American Rights and RBG

 American Rights and RBG

When I was twelve, I saw the new Ruth Bader Ginsburg movie at a small theatre. I remember noticing how many older women were there, reminding me of the older generations I had began to see during this time out protesting and standing up for justice and equality - many who had fought in their own younger life for rights they now could loose fifty years later - infusing further significance to the meaning of the pendulum of democracy in America I heard of that day. Remembering the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “A great man once said that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle. It is the pendulum. And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back.” 

Before Ginsburg stood as a prominent figure on the Supreme Court for decades, she was a respectable lawyer and defender of civil liberties, significantly winning five out of six cases in front of the Supreme Court that furthered gender equality as a principle of law. Looking from a broad perspective unique to some at the time, Ginsburg viewed the institution of separation and stereotypes as broadly harmful to all, not just women. In two cases she famously argued, Ginsburg saw the viability of women's rights within the law and gained equality by defending and gaining privledges for men against legalized gender biases that disadvantaged them. She highlighted to the court how gender discrimination hurt men too, especially appealing to the all made court. As she famously said, “almost every discrimination that operates against males, operates against females as well.”

However, this makes me wonder if these cases would have been successful or as prominent, especially having been argued by a woman, if they had not been supported by and first to directly benefit men. Mr. Satow discussed decisions regarding laws that affected people differently based on their sex. Without the passage of the ERA, discrimination based on sex was not on the highest level of scrutiny and the government could, with conceived “government interest”, make laws that grouped people by or were based on such. Because of this, arguments in defense of equal rights primarily lay in the Fourteenth Ammendment, which states that “all persons” are granted equal protection under the law. Ginsburg argued this point to the Supreme Court multiple times, saying that women should be valued the same in American society as men and vice versa. It is interesting to think about this in the Court today, with the majority indulgent of constitional origionalism or fundamentalism, in regard to how the constitution is applied to modern laws. Technically, because women being included in “persons” was inferred from the Constitutional text and not expliocitly stated by the founders, the court could find a basis for scruitny of these protections, as we have seen other significant liberties recently taken away based on terminology and interpretation. I wonder if RBG predicted this shift of the pendalum, like when she spoke regarding Roe v. Wade and said she felt it was too broad too fast and could have been better protected from future attacks with the 14th Ammendment in defense, rather than the right to privacy- and clearly, she was right.