Ginsburg assisted in shaping laws against sex discrimination
Before joining the U.S. Supreme Court, the demure, soft-spoken Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was leading the fight to assure gender equality.
Justice Ginsburg, who recently became the only woman on the high court after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's exit, spoke yesterday to nearly 850 students, teachers, lawyers, and judges at the University of Toledo.
As an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1970s, Justice Ginsburg assisted in shaping the laws against sex discrimination that now assure women equal protection.
The speech, which she gave in the Doermann Theater, was sponsored by the UT college of law.
She said the 1970s was a decade marked with ground-breaking laws and federal court decisions that improved equality for women, paving the way for their numbers to increase greatly as judges and attorneys.A Columbia law school graduate, she assisted in launching the Women's Rights Project of the ACLU in 1972, when she began arguing and winning pivotal case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
She said the decisions varied from putting men and women on equal footing in the administering of decedents' estates to opening the doors to military service academies to women.
"In one sense, our mission in the 1970s was easy. The topics were very well defined. There was nothing subtle about the way things were. Statute books in states and the nation were riddled with what we then called sex-based differentials," she said.
Appointed by President Clinton in 1993, Justice Ginsburg became the second woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Asked by an audience member about the difference the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment would have meant for women, she said that she would like to have the Constitution amended so that her three granddaughters would one day be able to read that men and women are people of equal citizenship stature.
"But it doesn't say that. It may be largely symbolic, but it is a very important symbol and maybe some day it will be there," she said.
Justice Ginsburg is the third Supreme Court justice to speak at the college in the last four years.
Justices Antonin Scalia and O'Connor also have appeared at UT.
Diva restaurant, 329 North Huron St., usually is closed on Mondays. However, it opened its doors for the justice and a gathering of some 50 people. U.S. marshals visited the restaurant earlier to prepare for Justice Ginsburg's arrival.
Blade staff writer Christopher D. Kirkpatrick contributed to this report.
Contact Mark Reiter at:
markreiter@theblade.com
or 419-213-2134.
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