Sisters in Law (41 page)

  
56 “Harvard University law professor”: Ibid.

  
57 answerable directly to him: Aryeh Neier, interview with the author, July 11, 2013.

  
57 overriding and lifelong message: Ibid.

  
57 “‘making
Ruth
the head of that?'”: Ann Freedman, interview with the author, October 29, 2013.

  
58 would be the director: Minutes of the Board of Directors, February 1972, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 25, folder 5.

  
58 “supporting memorandum”: Supporting memorandum, September 29, 1971, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University Library, Box 26, folder 2.

  
58 national and local ACLU boardrooms: Susan M. Hartmann,
The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 80.

  
59 a legendary fund-raiser: Marilyn Haft, interview with the author, June 19, 2013.

  
59 reproductive control: Draft Prospectus for a Women's Rights Project, October 1972, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress.

  
59 complaints arrived with alarming speed: ACLU archives, Box 3113.

  
60 male-only draft: Ruth B. Cowan, “Womens Rights through Litigation: An Examination of the American Civil Liberties Union Women's Rights Project, 1971–1976,”
Columbia Human Rights Law Review
8 (1977): 373–89.

  
60 petition Congress to stop the practice: Biskupic,
Sandra Day O'Connor
, 58.

  
60 when the time came: Ibid., 97.

  
61 abortion rights for women: Aryeh Neier, interview with the author, July 11, 2013.

  
61 sterilize criminals:
Skinner v. Oklahoma
ex rel. Williamson 316 U.S. 535 (1942).

  
63 Playboy Foundation: Aryeh Neier, interview with the author, July 11, 2013.

  
63 “so confident about it”: Susan Berresford, interview with the author, November 5, 2013.

  
63 “sensitivity meetings”: Hartmann,
The Other Feminists
, 156, citing FFA transcripts.

  
63 growing structure of favorable decisions: Cowan, “Women's Rights through Litigation,” page 381–82.

  
63 reinventing the wheel: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 20, Folder Conference of Equal Rights Advocates, April 1973.

  
65 Amendment to the state constitution:
Baehr v. Lewin
, 74 Haw. 530, 852 P.2d 44 (1993), reconsideration and clarification granted in part, 74 Haw. 645, 852 P.2d 74 (1993).

  
65 always her priority: Janice Goodman, interview with the author, July 31, 2013.

  
66 “that quiet voice”: Nina Totenberg, interview with author, September 6, 2013.

  
66 more women on the faculty: Ginsburg, letter to William McGill, 1972, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 18, F71–73.

  
66 women in bar functions: Ginsburg, letter to New York City Bar Association, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 12, folder June/November 1972.

  
66 Century Club was in the '70s: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 12, SALT speech; Harvey Goldschmid, interview with the author, November 4, 2013, re: her whispering in Herbert Wechsler's ear.

  
66 big-enough room at its meeting: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress,
Box 13, folder August '76, correspondence with the ABA bicentennial celebration programmers.

CHAPTER
4
: ACT ONE: BUILDING WOMEN'S EQUALITY

  
69 she would throw it up: Fred Strebeigh,
Equal:
Women Reshape American Law
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 52, citing Elinor Porter Swiger,
Women Lawyers at Work
(New York: Messner, 1978), 52.

  
71 give it to Ruth to argue: Strebeigh,
Equal
, 50–51.

  
71 Ginsburg had won in
Reed v. Reed
: Serena Mayeri, “‘When the Trouble Started': The Story of
Frontiero v. Richardson
,” in
Women and the Law Stories
, edited by Elizabeth M. Schneider and Stephanie M. Wildman (New York: Foundation Press, 2011), http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi ?article=1321&context=upenn_wps.

  
72 manage the Nixon Court: Michael J. Klarman, “Social Reform Litigation and Its Challenges: An Essay in Honor of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”
Harvard Journal of Law & Gender
32 (2009): 251–302, citing a letter from Charles F. Abernathy to Brenda Fasteau, October 19, 1972 (on file with the Harvard Law School Library),
http://
www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlg/vol
322
/
251
-
3
02
.pdf.

  
72 her suggestions on anything: Charles F. Abernathy, Southern Poverty Law Center, letter to Brenda Fasteau, American Civil Liberties Union, October 19, 1972, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 3, Folder
Frontiero v. Richardson
, 1972.

  
72 was important, she asserted: Ginsburg, letter to Joseph Levin, Southern Poverty Law Center, October 24, 1972, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 3, Folder
Frontiero v. Richardson
, 1972.

  
73 oral argument purposes: Joseph Levin, Southern Poverty Law Center, letter to Ginsburg, October 27, 1972, Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 3, Folder
Frontiero v. Richardson
, 1972.

  
74 “when Ruth starts to perform”: Nina Totenberg, interview with the author, September 6, 2013.

  
75 for the bold move: Geoffrey Stone, interview with the author, September 12, 2013; Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel,
Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

  
76 “emotional discussion about women's rights”: Linda Greenhouse,
Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey
(New York: Times Books, 2005), 210.

  
76 “mute the outrage of Women's Lib”: Lewis Powell, letter to William Brennan, May 8, 1973, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Archive, 1921–1998: Washington and Lee University School of Law, 001,
Frontiero v. Richardson
.

  
76 various lawyers' performances: Blackmun papers, cited in Greenhouse,
Becoming Justice Blackmun
, 215.

  
76 very conventional Virginia gentleman: Penny Clark, interview with the author, December 27, 2013.

