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If You Ask Judges, Do You Always Agree On Everything? Of Course Not, We Divide Just As You Do. Why Aren't You Transparent About It? Because The People Would Begin To Think That The Law Is Not Stable, The Law Is Unclear. And That Would Not Give Them Much Faith In The Law.

-Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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If You Ask Judges,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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If You Ask Judges, Do You Always Agree On Everything? Of Course Not, We Divide Just As You Do. Why Aren't You Transparent About It? Because The People Would Begin To Think That The Law Is Not Stable, The Law Is Unclear. And That Would Not Give Them Much Faith In The Law.

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..the United States Is Subject To The Scrutiny Of A Candid World ... What The United States Does, For Good Or For Ill, Continues To Be Watched By The International Community, In Particular By Organizations Concerned With The Advancement Of The Rule Of Law And Respect For Human Dignity.

So That's The Dissenter's Hope: That They Are Writing Not For Today But For Tomorrow.

Freedom Of Speech

Neither Federal Nor State Government Acts Compatibly With Equal Protection When A Law Or Official Policy Denies To Women, Simply Because They Are Women, Full Citizenship Stature - Equal Opportunity To Aspire, Achieve, Participate In And Contribute To Society Based On Their Individual Talents And Capacities.

I Didn't Change The Constitution; The Equality Principle Was There From The Start. I Just Was An Advocate For Seeing Its Full Realization.

Prisons Should Be Co-ed Because Separate Quarters Are Discriminatory.

Every Constitution Written Since The End Of World War Ii Includes A Provision That Men And Women Are Citizens Of Equal Stature. Ours Does Not.

A Prime Part Of The History Of Our Constitution Is The Story Of The Extension Of Constitutional Rights To People Once Ignored Or Excluded.

Even The Declaration Of Independence Starts Out All Men Are Created Equal, So I See My Advocacy As Part Of An Effort To Make The Equality Principle Everything The Founders Would Have Wanted It To Be If They Weren't Held Back By The Society In Which They Lived And Particularly The Shame Of Slavery.

I Conceived Of Myself In Large Part As A Teacher. There Wasn't A Great Understanding Of Gender Discrimination. People Knew That Race Discrimination Was An Odious Thing, But There Were Many Who Thought That All The Gender-based Differentials In The Law Operated Benignly In Women's Favor. So My Objective Was To Take The Court Step By Step To The Realization, In Justice Brennan's Words, That The Pedestal On Which Some Thought Women Were Standing All Too Often Turned Out To Be A Cage.

I Do Hope That Some Of My Dissents Will One Day Be The Law.

We Live In An Age In Which The Fundamental Principles To Which We Subscribe - Liberty, Equality And Justice For All - Are Encountering Extraordinary Challenges, ... But It Is Also An Age In Which We Can Join Hands With Others Who Hold To Those Principles And Face Similar Challenges.

Justice For All

Religious Organizations Exist To Foster The Interests Of Persons Subscribing To The Same Religious Faith. Not So Of For-profit Corporations. Workers Who Sustain The Operations Of Those Corporations Commonly Are Not Drawn From One Religious Community.

Depriving A Parent Of Parental Status Is As Devastating As A Criminal Conviction.

There Is A Constitutional Right To Prostitution.

I Said On The Equality Side Of It, That It Is Essential To A Woman's Equality With Man That She Be The Decision-maker, That Her Choice Be Controlling.

You Would Have A Huge Statelessness Problem If You Don't Consider A Child Born Abroad A U.s. Citizen.

Fight For The Things That You Care About, But Do It In A Way That Will Lead Others To Join You.

When I Graduated From Law School In 1959, There Wasn't A Single Woman On Any Federal Bench. It Wouldn't Be A Realistic Ambition For A Woman To Want To Become A Federal Judge.

The Written Argument Endures. The Oral Argument Is Fleeting.

No One Who Is In Business For Profit Can Foist His Or Her Beliefs On A Workforce That Includes Many People Who Do Not Share Those Beliefs.

All Respect For The Office Of The Presidency Aside, I Assumed That The Obvious And Unadulterated Decline Of Freedom And Constitutional Sovereignty, Not To Mention The Efforts To Curb The Power Of Judicial Review, Spoke For Itself.

People Who Have Been Hardworking, Tax Paying, Those People Ought To Be Given An Opportunity To Be On A Track That Leads Towards Citizenship And If That Happened, Then They Wouldn't Be Prey To The Employers Who Say We Want You Because We Know That You Work For A Salary We Could Not Lawfully Pay Anyone Else.

