Irin Carmon Quotes & Sayings

Actually, there is no biological connection whatsoever between the function of giving birth to and nursing a child and the function of washing its clothes, preparing its food, and trying to bring it up to be a good and harmonious person," Moberg wrote. "Both men and women have one main role: that of being human beings." In — Irin Carmon

A conversation with her is a special pleasure because there are no words that are not preceded by thoughts. — Irin Carmon

She likes to quote the opening words of the Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union." Beautiful, yes, but as she always points out, "we the people" originally left out a lot of people. "It would not include me," RBG said, or enslaved people, or Native Americans. Over the course of the centuries, people left out of the Constitution fought to have their humanity recognized by it. RBG sees that struggle as her life's work. — Irin Carmon

Ruth, if you don't want to go to law school, you have the best reason in the world and no one would think less of you," Morris said. "But if you really want to go to law school, you will stop feeling sorry for yourself. You will find a way. — Irin Carmon

After that first year, a classmate named Rhoda Isselbacher, who was pregnant during the exam period, informed the men she would use their bathroom whether they liked it or not. — Irin Carmon

If only the court had acted more slowly,' RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women's equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had 'halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue. (85). — Irin Carmon

I don't see myself in the role of a great dissenter and I would much rather carry another mind even if it entails certain compromises," RBG said at a roundtable on judging in 1985. "Of course there is a question of bedrock principle where I won't compromise," she added, but she had "learned a lot about other minds paying attention to people's personalities in this job. — Irin Carmon

There's full marriage and then there's sort of skim milk marriage. — Irin Carmon

When the jabot with scalloped glass beads glitters flat against the top of RBG's black robe, it's bad news for liberals. That's her dissent collar. — Irin Carmon

RBG also understood that how pregnant women were treated had to do with sex. Only a woman's body showed proof of having sex, and only women were punished for having it. — Irin Carmon

RBG has never been very interested in drawing attention to herself without a good reason. That's how you know that when she does send up smoke signals, something has gone very wrong. — Irin Carmon

Someday, we will go back to having the kind of legislature that we should, where members, whatever party they belong to, want to make the thing work and cooperate with each other to see that that will happen. — Irin Carmon

IRIN: And when the time comes, what would you like to be remembered for? RBG: Someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has. - MSNBC interview, 2015 — Irin Carmon

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity," she said simply. "It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices. — Irin Carmon

RBG often repeated her mother's advice that getting angry was a waste of your own time. Even more often, she shared her mother-in-law's counsel for marriage: that sometimes it helped to be a little deaf. — Irin Carmon

The world as it was had no room for her. — Irin Carmon

Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time. — Irin Carmon

April 18, 2007: RBG launches her era of furious dissent with the abortion case Gonzales v. Carhart. — Irin Carmon

Anyway, hope springs eternal. If I lose today, there's hope that tomorrow will be better." - RBG, 2012 — Irin Carmon

What Wiesenfeld meant by "alternative," and what was hinted by RBG's use of the phrase life partner was a marriage in which the woman didn't lose herself and her autonomy, in which two humans shared their lives and goals on equal footing. — Irin Carmon

Put another way, RBG was already a radical just by being herself - a woman who beat the odds to make her mark. — Irin Carmon

RBG's main concession to hitting her late seventies was to give up waterskiing. — Irin Carmon

When Scalia dissents, he pours gasoline on the majority, lights a match, and stomps on the ashes. — Irin Carmon

For some reason, people repeatedly have asked RBG when she thought there would be enough women on the court. The question is asinine, her answer effective: 'When there are nine. — Irin Carmon

There were similarities too. Brooklyn. Like the swaggering lyricist, this tiny Jewish grandmother who demanded patience as she spoke could also pack a verbal punch. — Irin Carmon

Scalia would bring the spoils of a recent hunting trip. "Scalia kills it and Marty cooks it," said guest and former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson in 2007. "I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point, — Irin Carmon

If my opinion runs more than twenty pages," she said, "I am disturbed that I couldn't do it shorter." The mantra in her chambers is "Get it right and keep it tight." She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion's opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. "If you can say it in plain English, you should," RBG says. Going through "innumerable drafts," the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. "I think that law should be a literary profession," RBG says, "and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft. — Irin Carmon

RBG's old friend Gloria Steinem, who marvels at seeing the justice's image all over campuses, is happy to see RBG belie Steinem's own long-standing observation: "Women lose power with age, and men gain it." Historically, one way women have lost power is by being nudged out the door to make room for someone else. — Irin Carmon

least he had taken that half step. RBG wrote of the case, "Wiesenfeld is part of an evolution toward a policy of neutrality - a policy that will accommodate traditional patterns, but at the same time, one that requires removal of artificial constraints so that men and women willing to explore their full potential as humans may create new traditions by their actions. — Irin Carmon

It is as though a special, zestful spice seasons my work and days," RBG said after her first recovery. "Each thing I do comes with a heightened appreciation that I am able to do it." That — Irin Carmon

The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage. — Irin Carmon

Always be independent. — Irin Carmon

Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability." The analogy had special meaning in the constitutional context: In a series of cases triggered by Brown v. Board of Education, the court had said that laws that classified on the basis of race were almost always unconstitutional, or deserving "strict scrutiny." The court had said in Reed that it wasn't applying strict scrutiny, but then it seemed to do so anyway. Were laws that classified what men and women could do blatantly unconstitutional the way laws classifying by race were? RBG boldly urged the court to say they were. — Irin Carmon

Present the court with the next logical step, — Irin Carmon

Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny," RBG said. "I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don't share that belief. — Irin Carmon

Her former Columbia Law mentee Diane Zimmerman remembers the exuberant party thrown by students and faculty. RBG sat on the floor giggling, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken out of a bucket. — Irin Carmon

I think that men and women, shoulder to shoulder, will work together to make this a better world. Just as I don't think that men are the superior sex, neither do I think women are. I think that it is great that we are beginning to use the talents of all of the people, in all walks of life, and that we no longer have the closed doors that we once had." - RBG — Irin Carmon

August 19, 1981: President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court. Male justices who had made noises over the years about resigning if a woman ever joined their ranks stay put. — Irin Carmon

RBG's most famous words in the Hobby Lobby dissent could have appeared in any of her searing dissents: "The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield. — Irin Carmon

When a handful of students came to RBG in 1970 and asked her to teach the first-ever Rutgers class on women and the law, she was ready to agree. It took her only about a month to read every federal decision and every law review article about women's status. There wasn't much. One popular textbook included the passage "Land, like woman, was meant to be possessed. — Irin Carmon

People have found her somber, but it is sometimes because her humor is so deadpan dry that it escapes many. — Irin Carmon

But lately, RBG was tired of pretending not to hear. — Irin Carmon

Suddenly, she felt the ground steady under her. These men, the most important judges in the country, were her captive audience for the next ten minutes. RBG knew so much more about the case and the topic than they did. She had to teach them. She knew how to do that. RBG had been teaching law for almost a decade. — Irin Carmon