a hugely consequential day for our country as history would have it. and tonight a crowd has gathered indeed at the steps of the u.s. supreme court. the court announced her death earlier this evening, said it was due to complications from cancer. ginsburg, who was 87 years old, was the second woman to serve on the supreme court. she was an iconic figure whose legacy only grew into her ninth decade on earth. she had changed american law and left her mark on american law before she ever served a day on the supreme court, where she went on to further cement her legacy. her health has been tenuous for some time. she has battled any number of ailments, including multiple rigorous cancer treatments. she said more than once she would no longer serve on the court if she were unable to do the work, and it turns out only in death was she unable to continue.

tonight we will look at all of it, her life, her jurisprudence, the fight now before us just when you perhaps thought our politics could not get any more poisonous or toxic, it's about to. donald trump had already started a rally in minnesota when word of her death arrived. he was informed only after leaving the stage en route to the flight home. >> she just died? wow, i didn't know that. i just- you're telling me now for the first time. she led an amazing life. what else can you say? she was an amazing woman. whether you agreed or not, she was an amazing woman who led an amazing life. i'm actually sad to hear that. >> and just a few minutes ago, the president issued a statement saying, quote, today our nation mourns the loss of a titan of the law.

nicolle. >> look, if you are a woman, you live in ruth ginsburg's america, and she has been this towering figure in american jurisprudence and has affected our country in more ways than we can describe in just an hour. even if she hadn't served on the court, she would have left that mark. as "new york times" reporter linda greenhouse said, she was a trailblazer for women's rights. she argued six cases before the high court and worked with the aclu to attack and dismantle legal gender discrimination. bill clinton nominated her to the supreme court in 1993 and as a powerful member of the liberal bloc, she was a reliable vote in favor of protecting abortion access and voting rights. her death just 46 days before voters go to the polls brings a

seismic shift to the political landscape. last time -- i'm sorry, brian. that's you. >> the last time a vacancy came up in an election year was in january, let's not forget, of an election year. >> right. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell famously argued the senate should not and would not even hold a hearing on president obama's nominee merrick garland. that allowed donald trump to appoint neil gorsuch to the court. the rest, as they say, is history. tonight mcconnell issued a statement saying, quote, president trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the united states senate. now, earlier senate democratic leader chuck schumer of new york posted this message, and we quote. the american people should have a voice in the selection of their next supreme court justice. therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.

indeed in the days leading up to her death, ruth bader ginsburg dictated this statement to her granddaughter. it reads, quote, my most fervent wish is that i will not be replaced until a new president is installed. vice president joe biden, who presided over ginsburg's confirmation hearing, spoke of her death about an hour ago. >> her opinions and her dissent are going to continue to shape the basis for our law for a generation. but there is no doubt -- let me be clear that the voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice for the senate to consider. this was the position the republican senate took in 2016 when there were almost ten months to go before the election. that's the position the united states senate must take today,

and the election's only 46 days off. >> here for our leadoff discussion on a friday night, neal katyal, a veteran of the justice department and former acting solicitor general during the obama administration. he has argued 39 cases before the united states supreme court. peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" is here. and claire mccaskill, former democratic senator from the state of missouri. neal katyal, we start with you. you have argued cases in front of the supreme court. your thoughts from the personal to the history she made to the political reality we are in now. >> well, i am heartbroken. anyone who loves the court, anyone who loves the law is heartbroken tonight. i know we have to talk about mitch mcconnell and donald trump and all of that, but let's not let our worries about these folks cloud this moment, nicolle. she was so much greater than all of that. she transcended that.

i mean there's almost no one who has changed our lives more in the last decades as an advocate for women's equality, even on the more mundane stuff like how the court operates, the civil procedure rules and stuff like that. but that's not why you see these scenes in washington tonight at the supreme court. i mean the only other time i've seen a scene like that is after the same-sex marriage case was decided where you had thousands of people on the plaza singing "america the beautiful" and the like. you know, they're doing that tonight, and justice ginsburg cast one of those five deciding votes for same-sex marriage as she did so many different things in her life. she was a fervent advocate for equality. and the words above the supreme court are "equal justice under law." there is no one in our lives who has embodied that more in her life's work than her. so it is the hugest loss to the court and to the country imaginable.

