Ginsburg shows funny side away from Court
She may not leave them laughing inside the halls of the Supreme Court, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed she does have a funny bone during a speech Sunday at an Atlanta synagogue.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recounts the following from Ginsburg’s talk to the congregants:
Speaking in the dry wit appropriate to her station, she explained that when she was one of nine women entering Harvard University Law School in 1956, the dean asked why they were filling positions that could have been filled by men.
One female student explained that since there were more than 500 male law students, Harvard was ideal husband-hunting territory. The woman, Bader Ginsburg added, never married and probably never had that intent.
The future Supreme Court justice’s response was equally disingenuous. The woman, who had entered Harvard married and with a baby, told the dean that her husband also was a law student.
“And I thought it was important,” the now 70-year-old woman said seconds before the congregation erupted in laughter, “for a wife to understand her husband’s work.”
Ginsburg also said if Roe v. Wade were overturned – something she doubts will happen – it would have a bigger impact on poorer women than on women of means. “It would have a devastating impact on poor women,” Ginsburg said.
