>> his mother took me aside and said, dear, i would like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage. and the secret was it helped

sometimes to be a little deaf. [laughter] and with that, she handed me a pair of max ear plugs which are the best ear plugs. that advice i followed through 56 years of a wonderful marriage and in every workplace including my current job. [laughter] if something thoughtless or unkind is said, just tune out. >> it works in the supreme court too? [laughter] >> yes, it does for me. >> what is it like to be such an icon? what does it mean to you that people know who you are, the notorious rbg, there's an opera named after you and justice scalia and all of these things. what does that mean to you? is it awkward, or do you kind of enjoy it?

>> i think it's amazing. now i'm 83, and everyone wants to take a picture with me. [laughter] this notorious rbg is the creation of a second-year law student at nyu, now graduated, and it started when the court announced the decision in the shelby county case that declared unconstitutional part of the voting rights act of 1965. she, this student, jana, was displeased, angry, and then she said, well, i heard from someone i admire that anger, envy, these are useless emotions.

they don't advance anything, so best do something positive. and the something positive was to put my dissent in the shelby county case on tumblr, and then it took off into the wild blue yonder from there. and when my be law clerks heard about this tumblr, they said, well, do you know who -- where notorious rbg comes from, and i said, of course i do. [laughter] the notorious b.i.g. and i were both born and bred in brooklyn, new york. [laughter] >> have you thought of writing any of your dissenting opinions in rap? [laughter] they're doing it on broadway now with that -- [laughter] well, let me ask you, tell me --

it's so much fun, i have to talk about the opera. you're a great lover of the opera, you're a great lover of shakespeare, and we're spending a little bit of time today talking about some of these things because they're such fun things, and you'll have a chance to ask the deeper, more probing questions about the supreme court. but your relationship with justice scalia, a lot of people are mystified by that because they, you were on somewhat opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. you served together on the d.c. circuit. you wound up often on opposite sides of cases decided by the supreme court. sometimes justice scalia wrote in such a colorful fashion would be pretty harsh in his language. and yet you were great friends. why is -- how did that happen, why were you such great friends, and what does that tell us about life on the court? >> our friendship should not have been surprising to people

who watch the court. they would have known that justice scalia was exceedingly fond of justice brennan who was also on the opposite side in many cases. and justice brennan usually enjoyed justice scalia's company, as i do -- [laughter] did. he has an extraordinary ability to make you smile, even laugh. when we were on the d.c. circuit together, three-judge panel, justice scalia would whisper something to me that would just break me up. and i had everything, all i could do to avoid laughing out loud. i'd sometimes pinch myself. [laughter] people sometimes asked me, what was your favorite scalia joke?

i say, i know what it is, but i can't tell you. [laughter] and it was such fun being a super at the washington national opera with him twice and to be part of this scalia/ginsburg. so some of my feminist friends say why isn't it ginsburg/scalia, ginsburg is first alphabetically. as ted knows very well, seniority is very important in my workplace. so scalia, although he was three years younger, he was appointed to the court many years before i was. that's why it is scalia/ginsburg. and it's a comic opera, as you would expect. it will be -- it had its world premiere in castleton, virginia, last summer. it will have its next production

at the opera festival in cooperstown, new york. so if you're interested, you can go to the baseball hall of fame, and -- [laughter] you can go to scalia/ginsburg. but the setup -- oh, i should tell you how it came to be. very talented young man, derek wang -- a music major, has a masters in music -- and then decided it would be useful to learn a little bit about the law. so he enrolled in his hometown law school, university of maryland. he's taking a constitutional law course, and he's reading these dueling opinions, scalia, ginsburg. and he said to himself, this could make a very funny opera. and i'll give you just a taste of the opening pieces.