>> hey, counselor, it would be in a perfect world ideal to devote this hour to a celebration of the life and jurisprudence of ruth bader ginsburg. it is impossible only because of the role that politics plays in our life in 2020 and where we are on the calendar. so i have a question for you because republicans are already raising the potential rush to try to confirm a replacement would be because an 8-8 court, an eight-justice court, potentially 4-4 would be fraught if they have to rule on anything regarding our upcoming election. can you tell the good folks watching who are going to hear this argument more and more about the times an eight-justice court has operated and thrived either due to vacancy or recusal? >> yeah.

i mean this is a bogus argument, and it's so sad to me to hear people like mitch mcconnell tonight rushing essentially with glee to try and fill this seat. and this is the trump administration's modus operandi. there was a federal judge in tennessee who died last week. within six days, they nominated her replacement. you know, barely even letting the family time to grieve before doing so. the idea that the supreme court can't function with eight members is preposterous. i've argued before an eight-member court many times and of course the best evidence that it can function with eight was what the republicans said in 2016, which was, it's easy to function with eight. when you have eight justices, what it means is that if there is a tied vote, that the decision of the lower court is affirmed without any precedential decision making so it doesn't bind other cases. that's a common thing. it happens. even if you have nine justices, you often have one recused for any number of reasons, stock investments or involvement with the case or the parties or the

like. our system accommodates those things. this is not about the very few cases that are going to come before the court in the next couple months. this is because they want a lifetime appointment and, you know, the problem with that for the republicans is that's exactly what they said in 2016 was inappropriate and unfair. and, look, if they do this, if they do this, the democrats will be well within their rights to expand the supreme court because the constitution doesn't have a fixed number, and we've had ten justices in the past. they'd be well within their rights to expand it to 13 or 15 or even 17 to nullify these games. nobody should be playing games with the supreme court. if the republicans do so, the democrats will have weapons available to them. >> so, peter baker, play the role i just tried to fill as an amateur. as is so often your role at "the new york times," please give us the lead paragraph on what just changed with the passing of this

legal and intellectual giant tonight. >> well, obviously it changes a lot in terms of the legal community. it changes a lot in terms of our understanding of what the constitution is going to be in the future. in terms of our politics, it just upends an election that was already high stakes, high octane, bitter, toxic, and fiercely contested. what it's done, of course, is it's introduced a new element into the campaign that will, you know, galvanize both sides of the aisle. it will allow the president to try to take attention away from the coronavirus and say to conservatives or republicans who might be uncertain about re-electing him, look, here's why you need to stick with me. see the consequence if you don't. you may not like me or some of my policies but i'm giving you judges. i'm giving you justices. isn't it better to have a conservative justice in this seat than a liberal? similarly you're going to imagine democrats are going to

wake up tomorrow and realize how much is at stake if joe biden wins this election. if there's seat available at that point, it obviously makes an enormous difference if it's a biden appointee. now, the question is whether or not you can rush such a confirmation between now and the election. that's a very, very open question. if they try it, and it's not clear from senator mcconnell's statement that's what they're going to do because he doesn't say what timing he's thinking about. but if they try it between now and the election, it will be a particularly titanic battle, the likes we haven't seen in terms of a confirmation in a long time. and that's a fraught moment, i think. it will put a lot of republicans who are in tight races, particularly susan collins and even mitch mcconnell, senator lindsey graham in south carolina, cory gardner in colorado, put them all in a really interesting position, really potentially difficult position where they're going to have to answer for what's different between this year and four years ago when they blocked president obama's nominee.

