A Tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Confronted with Biological Cancer and the Moral Cancers of anti-Semitism and Sexism, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Persevered
As I write this, I am cognizant of the limits of what I can say as a federal judicial law clerk:
Law is imperfect; but — when molded by minds like Justice Ginsburg’s — it increases everyone’s freedom by limiting the liberty of would-be oppressors to oppress. It is, at its best, the dam holding back the tide of humanity’s lowest instincts.
Justice Ginsburg dedicated her life to maintaining that legal dam — to maintaining the Constitution and laws, those “wise restraints which make us free.” How remarkable. Few souls go through life with convictions for the public good that are stronger than the impulse for their own private good. Like all the best civil servants, Justice Ginsburg cared about the public good. She worked — as a student at Harvard and Columbia Law, as a lawyer fighting for gender equality, and as a justice — to help this country live up to its highest ideals instead of its lowest impulses.
She did so imperfectly; she was only human. But she fulfilled a fundamental duty of any civil servant: She cared about the people she served. She did so while facing down not only biological cancer but also all the psychic cancers of humanity — sexism and anti-Semitism chief among them.
May her example guide us.