so it starts out with scalia's rage aria which goes like this: the justices are blind, how can they possibly spout this? the constitution says absolutely nothing about this. [laughter] and then i explain to him that he's searching for bright line solutions to problems that don't have easy answers. but the great thing about our constitution is that, like our society, it can evolve. so that's the setup. the plot is roughly based on the magic flute. justice scalia is locked up in a darkroom, he's being punished for excessive dissenting. [laughter] and i come to help him out. i enter that scene through a glass ceiling -- [laughter]

and then, as in the magic flute, i join him for the last trial, and we sing a duet, we are different, we are one. different in our approach to the interpretation of legal text, but one in our fondness for each other, our reverence for the constitution and the institution we serve. >> and that friendship and that relationship tells us so much about how maybe we all should learn from that, our relationships with people who have different perspective. justice scalia was fond of saying that you made his opinions better because he would run them by you -- correct me if i'm wrong -- you would point out the various vulnerabilities or weaknesses in his opinion.

he'd go back and sharpen his words or try to make -- but he said your participation, because he learned this when you were together on the d.c. circuit. you exchanged opinions, and he respected your intelligence so much that he wanted to run them by you. is that -- >> well, i'd say i was the beneficiary of that relationship more than he was. when i wrote an opinion and scalia wrote a dissent, he identified all of the soft spots so every opinion of mine with a scalia dissent is much better than the first draft. he was also an excellent grammarian. and sometimes he would call me whether we were on the same side or not and point out a slip i had made in grammar. sometimes i would call him and

say why don't you tone it down. this is so strident that you're going to lose your audience. you'll be more effective if you just put down the decibel level. most of the time he did not listen to me. [laughter] >> i could tell from reading some of his dissenting opinions particularly, there's a difference between when you have to write for the court and when you're writing a dissenting opinion. you were explaining that to me the other day. he, obviously, didn't temper some of the language, and i'm thinking of the marriage equality cases, the two cases and so forth. >> you could also think of one of the 25% that you didn't win or the bmi case. that was a zinger of a dissent. >> that -- okay. so let's talk about that one. [laughter] i had forgotten about that case.

[laughter] i argued that case, it was for the virginia military institute, i represented the commonwealth of virginia. and vmi, as you know everyone here, was an all-male institution, a part of the university of virginia system, and it was a relatively small component of the system, and it was taught on an adversarial system is what they called it on the theory that some young men needed to be in an all-male environment in order to get their bearings -- >> to get through the rat line. >> the rat line. so the challenge was that it violates the equal protection clause because women were deny add mission to vmi. admission to vmi. and i argued that case. and justice -- it was a 7-1 decision. i got one vote. [laughter] >> just one. and i had six people.

the chief concurred in the judgment, not the opinion. and you captured justice scalia. well, you didn't need to capture him -- [laughter] >> you mean my advocacy didn't, wasn't necessary to win him over. [laughter] and it didn't do any more than that. >> i was just telling a lady a story about the aftermath of the vmi case. i had a letter from a vmi graduate saying that in his life he had met many women who were at least as tough as he was. he had a teenaged daughter, and he was glad that she would have the opportunity, if she wanted it, to attend vmi. and then i heard from him some six months later.

i keep the letter where i can see it every time i want to be lifted up. in the letter was tissue paper. i opened the paper, and there was -- it looked like a toy soldier. of it was a pin. the letter said this is a cadet pins that is given to the -- pin that is given to the mother of every vmi graduate at the graduation ceremony. my mother died last month. i think she would want you to have her cadet pin because in some way you are a grandmother to the future generations of vmi students. [applause] and incidentally, i will be at vmi in february along with wendy williams and mary hartlett.

>> that's a beautiful story. takes us to the fact that you were such a pioneer. not every justice on the supreme court has argued cases in front of the supreme court. john roberts, i think, argued 39. he was in civil practice for a long time. you were with, representing the aclu, and you were one of the early people to bring these cases about gender equality challenging federal statutes particularly that denied equal rights to women -- >> or men. >> or men, that's right. and tell us, i mean, what was it like arguing those cases? you were a bit alone. when we were talking the other day, i said it reminded me of justice thurgood marshall who was with the naacp legal defense fund arguing cases and just as

you pointed out, why don't you say the difference, but then segway into what it was like for you. >> i copied his strategy, and that is he developed the law up to brown v. board in steps. you probably remember the first case many that series. -- in that series, sweat against painter, when texas realized that it couldn't deny admission to law school to african-americans simply because of their race. so it set up a separate law school for them vastly inferior. thurgood marshall argued separate but equal, isn't that

