>> be in the supreme court? >> for there other justices saying they were happy to see you there? o'connor was the most welcoming.

>> i don't consider myself a journalist. i began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have the day job of running a private equity firm. how do you define leadership? >> when you went to cornell, your grades were good. you got into harvard law school. was the class half women and half men? [laughter] those ancient days, i went to law school between 1956 and 1959. 500 of us.over none of us were women.

there were five women. , harvard law school, it is about 50% women. [applause] >> in your harvard law school class, you did extremely well and got onto the harvard law review and you are near the top of your class, maybe first of five in your class. when your husband needed to move to new york, you wanted to transfer to columbia law school and the dean of the harvard law school did not think that was such a great idea if you wanted to be a harvard graduate. >> yes. he said i had to spend my third year at harvard. martyason i didn't was was diagnosed with a testicular tumor in his third year of law school. days for cancer cure.

there was no such thing as chemotherapy, there was only massive radiation. he did not know whether he would survive. i did not want to be a single mom. we wanted to stay together as a family. marty had a good job with a firm in new york. i asked the dean, i thought it would be an easy answer if i could complete my education at columbia and have a harvard degree. absolutely not. you must spend your third year here. i had the perfect rebuttal. there was a cornell classmate of mine who had had her first year of law school elsewhere. she transferred into our second

year class. , she willthe dean have her second and third year ,nd will earn a harvard degree but i think it is universally understood that the first year of law school is the most important. it should make no difference. but i was told a rule is a rule. >> he went to columbia law school and your degree is from columbia. you did extremely well in the review there as well. from the harvard law review and the columbia law review, you were flooded with job offers. [laughter] firm in wasn't a single the entire city of new york.

i have set i had three strikes against me. i was jewish. firms were just beginning to welcome jews. then i was a woman. killer, i was a mother. my daughter was four years old when i graduated from law school. might take a chance on a woman were not going to take a chance on a mother. >> one of your law professors with pauljudgeship mainieri. was that easy to do because you are a mother? >> he had no qualms about a woman. he had had a woman is a law clerk before. concerned, the southern

district of new york was a busy court. would need a law clerk stayed even on a sunday. i found out about this years later. i did not know at the time. give her a chance and if she doesn't work out, there is a , he will in the class jump in and take over. there was also a stick. ,f you don't give her a chance i will never recommend another student to you. that is how it was for women of my vintage. clerkship, you got a position as a law professor at

rutgers. jus. ginsberg: yes. i was working for the columbia project on international procedure. david: how did you get connected to the aclu and your trailblazing efforts in gender discrimination and gender law? it came about first from my students at course ino wanted a women and the law. library ando the inside of a month, i read every federal decision ever written about gender-based issues in the law. time, new complaints were coming into the new jersey affiliate of the aclu, complaints of the kind the aclu had not seen before. one group of complainers were

public school teachers, who were when theternity leave pregnancy began to show because , weschool districts worried don't want the little children to think their teacher swallowed a watermelon. women -- the leave was unpaid and there was no guaranteed right to return. complain, so it was the two things coming together. the students wanting to learn about women's matters under the complaints coming to the aclu. , it was a strip -- tremendous stroke of good fortune.

up until the start of the 1970's, it simply wasn't in thee to move courts direction of recognizing women as people of equal citizenship stature. david: when president clinton became president, you were obviously somebody being considered and president clinton said, women don't want her. jus. ginsberg: i had written a comment on roe v. wade and it was not 100% supporting that decision. ♪

david: you won a number of cases in the aclu. you are asked to go on to the u.s. court of appeals district of columbia by president carter. were you surprised to get that appointment? or were you wanting to be a professor? jus. ginsberg: president carter deserves a norm us credit for what the federal bench looks like today. hen he became president,

noticed that the federal judges all looked like him, they were all white and male. carter appreciated that that is -- look.he states luck so he was determined to put women and members of minority groups in the federal courts in numbers, not as one at a time curiosity's. over 25he appointed women to district court togeships and 11 women courts of appeals and i was i think the last of them. david: you served 13 years in the court of appeals, district of columbia. after 13 years, did you think you had a chance to be on the supreme court or did you think this was something that might never happen? my. ginsberg: no one thinks,

aim in life is to be a supreme court justice, it just is not realistic. there are only nine of us. luck has a lot to do with who are the particular nine at a particular time. so, growing up, i never had an idea of being any kind of judge. women were barely there on the bench. when carter became president, it was only one woman in a federal court of appeals. he made her the first ever secretary of education. then there were none again. and nochanged that president ever went back. reagan did not want to be outdone by carter. to put thermined

first woman in the u.s. supreme court. search and they came up with a spectacular choice in sandra day o'connor. david: when president clinton became president, you were somebody being considered and then president clinton talked to somebody pushing for your appointment and president clinton said, women don't want her. how could that have been the case when you were the leading lawyer in gender discrimination? why would women have not wanted you or some women not want to do in the supreme court? jus. ginsberg: just some women. most women were overwhelmingly supportive of my nomination. written a comment on 100%. wade and it was not supporting that decision.

