Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died at the age of 87. This story on her unlikely friendship with the late Justice Antonin Scalia originally ran in 2015.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after addressing an assembly in front of LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center in Baton Rouge, La., on Oct. 24, 2003.Ginsburg didn’t let him have the last word, noting that the elephant driver had said their placement was “a matter of distribution of weight.” The audience, including Scalia, roared with laughter.She describes her fondness for “Nino” by recalling the time she first heard him speak at a law conference, before they became judges.
“I don’t think they even try to influence each other,” Blatt said. “Both of them simply have huge personalities, love the arts, like to laugh and are brilliant.” Other justices do socialize after hours: Justice Elena Kagan has gone hunting with Scalia and to the theater with Ginsburg, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy have been seen together at Washington Nationals games. But the Ginsburg-Scalia bond is special.“She has very warm feelings” for him, said Samuel Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor who clerked for Ginsburg. “There is a personal connection with him unlike any of the other justices.
In summer 2012, when the court ended with a close split on President Obama’s healthcare law and Arizona’s strict immigration law, Scalia and Ginsburg had agreed in 56% of the term’s cases — the lowest rate of any two justices. When only the 5-4 decisions were included, they agreed just 7% of the time.Ginsburg believes the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection” of the laws must evolve with society. In the 1970s, that meant an end to gender discrimination.
When Ginsburg in 1996 wrote her first major opinion and ruled that the Virginia Military Institute and other all-male public colleges must open their doors to qualified women, Scalia wrote the lone dissent.And even today, he insists he was right. He told the George Washington University audience that the military service academies have lost their luster as training grounds for “warriors” now that women are enrolled.
After the court adjourns for the summer, the pair’s unusual friendship will be on display in a comic opera called “Scalia/Ginsburg: A Parody of Operatic Proportions.” Its composer, Derrick Wang, said he discovered a truly operatic character when he read Scalia’s dissents as a law student at the University of Maryland.“Whenever I encountered the phrase — ‘Scalia J., dissenting’ — I would hear in my head a rage aria. That’s a type of aria where the character is incensed and expresses anger.
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