before the court today? these schools are so plainly unequal. but i said i'm uneasy when people make that comparison, because it's a huge difference. and that is thurgood marshall's life was in danger when he went to a southern town to represent someone. my advocacy was a challenge, but my life was never in danger. another difference is people understood that racial discrimination was odious. but when i started out arguing cases, endeavoring to strike down arbitrary gender lines in the law, the judge to whom i was arguing had a hard time getting

it because they thought of themselves as good husbands, good fathers, and they thought that women were on a pedestal, women were sheltered, they were protected. then justice brennan had that wonderful image that he used in the -- [inaudible] case -- >> one of your cases. >> yes. that all too often the pedestal turns out to be a cage. it protects women from achieving whatever they could based on their god given talents. so getting judges to understand that gender discrimination was bad for the society, bad for

women, bad for men and bad for children. none of the cases that, in which i represented a complainant, none of those cases were test cases. these were everyday people. sally reid was the first one, woman from boise, idaho. made her living by caring for disabled people in her home. had a young son, was given custody of the boy when the boy was, quote, of tender years. boy reached his teens, the father applied more custody saying now this boy needs to be prepared for a man's world. sally fought the father's becoming custodian, and she was unsuccessful. she was sadly right.

the boy one day was, when he was in a severe depression and he took out one of his father's guns and committed suicide. so sally wanted to be appoint add morer of his i -- administrator of his estate. probate court judge said i'm sorry, but this is what the idaho law says: as between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent's estate, males must be preferred to females. the great thing about sally reid's case is that she took it on her own dime through three levels of the idaho courts. i didn't get involved until there was an appeal to the supreme court.

but this was an everyday woman who had such faith in our legal system, faith that it could right what she conceived to be an obvious injustice. and every one of them -- one didn't get a housing allowance when she married, her husband didn't have access to the medical and dental facilities on base. stephen rosenfeld, a man whose wife died in childbirth. there was also social security benefits when a child is left in the care of a sole surviving parent if she is female, not if he is male. so stephen wisenfeld too had

thought that that was an obvious injustice and believed that we have a legal system where people can complain and will be heard. >> do you think that the nature of those cases helped you be successful? because so many cases had come before where similar issues had been raised, and they were just, essentially, summarily dismissed back of the hand kind of thing? you changed, you had to change the culture as well as the law, is and i'm wondering was it the nature of those cases plus your advocacy, of course? how do you think that happened? because we're not there completely yet, of course, but it's a completely different world. when people think about those cases, they think, of course. but you made a bug, huge change. -- a big, huge change.

>> i was this at the right time because feminists, men as well as women, had been making the same arguments as you just pointed out before society was ready to listen. what were the cases in the not so good old days? there was gossett against cleary, a woman who owned a tavern. her daughter was a bartender. michigan passed a law that says to tend bar you have to be male unless your husband or father is the owner of the establishment. well, that law put these two women out of work. and the supreme court made light of it, made jokes about all the old alehouse. gwendolyn hoyt who today we would call her a battered woman. one day her husband had

humiliated her to the breaking point. she took her young son's baseball bat, hit him over the head. end of their argument. [laughter] beginning of the murder prosecution. florida didn't put women on juries, and the supreme court, the quote liberal warren court in 1961, said that was okay. but in the decade of the '70s, there was one case after another in which jenner lines -- gender lines were struck down. why had that happened? not because of me, because society, society had changed. society was moving. and, of course, our reactive institutions, they don't lead the way, but they can perhaps accelerate the direction of change.

so it was the first case in 1971, it was already the berger court, and a whole series of cases. the court saw the light. the statute books into the '70s had a certain vision of the way women are, the way men are. so the men were the breadwinners , and the woman's domain was the home and raising children. so if you didn't fit that mold, you were out of luck. but in the ten years from '61 to '71, there really was an enormous change in the way people were ordering their lives.

