Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

A Supreme Life, Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired September 25, 2020 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): It is with profound sorrow and deep sympathy to the Ginsburg family that I have the high honor to welcome Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol of the United States. She does so on a catafalque built for Abraham Lincoln. May she rest in peace.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Denyce Graves accompanied by Ms. Laura Ward.

[10:05:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt.

RABBI LAUREN HOLTZBLATT, ASA ISRAEL CONGREGATION: Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, Senator Harris, and to all of our leaders who are gathered today, thank you.

Psalms 118, verse 5.

[10:05:00]

From the narrow straits, I call out to you. You, God, answered me with expanse.

In the chambers of Justice Ginsburg hangs a framed piece of art that reads, tzedek, tzedek tirdof, justice, justice you must pursue. A command in the 16th chapter Deuteronomy, the rabbinic tradition assigns meaning to every single word in the torah, so there must be a reason why tzedek, justice is written twice.

The repetition here teaches Ibn Ezra, a medieval rabbi, that time and time again, all of the days of your life, you must pursue justice.

This was how Justice Ginsburg lived her life. Justice did not arrive like a lightning bolt but rather through dogged persistence, all the days of her life. Real change, she said, enduring change, happens one step at a time. She faced many obstacles in her life, even from a young age. Though chosen as the valedictorian of her high school class, she gave no graduation speech. Instead, she grieved at home with her father after burying her beloved mother one day before graduation.

Her family had already suffered terrible loss with the death of her sister when Justice Ginsburg was only 14 months old.

But Justice Ginsburg kept rising, a full scholarship to Cornell University and only one of nine women in her Harvard Law School Class. After transferring to Columbia Law School, she graduated first in her class, yet she could not find a job. No firm in New York would hire her because she was a woman.

These obstacles didn't deter her. She pressed on. As she said in an interview with her dear friend, Nina Totenberg, and I quote, I get out of law school with top grades, no law firm in the city of New York will hire me. I end up teaching. That gave me time to devote to the movement of evening out the rights -- excuse me -- of women and men.

I was nominated to a vacancy on the D.C. circuit. Justice O'Connor once said to me, suppose we had come of age in a time when women lawyers were welcome at the bar. You know what? Today, we would have been retired partners from some large law firm. But because the route was not open to us, we had to find another way. And both end up on the United States Supreme Court.

All the days of her life, she pursued justice, even in illness. She fought five bouts with cancer and she supported her beloved Marty through his battle with cancer, as well. Each time, she pressed forward. She returned to work, to the bench, to the court, with focus each and every time.

Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, nothing was given. Pursuing justice took resilience, persistence, a commitment to never stop. As a lawyer, she won equality for women and men, not in one swift victory but brick by brick, case by case, through meticulous, careful lawyering.

[10:15:02]

She changed the course of American law. And even when her views did not prevail, she still fought.

In recent years, Justice Ginsburg became famous for her dissents. Despair was not an option. She said, and I quote, dissents speak to a future age. 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 and gradually, over time, their views become the dominant view, so that the dissenters hope that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow. Justice Ginsburg's dissents were not cries of defeat, they were blueprints for the future.

Justice Ginsburg loved her family, her grandchildren, her dear friends, her colleagues and her court family. We all send our love to you. And Justice Ginsburg also loved the court, to which she so devoted her life, a court for all of us. It was Justice Ginsburg's tenacious hope to preserve the integrity of the court.

Today, she makes history again, as the first woman and the first Jewish woman to lie in state. Today, we stand in sorrow and tomorrow we, the people, must carry on Justice Ginsburg's legacy. Even as our hearts are breaking, we must rise with her strength and move forward. She was our prophet, our north star, our strength for so very long. Now she must be permitted to rest after toiling so hard for every single one of us.

May the memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (INAUDIBLE), forever and ever be a blessing. (INAUDIBLE). God give us the strength and bless us with the courage, the intelligence, the bravery and the unbreakable resolve to pursue justice. Amen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Denyce Graves accompanied by Ms. Laura Ward.