I Would Not Like To Be The Only Woman On The Court.

My Dissenting Opinions, Like My Briefs, Are Intended To Persuade. And Sometimes One Must Be Forceful About Saying How Wrong The Court's Decision Is.

Women's Rights Are An Essential Part Of The Overall Human Rights Agenda, Trained On The Equal Dignity And Ability To Live In Freedom All People Should Enjoy.

My Mother Told Me To Be A Lady. And For Her, That Meant Be Your Own Person, Be Independent.

The Second Amendment Has A Preamble About The Need For A Militia. Because There Is A Need For A Militia To Be At The Ready, Therefore The Right To Keep And Bear Arms Must Be Secured.

Second Amendment

Reading Is The Key That Opens Doors To Many Good Things In Life. Reading Shaped My Dreams, And More Reading Helped Me Make My Dreams Come True.

One Aspect Of Appellate Judging Is We Have To Give Reasons For All Of Our Decisions. And When You Sit Down And Try To Write It Out, Sometimes You Find That Your First Judgment Wasn't The Right One.

You're Saying, No, State Said Two Kinds Of Marriage; The Full Marriage, And Then This Sort Of Skim-milk Marriage.

If We Gave Up Our Freedom As The Price Of Security, We Would No Longer Be The Great Nation That We Are.

I Think Our System Is Being Polluted By Money.

Racial Discrimination In Elections In Texas Is No Mere Historical Artifact. To The Contrary, Texas Has Been Found In Violation Of The Voting Rights Act In Every Redistricting Cycle From And After 1970.

Congress Could Always Stop The President If Congress Thinks That What The President Has Done Exceeds The President's Authority Or Is Just Wrong For The United States.

Our Goal In The '70s Was To End The Closed Door Era. There Were So Many Things That Were Off Limits To Women, Policing, Firefighting, Mining, Piloting Planes. And The Stereotypical View Of People Of A World Divided Between Home And Child Caring Women And Men As Breadwinners, Men Representing The Family Outside The Home.

Frankly I Had Thought That At The Time Roe Was Decided, There Was Concern About Population Growth And Particularly Growth In Populations That We Don't Want To Have Too Many Of.

I Think The Notion That We Have All The Democracy That Money Can Buy Strays So Far From What Our Democracy Is Supposed To Be.

Women Will Only Have True Equality When Men Share With Them The Responsibility Of Bringing Up The Next Generation.

In Most Civil Law Systems There Are No Dissents. There Is A Single Opinion For The Court: It Is Unanimous; It Is Highly Stylized; You Can't Tell Which Judge Wrote It.

I Became A Lawyer For Selfish Reasons. I Thought I Could Do A Lawyer’s Job Better Than Any Other.

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The Second Amendment Is Outdated In The Sense That Its Function Has Become Obsolete.

Second Amendment

I Would Not Look To The United States Constitution If I Were Drafting A Constitution In The Year 2012.

If You Ask Judges, Do You Always Agree On Everything? Of Course Not, We Divide Just As You Do. Why Aren't You Transparent About It? Because The People Would Begin To Think That The Law Is Not Stable, The Law Is Unclear. And That Would Not Give Them Much Faith In The Law.

I Have Yet To See A Death Case Among The Dozen Coming To The Supreme Court On Eve-of-execution Stay Applications In Which The Defendant Was Well Represented At Trial... People Who Are Well Represented At Trial Do Not Get The Death Penalty.

One Might Plausibly Contend That Congress Violates The Spirit, If Not The Letter, Of The Constitutional Doctrine Of Separation Of Powers When It Exonerates Itself From The Impositions Of The Laws It Obligates People Outside The Legislature To Obey.

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I Do Think That Being The Second [female Supreme Court Justice] Is Wonderful, Because It Is A Sign That Being A Woman In A Place Of Importance Is No Longer Extraordinary.

The State Controlling A Woman Would Mean Denying Her Full Autonomy And Full Equality.

Throwing Out Preclearance When It Has Worked And Is Continuing To Work To Stop Discriminatory Changes Is Like Throwing Away Your Umbrella In A Rainstorm Because You Are Not Getting Wet.

Adult Women Are Able To Make Decisions About Their Own Lives' Course No Less Than Men Are.

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If There Was One Decision I Would Overrule, It Would Be Citizens United. I Think The Notion That We Have All The Democracy That Money Can Buy Strays So Far From What Our Democracy Is Supposed To Be.

