
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  Speaker 1: Or there's no more upstrating at the court what he says,
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  Speaker 1: if you vote for me on this one, I'll vote
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  Speaker 1: for you on that one. That doesn't happen. It never happens.
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  Speaker 1: But we are constantly trying to persuade each other, and
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  Speaker 1: most often we do it through our writing. Every time
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  Speaker 1: I write a descent before I am hopeful that I
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  Speaker 1: can pick up a vote many people are surprised that
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  Speaker 1: the civility that exists between justices even though they write
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  Speaker 1: not such favorable things about each other. So, for example,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Justice Scalia used to say not such wonderful things about
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  Speaker 1: your views, and you then still went to the opera
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  Speaker 1: with him. Was that a little awkward or hard to do?
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  Speaker 1: And not at all? And Justice Lean and I became
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  Speaker 1: friends when we were buddies on the d C circuit.
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  Speaker 1: What did I love most about him? His infectious sense
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  Speaker 1: of humor. When we were three judges on the Court
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  Speaker 1: of Appeals, he sometimes whispered something to me. It would
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  Speaker 1: crack me up. I had all I could do to
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  Speaker 1: contain hysterical laughter. But we had much in common. True,
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  Speaker 1: our styles were very different, but both of us cared
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  Speaker 1: a lot about writing opinions so that at least other
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  Speaker 1: lawyers and judges will understand what we were saying. Both
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: of you were and you still are a great opera lover.
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  Speaker 1: Where did you get your love of opera to begin with?
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  Speaker 1: And where did the opera Scalia Ginsburg come from. I'll
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  Speaker 1: take you the first question first. My love of opera
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  Speaker 1: began when I was eleven years old. I was in
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  Speaker 1: grade school, in Brooklyn, New York. My aunt, who was
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  Speaker 1: middle school junior high school English teacher, took me to
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  Speaker 1: high school in Brooklyn where an opera was being performed.
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  Speaker 1: It was La Gia Conda, not a likely choice for
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  Speaker 1: first opera. There was a man at the time named
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  Speaker 1: Dean Dixon whose mission in life was to turn children
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  Speaker 1: onto beautiful music, and he had an all city orchestra.
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  Speaker 1: He took opera performances around to various schools, condensed them
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  Speaker 1: into one hour, narrated in between. They were costumes bear staging.
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  Speaker 1: So of my introduction to opera was thanks to Dean
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  Speaker 1: Dixon in ninety four. So the Scalia Ginsburg Opera was
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  Speaker 1: written by a law school student. He was then a
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  Speaker 1: law school student. He was a music major at Harvard
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  Speaker 1: and the masses in music from Yale. Dirk Wang is
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  Speaker 1: his name. He decided it would be useful to know
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  Speaker 1: something about the law, so he enrolled in his hometown
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  Speaker 1: law school with University of Maryland, and in his second
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  Speaker 1: year he took a constitutional law course. He read these
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  Speaker 1: dueling opinions Scali on one side, Ginsburg on the other,
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  Speaker 1: and decided this could make a very funny opera. So
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  Speaker 1: I'll just give you a taste of Scley Higginsburg. It
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  Speaker 1: opens with Scalia's rage aria. It's an a very Handelian
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  Speaker 1: in style, and he sings the justices a blind how
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  Speaker 1: can they possibly spout this? The Constitution says absolutely nothing
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  Speaker 1: about this. And then, in my color of true a
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  Speaker 1: soprano voice, I answered, dear Justice, Scalia, you are surging
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  Speaker 1: for bright line solutions the problems that don't have easy answers.
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  Speaker 1: But the great thing about our constitution is that, like
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  Speaker 1: our society, it can evolve, so that that sets up
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the difference between us. The plot of Scalia Agginsburg is
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  Speaker 1: roughly based on the Magic Flu and Scalia is locked
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: up in a dog room. He's being punished for excessive dissenting.