[10:20:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, please remain at your seats until escorted to pay your respects by the sergeants at arms staff.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: The family of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg paying their final respects to the late Supreme Court justice there, led by her daughter, Jane, and son, James. If you've ever said goodbye to a parent or grandparent that way, you know that is an emotional moment.

Those words, America, America, I gave my best to you, the refrain of American Anthem as performed by the mezzo-soprano, Denyce Graves, who, in addition to being a favorite of Ginsburg, also a close friend, I can't think of better words to describe the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I gave my best to you.

Our Ariane de Vogue has covered the court and this justice for years.

[10:25:01]

You have a story, Ariane, about her relationship with Denyce Graves, the singer.

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT REPORTER: Yes, you know, she loved Denyce Graves. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg would host these private musicals at the court. It was just for a few guests, it was off the record. But you can bet justices like Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch really didn't know a lot about opera, they would be there and they would sit there and they would listen.

And when somebody liked Denyce Graves would sing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't often smile on the bench or in public appearances, she was kind of very serious, she would beam. And what's interesting, she would often say, you know, I always wished that I could be a great diva, but alas, I couldn't sing. So she loved music and you really saw that in that ceremony.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: What a great story, Ariane. I had never heard that.

Jeffrey, I kept coming back to the line in Denyce's beautiful rendition of that song, What Will our Children Say? And I keep thinking about the fact that my children and Jim's children are young enough that they will never live in a world that at least it is legal for our daughters to be told, no, you cannot do this on the basis of sex, and that is in so many ways because of her.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. Even to explain to people who are under the age of 30, what the law was in the 1960s and '70s. I mean, we're not talking about ancient history. We're not talking about the times when the internal combustion engine didn't exist. I mean, we are talking about relatively recent American history where, as you pointed out, women couldn't apply for credit cards without their husband's signature, where newspaper classified advertisements, also something that's disappeared from the world, but classified advertisements used to have help wanted for men and help wanted for women.

I mean, all of that was part of the -- was part of the world that Ruth Ginsburg not only grew up in but helped to change. And changed so profoundly that even with the Supreme Court on the verge of a major shift to the right, some of these changes are so deep and so embedded, not just in the law, but in our culture, that the changes that Ruth Ginsburg helped bring in the world are essentially immune to the shifting political and legal winds in the country. That's how big the changes are that she helped usher in.

SCIUTTO: Well, one story from earlier in her life when she was applying for her first job in government, she was demoted because she was pregnant. And then she traveled to Sweden and was surprised to see the judge presiding over a case there who was eight months pregnant. And said, wait a second, this isn't right. It helped inspire so much of the work she did in this country here.

We're seeing -- well, there's Donna Shalala, congresswoman. We're seeing a long line of current and former lawmakers paying their respects there, the former vice president with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden in the audience, as well.

You know, Poppy, 33 Americans have lain in state in the Capitol building before this day. 12 have been presidents, from Lincoln to JFK to George H.W. Bush. The first woman, first woman to lie in state.

HARLOW: I'm so glad you mentioned that, Jim. And on top of it, as you've mentioned before, the first Jewish person to lie in state, Jewish man or woman. And I would just say that this moment for Jewish- Americans has to be deeply meaningful to hear that Hebrew prayer in the halls of Congress, that has not been heard in a moment like this before.

SCIUTTO: The rabbi, Lauren Holtzblatt, who eulogized her with the words, she did not arrive like a lightning bolt, she believed real change happened one step at a time, words for our time.

HARLOW: Yes, right? I mean, she was slow in what she did and deliberate in how she did it, and that has made the enduring change that happens step by step.

Ariane, I'm reminded of her dissent in the Lilly Ledbetter case, an equal pay case that was later rectified by an act of Congress. the parsimonious reading of Title 7 and her reminder to her fellow justices, saying, the court is indifferent to the insidious ways that men are paid more.

[10:30:00]

DE VOGUE: Absolutely. That was one of her favorite opinions. But one more thing I wanted to say is that before that hearse arrived at the Capitol, it drove by the Supreme Court.