The Irony And Tragedy Is Any Woman Of Means Can Have A Safe Abortion Somewhere In The United States. But Women Lacking The Wherewithal To Travel Can't. There Is No Big Constituency Out There Concerned About Access Restrictions On Poor Women.

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Undocumented Aliens Unfortunately Are Not Protected By The Law And They Are Tremendously Subjected To Exploitation. The Result Is That They Would Be Willing To Work For A Wage That No Person Who Is Welcome In Our Shores Would Take.

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My Own View, And I've Said This Many Times, Is As Long As I Can Do The Work Full Steam, I Will Stay On The Court. But When I Feel Myself Slipping, When I Slow Down In My Ability To Write Opinions With Fair Dispatch, When I Forget The Names Of Cases That I Once Could Recite At The Drop Of A Hat, I Will Know It Is Time For Me To Go.

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If I Had Any Talent God Could Give Me, I Would Be A Great Diva.

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The Emphasis Must Be Not On The Right To Abortion But On The Right To Privacy And Reproductive Control.

So Now The Perception Is, Yes, Women Are Here To Stay. And When I'm Sometimes Asked When Will There Be Enough [women On The Supreme Court]? And I Say When There Are Nine, People Are Shocked. But There'd Been Nine Men, And Nobody's Ever Raised A Question About That.

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Work For The Things That You Care About.

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Dissents Speak To A Future Age. It's Not Simply To Say, 'my Colleagues Are Wrong And I Would Do It This Way.' But The Greatest Dissents Do Become Court Opinions And Gradually Over Time Their Views Become The Dominant View. So That's The Dissenter's Hope: That They Are Writing Not For Today But For Tomorrow.

Freedom Of Speech

Arizona Presents No Specific Reason For Excepting Capital Defendants From The Constitutional Protections Extended To Defendants Generally, And None Is Readily Apparent.

There Are Some Singers That Know Exactly When To Go, And Others Hang On Much Too Long And That Is The Same, That Is The Same With Judges.

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Sometimes People Say Unkind Or Thoughtless Things, And When They Do, It Is Best To Be A Little Hard Of Hearing — To Tune Out And Not Snap Back In Anger Or Impatience.

The Impact Of All These Restrictions Is On Poor Women, Because Women Who Have Means, If Their State Doesn't Provide Access, Another State Does. ... It Makes No Sense As A National Policy To Promote Birth Only Among Poor People.

Historically, The New Government Had No Money To Pay For An Army, So They Relied On The State Militias. And The States Required Men To Have Certain Weapons And They Specified In The Law What Weapons These People Had To Keep In Their Home So That When They Were Called To Do Service As Militiamen, They Would Have Them. That Was The Entire Purpose Of The Second Amendment.

It's Great To Be In The Position Of Asking Questions And Not Having To Answer Questions.

Asking Questions

I Think Members Of The Legislature, People Who Have To Run For Office, Know The Connection Between Money And Influence On What Laws Get Passed.

Generalizations About The "way Women Are" And Estimates Of What Is Appropriate For Most Women No Longer Justify Denying Opportunity To Women Whose Talent And Capacity Place Them Outside The Average Description.

I'm Not Very Good At Promotion.

My Rule Was I Will Not Answer A Question That Attempts To Project How I Will Rule In A Case That Might Come Before The Court.

When Police Or Prosecutors Conceal Significant Exculpatory Or Impeaching Material, We Hold, It Is Ordinarily Incumbent On The State To Set The Record Straight.

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A Constitution, As Important As It Is, Will Mean Nothing Unless The People Are Yearning For Liberty And Freedom.

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Establishment Clause

My Mother Told Me Two Things Constantly. One Was To Be A Lady, And The Other Was To Be Independent. The Study Of Law Was Unusual For Women Of My Generation. For Most Girls Growing Up In The '40s, The Most Important Degree Was Not Your B.a., But Your M.r.s.

I Am A Judge Born, Raised, And Proud Of Being A Jew. The Demand For Justice Runs Through The Entirety Of The Jewish Tradition. I Hope, In My Years On The Bench Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, I Will Have The Strength And The Courage To Remain Constant In The Service Of That Demand.

Jewish Tradition

If I Resign Any Time This Year, He [president Obama] Could Not Successfully Appoint Anyone I Would Like To See In The Court. ... [a]nybody Who Thinks That If I Step Down, Obama Could Appoint Someone Like Me, They're Misguided.

Anger, Resentment, Envy, And Self-pity Are Wasteful Reactions. They Greatly Drain One's Time. They Sap Energy Better Devoted To Productive Endeavors.

Dissents Speak To A Future Age.

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