Ruthanne Deutsch is a founding partner at Deutsch Hunt PLLC. She clerked for Ginsburg during the 2007-08 term.
I remember my clerkship interview with Justice Ginsburg as if it were yesterday. I arrived with instructions from helpful former clerks to count to “3 Mississippi” after her pauses, to be sure she had finished saying what she wanted. A high school friend encouraged me to think of her as my Bubba from Brooklyn. The justice was formal (and formidable). But she also was warm, engaged and appreciative of my having attended law school as the mother of two young children. “Two is something,” she gracefully noted. “I only had to care for one child during law school.” Of course she neglected to add that when she was in law school, she also cared for a husband undergoing cancer treatments — essentially taking his classes as well as her own — all while performing at the very top of her class.
As the interview came to its close, we spent some time walking through her chambers looking at the many photographs lining her bookshelves. She paused before her favorite, a picture of her son-in-law with two of her grandchildren, taken when they were small. “This,” she said, “is hope for the future.” What she meant was a world where we all can realize our full potential as human beings, not relegated to the confines of socially (or legally) imposed gender roles. Men can be caregivers just as women can be breadwinners. And the law should pose no obstacle to the full range of life choices and opportunities for anyone, regardless of their gender (or race, or sexual orientation). No surprise that one of her favorite cases from her storied career fighting for gender equality was Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975). There, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a gender-based distinction under the Social Security Act that permitted widows but not widowers to collect special benefits while caring for minor children.
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