what i said was the court has an easy target because the texas law was the most extreme in the -- abortion could be had only if necessary to save the woman's life. it does not matter that her health would be ruined, that she was the victim of rape or inset. i thought roe v. wade was an easy case in the supreme court could have held that most extreme law unconstitutional and put down the pen. instead, the court wrote an abortionhat made every restriction in the country illegal in one fell swoop. was not the way that the court ordinarily operated. it waits until the next case and

the next case. , some women felt i should have been 100% in favor of roe v. wade. david: president clinton met with you and you had a good meeting and he offered you the appointment and the confirmation went pretty well, would you say? yes, insberg: 96-3, would say. [laughter] [applause] you have now been in the court 26 years and therefore in total you have been in the federal judiciary 39 years. 26 years in the supreme court. when you first got on the court, where the other justices saying, we are happy to see you here, let's go have dinner together, let's socialize, or where they standoffish? what was your relationship with sandra day o'connor like in the court as the second woman in the court? jus. ginsberg: the court was not

an unknown territory to me. i had worked at the court of appeals. , a judgee in a while she was quite senior would call me and say, we are going for lunch. was the biggest liquor distributor in the d.c. area. [laughter] jus. ginsberg: before we went to his warehouse, we would stop at the supreme court and pick up --tice brennan and justice i knew justice scalia from our court of appeals days. i knew justice clarence thomas, who was also in the d.c. circuit. sandra was as close as i came to

having a big sister. and i did have a big sister, but she died in my infancy, so i never knew her. o'connor was the most welcoming. she gave me some very good advice. not only when i was a new justice, but also during my first cancer battle. justice o'connor had breast bench and she was on the nine days after her cancer surgeries. david: wow. ruth,insberg: she said, you have your chemotherapy on friday, that way you will get over it during the weekend, see you can be back. [laughter] way to win the best a case if you are arguing one before the supreme court is to write a great brief, to write --

be a great oral advocate, does the oral argument make a difference or the brief or what is the best way to win a case in the supreme court? for somebody who might want to argue a case. [laughter] an oral argument at the court is not a debate. i would say the two components, the brief is by far the most important. it is what we start with and what we end up with when we go back to chambers. oral argument is fleeting. david: if somebody wants to be in the supreme court, do you send in a letter applying or how does that work? [laughter] jus. ginsberg: we get hundreds and hundreds of applications. ♪

david: the court meets from october until june, more or less. what do the justices do in july and august? do they sit around reading briefs or did they do other things? one thing that follows us throughout the world all over the year is death penalty business, which the court treats like a firing squad. very often, when an execution date is set, there is an 11th hour application for a stay. responsiblece is for the final vote. we all are called wherever we are in the world.

in addition, most of us take some time off to teach. david: so, today, when you are thinking about the court, what is it that gives you the greatest hope for the future of the court and the way it works? jus. ginsberg: i think that all of us review the institutions in theh we work -- revere institutions in which we work and we want to leave it in as good shape as we found it. david: if somebody wants to be a supreme court clerk, each justice gets for clerks, do you just send in a letter applying or how does that work? [laughter] jus. ginsberg: we get hundreds of applications. source for law clerks are other judges, other federal judges. tend to write

glowing letters of recommendation. everyone is the best and the brightest that has ever graduated from their class. [laughter] jus. ginsberg: but my colleagues in other federal courts will tell me the straight story. very often, i will get a call from another federal judge saying, i have a clerk this year who i think would be just right for you. best are my recommendations. david: we have a few questions from people attending today. if you could change one thing about the constitution, what would it be and why? [laughter] probably, ifs you you are a founding father, founding mother -- [laughter] david: what might you have put in the constitution that did not get in there? jus. ginsberg: i would add an equal rights amendment. [applause]

jus. ginsberg: i explain it this way. when i take out my pocket constitution to show my granddaughters, i can show them the first amendment guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. i can't point to anything that men are persons of equal citizenship stature. every constitution in the world written since the year 1950 has the equivalent of that statement , men and women are persons equal in stature before the law. i would like my next great-grandchild to have a constitution that includes that statement, that this is a fundamental premise of our

society, just the way freedom of thought and expression. david: what gives you the most hope for the future? jus. ginsberg: my granddaughters. [applause] jus. ginsberg: i'm very proud of my oldest granddaughter, who is a lawyer. cares a great deal about our country. about its highest values. she and other young people like us gethink will help back on track. [applause] david: ok. what do you think is the biggest threat to our democracy? [laughter] jus. ginsberg: a public that doesn't care about preserving

the rights we have. you know that great speech on liberty? he says the fire dies in the hearts of people, there is no constitution that can restore it. faith is in the spirit of liberty. david: when you go to a restaurant these days, can you actually have dinner without a selfie request or people coming up for autographs? is it possible? jus. ginsberg: it is amazing. i'm 86 and a half years old and everyone wants to take a picture with me. [laughter] [applause] david: justice ginsburg, i want to thank you very much for a very interesting conversation.

[applause] thank you for your service to our country over 39 years. [applause] ♪ from the couldn't be prouders

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