Ruth Bader Ginsburg Interview 1

1
Oral History of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Dr. Maeva Marcus, and the
interviewee is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The interview took place in Justice Ginsburg’s
Supreme Court Chambers on August 10, 1995. This is the first interview.
Dr. Marcus: I know that you returned from Europe a few weeks ago. I, on the other
hand, came back just this weekend, so I’m still on European time. But I
was curious, this wasn’t the first time you went to Europe as a Supreme
Court justice, was it?
Justice Ginsburg: No. The first time was the summer of 1994, when I taught in Valparaiso
University Law School’s program in Cambridge.
Dr. Marcus: That’s right. You told me that you had done that. I was wondering if you
saw any difference in the way you were treated as a Supreme Court justice
from the times you had been to Europe when you were a Court of Appeals
judge.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. I see that difference all over. I’m the same person, but people
respond differently to me. I wasn’t in a country this summer where some
group of U.S. tourists didn’t come up and say, “Are you Mrs. Ginsburg?”
Dr. Marcus: And they say “Mrs. Ginsburg”?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Not “Justice Ginsburg.”
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. Interesting.
Dr. Marcus: That is interesting, actually.
Justice Ginsburg: Even on the Charles Bridge in Prague.2
Dr. Marcus: It’s a beautiful bridge and people linger there. Do they still have the
artists?
Justice Ginsburg: Oh, yes, yes. Every few steps you can find an artist who will sketch your
picture, and if you don’t like it straight, you can get it in caricature.
Dr. Marcus: I love that place, but I gather it is full of Americans now, because it’s
much cheaper than any place else in Europe.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. We had been in Austria, and the difference in the prices is enormous.
Austria was very high, one of the highest in Europe, I think, but in Prague
there were still bargains to be had.
Dr. Marcus: Did you do official things, or were you just a tourist?
Justice Ginsburg: We were there for a holiday weekend, but the first day, our brand-new
ambassador arranged a lunch at the U.S. Embassy, to which she invited
several Czech jurists. And my unofficial hosts were the chairman of the
Supreme Court of the Czech Republic and a member of the Constitutional
Court, both wonderful, bright people.
Dr. Marcus: Did they all speak English?
Justice Ginsburg: The chairman of the Supreme Court’s English was not so good. He was
constantly apologizing for it. Of course, it was far better than my Czech.
The judge from the Constitutional Court had studied in the U.S. and in
England, and his English was beautiful.
Dr. Marcus: So it was easy to have discussions with them. You didn’t need an
interpreter?
Justice Ginsburg: No.3
Dr. Marcus: Which I think you will have for the visitors today.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, I had a preview of that during our days with the Russians in Florence.
Dr. Marcus: You were with Russians in Florence?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: This summer, too?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. After Prague, we went to Florence for a conference arranged by
NYU [New York University] and St. Louis University, to discuss modes
of constitutional review. There were delegations from Germany, Italy,
and the U.S. The purpose was to assist and encourage the Russians, who
had just re-started their Constitutional Court.
Dr. Marcus: I remember from years back, delegations of Russians coming to learn, but
it was so difficult to communicate. They don’t understand the concepts.
It’s so foreign to them.
Dr. Marcus: Just for the record, we want everyone to know that this oral history
interview is being done under the auspices of the Historical Society for the
District of Columbia Circuit, and that when it’s completed, you intend to
give it to the Society for its uses. If you agree, just say that’s what you
want to do.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, Maeva, I agree. You know that I was one of the founding members
of the Historical Society. I am very enthusiastic about this oral history
project, and it is certainly my intention that the interview be for the
Society’s use and that it be made available to people who study the
products of the Society’s work.4
Dr. Marcus: Great. That’s really nice. Now, again for the record, can you tell us when
and where you were born?
Justice Ginsburg: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 1933.
Dr. Marcus: So almost with the inauguration of President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt.
Justice Ginsburg: That’s right, yes.
Dr. Marcus: You ushered in a new era. What were your parents’ names?
Justice Ginsburg: My mother’s name was Celia Amster, and my father’s name was Nathan
Bader.
Dr. Marcus: Were they born in America?
Justice Ginsburg: My father was born in a town near Odessa thirteen years before he came to
the United States. And my mother was born on the Lower East Side of
New York, just four months after her mother arrived in the United States,
so she was conceived in what was then part of the Austria-Hungary
Empire, today, a part of Poland, and born in the U.S.
Dr. Marcus: Did your parents speak English or other languages?
Justice Ginsburg: The first language for both of them was Yiddish. My mother, having been
born in the United States, spoke both, and sometimes, as a child, mixed
them. Her father was a carpenter. She wrote his bills, and had saved some
of them. They would say, for example, “One cabinet gefixed.”
Dr. Marcus: Did you, as a result, learn Yiddish?
Justice Ginsburg: No, because my parents were like most parents of their background and
generation. They wanted their children to be entirely American and not
speak Yiddish. Yiddish was the language my parents spoke when they5
didn’t want me to understand what they were saying. But they were
careful to reserve the language for those special moments, so I generally
did not hear Yiddish spoken around the house.
Dr. Marcus: So they picked up English quickly, I guess.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. English was my father’s second language. It was his elder sister’s
third language. In her time, there was relatively less anti-Semitism, and
Jewish children were accepted in Russian schools. By my father’s time,
anti-Semitism had heated up. Jewish children were not permitted in
Russian schools. He attended only a cheder (Hebrew school) in the old
country and never learned Russian. So English became his second
language.