>> claire mccaskill, let me be blunt because it's the only way you and i have these conversations. the political power of this moment for the republicans is that the very voters that find his personal conduct reprehensible and revoting are quite animated by the prospect of a conservative appointment to the supreme court, especially one that changes the balance of power. what is the counter argument on the democratic side? historically democrats haven't viewed the supreme court with the same sort of intensity in terms of turnout and exit polls saying this is why they showed up. how do they change that now for the next 46 days? >> well, the american people respect fairness, and everyone knows what mitch mcconnell did in 2016. and they will be reminded of it over and over again. i mean chuck schumer's tweet tonight were mitch mcconnell's words in 2016. >> right.

>> exactly what mitch mcconnell said in 2016. so the people -- i think mitch mcconnell is in a tough place here. it's tricky because if he pushes his members in tough races, people like lindsey graham, who has said he would not do this, and grassley, who's not in the race, but he's also said he wouldn't do it. but you look at somebody like susan collins, or you look at somebody like cory gardner. this is a tough, tough place to put them in, in this very short period of time before the election. and i am not sure, like peter said. i mean we're talking about whether or not mitch mcconnell thinks people need to be home campaigning and working on winning. even if he just gives them a week, they've only got like 37 days, 38 days. well, the quickest a supreme court justice has ever been confirmed in the history of our country is 47 days. so this is really -- it's going to be very interesting. but i have to just briefly tell my favorite ruth bader ginsburg

story. my favorite night -- >> please, please. >> my favorite night in the senate was the night that the women of the supreme court gathered with the women of the senate, and it was just us. and we would gab and gossip and joke. no staff. and i think the second dinner we had was at the supreme court, and i was talking to ruth bader ginsburg, and i told her how much work she caused me. and she said, what are you talking about? and i said, well, when i was a young prosecutor, the very last case she argued in front of the supreme court was a missouri case called durren v. missouri. and the case she was arguing was that women in missouri should not be allowed to exempt themselves from jury service just because they were women. she won that case, and i was an assistant prosecutor, and my job was to begin to retry all the cases that were thrown out by the decision that basically wiped out a very unfair law that

allowed women to get out of jury service just because they were women. so with that, she quietly gets up from the table. she leaves. she walks down to her office, and she comes back, and she brings me the brief of that case with her name signed on it. so it is a treasure i have, and that's how generous she was and how kind she was. and believe me, when you had a conversation with her one-on-one, she was a very funny woman. you know, this is somebody who you would have adored spending time with, nicolle. she was our kind of gal. >> sounds like it. i thank you for sharing that. >> i know there are some levers the democrats can pull being in the minority. they can delay a committee vote for a week. they can insist on 30 hours' debate on the senate floor, i believe. the tough love question for you in the wake of this tragic news tonight is will the party be ready? are the democrats able to put on

their big boy and big girl pants, having once perhaps mistaken senator flake's pained facial expression -- and he got very good at that -- for a potential no vote? that incident, of course, turned an attorney named kavanaugh into justice kavanaugh. >> well, the thing that's different about kavanaugh and this scenario is, first, mitch mcconnell made the rule, and now if he doesn't live by it, he looks like a cheater, somebody who thinks there's two sets of rules, one for him and one for everybody else. the second thing is we were the ones that were in real trouble in 2016. you're looking at somebody that the moment i found out kennedy had resigned, i knew i was in trouble. we had democrats up in very tough states including mine. and they now are in that situation where they're the ones that have incumbent republicans

in very tough races. so make no mistake about it. lindsey graham said he wouldn't do this. so if he does it, he's in big trouble with people who would typically think lindsey graham would keep his word. if he doesn't do it, he's in big trouble with the far right, who sees nothing beyond the end of their nose and getting rid of roe v. wade. so lindsey is in trouble either way. so mitch mcconnell has got to navigate this and try to hold on to power in the senate. and make no mistake about it. that's the only thing he cares about. he doesn't care about what the supreme court rules about anything. mitch mcconnell only wants to hold on to power, so this is a tricky path for him to navigate. >> thanks to our leadoff guests on this consequential night. to peter baker, to neal katyal, to claire mccaskill. nicolle? >> joining us now, valerie jarrett, former senior adviser to president barack obama.

