Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law
Jeffrey Rosen met RBG in 1991, when he was a law clerk on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. RBG agreed to perform Rosen and his wife’s marriage in her chambers, and sent them drafts of the vows for wedding ceremonies she had performed for other friends. Several hours after receiving their draft, she sent it back with tracked changes:
Jeffrey, you may kiss the bride. → You may embrace each other for the first kiss of your marriage.
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I think I finished reading this at or right before the beginning of Autumn Quarter 2021, and I’ve now just finished the quarter, so the content/my take-aways from this book is not very fresh in my mind anymore. What I wrote above was all I had in my drafts — I liked it because it shows:
- How antiquated/backwards/anti-feminist certain (if not most, or even all) wedding traditions are
- How RBG sent back the draft within a few hours?! Even though she was probably very busy with other things, she prioritized this
Now I don’t really know why I started this list because there wasn’t much more than these two things.
I do remember, after reading this book, reconsidering RBG as a role model figure. I revered her — I quoted her in my high school yearbook and in my college essay, hung up a poster of her in my college dorm room, and felt devastated when she passed. I still do respect her, but for the first time ever since I learned about her and her work when I was in high school, I questioned whether I really wanted to aspire to be her. The book portrayed a cancer-struck or recently-widowed RBG returning to work the next day as a heroine — and I guess that kind of dedication can be said to be heroic in some ways — but the portrayal I pictured in my head was not just one of a heroine, but of an overworked public servant with an arguably unhealthy relationship with their work.
A few days ago, I saw a tweet from Professor Michele Dauber criticizing RBG for holding on to her seat: “Maybe all the “RBG was a saint” people want to reconsider whether she should have resigned during Obama’s first term instead of dressing up in opera clothes and reveling in celebrity.”
A big part of growing up and of education is letting go of your role models, or at least getting a more nuanced perspective on their lives. I held RBG up so high in regard in my desire to have a feminist role model that I refused to think of her critically in any respect, but I think I’m just starting to scratch the surface.