Dr. Marcus: Did they ever speak Russian, his sister? I mean, once coming to America.
Justice Ginsburg: No.
Dr. Marcus: Did you have other siblings?
Justice Ginsburg: I had an elder sister who died when I was an infant, sometime between my
first and second birthdays. She was eight at the time of her death. I have
no memory of her, but she was a presence in my home all my growing up
years, because her death was such a tragic event for my parents.
Dr. Marcus: That’s terrible. Do you think you had to perform better to make up for the
lack of another child?
Justice Ginsburg: No. The way I felt her death most personally was in the extra care taken
for my health. I could never go out without galoshes if rain was6
threatening. I had to wear heavy lisle stockings in the winter. At the first
sign of a nose drip, I was kept home from school.
Dr. Marcus: And did you find that oppressive, or no?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, I certainly did.
Dr. Marcus: But you didn’t rebel?
Justice Ginsburg: No. I understood what it had to be like for them. She died of meningitis,
and one of my aunts told me that my parents, as any parent in that
situation, felt they should have been more protective. It probably would
not have made a bit of difference.
When I was about five, I suffered from a bad middle-ear infection.
They thought that I might have a malady similar to my sister’s. I didn’t.
Though I didn’t like their super caution, I understood the reason for it.
Dr. Marcus: How did you get the nickname? Do you pronounce it Kiki?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. It was my sister’s nickname for me. When I was a child, I kicked a
lot, so she called me by that name.
Dr. Marcus: I never imagined there was a connection with kicking. [Laughter]
Justice Ginsburg: I’ve told many stories about how I got that name, but that’s the one my
mother told me, was the real one. The spelling is not taken from a once
popular story about Kiki, a French woman who never had a room of her
own. It was the spelling of a child, then seven or eight years old.
Dr. Marcus: And did everybody call you that?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Within your family?7
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Friends?
Justice Ginsburg: Everyone did, when I was growing up. On my birth certificate, my name
is Joan Ruth Bader. In kindergarten, my mother registered me as Ruth
because there were three or four Joans in the class. But no one I recall
ever called me either name. My sister started calling me Kiki when I was
an infant, then everyone else did.
Dr. Marcus: How was your father employed?
Justice Ginsburg: He was, for most of my growing-up years, in the fur business. That was
his father’s business in Russia, the Ukraine. Originally it was I. Bader &
Sons. Then my father went into partnership with one of his brothers. He
was a manufacturer of inexpensive, or less expensive, furs.
Dr. Marcus: Did the Depression have an effect? I’m sure it had an effect, but what
effect did it have on his business?
Justice Ginsburg: It had a severe economic effect. I had many aunts and uncles, but two
were particularly close. The uncle was my father’s youngest brother, the
aunt, my mother’s youngest sister. My aunt and uncle had a child born
three months before me, Richard Eugene Bader. We grew up together
almost as twins. I was born in a Brooklyn hospital, but my family then
lived in Belle Harbor, which is in Queens. Because of the Depression, the
two families lived together in one house. When we moved to Brooklyn,
the two families continued living together. About the time I started
kindergarten, we moved into different houses, but on the same block. By8
that time, between 1937 and 1938, business was improving, so my parents
and Richard’s could afford to rent (my parents never owned any home)
separate dwellings.
Dr. Marcus: So your father stuck it out in that business. I mean, it didn’t close or
anything because of the Depression?
Justice Ginsburg: No, it didn’t close until my mother’s death.
Dr. Marcus: How many years later was that?
Justice Ginsburg: It was seventeen years after I was born.
Dr. Marcus: Did your mother work? Did she help with the business or do anything?
Justice Ginsburg: My mother had been a secretary to a man in the fur business. When she
married, she stopped working, because for that generation, if the wife
worked, it meant the man was not successful. My mother had a very good
head for business, a very good sense of people. My father’s business
stayed afloat as long as she was alive, but when she was no longer alive, it
went downhill rapidly.
Dr. Marcus: That’s amazing. Can you describe what life was like at home, what your
parents’ interests were, politics, the kinds of activities you engaged in?
Justice Ginsburg: What I liked most about home was my mother reading to me. She loved
books, she loved reading. She would take me to the library. That was my
regular Friday afternoon adventure. I’d look through the books and decide
which ones I wanted.
Growing up with a cousin practically my age, almost as twins, we
played together constantly. In Brooklyn at that time, many9
neighborhoods, including mine, were balanced by nearly equal numbers of
Irish, Italians, and Jews, and we all played together. My best friend,
Marilyn De Lutio, lived two houses down the street. Her parents came to
the U.S. from Italy. I remember going to services at my friend’s church. I
found the services trying, because the language used was Latin. But I
loved the saints, and was more than a little jealous that my friend had all
these saints and I had only this one God.
Dr. Marcus: Did you feel that growing up in that kind of an atmosphere affected your
intellectual development? How did it affect the way that you turned out in
the end?
Justice Ginsburg: How I turned out, I think, was largely affected by my mother. In part
because of her own experience, she wanted me to be independent, to be
self-standing.
Dr. Marcus: That’s surely very unusual for that generation. When you say she wanted
you to be independent, did you have a feeling that that simply meant you
should be able to support yourself, or did it mean that you really should
have a career? Did she encourage you to be interested in something that
would lead to a career?
