Is R.B.G your secret intellectual crush? You’re not alone.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is definitely Tumblr’s favorite Supreme Court Justice. The judge’s whip-smart opinions have won her fans who have turned Ginsburg’s visage into memes, GIFs, and nail art. Law student Shana Knizhkin, who runs the Notorious R.B.G. blog devoted to all things Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is interviewed in this new video from the Jewish Daily Forward. It turns out that Ginsburg is aware of the Tumblr and even owns a “large supply” of the Notorious R.B.G. shirts. She recently told NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, “I think a law clerk told me about this tumblr and also explained to me what Notorious RBG was a parody on. And now my grandchildren love it and I try to keep abreast of the latest that’s on the tumblr.”
It turns out that Ginsburg is aware of the Tumblr and even owns a “large supply” of the Notorious R.B.G. shirts.
Shana Knizhkin points to Ginsburg’s inspirational life story as a reason why she’s a fan: Ginsburg was one of only nine women in her class at Harvard Law in the 1950s. Even though Ginsburg graduated at the top of her class, no law firm would hire her and she started working at the ACLU as a backup plan. These days, says Knizkhin, “What Justice Ginsburg is really good at is taking the law and breaking it down so everyone can understand it.”
Recently for example, her dissent in both the Hobby Lobby case and the Voting Rights Act decision made for compelling reading. When the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to declare key parts of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional in June 2013, Ginsburg quoted Shakespeare’s The Tempest in her dissent, writing that when you look at the history of racism in the United States, “The Court ignores that ‘what’s past is prologue.'” Now that’s a line we could use on a t-shirt.
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