  
77 he reminds himself: Lewis Powell, notes to self, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Archive, Washington and Lee University School of Law, 001,
Frontiero v. Richardson
, document labeled “argued 1/17/73.”

  
77 he wrote to Brennan: Lewis F. Powell to William Brennan, March 2, 1973, in Thurgood Marshall Papers, Library of Congress; Strebeigh,
Equal
, 59.

CHAPTER
5
: INTERMISSION: ABORTION

  
78 “emancipation of American women”: Tinsley E. Yarbrough,
Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 230.

  
78 “right of the physician”: Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, eds.,
Before
Roe v. Wade
:
Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate before the Supreme Court's Ruling
(New York: Kaplan, 2010), 248.

  
78 feminists, radical or mainstream: Leslie J. Reagan,
When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States,
1867
–
1973
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 217.

  
79 health of the pregnant woman: “Abortion—Twentieth-Century Abortion Law Reform,” law.jrank (website),
http://law.jrank.org/pages/
447
/Abortion-Twentieth-century-abortion-law-reform.html.

  
79 missing arms or legs: Greenhouse and Siegel,
Before
Roe v. Wade, 11; “Sherri Finkbine's Abortion: Its Meaning 50 Years Later,” Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona (blog),
http://blog.advocatesaz.org/
2012
/
08
/
15
/sherri-finkbines-abortion-its-meaning-
50
-years-later/.

  
79 feminist movement in 1963: Greenhouse and Siegel,
Before
Roe v. Wade, 14–16; Reagan,
When Abortion Was a Crime
, 231–34.

  
80 state of their mental health: Reagan,
When Abortion Was a Crime
, 231–34.

  
80 had been presented to the Court: Greenhouse and Siegel,
Before
Roe v. Wade; see, for example, “Brief
Amicus Curiae
on Behalf of New Women Lawyers, Women's Health and Abortion Project, Inc., National Abortion Action Coalition (1971),” in
Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism
, vol. 3,
1960
to the Present
, edited by Dawn Keetley and John Pettegrew (Oxford and Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 215.

  
80 Women's Rights Project: Strictly speaking,
Roe
came through Sarah Weddington's group of young lawyers and graduate students out of the University of Texas at Austin, but the ACLU was the show runner of the companion case,
Doe v. Bolton
. The two are, for purposes of the ACLU involvement, as one.

  
82 Center for Constitutional Rights: Greenhouse and Siegel,
Before
Roe v. Wade, 333.

  
82 “self-fulfillment potential”: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 13, folder November 75.

  
83 “the basic unit of society”: Phyllis Schlafly, “Women's Libbers do NOT Speak for Us,”
Phyllis Schlafly Report
, February 1972, reprinted in Siegel and Greenhouse,
Before
Roe v. Wade, 218–19.

CHAPTER
6
: ACT TWO: EQUALITY IN PERIL

  
84 “appointed to the Supreme Court”: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Nomination Acceptance Address,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, June 14, 1993,
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ruthbaderginsburgusscnominationspeech.htm.

  
84 almost no women on any court: In 1971, women were fewer than 5 percent of all judges. “Before there was Sotomayor, before even Ginsburg and O'Connor . . . there was Mildred Lillie,”
Peter Jennings Project
, August 3, 2009,
http://peterjenningsproject.blogspot.com/
2009
/
08
/before-there-was-sotomayor-before-even.html.

  
84 highest court in New York: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 18, F73.

  
85 When the Equal Rights Amendment: https://
www.aclu.org/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff.

  
86 struggled mightily to survive: Fred Strebeigh,
Equal: Women Reshape American Law
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 63.

  
86
Frontiero
to two:
Kahn v. Shevin
, 416 U.S. 351 (1974).

  
87 Ginsburg was alarmed: Ginsburg, letter to Stephen Wiesenfeld, May 3, 1974.

  
88 “unconstitutional and simply wrong”: Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel,
Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 400.

  
88 his daughter rebooted her career: Ibid., 402.

  
88 Clark knew her customer: Penny Clark, interview with the author, December 27, 2013.

  
88 “play in this controversial area”: Penny Clark, memo to Lewis F. Powell, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Archives, Washington and Lee University School of Law, 001, Taylor file.

  
89 need affirmative action too: Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 14; speech to ABA: Affirmative Action, the Impact of Bakke, 1978.

  
92 “affirmed in her case”: Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate . . . on the Nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, July 20–23, 1993,
http://
www.loc.gov/law/find/nominations/ginsburg/
hearing.pdf.

  
92 “the liberal Warren Court”: Ibid.

  
92 judged by—their peers: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Sex and Unequal Protection: Men and Women as Victims,” keynote address, Southern Regional Conference of the National Conference of Law Women, Duke University, October 1, 1971, published in
Journal of Family Law
11 (1971): 347;
“Realizing the Equality Principle,” Ginsburg Archive, Library of Congress, Box 12.

CHAPTER
7
: ACT THREE: THE STAY-AT-HOME DAD TO THE RESCUE

  
94 “can't get any better than that!”: Strebeigh,
Equal
, 67, quoting interview with M. E. Freeman.

  
94 “part of equality for all”: Stephen Wiesenfeld, letter to Ginsburg, August 8, 1993.

  
95 “when I wrote the letter”: Ibid.

  
95 “what the procedures would be”: Stephen Wiesenfeld, interview with the author, October 14, 2013.