Justice Ginsburg: I had an aunt who taught English at a junior high school. My mother
thought that was fine. She encouraged me to aim for a teaching career.
She did not think about the legal profession, because in her day, there
were scarcely any women in law jobs.10
Dr. Marcus: At the time, when she talked to you about that, did you have any feeling
yourself that you were not going to end up as a junior high school English
teacher, as something different?
Justice Ginsburg: No. I didn’t give much thought to what I was going to be. I think I had an
ambitious or competitive side. I wanted to do well in school, at least from
the third grade on, but I didn’t think seriously about what I would do, apart
from having a vague expectation that I would do something.
Dr. Marcus: Were you conscious of belonging to a religious minority? You say you
sort of had a balanced neighborhood. Were you aware that Jews were
really a minority in the United States?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, anyone growing up around the time I was born had to have that
consciousness. The Nazis ruled Germany, and World War II was waged
during my grade-school years. Over time, people in the United States
became increasingly aware of what was happening. Meeting refugees
from Europe, some of them children who came to the summer camp I
attended, one couldn’t help but be conscious that Jews were a minority, a
minority that had suffered, through the ages, the dislike, even the hatred,
of others.
Dr. Marcus: Did you personally experience any kind of discrimination when you were
growing up?
Justice Ginsburg: I heard Jews called bad names, but there were bad names for Italians and
Irish, too. There were many Jews where I lived, not a majority, but a
sizeable minority. So a Jewish child never felt alone, as she might in a11
community where there were few Jews. I thought of that years later when
I spent close to two years in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Many of the people in
that place did not grow up with Jews in their neighborhoods. One of the
civil servants for whom I worked in Oklahoma wasn’t entirely sure that
Jews didn’t have horns.
Dr. Marcus: Even in the 1950s?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: But in the New York City schools, it wasn’t a problem?
Justice Ginsburg: No.
Dr. Marcus: When you went to school.
Justice Ginsburg: There were many others like me. My closest friend did worry that I would
not get to heaven because of my faith. And some Catholic children were
reluctant to invite Jewish children to lunch or dinner in their homes, or
their parents were reluctant. But that certainly was not the case with my
friend or her mother, a devout Catholic woman.
Dr. Marcus: Did you come from a religiously observant household?
Justice Ginsburg: My mother lit candles on Friday night. They sent me to various Hebrew
schools, one time to Orthodox, other times Conservative or Reform. My
father’s parents were alive during my growing-up years, and they had
Seders the first and second nights of Passover. Annually at Hanukkah, all
the grandchildren gathered to receive from our grandfather a dollar apiece
as Hanukkah gelt.
Dr. Marcus: Did you observe the Sabbath, for example, or did your parents?12
Justice Ginsburg: No.
Dr. Marcus: When you were growing up, did you have to work at any time?
Justice Ginsburg: I did not work as a teenager. I did at Cornell [University], just to have
enough money to buy movie tickets or get a midnight snack.
Dr. Marcus: Did you take summer vacations?
Justice Ginsburg: My uncle owned a summer camp in the Adirondacks above Lake George,
a beautiful location. I spent every summer there until I was eighteen, first
as a camper, then as a counselor.
Dr. Marcus: Was that a Jewish camp or was it mixed?
Justice Ginsburg: It was Jewish. We had services on Friday night. For a period, I was a
camp rabbi.
Dr. Marcus: How did that come about?
Justice Ginsburg: I think I volunteered. I liked to talk in public, and enjoyed conducting the
service. It was inspiring and not too long.
Dr. Marcus: Did you conduct it in English or Hebrew?
Justice Ginsburg: We sang chants in Hebrew, but the service was in English.
Dr. Marcus: That was very forward-looking at that time. Did you ever travel anywhere
when you were a teenager?
Justice Ginsburg: Not very far. My parents took vacations at places like Lakewood, Asbury
Park, and Atlantic City, New Jersey. I didn’t take my first plane ride until
my first year at Cornell. By then my mother was dead. I did not tell my
father I was coming to New York by plane.13
Dr. Marcus: So that would have been in late forties, something like that? Probably the
early fifties.
Justice Ginsburg: I started Cornell in 1950. The longest trip I had taken before then was to
Quebec, Canada. It was an excursion from camp. We went to Quebec
City, and stopped in Montreal on the way back. I had been to Canada a
few times with my parents, because a branch of my mother’s family settled
in Toronto.
Dr. Marcus: Did you enjoy travel then?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: I mean, did it seem like something you would want to do?
Justice Ginsburg: I didn’t think of it as travel. I thought of it as a vacation, an excursion.
Dr. Marcus: When you were young and also a teenager, and you said your mother took
you to the library, that it was exciting to choose what you were going to
read, what did you read? What were your favorite books?
Justice Ginsburg: I loved mythology, and especially Greek mythology. Reading myths gave
me something akin to the saints my religion did not offer. Among books I
particularly loved were The Secret Garden, Mary Poppins, Nobody’s Boy,
Nobody’s Girl. These are books I later read to my children and now
grandchildren.
Dr. Marcus: Did you like Louisa May Alcott?
Justice Ginsburg: Oh, yes, I loved Jo best among the March sisters.
