A Legacy in Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Part 2

In part two of Professor Michael Cousineau's class on the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we hear from Justice Jon Streeter of the California Court of Appeals, Dr. Sylvia Drew Ivie, Special Advisor to the President of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and Angela Oh, a Los Angeles mediator. They share reflections on Ginsburg’s life and work, the implications for our own lives, and what she meant to so many.

Learn more about this episode and others at keck.usc.edu/pphs/podcast

Stay in the loop - subscribe to the Preventive Dose newsletter for monthly news straight to your inbox.

Follow us on social - find us at @uscpphs

• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• X
• YouTube

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

From the health sciences campus

Speaker 2: 0:03

At university of Southern California comes pop an occasional series, exploring perspectives, Connecting community research, and students giving us a real world perspective as told by those, seen through the public health lens. I'm your host, Gardena, Domingez, Gonzalez, and alumnus of the master of public health program at USC. I'm also a research coordinator here in the department of preventative medicine and office for social justice. Come back to our special two-part premiere of pop perspectives on public health. We're back in class with professor Michael Cousineau where we'll hear from just as John Streeter, dr. Sylvia drew Ivy and Angela. Oh, on justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and how she impacted the lives of so many. If you haven't listened to part one, I invite you to check it out, to hear a moving tribute in short talk from professor Ariel gross of USC gold school of law. On some of the impactful cases justice Ginsburg was involved in.

Speaker 1: 1:13

You now have three guests who are going to respond to, uh, professor Gross's presentation. We're going to start with a justice straighter. Thank you. I think it's fitting that you started today with some words, um, from, from layer and Samantha, that really highlighted the fact that going forward for all of us in the law and in all fields, including, uh, especially relevant to you healthcare, we are standing on the shoulders of a giant, and we should remember just how monumental the impact of one individual can be. It's relevant to your careers going forward, you know, to the entire country and indeed to the world that you think of the arc of her, of justice Ginsburg's career and how she became who she was. When I learned of her loss on Friday, I'll not forget the moment. You know, it was one of those moments, you know, I'm old enough to remember the terrible losses of great leaders in the 1960s. And this was one of those moments for me on Friday. It, it cut personally, not just because of what I do. I too, of course, I'm an appellate judge, but my career intersected with her in what is for me a very personal way. And I, and I wanted to share this with you because when, when, when our paths crossed, I was probably younger than everybody in this class today, I was 25 years old. I was in, I was a law clerk. Those were listening closely to my buyout, may have noted that I started in the law as a law clerk on the DC circuit court of appeals. She was a brand new judge on that court. And I worked for a different judge, judge, Harry Edwards, and the two of them, uh, were extremely close and have, have remained close over the years. Um, I have vivid memories of sitting in a courtroom and watching a panel of three judges. One of which was my judge, judge Edwards. And one of which was judge Ginsburg. Uh, judge Ginsburg was diminutive. She was quite small soft-spoken, uh, but on more than one occasion, I saw her tear advocates limb from limb. If they did not come prepared to oral argument, she was rigorous in her thought. She was, she was demanding a principled, but in a quiet way. And it is because of that start that I had, uh, in an institution and the judicial institution where she was a leader that I have always remembered the standard that she set for for excellence in what she did. When I learned on Friday of her passing, uh, you know, it was a difficult experience and it took a, uh, a couple of days to absorb it. W w one of the things I did was I went back and I read a couple of things, opinions that professor gross is, has just mentioned the, uh, the VMI case, uh, that she is so well known for in the Shelby County dissent, just to, to, to be close to her words and, and, and, and to truly appreciate the craftsmanship, uh, with which she worked. I also went back and I pulled out a transcript from the year 2000, uh, when justice Ginsburg, uh, then on the U S Supreme court, uh, was invited back to the DC circuit. And the judge I worked for judge Edwards was then chief judge of that court. And the occasion was to hang a portrait of justice Ginsburg in the ceremonial courtroom there at the DC circuit. And I thought that I would just quickly give you some of the, um, most memorable quotes from that day, because those who spoke were the people who were closest to her, loved her as professional colleagues the most. So it sort of brings you in a bit to her inner circle, uh, to hear the things, uh, that people who knew her best said about her then. And I found these quotes to be particularly meaningful, and I hope you will, too. Uh, first there was a lawyer in, in civil rights, uh, Debra Merritt, who early in their two careers as a lawyer in New Jersey and New York on civil rights cases about justice Ginsburg, uh, ms. Merritt said she found, uh, most striking her remarkable decision-making style. There are people who see the trees who focus on them detail on every picture. And there are some people who see the forest who have the vision to grasp the entire picture. Good judges. I think combined both of these traits, the essence of our judicial system is to use the trees, the individual cases to generate the forest, which is our terrain of justice. Uh, you went on, um, ms. Merritt went on to say that justice Ginsburg has set a virtually unmatchable standard of wisdom, principled decision-making integrity, and Kristalina prose. She has shown a complete generation of her law clerks, her humanity, her caring, and her commitment to mentoring us not only during our clerkship years, but throughout, uh, their careers and this, by the way, is something that I found particularly moving, because I know what it means to be in the clerkship family of one of those judges from that era. And I to have remained a mentee, um, all these decades later up of judge Edwards. And, and he, he has told me over the years of his close friendship with Ms. Justice Ginsburg, and she treats her former clerks the same way it was said by ms. Merit about justice Ginsburg. She cares deeply about language and clarity. And this has to do with craft, what we do as appellate judges. She uses words to discipline thought to convey truth, and to keep it simple. She has Hughes, bombastic statements, flowery prose, argumentative, text, and muddled reasoning. She has achieved a gracefulness in her writing that accentuates her equally refined reasoning. This elegance will preserve her legacy justice Ginsburg draws life and strength from legal principles in the same way that most of us draw strength from food, water, and sleep. That's a statement about how hard she worked and how absorbed she was in it. But for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, these principles are not just sterile concepts and legal debates are far from abstract logic games. Justice Ginsburg knows that legal rules affect people. And she cares deeply about how those rules shape people's lives this quiet, but the compassion for people is the characteristic that best defines justice Ginsburg and that what we admire most about her. I also picked out a series of quotes from Kathleen Paradis, who worked at the ACLU women's rights project with justice Ginsburg before she joined the bench. And she had an angle on justice Ginsburg that I think it is important to bear in mind, regardless of whether, you know, you have a degree of spirituality in your life or what kind it is, there is morality in the law. There is no question. Every one of us, you know, who works in the legal world on this call today understands that. But I thought this was an interesting observation on justice. Ginsburg's what she brought from her spiritual life to what she did. And ms. Paradis comments were on Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a Jew, a dimension. She said, I have come to understand and appreciate in the last several years for one thing, I see the contrast between her activism as an advocate and her moderation as a jurist, as influenced by her understanding of Jewish traditions. The model of her activism is as the prophet, the one who is the outsider and describes society's brokenness, whose warnings of impending doom are meant to awaken listeners and inspire them to change their ways and doom real its own experience, sensitized her to this brokenness, the fractures of our planet and our society, the gap between promise and fulfillment between rhetoric and reality. She acutely felt herself to be an outsider. She often described sex and pregnancy discrimination, she herself experienced. So those observations about this truly remarkable person for me, I found, uh, to be comforting as I have grieved for this great judicial leader, as so many millions across the country, and indeed across the world have thought, I thank you for the time to share those thoughts with you on such an incredibly impactful person. Thank you, justice Raider. And thank you for all the work that you do introduce now, a Soviet you Sylvia

