Member-only story
What Was Ruth Bader Ginsburg Like in Person?
(And some thoughts on Roe v. Wade and judicial restraint)
If Justice Scalia was at a party or reception, you knew it at the moment you walked in. You’d hear and see him from a long way away, describing some turkey hunt or poker game. But RBG could only be found the way scientists detect a black hole, by the observation of her gravitational effect. You’d see a huge beehive of people gathered around some invisible object, and there’d she be, in the middle, with a group gathered around as if seeking wisdom from a shrine. They were usually bent over, as if in worship, heads inclined to hear what she had to say. They were like that because of the first thing that would strike anyone: just how physically tiny she was.
At such receptions, Justices like Stephen Breyer or Clarence Thomas were happy and at ease, naturals at cocktail conversation. But RBG was not like that. At all. She projected a sort of awkward energy that would paralyze people in her vicinity. Maybe it was because she was who she was, but she seemed to consider that to be our problem, not hers; for whatever reason she had no particularly strong interest in setting others at ease.
Perhaps it was the pauses that made her listeners nervous. RBG would, while making some argument or telling a story, sometimes pause…