Dr. Marcus: Was there anybody who was a role model for you when you were growing
up?14
Justice Ginsburg: That term was not yet in vogue. I mentioned earlier I had a vague sense
that I would be working outside my home, but I didn’t think of any
particular profession. Among women I admired, Eleanor Roosevelt was
one. She wrote a column called “My Day.” My mother read it regularly
in the Brooklyn Eagle. And Amelia Earhart was intriguing, a courageous
woman, lost on a solo flight. And although it was not a high quality series
by literary standards, I loved Nancy Drew, because Nancy was a girl who
did things. Also, though called mystery books, they were not at all
frightening, so they gave me no nightmares, as many films did.
Dr. Marcus: Are there any incidents that you remember from your childhood as being
formative?
Justice Ginsburg: I remember skipping a grade. I skipped the first part of the third grade and
went into the second part to make room for a new teacher. The first report
card I got that term, because I missed learning long division, was not
good. My mother told me she was very disappointed that I didn’t work
harder in school. I promised myself, “She’s not going to get a report card
like that again, from now on, I will do very well in school.”
Dr. Marcus: What do you think makes one child react in a way that, “My mother wants
this. I’m going to do it and not disappoint her”? I mean, so many children
react just the opposite way, “I won’t be bothered with this.” It’s very
curious. I always wonder, is it genetic? What is it that makes some
children want to go on and do their best, and others just turn the other
way?15
Justice Ginsburg: One part of it was that I loved her very much, and I knew what she was
experiencing, because my father was by far the more sentimental of the
two. They would go at least once a month to the cemetery where my sister
was buried. When they came home, my father’s eyes were tear-filled, and
I would try to comfort him. My mother would tell me, “Sit in his lap, tell
him you love him very much.” She was very strong, she kept most of her
feelings locked inside. She was very strict, but very loving with me.
Dr. Marcus: You said that you attended neighborhood schools. Do you remember their
names?
Justice Ginsburg: I went to P.S. 238 and then James Madison High School. I visited both of
those schools at the end of my first term here. I don’t remember all of the
many Hebrew schools I attended. One was the Avenue R Synagogue, a
Reform synagogue. I ended up at East Midwood Jewish Center, a
Conservative temple. In between, I attended an Orthodox school, attached
to a temple where the women sat in the balcony.
Dr. Marcus: Did any teachers that you had throughout school, either in public school or
in Hebrew school, particularly impress you or influence you?
Justice Ginsburg: I had many good teachers in public school. One was Miss Murphy,
conductor of my elementary school orchestra. I played the piano in the
orchestra, not very well. Others in the orchestra had more talent, but I
tried hard. I love the piano, although I don’t have any talent for it, and I
took lessons almost until the end of my high school days, then again when
I was at Cornell.16
Dr. Marcus: Were the teachers mostly women, all women?
Justice Ginsburg: Mostly women. The principal of my elementary school was a man.
Dominic Hunt, if I remember correctly, was his name. But almost all the
teachers were female. There were some male teachers in my high school
and, again, the principal, and the heads of most departments were men, but
the teachers were overwhelmingly female.
Dr. Marcus: Perhaps maybe from the perspective of looking back, do you think you
received a good education in public school?
Justice Ginsburg: In some areas, yes. In English, particularly. The weakest was other
languages. I took French and German in high school, French for four
years, German for two years, and didn’t learn enough in either language to
speak or even read competently.
Dr. Marcus: What about math and science?
Justice Ginsburg: The instructor was quite good. I wasn’t a great math student, but we had
good teachers. I didn’t take physics, but I took chemistry and biology. I
remember in biology particularly, the teacher was a man with a talent for
sparking student interest.
Dr. Marcus: It’s interesting that you didn’t do well with math. Don’t they think now
that mathematical reasoning has a correlation to good performance on the
LSAT?
Justice Ginsburg: I did well enough in math. I just didn’t like it, and I found it hard, as
distinguished from English.17
Dr. Marcus: Were there any other subjects other than English that really caught your
fancy?
Justice Ginsburg: History, what we called social studies. The degree of attraction would
vary with the teacher, but I liked the subject.
Dr. Marcus: You mentioned music. Other than orchestra, did they have formal music
education in the school?
Justice Ginsburg: They did, but it was never very serious. I was in the high school orchestra,
not for the piano, because there wasn’t a role for the piano in the orchestra.
I played the cello, very badly, but well enough to sit in the back chairs and
be part of the high school orchestra, and that was a grand experience.
Dr. Marcus: Did you become familiar with classical music at school or at home?
Justice Ginsburg: Mainly at home. I had a wonderful piano teacher, Isidore Gorn. I would
go by subway to New York for lessons. His studio was on West 73rd
Street. He had been at the summer camp I attended. His wife was the
head counselor. He was a fine musician, once closely associated with
George Gershwin. He was responsible for my early acquaintance with,
and love of Gilbert and Sullivan. He tried to persuade me I wasn’t really a
monotone, by having me sing intervals. I remained persuaded I was a
monotone, but he introduced me to elementary music theory and harmony.
I did take the piano seriously. For a while I would practice two, three
hours every day.
Dr. Marcus: That’s remarkable. Did you listen to records at home or on the radio?18
Justice Ginsburg: Not that much, but I went to concerts, particularly with my aunt, the junior
high school teacher. The first opera I ever attended was not a full
performance, it was a child’s version of La Giaconda, and it was done by
Dean Dixon, who had a great Saturday concert and mini-opera series for
children.
Dr. Marcus: Was it performed in English?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. He would explain the opera and the music, so children could grasp
what they heard.
Dr. Marcus: So do you think that’s where your love of opera began, or did it develop
later?
