Ruth Bader…Lolita?
Ginsburg studied creative writing at Cornell University with a very famous—well, with a relatively famous, but very infamous—instructor. She credits Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, with changing the very manner in which she not only wrote, but read. Metaphorical imagery fills in the gap:
“Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.”
Delivery of a Country
D.W. Griffith made a controversial movie in which he pretty much credited the birth of the United States to the hard-working slave-owners of the south. In an editorial for school paper published in 1946, Ginsburg takes a somewhat different path through history:
“The Declaration of Independence of our own U.S. may well be considered one of the most important steps in the shaping of the world. It marked the birth of a new nation, a nation that has so grown in strength as to take its place at the top of the list of the world’s great powers.”
A Night at the Opera
It may perhaps not be the most well-known aspect of Ginsburg’s life that an opera was written to commemorate her “odd couple” friendship with staunch conservative Antonin Scalia. An excerpt from the opera is included in the book and the opening aria is based upon the foundation of metaphor:
“The Justices are blind!
How can they possibly spout this—?
The Constitution says absolutely nothing about this”
“The Potty Problem”
“The Potty Problem” is a metaphor for systemic gender discrimination at law schools. For most of American history, law schools were pretty much off-limits for female applicants—at least in large masses—with various excuses forwarded to cover up the obvious. One of excuses being that law schools didn’t have an adequate number of women’s restrooms.
The Wisdom According to Ruthie
While in eight grade, young Ruth Bader composed an essay to be published in the bulletin of her local Jewish Center outlining a plan for world peace in the aftermath of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. Those horrors were still quite fresh and the wounds more than a little tender on the publication date of June 21, 1946 when the eighth grader used language that seemed already almost suitable for judgment by Nabokov:
“We are part of a world whose unity has been almost completely shattered. No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again...There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance. Then and only then shall we have a world built on the foundation of the Fatherhood of God and whose structure is the Brotherhood of Man.”
