Ginsburg calls herself a ‘flaming feminist litigator’

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Wednesday described herself as a “flaming feminist litigator” and recounted how she landed a seat on the Supreme Court bench. 

Asked during a question and answer session at Georgetown University Law Center why she decided to litigate cases involving women’s rights and gender equality, Ginsburg responded by rephrasing the question. 

“How did I decide to become a flaming feminist litigator?” Ginsburg, 84, quipped, prompting laughter and applause. {mosads}

The Supreme Court justice then went on to recount her early career in the 1950s and ’60s, saying she was “a beneficiary of a big change in the times,” when many women sought to move beyond traditional gender roles. 

She recalled, for example, that when her daughter Jane was in kindergarten in the early 1960s, other students’ parents “felt bad” for Jane because Ginsburg worked. 

A decade later, Ginsburg said, when her son James was in school, households in which both parents worked had become “a prevailing pattern.”

“Once people’s lives changed, it was up to the law to catch up to those changes,” she said of her work as a litigator.