How RBG Became ‘Notorious’

The Experiment

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4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her fight for women’s rights, the then–ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg did something unexpected: She argued on behalf of men. “It didn’t matter to her if the plaintiff was a man or a woman,” says the Georgetown law professor Wendy Williams. “Because in most of those cases, the discrimination against the man was derivative of a prior and worse discrimination against the woman.” Craig v. Boren involved Oklahoma frat boys, a drive-through convenience store, and gender-specific beer laws. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1976 decision was foundational in advancing equal rights for women and represented a key moment in the future justice’s career. This story originally ran on More Perfect, a Radiolab spin-off about the Supreme Court. Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at theexperiment@theatlantic.com. Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Julia Longoria, this is the experiment.
0:03.8	And this week, we're going to revisit a story I reported a little while back for a different
0:09.0	show called More Perfect.
0:11.4	It's hosted by Jad Abumrod from Radio Lab, and it's all about the Supreme Court.
0:17.0	But really, it's about the same things we explore on the experiment.
0:21.1	The ideals of our country that we strive for, and the messy imperfect pursuit of those
0:28.2	ideals.
0:30.2	This is a story about a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
0:33.9	Before she got on the Supreme Court, she was a lawyer, trying to convince an all-male
0:39.6	Supreme Court to make gender equality a reality.
0:45.5	The Honourable, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justice is of the Supreme Court of the
0:50.4	United States.
0:52.4	Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
1:04.5	Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
1:22.4	Here we are.
1:39.0	I'm going to ask you an utterly false question, which is where would you like to start?
1:43.4	As if we hadn't been doing this for so damn long.
1:47.8	Okay, so let me outline the basic dilemma that's at the heart of the story here.
1:55.0	And I'm going to put it to you as a question.
1:58.1	If you were to do a control F in the Constitution, like how many times do you think the word sex
2:03.4	comes up?
2:04.4	Oh, that's interesting.
	...

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