How Being a Working Mother Sharpened RBG’s Legal Mind
Acing law school with a newborn could not have been easy, even for one of the greatest legal thinkers of the century. But for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, balancing parenting with studying provided an education in itself. She credits her baby daughter with spurring her on, as well as providing useful perspective.
“My success in law school, I have no doubt, was in large measure because of baby Jane,” she wrote in a 2016 New York Times column. “I attended classes and studied diligently until 4 in the afternoon; the next hours were Jane’s time, spent at the park, playing silly games or singing funny songs, reading picture books and A. A. Milne poems, and bathing and feeding her. After Jane’s bedtime, I returned to the law books with renewed will. Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.”
On the news of the iconic jurist’s death at the age of 87, it’s well worth reading “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Advice for Living,” in its entirety. Its gems include writing tips from Ginsburg’s college professor—the novelist Vladimir Nabakov!—as well as Ginsburg’s mother-in-law’s wisdom on marital harmony (“be a little deaf”).