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  Speaker 1: I then emerged through a glass ceiling and to help
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  Speaker 1: him pass the tests he needs to pass to get
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  Speaker 1: out of the dog room. Then a character left over
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  Speaker 1: from Don Giovanni the commentatory it is astonished. He said,
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  Speaker 1: he's your enemy, why would you want to help him?
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  Speaker 1: And I sing, He's not my enemy, he's my dear friend,
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  Speaker 1: and then we sing a wonderful duet that those we
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  Speaker 1: are different, we are one different. Enough approach to reading
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  Speaker 1: legal texts, but one in our reverence for the Constitution
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  Speaker 1: and for the institution we serve. So most justices of
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  Speaker 1: the Supreme courter relatively not recognized by the public. I
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  Speaker 1: would say maybe in recent years that changed a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: But you are extremely well known around the country now,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: but you weren't when you went on the court. But
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: now you've become more or less a rock star um RBG,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: and you have movies about you on the basis of
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: sex and other things. So why do you think this
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  Speaker 1: has occurred? And is this something you don't really enjoy
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  Speaker 1: that much or something you just think comes with the territory. Now,
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  Speaker 1: how is the notorious on BG created? It was the
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  Speaker 1: idea of a second year student at ny U Law
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  Speaker 1: School who was very disappointed in the Court's decision in
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the Shelby County case. And that was a case in
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: which is the Court declared unconstitutional the key provision of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act of nine, an act that had
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  Speaker 1: been renewed time and again by overwhelming majorities both sides
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  Speaker 1: of the aisle, but the Supreme Court struck down the formula.
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  Speaker 1: The way the Voting Acts Act worked was if you
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: were a state or a city or a county that
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: kept African Americans from voting. In the NAZA litt old days,
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  Speaker 1: you could not make any change in voting legislation m
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  Speaker 1: unless you precleared it with the Department of Justice Civil
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  Speaker 1: Rights Division, or with a three judge district court and
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  Speaker 1: the District of Columbia. So that advanced check suppress many
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  Speaker 1: laws that would have discourage African Americans from voting. The
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  Speaker 1: Supreme Court said, well, the formula for who was discriminating
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  Speaker 1: is now out of date. Caylus needs to do it
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  Speaker 1: over because jurisdictions that were discriminating in may have clean
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  Speaker 1: hands today. The political problem was, what member of Congress,
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  Speaker 1: what senator, what representative would stand up and say, my state, oh,
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  Speaker 1: my city, or my county is still discriminating. So keep
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  Speaker 1: it under the surveillance that the voting writes that provides
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  Speaker 1: just wasn't going to happen. The Act itself had a
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  Speaker 1: bailout provision, so if a state, city, county indeed had
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  Speaker 1: clean hands for several elections, it could bail out. And
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  Speaker 1: that device, I thought was was all that was needed.
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  Speaker 1: But in any event, this student was disturbed about the
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  Speaker 1: Court's decision. She was angry, and then she said to herself,
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  Speaker 1: anger is not a useful emotion. I'm going to do
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  Speaker 1: something positive. And what she did but she took the
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  Speaker 1: announcement of my descent that I read from the bench
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in Shelby County, and she created this blog Hiding at
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the Notorious Albig, a name she got from a well
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  Speaker 1: known rapper who was called the Notorious b I G.
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  Speaker 1: And when I was asked, well, what in the world
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  Speaker 1: you have in common with the Notorious B I G?
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  Speaker 1: I said, It's obvious both of us were born and
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  Speaker 1: bred in Brooklyn, New York. So now you were born
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: in Brendon, Brooklyn, you have still a bit of a
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  Speaker 1: Brooklyn accent, you might admit. Um you were played in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: a movie by Felicity Jones, who was not Jewish, shore
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: from Brooklyn. So how do you think she did? I
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  Speaker 1: thought you is fantastic. When I first met Felicity, I said,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: you speak the Queens English. How are you going to
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: sound like a girl born in bred in Brooklyn. But
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: she listened to many tapes of my speeches and my
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: arguments at the court, and she was wonderful. So in
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: recent years you've also got a lot of attention for
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: your exercise. Uh. I have been with the same personal
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: trainer since when I had my first stance about I
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: had chelocal cancer and my dear husband said, after going
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, I looked like a survivor of Auschwitz.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: He said, you must do something to burg yourself up.
