In Memoriam for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

• Author: Amy Marshak
• Position: Senior Fellow, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, Georgetown University Law Center
• Pages: 1265-1268

IN MEMORIAM

In Memoriam for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

AMY MARSHAK*

Since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing in 2020, I have held dear the

memory of my year as her law clerk and the everyday moments of mentorship

that she generously shared. Three memories in particular stand out as exemplars

of her remarkable wisdom on the values of perspective, precision, and patience in

both life and the law.

The first: one day, Justice Ginsburg was talking to me in her chambers about a

speech she was about to give. She commented that, of the nineteenth-century pio-

neers for women’s suffrage, she particularly admired Elizabeth Cady Stanton

because she was a “whole person.”By this, Justice Ginsburg meant that not only

was Stanton a brilliant and path-marking leader who paved the way for women’s

suffrage eighteen years after her death, but she also sustained meaningful rela-

tionships in her life, supported othercauses, and raised seven children.

This passing comment made an indelible mark on me. The challenges of bal-

ancing career, friendships, marriage, parenting, and personal pursuits are all too

familiar, especially during a global pandemic. Justice Ginsburg herself embodied

the quality she most admired in Stanton: a brilliant career as an advocate for

women’s rights, a scholar, and a jurist; a devoted marriage of fifty-six years and a

deep commitment to her children and grandchildren; closepersonal relationships,

including her fabled friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia; and an abiding love

for her personal passions, opera perhaps chief among them. When things get

hard, I call on Justice Ginsburg’s strength and clear-headed wisdom, earned

through a lifetime of both enormous challenges and incredible opportunities, to

guide my way.

1

But Justice Ginsburg’s comment reflects more than her personal ethos; it

embodies the foundations of her commitment to equality beforethe law for all. In

her career with the American Civil Liberties Union advocating for equal citizen-

ship stature for women, Ruth Bader Ginsburg pursued a vision of the

* Senior Fellow, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, Georgetown University Law

Center. ©2022, Amy Marshak. Many thanks to Mary Hartnett, whose work with Justice Ginsburg has

illuminated my thinking about the Justice, and to Shelby Calambokidis and the staff of The Georgetown

Law Journal for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. This piece is dedicated to the memory of

Justice Ginsburg and her dear friend, Judge Robert A. Katzmann, who, like Justice Ginsburg, was a

devoted mentor and brilliant jurist.

1. It should be noted, however, that Justice Ginsburg would be the first to point out that her ability to

“have it all”appears more clearly in hindsight than in any given moment. As she once said, “you can’t

have it all, all at once,”even if, over the course of her life, she did just that. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in Art

and Words,W

ASH.POST (Sept. 19, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/nation/2020/09/

19/ruth-bader-ginsburg-art-words/.

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