Sisters in Law (40 page)

  
28 “take their feet off our necks”: Duke Speech.

  
29 discuss life and law: Jan Goodman, interview with the author, July 31, 2013.

  
29 at Duke University: Duke Speech.

  
30 students in her seminar: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, folder ERA Correspondence, 1970–71.

  
30 appearances in the Supreme Court: Amy Davidson, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Retirement Dissent,”
The New Yorker,
September 24, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson.

  
30 she was now undertaking: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, November 8, 1978.

CHAPTER
2
: THE LAWSUIT OF RUTH'S DREAMS

  
32 tax advance sheet: The story is by now
vieux jeu
, but this version comes from Fred Strebeigh,
Equal
:
Women Reshape American Law
(New York: W. W.
Norton, 2009), 23, which he credits to an interview with MG and a letter from him.

  
32 lifelong bachelor: From opinion of the Tenth Circuit in
Moritz v. Commissioner of IRS
, 469 F.2d 466 (1972),
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F
2
/
469
/
466
/
7985
2
/.

  
33 thought might be interested: Strebeigh,
Equal
, 24.

  
33 “absolutely brilliant piece of work”: Norman Dorsen, interview with the author, June 18, 2013.

  
34 “from obscurity”: Strebeigh,
Equal
, 25.

  
35 on behalf of women's rights: Ibid., 27.

  
36 Those were laws that discriminate on race:
United States v. Carolene Products Company
, 304 U.S. 144 (1938).

  
37 Ginsburg was counting on: “Developments in the Law—Equal Protection,” note,
Harvard Law Review
82 (1969): 1065.

  
37 to be his law clerk: Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel,
Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 388.

  
37 “related to performance”: “Developments in the Law—Equal Protection,” note,
Harvard Law Review
82 (1969): 1068, n. 61. The authors give a passing nod to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination based on sex, without further commentary.

  
37 91 percent was male: Susan M. Hartmann,
The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 80.

  
37 Dorsen (New York, Harvard J.D.): “Aryeh Neier,” ACLU ProCon.org, June 27, 2012,
http://aclu.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=
002205
;
“Melvin Wulf, LLB,” ACLU ProCon.org, June 12, 2008,
http://aclu.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=
002223.

  
38 could wait until “tomorrow”: Hartmann,
The Other Feminists,
72–73.

  
38 apply only to race: See Kurland discussion below.

  
38 starting to have “tantrums”: Hartmann,
The Other Feminists,
74.

  
38 racial civil rights movement: Suzy Post, KY Civil Rights Hall of Fame, oral history project,
http://nunncenter.org/civilrights/category/interviewees/suzy-post/.

  
38 Suzy Post went to the next level: Hartmann,
The Other Feminists
, 81.

  
39 civil liberties frame around it: Samuel Walker,
In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; 2nd edition, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 299.

  
39 their network a little harder: Fred Strebeigh,
Equal: Women Reshape American Law
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 27, note citing copy of Dorsen letter from Ginsburg files.

  
39 who had just graduated: Ibid., 34.

  
39 attending Yale Law School: Ann Freedman, interview with the author, October 29, 2013.

  
40 “always a lawyer's lawyer”: Ibid.

  
41 not in a good way: Fighting the Ginsburgs in
Moritz
, the solicitor general of the United States had produced a great gift to the project of women's
equality—a comprehensive list of all the U.S. laws and regulations that distinguished between the sexes; see
http://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/viewspeeches.aspx?Filename=sp_
02
-
10
-
06
.html.

  
41 known how to use it: Nina Totenberg, interview with the author, September 6, 2013.

  
42 “the task at hand”: Ann Freedman, interview with the author, October 29, 2013.

  
43 original
Moritz
appeal: Ruth always said that
Moritz
was really the grandmother brief, because that's the case she worked on first and that's where she found
Royster Guano
. Elizabeth Vrato,
The Counselors: Conversations with
18
Courageous Women Who Have Changed the World
(Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002).

  
44 “history of the Republic”: Geoffrey Stone, interview with the author, September 12, 2013.

CHAPTER
3
: GOLDWATER GIRL AND CARD-CARRYING MEMBER OF THE ACLU

  
45 like Ginsburg's: O'Connor legislator's papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.

  
45 new feminists of Los Angeles: “Los Angeles' New Feminists,” June 1970, O'Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.

  
45 filthy Greenwich Village walk-ups: O'Connor papers, Box 1:1.

  
45 cosmopolitan
Atlantic Monthly
: O'Connor papers, Box 1:1, contains the whole issue; see also
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/
1970
/
03
/women-and-the-law/
304923
/.

  
45 got an earful: Elizabeth Pantazelos, “Women at Work: Articles from the '70s, '80s, and '90s Address the Ongoing Obstacles that Career Women Face,”
The Atlantic
, May 2006,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/
2006
/
05
/women-at-work/
304944
/.

  
46 “part time or occasional nature”: Remarks, May 7, 1970, O'Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.

