Ruth Bader Ginsburg – our nation’s leading advocate of “equality under law” – has died, and her loss will be widely felt.
Her impassioned and compelling judicial opinions – and dissents – which fought for (and advanced) gender equality and rights for the disabled, and against stereotypic prejudices of all types, were landmarks in American social and political progress.
A brilliant student, law professor and legal practitioner, she argued six cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won five of them. As the first female member of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, she raised the aspirations and motivations of generations that followed.
Entering the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 as an Associate Justice, she fought for, and won, in 1996 the watershed case condemning the Virginia Military Academy for its (then) male-only admissions policy as a violation of the 16th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause.
At this precarious moment in our nation’s history, with an arch-conservative Supreme Court turning back the clock on our previous advances, we will sorely miss her constructive thinking. For example, her principled opposition to the concept of “Citizens United”, which permits unlimited business political contributions, needs new advocates.
In these troubled times of militant polarization, with vehement rhetoric stimulating feelings of anger and fear, we desperately need rational, fair-minded leadership seeking productive compromises of disparate views in a continuing effort to produce “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
Those candidates – sharing the spirit of Ruth Bader Ginsburg – are there, and they need your support.
The answer is clear: REGISTER and VOTE for the “good guys and gals” (and encourage your friends and colleagues throughout the country to do so, too)!
By Daniel Rose