valerie, claire just took my breath away with a personal story about justice ginsburg, and i want to ask you if you have any personal stories to share. >> first of all, good evening, brian and nicolle. i want to begin by saying my deepest heartfelt condolences to justice ginsburg's family, and thank them for sharing her. what a gift to our nation, and we appreciate them for that. i remember the first time i spotted her in the white house, and it took my breath away. of course i had followed her career since i was a young lawyer. she was an icon for women, fighting for women's rights, against discrimination, and watched her confirmation to the supreme court and every decision since then. and anytime i was in her presence, she was decent, kind, thoughtful, human, and really funny. and we will miss her deeply, and i just think it's unconscionable that on the eve of her death, senator mcconnell would be talking about replacing her immediately.

it's just -- it's unkind. it's not respectful of her family, and it is going to irritate a whole lot of folks around our country. and i agree with senator mccaskill. it's going to put some senators who have tough races in a very difficult position. >> valerie, does joe biden now find himself in a position of having to produce some names of people he would appoint? i mean how does this change? we've talked about -- and peter baker and his colleague maggie haberman have reported out how this changes the race. it would seem to me at this moment and because it was justice ginsburg, this is an equally sort of powerful political opportunity for the biden/harris ticket. do you see it that way? >> well, i think what vice president biden will do is point

out the double standard. the fact that when president obama appointed merrick garland, chief judge merrick garland in march of 2016, what did mitch mcconnell say? he said, oh, well we couldn't possibly confirm a justice in an election year. the people's voices should factor in. and now they're considering jamming through an appointee in just 46 days? it's unprecedented in the history of supreme court appointments. so i think it gives vice president biden an equitable argument to make. i don't imagine that he would release names before he's actually sworn in as president, but i think he can put president trump in a very awkward position. >> i guess my only pushback would be when has that ever stopped president trump or mitch mcconnell, norms or feeling automatic ward or being indecent or being unkind? >> no, you're right. you're right, nicolle. >> right? >> there's no shame there.

>> there's no shame. donald trump will take this and run on this now. >> i think president trump will absolutely run on it. but senator mcconnell, the most important thing to him, as he has proven to us time and time again, is to maintain his leadership position. and it will be in jeopardy if he loses the senate. and the polls that we've all seen have showed that those races are tight. and so for him to put his senate republicans in a tough spot, who already had tough races, i think puts him in a very awkward position. so he has to choose does he want to jam this through, give the democrats an opportunity to galvanize around that double standard, or does he want to hold off? my guess is he will take his chances and jam it through, and my expectation will be that there will be consequences to be paid in november for those senators who take that tough vote. >> oh, valerie, the soft bigotry of our low expectations of today's republicans. thank you so much for joining us.

>> well said, nicolle. >> for such an important and political historic night for the country. thank you, valerie. >> you're welcome. good night. >> valerie, thank you. with us now, robert costa, national political reporter for "the washington post," moderator of "washington week" on pbs. and eugene robinson, pulitzer prize-winning columnist for "the washington post." robert, quickly to you because i've been following you tonight on social media and your reporting between texting and calls, again, once we get beyond the impact of this loss to american jurisprudence and everything else justice ginsburg touched, what are the politics of this breaking out to be? >> brian, first, of course, my condolences to justice ginsburg's family as they deal with this loss. but you did ask about politics, and based on my reporting tonight talking to top senate

republican sources, there are already discussions about how to move forward. number one, leader mcconnell has scene a dear colleague letter, a private letter to top senators and their aides and said, keep your powder dry. he wants to make a decision with them in the coming days about whether they make a push to have a vote before the election. some of the more conservative senators and their types are telling me that they would like to see a vote on a replacement for this seat before the election, making the argument -- i've not giving this argument any credence. i'm just reporting on the fact. they can make the argument that they want to have nine justices on the court to deal with an election crisis. i share that so you understand what republicans are going to be doing in the coming days. two, you see a real push already from some of my more moderate republican sources, the centrist types, to hold back, to have this as a lame duck decision. that's the tension tonight inside the gop, and they're already floating some names, but it's an early moment in this process.

