Ruth Bader Ginsburg: An Icon for Our Times?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg can be the icon we need...if we stop trying to make her the icon we want.

Sept 27, 2020 | By Raquel Sequeira TD ‘21.5

Photo description: photo of SCOTUS from a distance, chalk messages are on the pavement and flowers line the pedestrian barrier obstructing the steps.

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.” “When there are nine.” “I grew up not knowing there was a glass ceiling because of you.” “Thank you for inspiring this lady lawyer.” “I dissent.”

I paced the pavement in front of the Supreme Court, squinting to read the hundreds of chalk messages obscured by my lengthening shadow. Golden hour on Capitol Hill is one of my favorite places to be. Now, I was sharing the sunset with a crowd—not one of the angry crowds that often storm the white marble steps before abortion cases, but a crowd subdued to silent awe. People kept their distance from each other and even from the police barrier-turned-memorial, endowing the chalked-up sidewalk with a sense of sacredness. 

As I scanned the many messages of grief and gratitude, I found myself looking for something different. Anything. I wanted to find words that went deeper than “thank you” and “you inspired me” to help me understand what had so endeared Justice Ginsburg to my generation, and whether I should be mourning her, too.

The truth is, I was feeling a disconnect. The intense (and occasionally comical) idolization of Justice Ginsburg implies a reverence for her character, not just her accomplishments. But all the movies and merchandise honoring this unlikely pop culture icon are more about what Justice Ginsberg did than who she was. Maybe that’s what it means to make someone an icon. But if so, to mourn her passing with tears and testimonials, with candles at the steps of the court seem shallow. Celebrating the ways we benefited from her life’s work (or not) is merely self-absorbed. Those who either worship or demonize her jurisprudence risk missing the value of her truly inspiring intellectual and personal virtues.

Photo description: RBG photoshopped onto the 2017 Wonder Woman movie poster. Image source: Daily Candid

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a bad*ss in ways that “Notorious RBG” merch doesn’t capture. She worked insanely, unbelievably hard, graduating near the top of her Harvard Law School class while caring for a toddler and a husband with cancer whom she also helped to graduate law school. As both a lawyer and judge she was a workaholic, motivated by a sincere and consuming passion for the law. 

Justice Ginsburg was relational, but not ostentatiously so. She adored and cared for her husband, and she built surprising, genuine friendships with her fellow justices. But she was also an introvert and a nerd. She wrote briefs at her own dinner parties. She loved opera and hated small talk.[1] Her more profound relationality emerged in her briefs and opinions, when amid a maze of legal arguments she urged her colleagues to lift their heads and consider how their decisions would impact real people. 

In reading (and watching) about Justice Ginsburg, I was most struck by a quality that bridged her intellectual, public, and relational life. She spoke about how her mother taught her never to waste time on useless emotions, especially anger. It seems Justice Ginsburg took this to heart throughout a career fighting gender discrimination. After years of subtle harassment as one of six women in Harvard Law School and being rejected by firms and judges because of her gender, it would have been easy to come at gender discrimination swinging. But back then, she wasn’t the sledgehammer type. As an advocate for the ACLU, she disassembled gender inequality brick by brick with targeted arguments in each of her six cases on the issue. Her approach in front of and later behind the bench was always measured, her words sometimes painfully slow.

Amid the scores of tribute articles published in the week since her passing, one former clerk captured my sense of Justice Ginsburg’s virtues as “precision and persistence”:

She didn’t tell war stories (though we would have liked to hear them!), and she didn’t dole out advice based on her years as an advocate. Instead, she taught by example: She showed up every day and focused on the work at hand. She refined every opinion, over and over, until each unnecessary word had been excised and every nuance perfected. She was unfailingly collegial and generous with her colleagues, no matter how deep their disagreements, and she expected the same of us. She was a demanding boss. And she applied the same exacting standards to herself and her work, every single day.[2]

While many other articles feel almost selfish (“How a landmark ruling from Justice Ginsburg changed my life”; “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fight for gender equality was for all of us”), this clerk’s reflection helped fix the disconnect I felt at the steps of the Supreme Court by depicting an intellectual role model I could honor and look up to. Precision and persistence, dedication to her work and her craft, positioned Justice Ginsburg to take down inequities in our laws and society. 

Of course, it is right and beautiful to be grateful for what she achieved. But like the chalk messages, this kind of gratitude focuses on what she did for us rather than what we can learn from her. Perhaps just honoring her accomplishments is easier. Honoring her virtues would require us to first acknowledge virtue itself as real and objectively good. Valuing a virtuous life rather than an accomplished life as the ideal would challenge our “ends justify the means” tendencies--though I'm not sure it’s something my generation is ready to do. But maybe if we did, it could be transformative.

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