Speaker 3: 11:22

Morning, everybody. This is, uh, quite, uh, quite a profound that gathering that you've put together this morning. Michael, thank you for including me. I, um, I just want to, to share my personal feelings, uh, about this person and this passing, um, and what it means to me, not so much in terms of her vaunted scholarship and skill, uh, and standing, um, but I'm indebted to her and it's very emotional actually, because she embodies the wisdom of marshaling, uh, the fight against, uh, uh, sex discrimination with the fight against racial and ethnic discrimination. And it has been hard for me as a feminist and as a civil rights lawyer to feel that I'm part of both of those communities, because very often, uh, the women's movement has felt very exclusionary, uh, racially and ethnically and Ruth Bader Ginsberg did not fall into that category. When, when she heard the Shelby County case, she could have been any civil rights leader, African American or Latino or Asian Pacific Islander, because she knew and she felt, and she understood that we were all in that boat of a disenfranchised together. And when she shared the logic of the race cases, it wasn't just to use them, but to embrace them that, that she was part of that advocacy, uh, motion as much as she was the advocacy for equality and respect of law for women. So I've been so struck by how emotional everyone's responses to this passing the people who went to the Supreme court and just wept and leaned on one another, because she was just so rare. You know, she was so little, but she was so huge in her passion and her understanding and her ability to make everyone feel that they were in the tent, uh, that she was working towards. So that's just what I wanted to share. And I know that she was important to black people and Brown people and, and, uh, uh, Pacific Islander leaders, because we felt that she represented us too.

Speaker 4: 14:15

Thank you, Sylvia, Angela. I know you have to leave, leave us soon, but I wanted to give you as much time as you can afford to us.

Speaker 3: 14:23

Thank you. And I want to, uh, appreciate as well, the presenters that have made their comments about the passage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the impact that she's made on our lives, whether we know it or not. I mean, she definitely was, um, a jurist who understood what it meant to be on the margins, and it wasn't limited to gender and race and pregnancy. And it was like anybody who brought their appeal forward

