My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn't have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
Marty was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always - well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was.
You can't have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.
You can't have it all, all at once. Who - man or woman - has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.
It is not like I have gone crazy, I just don't want to take any chances. You never know what could happen.
The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.
If you're going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.
At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.
Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he's very funny and very smart.
I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter's generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.
The women of my generation and my daughter's generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.
I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972; every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program.
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 whole, we think of our consumers - other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it's better to have it clearer than confusing.
Our goal in the '70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.
It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,' but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.
I think some of my colleagues' spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.
At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.
My resume showed membership on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, a credit impressive abroad where it was not generally known that Law Reviews were student-operated publications.