and i can illustrate that by comparing my children are ten years apart. so my daughter was born in 1955 just before i started law school she was 4 when i graduated, and there were very few working moms in her kindergarten class. ten years later when my son was born many 1965 -- in 1965, two-earner families were no longer unusual. so there were many people in his class where both mother and father had a paid job. so many things worked in that direction. for one thing, one very important factor, people live nowadays much longer than they once did. there was a time when -- by the

time the woman had her last child, it wasn't -- she didn't have that much left to live. but now and for many years now women are spending most of their adult life in a household that doesn't have any childcare responsibilities. so what are they going to do with those empty nest? so that was one factor. inflation was another. if you want your children to go to college and be able to pay their tuition, then you need two incomes. the women's movement was, by that time, all over the world. some countries were ahead of

others, but the united nations had declared international women's year, so all of these things were working, and people were living in patterns that were not traditional. so the court was kind of catching up to a change that had already occurred in society. >> catching up but also making it happen. see, i think there's -- and i think you would agree -- that there's a synergistic effect here. >> yes. >> because you brought those cases, because of your leadership, because of who you were, what you were doing, people would read about those cases. then they would say, as you were explaining, the injustice of it, how it was unfair. and those things take a life of their own, so to speak, because each thing makes it a little bit easier for the next thing. and i was going to take that right into you're the fourth

woman to be appointed to the united states supreme court. tell us about -- >> second woman. >> second woman but the fourth that has been appointed to the court, and i misspoke, but i was thinking of justice o'connor. tell us a little bit about her and what it meant when, in 1981, when ronald reagan appointed her as the first woman to be appointed to the supreme court, what it was like for her and what it meant to what came along after. >> the appointment of sandra day o'connor is in part the result of the effort of president carter. when president carter took office, he looked around at the federal bench and on observed -- and observed they all look like me.

but that's not how the great united states looks. so he was determined to put women and members of minority groups in numbers in the federal courts. not as one at a time curiosities, but in terms. so i was one of the lucky 11 that he a appointed to court of as. he a-- appeals. he a appointed at least 25 to district courts. no president ever went back to the way it once was and left out people anymore. but when reagan became president, he said not only am i going to appoint be, continue to appoint women to the bench, but i would like to go down in the history books as the president who appointed the first woman to the supreme court. he made a nationwide search, and he came up with a super nominee,

sandra day o'connor. when sandra came to the court, she was all alone for 12 years. in our robing room, there was a bathroom. it was labeled "men." sandra a had to go back to her chambers. the sign of a change was evident when i came to the court, because they hurried up a renovation in that robing room. they installed a women's bathroom equal in size. [laughter] to the men's. >> now there are three women on the court, and there must be a huge difference from the issues that that we're talking about, that there is, there are three

and not just one person or even two. >> i think from the mix -- public perception it is so much better when we have children streaming in and out of the court, and they can see that women are all over the bench because i've been around is so long, i sit toward the middle. one side, one end is justice sotomayor and the other justice kagan. so we are one-third of the court and, ted, as you know very well, my newest colleagues are not shrinking violets. [laughter] there was, i think, a competition between justice scalia and justice sotomayor to see who could ask the most questions at oral arguments. [laughter] even so, at the last argument

this term in the mcdonald case, the lawyer had been performing very well said in response to my question, well, justice o'connor -- [laughter] and this is, she hasn't been with us for ten years. so -- but nobody calls me justice sotomayor or justice cay again. [laughter] -- kagan. >> this happened in bush v. gore, only it was the male justices who were confused by -- [inaudible] what is it like, oral argument? when i first argued a case in 1983, there were not very many questions. and now justice thomas famously very seldom asks a question

because he feels there's a lot of questions being asked by his colleagues. he has his reasons. but essentially eight justices, or now seven, ask questions all the time. what are you trying to accomplish when you're asking questions? are you trying to find something out about the strength and weekness of the advocate's case, or are you speaking to your colleagues? what's going on? >> both. one is to give the advocate a last clear chance to face the decision makers, put his strongest case. the question may be about a vulnerable point. the advocate has a chance to answer that. but more than occasionally it is we are talking past the advocate to each other trying to

influence the way a colleague is thinking about the case. >> now, some people find that strange because you're in court, you're in the same building. you can talk to your colleagues without the presence of the lawyers in the oral argument. doesn't that dialogue take place among the justices prior to oral argument? >> we would have had our first acquaintance with the case when we decide whether we will grant review. so there would be a discussion of the case then. we don't often discuss cases before we go on the bench, and the reason is that -- well, the supreme court is a very hot bench. that means everybody is well prepared for the oral argument. this, the fors sitting is easy -- the first sitting is is easy in the sense that we're