Speaker 5: 14:52

That was doing so on the basis of having experienced what it meant to be on the margins. And I feel that, um, we have a feast of losses going on right now. What that means to me is that, um, while we have to appreciate that feast, um, we have to also process what the next piece will be. So my work right now is mediating discrimination, harassment, retaliation, hate crimes, trafficking, human trafficking. These are the cases I'm seeing on the ground now. And I am a practitioner of meditation, as well as mediation. I love the mediation process because it empowers the parties at least to bring into the conversation about where resolution might rest to consider everything without, um, exclusion based on, on rules of evidence and procedure, which are very important when you're in a formal litigation posture. But when you are trying to simply get to a resolution so that you can close an unpleasant chapter in life and move on, then this process is a wonderful process. And for Bader Ginsburg, what she was able to do was bring that humanity and compassion to the work that she did at the highest court in our land. And what we're seeing right now is, um, a manipulation. This is my own personal opinion, a manipulation that is very dangerous for all of us. Um, there are blessings in these conflicts and these losses that we must sustain in life. It's unrealistic to think you go through life and everything is fine. If you don't get into a situation where taking some hits, you never learn what it means to really be a person of compassion. And to really understand where you, you stand in life and Ruth Bader Ginsburg because of her gender, because of her religion, because of her physical stature, she was always in this position of encountering suffering of one form or another. And that's suffering was sometimes in the form of, we don't have space for you because of what you look like, what you believe, who you are as a person. And yet she was able to find the wherewithal and the courage and the intelligence it's to move the conversation closer to what I refer to generally these days is humanity. You know, these are human beings lives that we're talking about. We had 27 million people without healthcare before the ACA it's a big case that's coming up. Maybe the biggest case on the Supreme court docket in which happens to have been set one week after the election. You see what the implications are here, huge, huge implications. And that number has gone up since 2017, the people who are left with no options, you as students at a campus at, at USC, I have two nieces who went to that school. I understand very well, the privilege that you enjoy by being students there, you don't have to think about what you will do if you get sick or you get injured, but there are many, many millions of people in this country who needed a Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be on that bench. You know, in our own ways, we find, um, a role that we can play once upon a time, I actually chaired the committee that selected judges who would serve for the entire life on the federal bench. You know, I, I can't tell you how awesome it was to have the opportunity to sit with others on the committee and go through literally, you know, we had a hundred applications or so, and, uh, to try and figure out what kind of character, what kind of intelligence, what kind of training did you have to go to the most elite universities? What kind of life experience did you bring? Because these are lifetime appointments. And while the federal bench is not what we call the people's court is the court of first impression on facts that need to be understood in light of what the law and precedent allows us to do when there's a conflict and litigation is the choice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she, she was able to teach. So she understood students. She understood the questions that are out there. She was able to serve and review decisions and the rationale, and she was naturally a brilliant individual and a brilliant woman who had great hearts. So I really appreciate this conversation. I appreciate the opportunity to, um, kind of reflect with you and I want to close with a poem also. So this is, um, a poem that I hope will actually inspire you. Um, and it is by our country's poet Laureate, joy, joy, Harjo it's called when the world is, we knew it ended. We were dreaming on an occupied Island at the farthest edge of a trembling nation. When it went down, two towers Rose up from the East Island of commerce and touch. The sky. Men walked on the moon, oil was sucked dry by two brothers. Then it went down swallowed by a fire dragon by oil and fear eaten hole. It was coming. It had been watching since the Eve of the missionaries in their long and Saul, and to see what would happen. We saw it from the kitchen window over the sink. As we made coffee, cooked rice and potatoes enough for an army, we saw it all. As we changed diapers and fed the babies. We saw it through the branches of the knowledgeable tree, through the snags of stars, through the sun and storms of our knees. And we bathed and watched wash the floor. The conference of the birds warned us as they flew over destroyers in the Harbor park there, since the first takeover, it was by their song and talk. We knew when to rise, when to look out the window to the commotion, going on the magnetic field, thrown off by grief. We heard it, the racket in every corner of the world, as the hunger for war Rose up in those who had steel to be president, to be King or emperor or own the trees, the stones and everything else that moved about the earth inside the earth and above it, we knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence from each leaf and flower from every mountain, sea, and desert from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe, floating in the skies of infinite being. And then it was over the world. We had grown to love for it, sweet grasses for the many colored horses and fishes for the shimmering possibilities while dreaming. But then there were seeds to plant and the babies who needed milk and comforting, and someone picked up a guitar RUCA Lailey from the rebel and began to sing about the flutter and the light, the kick beneath the skin of the earth. We felt there beneath us, a warm animal, a song being born between the legs of her, a poem. This is a time for poetry and it's a time for hard work. And so find your Sistance wherever you can, and then get ready to do the hard work. Thank you very much for your time.

Speaker 4: 22:57

Thank you, Angela. Thank you, justice straighter. Thank you. So be a drew Ivy and thank you, professor gross has been amazing. You can see the connections between when Angela said in terms of the hard work and the work of justice Ginsberg in wet, both. I think if everybody has brought it up, which is the connection to the affordable care act, because of that, it's important as part of this hard work for you to understand what's in that bill, what's in that law and what's at stake.

Speaker 5: 23:34

This two-part premiere focusing on justice, Ginsberg and her legacy. As you heard, she was involved in so many historical moments impacting public health. I'll be back next time, our first interview

Speaker 2: 23:46

Of this series until then you can keep up with USC and our department on social media at USC PHS or search public health sciences at USC. This series is brought to you by the department of preventive medicine at Keck school of medicine of USC home to high impact research and undergraduate graduate, and doctoral programs, training future leaders in the population and public health sciences. If you'd like to learn more, visit P m.usc.edu.