>> eugene, i think the reality we live in is that donald trump is likely to make a pick, to float it. he might just tweet it out. who the heck knows? and we'll be off to the races. what is your advice for democrats for how to deal with that? >> well, a couple of things, nicolle. first, i just want to mark the passing of a true giant of jurisprudence. i mean i compare the accomplishments of ruth bader ginsburg analogous to those of the late justice thurgood marshall in the way she advanced rights for women in this country, particularly with all the groundbreaking, landmark work that she did even before she got to the supreme court. so we have lost a true giant tonight, and it's a very sad day for this country just on that

basis. you know, i think, yes, probably president trump will float a nominee, probably tweet it. i believe he's probably now trying to figure out what's the best leverage he can get out of this, right? because he's behind in this election. if the election's tomorrow, he loses. so how can he use this vacancy and the prospect of putting a justice on the court who would rule against -- rule to overturn roe v. wade? how can he best use that as leverage. is that to try and ram it through before the election, which is a different thing for both practical and i think political reasons. it's difficult for mitch mcconnell to do with his endangered senators, some of whom have said they would not do

this precise thing, like lindsey graham, in a tough race, tied in south carolina. now is he going to do something that he specifically, on tape, on videotape, said he would not do? we already know lisa murkowski says she's not going to vote to replace a justice right away. susan collins is in a tough position. thom tillis is in a tough position. as claire said and others have said, mitch mcconnell cares most about retaining his senate majority, and he will be loathe to put that, i think, in jeopardy. so i'm not convinced that he's going to go along with trying to ram something through. so from president trump's point of view, then what's the best way to leverage it? and it may be in his mind -- and i know this kind of sounds crazy, but he's donald trump.

i mean it's almost -- i would not be that surprised if he said something like, you know, yes, there is an election coming up, and the people do get to decide. and guess what? you know, do you want me to name the next justice? i've given you a list of names. these are the people i'm going to pick, or do you want joe biden to choose some, you know, socialist who is going to destroy america? and leave that question hanging. he may think that it's best to have that question hanging in the air on election day to drive pro-life voters who may not like him, who may have soured on him, who may be appalled at some of the stuff he's done, but who care so much about that issue that they may be inclined to hold their noses and vote for him or vote in an election that they're now planning to sit out.

so i think that's kind of his calculation. i think democrats have to keep the pressure on, and they have to continue to parrot back the words of republicans from 2016 and other occasions when they said precisely that if they were in this situation, they would not rush to confirm a nominee. and if push comes to shove and there is an attempt to shove it through, i think they have to use all the sort of guerrilla delaying tactics that can be used in the senate, which is another form of pressure because it takes these endangered republican senators potentially off the campaign trail when they need to be out there. they can't afford to be sort of pinned down in washington. so democrats are not without power in this moment, and they

just need to -- i think you perhaps said earlier, put on their big boy pants and join the battle and know that the battle is not necessarily lost at this point. >> hey, robert, i want to talk about the city where you live, and i want to talk about these live pictures we've been watching on the right-hand side of our screen. and i want to be the first person during this hour of coverage to say notorious rbg. it strikes me that when william o. douglas was a justice for decades, they whispered behind his back. they called him wild bill. when thurgood marshall was on the court, he was called nothing but mr. justice marshall. but ruth bader ginsburg enjoyed this weird collision and confluence of social media, a feature film of her life story, a documentary of her life story

and time on the bench, an assist from "saturday night live," a hungry generation of young americans coming of age in a political time who realized in real time just how historic a figure she was among us. and look at the town where you live, washington, d.c., on an unseasonably cool night at 11:00 eastern time. people felt the need -- and we're starting the jewish holiday notably. people felt the need to go outside to make it to the steps of the court above which neal katyal reminds us the inscription "equal justice under law." sum up what you see there. >> the scenes we're watching tonight are perhaps the least surprising thing i've seen as a reporter who lives in washington, works in washington, because justice ginsburg was not only a legal figure, and she was

