We all need heroes. Heroes who embody our highest ideals and inspire us. Heroes who rise to the occasion when faced with challenging circumstances.
For many, (and long before her likeness was featured on bobblehead action figures or internet memes as the “Notorious RBG”) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was that hero. Her fearlessness; her principled pursuit of equity; her perseverance; and her razor-edged intellect were her superpowers and she wielded them to great effect.
Justly recognized as a feminist icon for her work as one of the architects of the successful legal challenges to gender discrimination in the 1970s, Justice Ginsburg’s influence and interests did not stop there. Throughout her career she focused on equal application of the law, extending its protections to previously under-represented peoples, and called out inconsistencies (whether in logic or in principle) when the law, or the enforcement of the law, fell short.
Justice Ginsburg’s death leaves a vacancy on the Supreme Court, one that President Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell have promised to fill in advance of the upcoming election. A great deal has already been written about the political gamesmanship (and projected consequences) associated with Justice Ginsburg’s death. We too will weigh in on this in the coming weeks. However, today, we want to first pause, celebrate, and pay personal tribute to a woman who has meant so much to us all here at Atrómitos.
As a woman-owned business (populated in large part by women attorneys) it would be difficult to overstate Justice Ginsburg’s influence on us, both individually and collectively. She modeled what is possible when a person has confidence in one’s convictions and capacity to effect change; when one stubbornly refuses to accept the limitations of the present or the prerogatives of the powerful.
A trailblazer and a legal titan known equally for her uncompromising legal analysis and her collegiality, Justice Ginsburg was also notable for her dogged faith in the capacity that we can all do better: that the arc of the moral universe may be long, but that it does bend toward justice. She was revered for the cogency of her dissenting opinions. In a 2002 interview with Nina Totenberg, Justice Ginsburg reflected on the power of dissent s: “Dissents speak to a future age…the greatest dissents do become court opinion….that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.”
When asked in 2015 how she would like to be remembered, Justice Ginsburg responded simply: “[As] someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.” This is a life ambition amply fulfilled and one to which we the women of Atrómitos aspire.
Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.
–The Atrómitos Team