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  Speaker 1: Get a personal trainer, And that's when I started in.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes I get so absorbed in my work I just
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: don't want to let go. But when it comes time
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  Speaker 1: to meet my train, I drop everything, and as tired
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  Speaker 1: as I may be in the beginning, I always feel
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: much better when we finished. Okay, so you met your
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: husband Marty. You were married for fifty six years. You
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  Speaker 1: met him at Cornell? Is that right? Yes? I met
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: when I was seventeen and he was eighteen. And what
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  Speaker 1: is the likelihood of a woman at Cornell meeting somebody
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  Speaker 1: they marry and that person wants to take care of
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  Speaker 1: child rearing and also cooking um as well as sharing
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  Speaker 1: all the other burdens of being married. Is that a
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  Speaker 1: very common thing in your observation or it was extraordinary
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  Speaker 1: at any time, particularly in the nine teen fifties. Cornell,
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  Speaker 1: by the way, had a four to one ratio of
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: four men to every woman. It was the place parents
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to send their daughters. So you couldn't find your
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: manner Cornel. You were hopeless. So then I met Marty,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: and he was, in fact the first boy I ever
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  Speaker 1: knew who cared that I had a brain. He was
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: always my biggest booster. The cooking that began. I had
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: two years between college and law school, and Marty was
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: in service. Those two years. We spent in Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the principal artillery base. I got pregnant during the first year,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and when I back went back to do Off to
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: give my cousin sent Marty a copy of the Escaper
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  Speaker 1: Cookbook in English translation and said, this will give you
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  Speaker 1: something to do while your wife is away. So Monty
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: had originally been a chemistry major at Cornell, and he
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: treated this Escofa a cookbook like the chemistry textbook. He
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: started with the basic stocks and worked his way through it.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: He gave up chemistry because it interfered with golf practice.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Why was a great golfer, And then he switched to government,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: which is was my major. He attributed his skill in
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the kitchen to two women, his mother and his wife,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: his mother. I think was that was an unfair judgment,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: but he was certainly right about me. I had one cookbook.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: It was called the sixty minutes Chelf, and that meant
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: from when you enter the apartment until when it's on
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  Speaker 1: the table, no more than sixty minutes. I had seven
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: things that I made, and we got to number seven,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: we went back to number one. Of Martin's mother, ever
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: give you any advice when you met her, she happily married.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: She gave me some wonderful advice. We were married in
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: her home and she said, just before the ceremony started, dear,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear it. What is it? Every now
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and then she said, it helps to be a little death,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: which is such wonderful advice. I haven't followed it assiduously
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to this very day. If I'm dealing with my colleagues
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: as someone a Valontine word is said. I just turned out.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So as a result of your marriage to Marty, who
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: was a distinguished law professor and tax lawyer as well,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: you have two children. Jane, your daughter, It teaches at Columbia.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: She is the martinel. Jack Low professor of Literary and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Artistic Property Law at Columbia Law School. And as I
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: understand that you and she were the only mother daughter
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: team to ever actually be elected to the Harvard Law Review.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Is that true so far? And you have a son
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: who's in the music business. James makes exquisite compact this.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: James grew up with a passion from music, but no
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: talent as a performer. So when he went to the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: University of Chicago, he was the classical disc jockey on
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the student radio station. Then in the years he was
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: dropping in and out of law school, he was also
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: making recordings. And one day he told us he liked
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: what he was doing much more than his law classes.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: So we said, fine, that's what you want to do.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And today his label is c D and his recordings
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: are Jim's. Do you have any grandchildren? I have four grandchildren,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: two step grandchildren, and one great grandchild. And what do
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: your your grandchildren call you? RBG or what do they
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: call you? I'm a Jewish grandmother, so I'm called Bubby. Okay.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: That was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking with David ruben
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Stein