Justice Ginsburg: It certainly developed in the days we spent at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. We
borrowed opera recordings from the Post Library, and two years in a row,
drove to Dallas when the Met – the Met then traveled – came to town. We
stayed for a few days and saw three or four operas. But we listened to
many recordings, first playing the music for a week, then sitting down
with the libretto as we replayed the recording.
Dr. Marcus: When you were in New York, you didn’t go to the Met, ever?
Justice Ginsburg: I went to the ballet at the Met – the old Met – a few times, but I didn’t see
an opera there until I was in law school. My husband’s parents had season
tickets and were members of the Opera Guild. We occasionally used seats
they ordered for us. When we moved to New York after my second year
of law school, we purchased our own subscription to the Met. We had a19
subscription from 1958 until 1980. For many of those years, we had a
box, which we shared with friends.
Dr. Marcus: Were there any other so-called extracurricular activities that you engaged
in, in high school?
Justice Ginsburg: In high school, I was a member of a group called Go-Getters. We sold
tickets to events at school, most often sporting events. I was also a twirler,
and performed at football game half-times. I doubt I would have done that
apart from the idea that if you were a girl and you could twirl a baton,
your popularity would be enhanced.
Dr. Marcus: I can’t imagine it. Did you enjoy it?
Justice Ginsburg: Not in the beginning, while learning how, but once I mastered the baton, it
was fun.
Dr. Marcus: And was it successful? Did it make you popular? [Laughter]
Justice Ginsburg: At the time, I must have thought it helped. I do know that I never got to
like football. I went to too many games in freezing weather. One time, I
chipped my front tooth while twirling, but didn’t leave the field. I waited
until we completed our act, then went home and called the dentist.
Dr. Marcus: You didn’t continue with your twirling career in college?
Justice Ginsburg: No, I certainly did not. I sometimes attended a Cornell football game,
because it was the social thing to do. But most often, I stayed inside warm
buildings during football season.
Dr. Marcus: If you remember, we left off when you had finished high school, and it’s a
good place to begin thinking about college. I wondered when you knew20
you were going to go on to college. It was probably unusual for most of
the people in your school to continue their education in that way.
Justice Ginsburg: My high school, as many at that time in Brooklyn, had two discrete tracks:
an academic track and a commercial track. Most students in the academic
track planned to go on to college. Cornell was a standout for me, because
my mother’s eldest brother had attended that school. Also it was in New
York State, so one could use the New York State Scholarship. And if you
went to Cornell on the New York State Scholarship, you were in line for a
second scholarship, a Cornell scholarship, given to high ranking State
Scholarship winners who attended Cornell. Those scholarships afforded
significant financial aid.
Dr. Marcus: You won the subsequent scholarships?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: So you basically had a free education?
Justice Ginsburg: I paid no tuition, but I did pay room and board. That’s why I picked up
odd jobs, sometimes clerical jobs in the president’s office. I was also a
recorder for the speech department. Just as you are recording my talk, I
would record speeches students made in class. Later on, in my junior
year, I worked for Professor Robert Cushman as a research assistant. But
I managed without financial difficulty, with the scholarships that covered
tuition, and some money my mother had put aside in ten different banks.
That was one effect of the Depression. She put nothing more than $1,000
in any one bank.21
Dr. Marcus: That enabled you pretty much to concentrate on your studies rather than
on work. I know you attended college from 1950 to 1954.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Do you think the atmosphere was very different on a college campus then
as compared to today?
Justice Ginsburg: Those were the Senator Joseph R. McCarthy* years, and most students
who attended college were determined to get their degree and get a good
job. It was long before the sixties and the Free Speech and free everything
else Movements. My generation was selfish in the sense of not caring too
much about what was going on in the world. We wanted to do well, to
succeed in life. It took people like Professor Cushman to make me
understand what was happening in the United States in those years, to care
and to appreciate that good people speaking out against suppression of
speech could make a difference.
Dr. Marcus: I was curious as to whether national events had an impact on the Cornell
campus. McCarthyism is certainly one of the things, but the Korean War;
my favorite, the steel seizure case.
Justice Ginsburg: Right.
Dr. Marcus: Did anybody pay any attention?
*Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957), U.S. politician, lawyer, farmer. As U.S. senator (R, Wisc; 1947-57),
conducted highly publicized investigations of alleged communists, using his chairmanship of the Senate Permanent
Committee on Investigations to pursue his witch hunt; censured by the Senate (1954) for contempt and abuse, after
which his influence declined.22
Justice Ginsburg: They certainly paid attention to McCarthy, because some of the best
teachers were disappearing from the classrooms.
Dr. Marcus: Even at the university level?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. There was one professor, Singer, I think, was his name. He taught
zoology and was very popular among the students. He wasn’t allowed to
teach in the early 1950s. And there were other incidents on the Cornell
campus. People were aware of McCarthy. And the Korean War, yes,
people were aware of that, too, but there was never the kind of student
resistance that showed up later in the Vietnam War years.
My husband’s case is a good example. The first two years at
Cornell, ROTC, Reserve Officers Training, was compulsory. After that, it
was elective. The second year, Marty responded to a form asking, “Do
you want to go on to senior ROTC?” He wrote on the form, “Hell, no!”
Then, when the Korean War heated up, if one had to be in service, it was
better to go as an officer. Marty made his way into senior ROTC.
Perhaps as punishment, he didn’t go to the Quartermaster Corps for his
service, as many of his colleagues at Cornell did; instead, he was sent to
artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which turned out to be a blessing
for us.
