Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.
Ruth Bader GinsburgRead
Promoting active liberty does not mean allowing the majority to run roughshod over minorities. It calls for taking special care that all groups have a chance to fully participate in society and the political process.
Interpretation
Active liberty ensures that all voices, especially minorities, are heard in society and politics.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasizes the importance of 'active liberty' not merely as a notion of majority rule, but as a commitment to protect and empower minority groups. This means that true participation in society and governance requires deliberate efforts to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, is given the opportunity to engage and contribute to the democratic process.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on civil rights to emphasize the need for inclusivity.
Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.
If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don't say, 'You don't know how to use the English language,' or 'How could you make that argument?' It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.
I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they're men or women.
The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.
A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.
My resume showed membership on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, a credit impressive abroad where it was not generally known that Law Reviews were student-operated publications.
Fill the seats of justice with good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is.
If you look at any other group of people suffering injustice, women are always in the worst situation within that group.
Acquittal of the guilty damns the judge.
When in Gregg v. Georgia the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment, this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue.
We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.
I cannot see any of these death penalty cases where there hasn't been a violation on the ground of either poverty or race. If we can ever get that straightened out, it will help. But, of course, the real answer to it is to do away with the death penalty.
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