It Does Her Life's Work Justice
Former President Bill Clinton, when interviewed in this documentary about his potential nominees for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, tells the story of his first meeting with then Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She hadn't initially been considered a real contender (Mario Cuomo was Clinton's first choice), but they had a meeting about it nonetheless. Within minutes, the president was head-over-heels in love with her mind, and knew he would be nominating her to be an Associate Justice on the Court.
I think most who see RBG will feel the same way.
Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen have done fine work in creating a succinct and passionate look at Justice Ginsburg's life, both personal and professional, especially her years as a litigator fighting for sex equality before ascending to the Supreme Court. The film also provides enough intimacy to make clear where Justice Ginsburg gets her best qualities. Her brain has always been her own, but her mother advised her that, no matter what, she must always be a lady, and be independent. The latter seems more than natural for the Justice today, but the former is her secret weapon. To "be a lady," her mother meant, among other things, is not to get angry in an argument, and this mindset makes Justice Ginsburg an incredibly effective voice in the courtroom.
Audio of her arguments before the Supreme Court are played over footage of the empty chamber, with subtitles displaying the most important passages. These sequences—which showcase her arguments for a woman's equal treatment in the Air Force and for a widower father to receive the same Social Security benefits a widowed mother would receive—demonstrate her shrewd ability to make a case. She knew not just what to say, but how to get the all-male Justices to listen to her.
Moments like these, where she was quietly pushing the boulder of equality uphill, are terrific, because they highlight her key role in history before becoming a Justice. I think there are many, like myself, who know Justice Ginsburg as a liberal voice on the Court, and value her because of it, but don't know the full extent of the work she did to earn her place on the bench. The film provides similar treatment for her time on the Supreme Court, including an inspiring extended sequence on the case that led to the admission of women to the Virginia Military Institute in 1997. As time marches on and the Court becomes more conservative with the additions of Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Ginsburg's dissents don't feel as though they carry as much weight as previous arguments. This isn't because they weren't the winning decision, but rather because the cases themselves aren't as well explored as they could be in the film.
Most of Justice Ginsburg's positions—like that women should be treated the same as men for the same work—are now widely considered correct, but she has been involved in cases, particularly as a Justice, that would involve some interesting counterpoints. Her dissents are quoted, but not the majority opinions. I don't think most people walking into RBG, myself included, are looking to disagree with or undercut Justice Ginsburg, but I think it does her own work a little bit of a disservice not to show what it was she was dissenting. I come to this film from a place of some ignorance to the cases she's presided over, and I know only their basic outcomes. Maybe this 97-minute documentary isn't the place for a deeper dissection of those cases, but I think it's a missed opportunity to show us how formidable (or not) the arguments are that she's pushing back against.
Despite this complaint from a SCOTUS novice, the film makes it abundantly clear that many millennials, particularly young women, view Justice Ginsburg as an icon. These fans are the ones who coined her nickname, "Notorious RBG," a nod to the similarly named rapper, and it's these inspired young women who will be Justice Ginsburg's legacy in her latter days on the Court. This is never clearer in the film than when Justice Ginsburg's own granddaughter tells her that her own graduating class from Harvard Law School in 2017 was the institution's first ever 50/50 male/female class in its long history.
Throughout RBG, my mind kept flashing on a scene from Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, in which Tommy Lee Jones' Thaddeus Stevens makes his case before the House of Representatives about equality before the law. In the scene, he's actually trying to appease the more conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats that he doesn't consider all things (i.e. black people) equal in the abstract, but still equal before the law. Stevens did believe in true equality between black and white people, but nonetheless had to put on a moderate face to get the 13th Amendment passed. This wasn't coming to mind because Stevens and Ginsburg are so alike, but because his fierce yet canny argument for equality instilled the same kind of stirring, dedicated pride that Ginsburg's own arguments do. These are the moments that define what America is and what it can be.
RBG is an excellent introduction to the historical figure and person that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is, and it's a wonderful record and demonstration of her importance to that defining fight for equality.