Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504220007
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOAN BISKUPIC THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
In her 20 months on the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's frank and revealingly personal accounts of the obstacles facing women have established her as one of the nation's most prominent feminist voices.
Not since the appointment of Thurgood Marshall has a justice been so identified with a cause as Ginsburg. But while Marshall, once he joined the court, expressed his commitment to civil rights privately or through his written opinions, Ginsburg has taken her advocacy of women's rights public in a way that is unusual for a member of the court, speaking on college campuses, to women's groups and at occasions honoring other female officials.
Appearing at Columbia Law School a few months after her appointment, Ginsburg evoked what is by now a familiar response.
``If it's possible to have love at first sight with someone you don't know,'' a young woman told Ginsburg, to loud applause from the predominantly female audience, ``I'm feeling a little bit of that with you now.''
Yet, little of the passion that inspired such enthusiasm at Columbia has been evident in her record on the court. Since President Clinton appointed her in 1993, her opinions have been consistent with the middle-of-the-road approach that characterized her tenure as a judge on the court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Last term, in fact, she sided more often with conservative Antonin Scalia than with Harry Blackmun, the court's most consistent liberal until his retirement.
Moreover, while Ginsburg is clearly energized by her public role, she remains shy and awkward in one-on-one conversations, often avoiding direct eye contact. She also is unusually prickly about public and press scrutiny. She declined to be interviewed or photographed for this story.
And despite her calls for sexual equality and frequent references on the bench to gender - she has made a point during oral arguments, for example, of referring to hypothetical judges as ``she'' - Ginsburg rejects the notion women bring a different approach, or ``voice,'' to the court.
Ginsburg's views are rooted in personal experience as a working mother and as a victim of discrimination - discrimination, she has not been reluctant to declare, that continues today.
Women will not be truly liberated, she says, until men take equal care of children: ``If I had an affirmative action program to design,'' she said at one Brooklyn appearance, ``it would be to give men every incentive to be concerned about the rearing of children.''
In a California appearance last fall, she recalled her distress at being phoned regularly by her then-young son's school principal, who wanted to discuss his behavior. ``This child has two parents,'' Ginsburg told the principal. ``Please alternate calls for conferences.''
And as for her widely reported tendency to interrupt her colleagues during oral arguments, including Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in one particular incident, Ginsburg told Diane Sawyer in an unusual television appearance on ABC's ``PrimeTime Live'': ``Diane, that never would have been noticed if it were two guys.''
Ginsburg's use of her position for a feminist message began the June day in 1993 when Clinton presented her in the Rose Garden and she paid tribute to her mother: ``I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve, and daughters are cherished as much as sons.''
Ginsburg's outspokenness presents a sharp contrast to O'Connor, who made history in 1981 by becoming the first woman appointed to the court. O'Connor has her own personal experiences to draw on - she was offered a secretarial job when she graduated from Stanford University law school in 1952 - but she does not dwell on societal inequities the way Ginsburg does. The differences may be of style, degrees of activism or even roots.
O'Connor, 65, was born into a land-owning family. She became an Arizona state senator and judge and bested the system from within. Ginsburg, 62, was born in Brooklyn to a family of modest means and fought sexism from the outside.
When she graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959, Ginsburg said, ``I struck out on three grounds - I was Jewish, a woman, and a mother. The first raised one eyebrow; the second, two; the third made me indubitably inadmissible.''
Ginsburg is also bolder in pointing a finger at the failings of men who ``remain reluctant to share the joys and burdens of bringing up children.''
``One truth must be told,'' she said last year in a New York appearance, ``motherly love ain't everything it has been cracked up to be. To some extent, it's a myth that men have created to make women think that they do this job to perfection.'' Ginsburg said she believes that as many children are battered by women as by men.
Ginsburg is alone in her call to arms on social policy. But her fervor is rarely expressed in her opinions - on equal rights or any other issue. Ginsburg's decisions stick close to the facts of a case and she avoids broad pronouncements of law. Her style is efficient and bland.
Whether Ginsburg makes inroads over time depends on what cases come to the court and the membership of the bench. Her belief in the breadth of the guarantee of equal protection of the laws could end up influencing the court when it considers the constitutionality of all-male schools, such as Virginia Military Institute, or more broadly, discrimination based on sexual orientation.
While Ginsburg is respected among her colleagues, her fussiness has mildly offended some of them, according to law clerks who worked at the court during her first term.
Ginsburg's rigidity with people and the law may undermine her ultimate influence on the court, say some scholars. Her rulings on the appeals court rarely drew the special attention in the legal community that the writings of some high-profile appeals judges garner.
Whether Ginsburg, who is using the force of her life to inspire people off the court, will be able to inspire her colleagues remains an open question.
``I feel pretty good when I'm the fifth vote to decide the case,'' she told a group in Brooklyn last year. ``I feel even better if I'm the fourth and I pick up a fifth vote based on the writing.''
by CNB