just preparing for the sitting. we have no opinions to be writing. but as the term goes on, the treadmill moves faster and faster. and we really don't -- i am sometimes reading briefs the very morning of the oral argument. so we haven't gotten our own act together early enough to talk about the case. there are exceptions when we do. but then the conference is very close to the argument -- >> within the next day or so. we're going to turn this over to the group in a moment, but the conference is where you decide, you express how you want to vote. >> yes. so it will be wednesday afternoon we'll talk about

monday and tuesday cases and friday morning about tuesday ask wednesday cases. we go around the table in strict seniority order. sometimes there's cross-discussion, but at some point the chief or another justice will say enough talk, it will come out in the writing. and then we go on to the next case. >> i would like to keep asking questions, but james will be angry with me. and we know that those of you out will have questions. i want to thank you for at least my part of this thing, it's been a pleasure more me. james? >> there's a microphone here. be you've got a question for

either ted or the justice, please, work your way to the microphone. it obviously goes without saying, but no questions about pending cases that are before the court. [laughter] so if there are any questions, please, you know, come forward. don't be shy. we set aside this time for you, so -- >> justice ginsburg, thank you so much for being here. you talked something about the evolution of society, and i have a question for you for some of us that might be in the doldrums lately about this course in society and, you know, kind of looking at where the world is right now. do you have anything hopeful for us looking forward? [laughter] especially to november? [laughter] >> when i visit university campuses, i am very hopeful. i was just yesterday and the day before at notre dame. there was a huge audience, and

all of the young people that i met were very determined that that they were not simply going to do a day's work for a day's pay, but that they were going to do something for the larger society, something outside themselves, something to repair tears many our system -- in our system. i see it in my own granddaughter who's now a third-year law student and very much engaged in societal problems.

>> it's an honor to have you. we have more in common than you might think. first of all, my wife was born and raised in brook run, and also my name -- brooklyn, and also my name is chris wallace x the birth name of the notorious b.i.g. is chris wallace. [laughter] but my question is whether there's one opinion where you were on the dissent that you're particularly ashamed of or disappointed with that really sticks out to you. >> birdies sent? never. -- by dissent? never. [laughter] >> ashamed of how the majority came out. >> i would saudis a appointed. >> disappointed. >> yes. and i've said this before. i was disappointed in one of ted olson's great victories, bush v.

gore and citizens united and shelby county and in the lily ledbetter case. but not as disappointed as in constitutional cases, because i was convinced that the court had read title vii wrong -- >> in the ledbetter case. >> yes. and my last line was the ball is now in congress' court to correct the error into which my colleagues have fallen. [laughter] and the lily ledbetter fair pay act was the first piece of legislation that president obama signed when he took, when he took office. >> thank you. >> thank you for coming today, justice ginsburg. i was hoping you might share with us some of your thoughts, since i know you are an advocate for access to justice and for lawyers' role in public interest

work, maybe you would share with us some of your thoughts on access to justice issues that confront not only the profession but, obviously, society at large. >> but obviously? >> society at large. >> society at large as well as the profession. >> yes. well, law is a privileged profession. i think there's more of a monopoly, a lawyers' monopoly than any country in the world, and because that's so lawyers have an obligation to give back, to contribute to society. i tell law students that if you seek for yourself a life where you get a good paying job in a

law firm, and then you're like a plumber. you have a skill that you'll use. but if you're a true professional, you will do something, as i said before, outside yourself to give back to the community. i i think community service is a tremendously important. i've thought about if i were queen, i would probably have a gap period after high school, after high school so everyone would be involved to do some kind of public service whether you go to the military or you help teach many a public school -- in a public school. but i think that would be good for society the if we instilled in young people the notion of service to the community.

at an early, early age. >> thank you. >> justice ginsburg, i am a 20-year practicing decisioner in and out of the federal court, and it's a great honor to be here today. i do have a question concerning the shelby county case. >> you get, speak -- >> yes, ma'am. i have a question about the shelby county case. i am, have lived in the lower south and particularly alabama for many years and was very disappointed with the decision as i thought it sort of ended what i think of as the second reconstruction of the south. and i was just curious what you thought what the impact of shelby county on future civil rights legislation or existing civil rights litigation.

