Official Portrait Courtesy United States Supreme Court.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen for a wide-ranging conversation in celebration of the 25th anniversary of her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here are some important highlights of the conversation:
Jeffrey Rosen: What are your thoughts on the #MeToo movement and will it prove lasting progress for women’s equality?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: It was a question I was asked this afternoon at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. What I wanted to convey there was that sexual harassment of women has gone on forever, but it didn’t get headlines until a woman named Catherine MacKinnon wrote a book called “Sexual Harassment of Working Women,” and that was the start of litigation under Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act]. A few cases came to the Supreme Court and they all came out right. But still, women were hesitant.
I think one of the principal reasons for it was because they feared that they would not be believed. The number of women who have come forward as a result of the #MeToo movement has been astonishing. My hope is not just that it is here to stay, but that it is as effective for the woman who works as a maid in a hotel as it is for Hollywood stars. [applause]
Rosen: Many women are wondering, will this prove a lasting advance for women or like previous discussions of sexual harassment in the 90’s will this advance pass?
Ginsburg: I think it will have staying power because people, and not only women, men as well as women, realize how wrong the behavior was and how it subordinated women. So we shall see, but my prediction is that it is here to stay.
Rosen: Why is it happening now? Is there something about what millennials are doing that has caused the #MeToo movement or is it something else?
Ginsburg: I think we can compare it to the gay-rights movement when people stepped up and said “this is who I am and I am proud of it.” They came out in numbers instead of hiding, disguising. That movement developed very rapidly, and I think we are seeing the same thing with sexual harassment.
Rosen: Did you see this one coming?
Ginsburg: No, no. And why did it happen just when it did? I’ve heard from women who told stories about Harvey Weinstein many years ago. And then the Times decided to do a big story on it. I think it was the press finally taking notice of something they knew long before that propelled it to the place it now holds in the public arena.
Rosen: What is your advice to all women, young women and to all women, about how to sustain the momentum of the movement and to make its changes lasting?
Ginsburg: I have heard from lawyers that women have come forward with stories about things that happened many years ago, and even though the statute of limitations is long past, these cases are being settled. One interesting thing is whether it will be an end to the confidentiality pledge. Women who complained and brought suit were offered settlements in which they would agree that they would never disclose what they had complained about. I suspect we will not see those agreements anymore.
Rosen: What are the legal changes necessary to make these reforms permanent?
Ginsburg: We have the legal reforms—we have had them for a long time. Title VII. It was argued early on that sexual harassment has nothing to do with gender discrimination. Everyone knows boys will be boys, and that was that. There are state and federal laws. The laws are there and the laws are in place, it takes people to step forward and use them.
Rosen: At Sundance, you told your own #MeToo story about an encounter at Cornell long ago. Tell the audience about that.
Ginsburg: I was in a chemistry class at Cornell. I was not very adept in the laboratory, so a teaching assistant decided to help me out so much that he offered to give me a practice exam the day before the actual exam. When I went into the room and looked at the exam paper, I found that it was the practice exam. Then I knew immediately what this instructor expected as a payoff. So, instead of being shy, I confronted him and said, how dare you do this? That is one of many, many stories that every woman of my vintage knows.
Rosen: What would you advise women to say in similar situation? Should they be similarly strong?
Ginsburg: Yes. Say this is bad behavior. You should not engage in it and I will not submit to it. But I think it is easier today because there are numbers to support the woman who says so. We no longer hear as often as we did in the past, she’s making it up.
Rosen: What is your advice to men in this new regime where people are trying to behave well and figure out what the new norms are?
Ginsburg: Just think how you would like the women in your family to be treated, particularly your daughters. And when you see men behaving in ways they should not, you should tell them this is improper behavior.
Rosen: There is a debate both among women and among men about what sort of behavior should be sanctionable, and one group is saying that it’s wrong to lump together violent behavior like Harvey Weinstein with less dramatic forms of sexual misconduct and others say that all misconduct is wrong and should be sanctioned.
Ginsburg: Well, there are degrees of conduct, yes. But any time a woman is put in a position where she is inferior, subordinate, there should be—she should complain, she should not be afraid.
Rosen: What about due process for the accused?
Ginsburg: Well, that must not be ignored and it goes beyond sexual harassment. The person who is accused has a right to defend herself or himself, and we certainly should not lose sight of that. Recognizing that these are complaints that should be heard. There’s been criticism of some college codes of conduct for not giving the accused person a fair opportunity to be heard, and that’s one of the basic tenants of our system, as you know, everyone deserves a fair hearing.
Rosen: Are some of those criticisms of the college codes valid?
Ginsburg: Do I think they are? Yes.
Rosen: I think people are hungry for your thoughts about how to balance the values of due process against the need for increased gender equality.
Ginsburg: It’s not one or the other. It’s both. We have a system of justice where people who are accused get due process, so it’s just applying to this field what we have applied generally.
Rosen: Some women also fear backlash. They worry that women may have less opportunity for mentorship at work because guys are afraid of interacting with them. Is this valid or not?
Ginsburg: Well, let me ask you—as a man—do you think that you will be hesitant to encourage women because of the #MeToo movement?
Rosen: On the contrary, I have felt, like many men, sensitized to the plight of women by hearing these stories and it seems like an entirely salutary thing.
Ginsburg: Yes
The full conversation was streamed live on Feb 12, 2018 and is available at
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1933. She married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954, and has a daughter, Jane, and a son, James. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959–1961. From 1961–1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963–1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972–1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977–1978. In 1971, she was instrumental in launching the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat August 10, 1993.
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