  
46 “elected to high public office”: Ibid.

  
47 “been a splendid choice”: Letter to President Nixon, October 1, 1971, O'Connor files, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.

  
47 polluted the Court with a woman: Nixon tapes, cited in Joan Biskupic,
Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 41, n. 11.

  
47 treated women differently: Diane Schulder, “Women and the Laws,”
Atlantic Monthly
, March 1970; clipping in O'Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.

  
47 by only a single vote: Biskupic,
Sandra Day O'Connor
, 60.

  
47 “in a meaningful way”: Remarks, May 7, 1970, O'Connor papers, Arizona History and Archives, Box 1:1.

  
48 run for public office: Biskupic,
Sandra Day O'Connor
, 36, n. 57.

  
48 it was a done deal: “Irene Rasmussen on the Equal Rights Amendment,” Arizona Memory Project, Arizona State Archives, http://azmemory.azlibrary .gov/cdm/ref/collection/archpriv/id/1794

  
49 defend the amendment: Sarah Slavin, ed.,
U.S. Women's Interest Groups: Institutional Profiles
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995), 578.

  
49 “making men and women identical”: Biskupic,
Sandra Day O'Connor
, 59.

  
49 “questions have been raised,” she wrote: “Form letter from Senator Sandra Day O'Connor, February 18, 1984, re: Equal Rights Amendment,” Arizona Memory Project, Arizona State Archives,
http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/ref/collection/archgov/id/
481.

  
50 justices' dining room: “Irene Rasmussen on the Equal Rights Amendment.”

  
51 “be sure his sox match”: Duke Speech.

  
51 a
lesbian
, of all things: Doris L. Sassower, “Women's Rights Ignored,”
ABA Journal
(October 1971), 950.

  
51 one at a time: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “The Need for the Equal Rights Amendment,”
ABA Journal
59 (1973): 1013
.

  
51 “women or bridges”: Duke Speech.

  
52 “Some Problems of Construction”: Philip B. Kurland, “The Equal Rights Amendment: Some Problems of Construction,”
Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review
6 (1970–71): 243.

  
52 decisions of the Warren Court: Philip B. Kurland, Foreword, “Equal in Origin and Equal in Title to the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Government,”
Harvard Law Review
78 (1964): 143, 145 (referring to “the absence of workmanlike product, the absence of right quality . . . disingenuousness and misrepresentation” in the landmark racial decision). Philip B. Kurland, “‘
Brown v. Board of Education
Was the Beginning': The School Desegregation Cases in the United States Supreme Court, 1954–1979,”
Washington University Law Quarterly
(1979): 309, 313, 316.

  
52 upset the Lord's order: Donald G. Mathews and Jane S. De Hart,
Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 37.

  
52 opponent of racial civil rights: Karl E. Campbell,
Senator Sam Ervin, Last of the Founding Fathers
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 124.

  
53 school desegregation decision: Kurland, “
Brown v. Board of Education
Was the Beginning.”

  
53 men's prisons and toilets: American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 23, Minutes of Meeting Board of Directors, November 26, 1970.

  
53 heat of battle: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder ERA Correspondence, 1974.

  
53 “making relevant connections”: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Women at the Bar—A Generation of Change,”
University of Puget Sound Law Review
2 (1978): 1, http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi ?article=1081&context=sulr

  
54 the ERA went down: Amy Leigh Campbell,
Raising the Bar: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU Women's Rights Project
(Bloomington, Ind.: Xlibris, 2004), 40, citing Ginsburg's internal memorandum on
Reed
, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 6.

  
54 “facts and cool reason”: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, letter to Joan Krauskopf, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder ERA Correspondence, 1974.

  
54 opinion page at
The
New York Times
: clippings reflect that she got picked by the
NYT
to do the op-ed in favor of the ERA, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 16, F1975.

  
54 League of Women Voters: Ginsburg Archives, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder ERA Correspondence, 1975.

  
54 predicted the world would end: Ibid.

  
54 “Three Minutes on the ERA” on NPR: Ginsburg Archives, Library of Congress, Box 14, folder April 1978.

  
55 cover of the brief: “Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and WRP Staff,” ACLU.org (website), March 7, 2006,
http://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff.

  
55 pursued full throttle: ACLU Biennial Conference, Equality Committee report, November 1970, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 24, folder 4.

  
55 equality broadly defined: American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 23, Board minutes of January 18, 1971.

  
56 to a similar action: “The Trailblazers,”
Rutgers Magazine
, Winter 2013,
http://magazine.rutgers.edu/features/winter-
2013
/the-trailblazers.

  
56 “
no longer be acceptable
”: Memo from “The Office” to “Board of Directors,” November 20, 1970, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 24, folder 4.

  
56 women's rights as a new priority: Minutes of the Board of Directors, October 2–3, 1971, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 24, folder 6.

  
56 a women's rights project: Minutes of the Board of Directors, December 4–5, 1971, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 24, folder 6.