We stayed at Fort Sill the entire time. We did that because Marty
was so good at being a cannoneer, he was assigned to teach gunnery in the
artillery school. And why was he so good? For two reasons. One,
figuring out where the target is involves mathematics, trigonometry,23
particularly. He’s a wiz at math. The other, he could judge distance on the
ground better than any of the other guys because he had been an avid
golfer since the age of twelve. He would look at the target and the last
shell burst and say “It’s a five iron away.” His ability to judge distances
and adjust fire power was phenomenal. He ended up top man in his class
at the artillery school.
Cornell’s representative came to Fort Sill during our time there,
and wanted to meet Marty, to congratulate him personally. In fact, he took
us to dinner, and was disappointed to learn that at Cornell, Marty had been
in the Quartermaster Corps, not the Artillery.
Yes, we were conscious of the Korean War, mostly for selfish
reasons. The concern involved not women directly, but the men who
would be called into service.
Dr. Marcus: Do you remember any particular feeling about President [Harry S.]
Truman?
Justice Ginsburg: I can’t say we had the sense of him that we and many people do now. He
was a fine president. There were jokes then about Margaret and how
defensive he was concerning her singing career. People tended not to take
him seriously. He followed after such a substantial figure. The only
president I ever knew as a child was Roosevelt. He was, through all my
growing-up years, the President of the United States.
Dr. Marcus: Do you remember any discussion at that time about the propriety of
dropping the atom bomb at the end of World War II?24
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: There was? Yes?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. I remember discussions in my high school years, particularly at the
time of the Henry Wallace campaign for the presidency. There was even a
song, by Pete Seeger, if memory serves, about dropping the atom bomb.
Dr. Marcus: Because people who look at it now, they give both reasons, pro and con,
but they make it seem like at the time everyone agreed that this was the
right thing to do. I was just curious.
Justice Ginsburg: There was ambivalence, the sense that it ended World War II and saved
many U.S. lives, but, on the other hand, it did horrible things.
Dr. Marcus: Did people on the Cornell campus participate in the election of 1952, for
example?
Justice Ginsburg: I think most of us did not, because we were registered to vote someplace
else, and didn’t get absentee ballots.
Dr. Marcus: So people didn’t get much involved in political campaigns?
Justice Ginsburg: No.
Dr. Marcus: Of course, you had to be older to vote, too.
Justice Ginsburg: Right. You had to be twenty-one.
Dr. Marcus: So that made a difference.
Justice Ginsburg: That’s right. I was wondering, as you asked the question, why I didn’t go
through the absentee ballot procedure, which I would have. But that’s
right, I turned twenty-one the spring of my last year in college.25
Dr. Marcus: So you wouldn’t have had an opportunity at all. I take it from what you
told me before, that you met Marty at Cornell.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Can you tell me how that came about?
Justice Ginsburg: It was my first year, his second year. I had a boyfriend then attending
Columbia Law School. Marty had a girlfriend attending Smith College.
We had friends who thought it a good idea for us to get to know each other
to keep each other company during the week. So we met that way and
became close friends. Marty was my closest friend at Cornell, and we had
mainly that kind of relationship until his last year, my junior year.
Once I met Marty, I knew that if I ever wanted to go to the movies,
I could call him and he’d bring his gray Chevrolet by and take me.
Dr. Marcus: Did you take classes together?
Justice Ginsburg: Marty started out as a chemistry major. He soon dropped that, because
afternoon laboratories conflicted with golf practice. He was on the golf
team. So then he became a government major, which I was from the start.
We took many of the same courses. In fact, he’d say, “What are you
taking this term?” And then we would sign up for the same government or
history courses. And we took Vladamir Nabokov’s European literature
course together.
Dr. Marcus: Why did you choose government as a major?
Justice Ginsburg: The main reason, it was a relatively short major, so I could take many
courses outside the major, music and fine arts, for example. It was a26
shorter major than either history or English, which were the others I
considered.
Dr. Marcus: And are you glad that you did it?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. Cornell at that time had an unusual government department. It had
Robert Cushman in constitutional law; Clinton Rossiter teaching the
American presidency; Mario Einaudi teaching comparative government.
It was a great department. Over in the Industrial and Labor Relations
School, Milton Konvitz taught American ideals. So in the government
field, Cornell was particularly strong.
Dr. Marcus: And you thought that your college education was a good one?
Justice Ginsburg: For the most part, the basic education at Cornell was very good. What
was less good for me was the social side of the school. Cornell was very
much a fraternity/sorority school in the 1950s. And it was a place where
girls weren’t really encouraged to do their own thing. There were four
men to every woman at the arts college. The reason given was that girls
had to live in dormitories, while guys could live in College Town rooms or
apartments. Study was not the “in” thing, especially for girls, I did little
studying in the dormitory. But I knew every obscure women’s bathroom
on the Cornell campus. I’d go to a large restroom with my notes and study
as long as I liked. Then when I came back to the dorm, I had almost
nothing to do with class work. Even if you’d wanted to study, dorms were
often too noisy, too much else was going on. Cornell was strange in that27
respect. It had a strong faculty, but a spirit among most of the students
that didn’t prize learning.
Dr. Marcus: Did you join a sorority?
Justice Ginsburg: I did. In fact, I lived in a sorority house during my junior year. I joined
because a person who had been a counselor at the summer camp I
attended, a person I liked and admired very much, was the sorority’s
rushing chairman.
