LAPA Hot-Off-The-Press Book Talk with Author Jane Sherron De Hart on "Justice Ginsburg's Legacy: Exploring Contradictions"

Date & Time Apr 09 2019 12:00 PM - 1:20 PM
Speaker(s)
Jane Sherron De Hart, University of California, Santa Barbara, Emerita
Audience Open to the Public

LAPA Hot-Off-The-Press Book Talk Series 
Discussion of Jane Sherron De Hart's recently-published "Ruth Bader Ginsburg, A Life" focusing on "Justice Ginsburg's Legacy: Exploring Contradictions."

RSVP required- https://lapa.princeton.edu/content/ruth-bader-ginsburg-life.

Lunch will be available at noon.

A book sale/signing will follow the talk.

From Professor De Hart: Ruth Bader Ginsburg became known to the public in the 1970s as a reasonable but tenacious ACLU advocate for gender equality. In the 1980s she cemented her repulation as a unifying centrist judge on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit with rulings that seldom challenged the Supreme Court. Yet on the Roberts Court she has become known for scathing dissents that have transformed the 107th Justice into a pop-culture icon. Confronted with the changing character of her public persona over the span of her career, Ginsburg's response is that she was and is "just doing her job." Fundamentally her views on judging and on the role of courts in protecting constitutional rights have not changed. Redirecting focus to the increasing conservatism of the Court with the appointment of every new Chief Justice since the 1960s lends credence to Ginsburg's claim. The continuity of her quest for equal justice for all has remained intact. The same cannot be said of the fabric of our democracy.

Jane Sherron De Hart began her professional career as a historian of U.S. politics, publishing her first book as well as articles in the Journal of American History and the American Historical Review on arts policy. Moving into women's history in the 1970s, she created, with Linda Kerber, Women's America: Refocusing America, which will appear in 2019 in its 9th edition. At UC Santa Barbara, De Hart began exploring the other half of a two-pronged strategy for achieving gender equality in the law, focusing on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's equal protection litigation in the 1970s.

Presented by the Program in Law and Public Affairs, cosponsored with the Program in American Studies