>> you read the newspapers and see litigation was ongoing. the preclearance process is no more, but there have been a number of cases under section ii of the voting rights act. some of them are before the court at this very moment, so i don't want to say any more about them except they've been in the headlines as well. is so hope is not, is not gone. there is still a mechanism, section ii, a harder one.

but as i said, long run i am optimistic. i don't, i wouldn't predict that congress will change the formula for what jurisdictions are included because i can't imagine a senator or representative standing up in congress and saying, oh, yes, my county is still discriminating. [laughter] >> maybe we better leave it at that. [laughter] >> justice ginsburg, thank you so much for coming here. i guess when you started your remarks, you mentioned your reference for the constitution but also spoke about how principles and things can change. often times when people talk about their reverence for the constitution, it's almost in a biblical sense, but unlike like a religious document, the constitution can be amended.

but it hasn't been for almost 50 years. do you think that the failure to amend the constitution or to, or the fact that it hasn't been amended for so long is itself a risk to the constitutional system? >> do i think that -- >> is it a risk to the constitutional system that it has been made so hard to amend the constitution, and it very seldom has been amended, ask it's been quite a while? -- and it's been quite a while? >> think of some of the state constitutions that are easy to amend and, and they go on and on and on. [laughter] i think the, the framers of the constitution made the amendment process difficult for that reason. they meant this to be the fundamental instrument of government, powerfully hard to change.

of course, i am disappointed. i was once, still am, a strong proponent of the equal rights amendment. that fell three -- [inaudible] short of being ratified. three states short of being ratified. but even till, something comparable to statehood for d.c., i'm a d.c. resident, i would say i'm still glad that we don't have a constitution that begins to resemble -- [inaudible] and when you think of some of the amendments, you know, every time the supreme court writes a headline decision that people don't like, somebody proposes a constitutional amendment. so let's have prayer in the schools, let's not have -- so on the whole because i see the risk of things that i wouldn't like

put in the constitution, i think it's good that our constitution is not easily amended. >> okay. so these throe folks in line, we'll take those questions, and then we'll wrap up. >> justice ginsburg, mr. olson, thank you. my name's tom. and, justice ginsburg, as the father of four daughters, i want to thank you for your work on behalf of women's rights allowing my daughters to pursue things they want to do and and are passionate about instead of hinges people think they ought -- things people think they ought to do. my question is really for both of you. either one of you. i've been teaching law to engineers at the university of maryland for a number of years. and over the years the demographics have changed so that the great number of the students are foreign. [inaudible]

>> it's hard to hear. >> we were out one microphone. [laughter] >> thank you, eileen. [inaudible conversations] i'll speak loudly. civil engineering for a number of years, and my -- [inaudible] i have a number of foreign students. to teach them law, i've learned -- i figured out i needed to teach them the constitution and our fundamental legal structure or first so they could understand it in our context. with that background do you have any recommendations on how to teach these students law in america and the fundamentals of it and any recommendations on

reading? >> well, i think we all appreciate that although among nations in the world the united states is not particularly old, we have the longest surviving constitution still in force in the world. there was an old joke about the french constitution. someone goes into a book shop, and in the days when there were book shops -- [laughter] in france and requests a copy of the french constitution, and the shopkeeper says we don't deal in periodical literature. [laughter] not that our way is superior, but it is different.

our tripartheid system of government compared to parliamentary systems that take hold in most of the world, our constitution is not aspiration aspirational, it's law to be applied here ask now. many -- here and now. many constitutions have magnificent guarantees, the right to work, the right to shelter, the right not to be hungry. but how does a court enforce such rights? which in this constitution is law, the highest law that you apply. so maybe it helps, would help if it could be educational for the other students to ask students from abroad what is their system, what is the place of the constitution in their system. who has the last word on whether

legislation is constitutional. you know, that was a brilliant thing that our very first supreme court did and that chief justice marshall developed, judicial review for constitutionality. it didn't exist in the world with rare exceptions until after world war ii. so our system is unique, and if you can -- one idea that i have for you is you ask your foreign students to compare their system with ours. and that will enlighten your students who are from the united states. >> thank you.