Sororities and fraternities, during my years at Cornell, were rigidly
segregated by religion. It was the first time I had encountered that kind of
restriction. Before the summer of 1950, I had worked as a waitress in
summer camp with girls from Cornell who were members of the “Tri-
Delt” sorority. I was certain they would invite me to join their sorority,
because we were good friends the summer before I entered Cornell. They
did not. I got bids from the two Jewish sororities and others. That’s the
way it was.
In the center of the corridor in my first-year dormitory, on both
sides, rooms were assigned to Jewish girls. Perhaps that happened by
chance, but I am doubtful.
Dr. Marcus: Was it unheard of for someone not to join a sorority?
Justice Ginsburg: No, some resisted, some were not picked, but overwhelmingly, people
joined. It was the thing to do.
Dr. Marcus: And Marty was in a fraternity?28
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. That was a distinct advantage for the men, because they could then
live in the fraternity house, rather than in College Town. Marty was quite
active in his fraternity. He was the social chairman.
Dr. Marcus: Did the fraternities or sororities do anything good, or were they purely
social?
Justice Ginsburg: Good in what sense? Marty’s fraternity was the one that did the best
academically of any of the Greek-letter organizations. We didn’t have
significant projects, charitable, educational projects for the community, as
I recall.
Dr. Marcus: No, they never did? Because now I know the schools that still have
fraternities and sororities do have requirements that you volunteer your
time to those kinds of activities. They didn’t do that?
Justice Ginsburg: No.
Dr. Marcus: Did you have other friends, as well as Marty?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, the group Cornell put together in the center of my first year
dormitory corridor became fast friends. The girl next door, particularly,
remains a very close and dear friend. Her case was typical. She was at
Cornell for a year and a half. In the first semester of her sophomore year,
it was clear she was going to marry her then boyfriend. He was a pre-med
at Harvard. She had “her man,” so there was no reason for her parents to
continue to pay her tuition at Cornell. To please her parents, she
transferred to Brooklyn College. That’s the way it was. Cornell, with its
four-to-one ratio, was considered a good place to find a man.29
Dr. Marcus: How were women treated? Other than in a sorority or being made to live
in a dormitory, how were they treated in class, since they were such a
minority?
Justice Ginsburg: The women at Cornell, especially in the arts college, tended to be very
bright. As I remember, there was no distinction in the way we were
treated in class. We did have rigid curfews. On weekdays, 10:30 or 11:00
p.m.; Friday night, midnight; Saturday night, one o’clock. But I don’t
remember any difference in treatment in the classroom.
Dr. Marcus: Professors like Professor Cushman would choose you as a research
assistant?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Rather than only choosing a male who might profit by this eventually. I
think that’s fairly unusual at that time. Did you have particular professors
who made a deep impression on you during the Cornell years?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, Nabokov – I constantly forget the right way to pronounce his name –
changed the way I read. He made an enormous impression on me. I loved
his course. He savored words. When Lolita came out, years after I had
graduated from Cornell, I could hear him say “Lo-li-ta.” He gave an exam
on Bleak House by Dickens. One of the questions was, “Where in the
book do we first meet the character Pippi?” Nabokov reported: “Many of
you remembered that we first meet Pippi with his head sticking through a
grate, but only Seat Number whatever (Marty’s seat) wrote ‘Pippi’s large
head.’ That word makes the image.” He used words to paint pictures.30
Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen
a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the
reader. Nabokov’s lectures are published, and they are a joy to read.
Professor Cushman taught me much about life. He told me, among
other things, that he and his wife read aloud to each other. Marty and I
read many books aloud to each other in the nearly two years we spent at
Fort Sill, and sometimes I read to him, to this day, when we have a long
car ride. So those two stand out.
Dr. Marcus: I’d like actually to hear more about the way Nabokov changed how you
read. It sounds to me like it would slow you down, because you would
savor words.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. Right. Entirely right.
Dr. Marcus: But you must have different ways of reading different kinds of material.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, I can still read a trashy novel and race right through it, but if you read
aloud the first page or so of Bleak House, Dickens portrait of the fog and
Miss Flyte, you will understand what I mean. Good books are to be read
that way. One can savor them. In some of the things I read, a law review
article, for example, I know what I’m seeking to find. The prose is often
dense, but I can cut through the verbiage quickly. Good books, in
contrast, are to be savored. Also, my own writing shows the effects of
Nabokov’s course. I try to give people the picture in not too many words,
and I strive to find the right words.31
Dr. Marcus: I think that’s a valuable lesson to learn in college. I think that’s wonderful.
Whatever else you learn or not, that’s terrific. Did you engage in
extracurricular activity at Cornell?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. I don’t recall the name of the group I headed, but it was concerned
with careers for women. And I remember running for office, not winning,
some class office. I was also on the mixed teacher/student disciplinary
committee for the Arts College that handled mostly, in those days,
plagiarism cases.
Dr. Marcus: When you became active in this group that dealt with careers, had you an
idea already that you might go to law school?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. I began to think about it during my second year in college, and more
in my junior year when I worked for Professor Cushman. In fact, although
Marty was a year ahead of me at Cornell, I took the LSAT first.
Dr. Marcus: Really? He hadn’t decided?
