"We believe in racial equality, we believe in free speech. We have recorded those beliefs in the Constitution, our fundamental instrument of government. We are advancing toward the belief that men and women should be seen as equal before the law. We should record that basic principle in the Constitution. We should do that in preference to reading the principle into Constitutional provisions drafted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We know the founding fathers in the eighteenth century did not think men and women were or should be equal before the law. During the nineteenth century, after the Civil War, there were still tremendous differences in the law’s treatment of men and women. It was accepted that men should vote and women shouldn’t vote. It’s hard to read into provisions written over a century ago our modern concept that men and women should have equal opportunities, so far as government action is concerned. Yet the Supreme Court Justices have been doing just that. They have done so because our Constitution is meant to survive through the ages; there must be some adaptation to changing times and conditions."
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.
Enjoy the oral interview of Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the later 1970s; one of 42 oral interviews captured in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times
The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Available at Apple and Amazon.