>> madam justice, thank you so much for spending time with us today. i'm particularly interested in your view of how the in-house counsel role has evolved over the last ten or twenty years, and where would you like to see it go? >> perhaps ted would be a better person to comment on that. i, what i have observed is enormous growth in the role of in-house counsel and the size of in-house counsel. >> and the responsibilities as opposed to outside lawyers. >> yeah. it used to be that in-house counsel had a small staff. almost all the legal business was farmed out to a law firm. i've been heartened to see the participation of in-house counsel in pro bono work.

in this town the pro bono institute has a number of firms. the house counsel has been instrumental in getting the younger staff to engage in pro bono representation. >> thank you. >> justice ginsburg, thank you for everything that you have done to advance equal rights for men and women. do you have any advice for us on how we can best carry on that legacy and be continue to fight the good fight for equal rights for every human being? >> the easy job is done, that is the explicit gender lines in the law. almost all of them are gone.

what's left is unconscious bias. so my favorite example of that is the symphony orchestra. people in the music world who conducted auditions thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. they gave the critics of "the new york times" the blindfold test, and he was all confused. he got it wrong as often as he got it right. so then somebody came up with the brilliant idea let's drop a curtain so that the people who are doing the selecting won't know who is behind that curtain. there was an almost overnight change in symphony orchestras all over the country. women began to appear in numbers not just playing the harp.

unfortunately, we can't duplicate that in every field of endeavor. i think back to one title vii case in which i had some involvement in the '70s. it was against at&t for disproportionately rejecting women from middle management jobs. women on all the standard criteria were doing as well as the men. the last step was what they called a total person test. the total person test is the interviewer is meeting with candidate, and then at that stage women drop out disproportionally. why? not because interviewer is consciously biased against women, but there's a natural rapport when you're dealing with someone who looks like you.

you have a comfort level. someone is different, different race, different gender, you're kind of uncomfortable. you feel uneasy. ask that may be -- and that may be reflected in your choice of who will be promoted. not consciously. getting past that is, remains a problem. and then, of course, one of the young women who say there's no discrimination anymore, i can get any job i want inside law. fine. what are you going to do when children come? how are you going to arrange your life so that you can have both a work life and a home life? i had once thought that that was going to be easy with technology, but the firms don't seem to be moving that fast to be flexible.

so that's -- but people, men and women who are in law firms or in-house counsel should get together with each other and say what do we want and then make it known and then illustrate by your example that you can have a home life and a work life. one of my former law clerks has three young children, she has a three-day schedule at the firm, and they are just delighted with it, with her work because she can, she has a whole library at her fingertips at home. so it should be, it should be much easier to have a balanced

life than it once was. but don't be shy about speaking up. have company when grow do so -- when you do so so that you're not a lone voice. >> great. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. thanks to our esteemed guests, pioneers, civil rights leaders, titans, great nicknames, all those wonderful things -- [laughter] and thank everyone for coming. enjoy the rest of your week. [applause]

>> you're watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> next on "the communicators," the latest on self-driving car technology. then a conference on civic engagement and grassroots organizing. >> this week "the communicators" goes to pittsburgh to look at self-driving cars. we talk with one of the nation's key self-driving researchers at carnegie mellon university and take a ride in a autonomous car that the university is developing. >> host: well, dr. rajage kumar of carnegie mellon, what are we looking at here? what is this?

>> guest: we are looking at a cadillac crossover suv from 2011 which is capable of driving itself. so it's a self-driving cadillac. >> host: well, if you look at the car, it looks pretty norm from here. >> guest: yeah. it's a car that we literally bought new from a cadillac dealership in pittsburgh, and then we outfitted it with a bunch of sensors and computers, added software to it. bam, it drives itself. >> host: well, you wanted to give us a ride. >> guest: oh, we would love to give you a ride. >> host: let's go. >> guest: hop in. >> autonomous driving. >> host: what's the main reaction you get from people riding mt. car with yousome. >> guest: the typical reaction is one of anxiety and angst. fear and occasionally panic attacks. but then they eventually watch