RBG

On the other end of the spectrum of Supreme Court justices from Brett Kavanaugh is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed to the court in 1993, and before that a trailblazing advocate for equality of the sexes. In the past few years, especially since she has been moved into the unfortunate position of being in dissent, she has become a folk hero, entering pop culture as "the Notorious RBG," a take-off on the rapper Biggie Smalls. Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen have capitalized on Ginsburg's popularity with RBG, a documentary which made much more money that documentaries usually do.

Certainly this film is preaching to the choir--aside from her ill-considered remarks about Donald Trump during the campaign, there is nothing here to indicate Ginsburg isn't anything but honest and resolute--RBG manages to be entertaining as well as informative. Those who only know Ginsburg as the little old granny who writes scathing dissents against the likes of Samuel Alito and John Roberts would be interested to know that during the '60s and '70s she was a tireless advocate for women's rights, arguing six cases before the Supreme Court and winning five.

Ginsburg was born in bred in Brooklyn, and went to Cornell as an undergraduate, where many parents sent their daughters off to be married. She did marry, to Martin Ginsburg, who became her partner for life and a complete supporter of her career. She want to Harvard Law, was named to the Harvard Review, and then graduated from Columbia law, but no firm would hire her. She ended up teaching at Rutgers, and became part of a web of women looking for cases to establish equal rights for women, as promised in the 14th Amendment. The first was a woman in the Air Force who was denied housing benefits by the military simply because she was a woman. The other, in a canny move, was a man being discriminated against by not receiving social security benefits after his wife died. The film uses recordings (all Supreme Court cases are audio recorded, but of course not televised) to show that for the all-man court sexual discrimination was unknown to them.

Ginsburg was appointed to the federal bench by Jimmy Carter and, then, after the retirement of Byron White, Bill Clinton had his first Supreme Court appointment. His first choice was Mario Cuomo, who turned him down, and he dithered, but after meeting Ginsburg he made her his choice within fifteen minutes of speaking to her. She was the Thurgood Marshall of women's rights.

Ginsburg's first chance to write an opinion for women's rights was United States v. Virginia, in which she wrote that the Virginia Military Institute could not refuse to accept women simply because they were women. In the film she is seen proudly attending a gathering of female VMI graduates. But as the court has drifted right, she has more often been in dissent, though this has borne fruit. She was on the losing side of the Ledbetter v. Goodyear case, in which a woman was blatantly paid less money than a man for doing the same job, but this spurred congress to pass the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which was first bill signed by Barack Obama.

The film had the full participation of Ginsburg and her family, and she sits for an interview (the most amusing part was when she was shown Kate McKinnon's impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live, which she had never seen before). She loves the opera, and even gets to act in a production, which she takes great delight in. Amazingly, she was close friends with Antonin Scalia, which some of her friends can't believe, and is known for being a bad cook. Her son says he will never eat swordfish again after what she did to it. She is also a serious person--her daughter says they had a book called "Mommy Laughs," which was very skimpy.

Gnsburg, now 85, is asked about her future on the court. She did not heed calls for her to retire while Obama was president, to ensure she would be replaced by someone of similar thinking. Trump must be salivating at the thought of replacing her, so she has to live at least two more years. She is shown in a rigorous work out, though, probably doing more exercise than I could, so I feel good about her chances. God knows we need her.