Justice Ginsburg: He hadn’t decided. He hadn’t entirely abandoned medical school as a
possibility, although he had given up chemistry as a major. He was
thinking about business school and about law school. Whatever we did,
we wanted to do it together. We ruled out business because Harvard
Business School did not admit women at the time. They had only the
Radcliffe Management Program, a special program for girls, to get them
up to speed so they could grade the boys’ exams. It was not strongly
appealing. So that left law school. And I became interested in law school
in my second year. My interest may be attributable to Milton Konvitz’s32
American ideals course, a speech course I took, and student teaching in the
Ithaca schools. I had taken an educational psychology course that had as a
component, a brief student teaching stint. I didn’t like it at all. I was
assigned to a history class. The topic was the Spanish-American War.
The syllabus I was given had two columns. One column was headed U.S.
Everything we did was right. Everything the other side did was wrong. I
knew it wasn’t that way. I didn’t want to teach from such a syllabus. So
after that experience, I pretty much rejected school teaching, high school
history teaching. Law seemed to me very attractive, both as something I
could do and something that could make a difference.
Dr. Marcus: When did you and Marty start talking seriously about both of you applying
to law school?
Justice Ginsburg: At the start of my junior year, early on in his senior year.
Dr. Marcus: And at the time, did you discuss at all the difficulties that might be
inherent in both of you pursuing a career in the law?
Justice Ginsburg: No, I think we regarded it as very much part of the fifties’ togetherness
thing. Whatever he was going to do, I was going to do, although I was
seriously interested in law before he was.
Dr. Marcus: When you say the fifties’ togetherness thing, was that common?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes.
Dr. Marcus: Really?33
Justice Ginsburg: Togetherness was a big thing for husbands and wives. Of course, in most
families, there was a clear division of labor. But the idea of families
staying together was one of the main themes of the fifties.
Dr. Marcus: I hadn’t known that. When did you decide to get married?
Justice Ginsburg: Sometime during my junior year, probably in the middle of that year,
around Christmas vacation. Yes, it was Christmas vacation my junior
year.
Dr. Marcus: Was it the fact that Marty would be graduating that precipitated discussion
about this?
Justice Ginsburg: No, I had ended my relationship with my Columbia Law School
boyfriend, I guess in part because of Marty, but I didn’t appreciate that at
the time. Marty was the first guy ever interested in me because of what
was in my head. Perhaps that was so because at the start our relationship
was as good friends. Marty kept his girlfriend at Smith until his senior
year, until about the time we decided we were a pair.
Dr. Marcus: Is this an appropriate time to ask you to say something about the
importance of your marriage in your life?
Justice Ginsburg: It’s the best, most fortunate decision I ever made. It was extraordinary in
those days for a man to be supportive of his wife as a peer. In my first
year at Harvard, his second year, he told everyone that his wife was going
to make the law review. The one woman then on the law review, Nancy
Boxley, told me years later, “When Marty bragged about his wife and the
law review, I looked at you, you looked like a little twerp.” [Laughter]34
But that’s the way he was. He always made me feel I was better than I
thought I was, that I could accomplish whatever I sought. He had
enormous confidence in my ability, more than I had in myself.
Dr. Marcus: And that was most important to you throughout it all, the steps you took in
your career?
Justice Ginsburg: Part of it is, he’s so secure about himself, he never regarded me as any
kind of a threat to his ego. On the contrary, he took great pride in being
married to someone he considered very able.
Dr. Marcus: So you decided to get married in your junior year, but you finished at
Cornell.
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, I wanted to take my first year at Cornell, to double register, to leave
Cornell’s Arts College after three years and double register at Cornell Law
School, so I would end up in Marty’s class. I wanted to take my first year
at Cornell while he was taking his first year at Harvard, so we would end
up together in the second year at Harvard. Harvard wrote to me to this
effect: “You can take your first year at Cornell and that’s fine, but you’re
going to have to repeat it here, because we won’t give you any credit for
Cornell Law studies.” So instead, I took music and art courses at Cornell
and had a grand time my last year in college. Then Marty went into
service. So when we came back to law school, he had already finished his
first year and was returning to a second-year class, while I was just
starting.
Dr. Marcus: When you graduated from Cornell, did you get any awards?35
Justice Ginsburg: Yes. I was the class marshal for the arts college, which meant I had the
highest grades of all the women in that class. Cornell didn’t have Latin
degrees, but I did graduate with distinction in all subjects, and I had
honors in the government department.
Dr. Marcus: And you got married right after graduation?
Justice Ginsburg: Yes, the same month.
Dr. Marcus: Did you go then directly to Oklahoma?
Justice Ginsburg: No, we had a lovely honeymoon in Europe. We got married in June.
Marty was due to report for service, originally in Fort Dix, New Jersey, in
September, so we spent July and most of August on a long vacation in
Europe.
Dr. Marcus: Did you do Europe the way all the students do it today? What used to be
five dollars a day?
Justice Ginsburg: Not quite, but the amount we were spending was a large concern, at least
for me. Marty worried less about it. We did Europe with my fine arts
notes, we stopped at almost every place where there was something I
particularly wanted to see.
Dr. Marcus: How many countries did you visit?
Justice Ginsburg: We went first to England, then France, Italy, and Switzerland.
Dr. Marcus: Did you drive, take the train?
Justice Ginsburg: We drove. In the main, we drove. We rented a car in Paris and drove
from there through Burgundy, the Riviera, into Italy, back into
Switzerland, then once more into France.36
Dr. Marcus: This sounds like a good place to stop. The tape is about to run out. We
can pick up with your life in Oklahoma next time.
END OF SESSION ONE