a cultural figure as well as you just noted. but she was a moral figure for so many people who live in washington, especially those who are more center, left of center. they saw her as an icon, an inspiration. you walked down the places, the neighborhoods in washington, d.c. where young senate and house staffers live, college students live, places like u street and the crosses around u street and 16th and 17th street. and you look up at walls there. there are murals to justice ginsburg, paintings of justice ginsburg. there are things on street posts with her face and image, sometimes not even a letter or a name. people know the face. they know the image. they connect with it. and i can't tell you how many of my sources in the democratic party say they came to washington to practice law or to practice politics because of justice ginsburg. and for millennial women in particular after she was nominated and confirmed by president clinton and the senate, she is someone who for

the last almost three decades has been at the forefront of american legal political thought, and that has made her this figure who so many people and so many women identify with in a powerful way. and that's a legacy that will last for decades to come, and you see it in a vivid and visceral way when you live here in this city. >> brian, robert used this word sort of moral leader. i mean i think if you -- one of the obituaries that went up on -- i think it was "the washington post" website shortly after news broke that she died, told the story of her frustrations right after she graduated from law school. and she said she couldn't find a job, and there were three things that in her view were working against her, that she was jewish, that she was a woman, and that she was a mother. and if you are a woman working

in this country, if you're a working mom in this country, your life is better because of her. and it did not matter what party from which you hailed. you knew what she had done. you stood on her shoulders. and this loss comes at a time when people are just writhing around in the feeling of loss, the loss of the normal way of life, the loss of all these norms. i mean valerie jarrett was accurate in everything she said, but it hinged on this sort of predication that republicans are still capable of shame, that mitch mcconnell can be shamed into trying to live by his own words. that era is over. that is some of what we are reeling from in terms of what we have lost. but losing her, people talked all the time about how they wanted her in bubble wrap. they just needed her to live until there was another president so that that spot would be preserved, so that her

role not just on the court but in american life and especially for women would be preserved. and i'm sure you're hearing the same thing i'm hearing, brian, that, you know, why do we need to mash up the politics of the moment with the loss of this legend? but it is because -- and she would have been acutely aware of it. i think her statement to npr makes it abundantly clear that she was. those two things have to coexist >> yeah. it's no surprise she was a thoroughly modern figure given the battles she faced coming up. as you point out, she goes to cornell. then she's married with a child, goes to harvard law, tied for number one in her class. goes to columbia law school. like sandra day o'connor with whom she served briefly on the court, couldn't find employment with a first-class american law school education. so fast-forward to modern times, she was in on the joke about

keeping her health and staying alive and what she meant to people. she was enormously proud of what she meant to the generation coming up now, and it is not at all overstatement to inject the words "a moral figure" because that begins to explain the loss we're covering tonight. there is the front page of tomorrow's "new york times." this comes with our thanks to our friends robert costa and eugene robinson because more friends are waiting to talk with us. they include joyce vance, former u.s. attorney, who spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor. matt miller, an msnbc justice and security analyst, former chief spokesman over at the justice department during the obama administration. and we're happy to welcome elizabeth preloger, who clerked for justice ginsburg from '09 to 2010. and with permission, elizabeth, i'd like to begin with you because here i am. i'm not a lawyer.

i'm a court buff, and i try to read all the consequential decisions of the court. and i was so struck by the language. justice ginsburg's decisions stood out because they were written for me. they were written for a layperson with a passing understanding of constitutional law. what was she like to clerk for? i want to know what your job interview was like. >> she was an incredible person to clerk for, and you're exactly right. she wrote those opinions for you and for the country because she wanted the words of the law to be comprehensible and the things that she was trying to express and the law that she was making, she wanted to make sure that the public could understand it. that job interview, i was so nervous, and yet she put me at ease immediately. we started talking about our mutual love of writing, and she had learned actually from vladimir nabokov. i had written my thesis on him in under grad. so we started talking about his

books and it instantly put me at ease. it was such an incredible privilege to clerk for her, and it's such an enormous loss for our country tonight. >> matt miller, can you take on sort of these twin aftershocks, the loss of a giant, a titan in every sense of the word, and what it puts in motion? >> it obviously puts in motion a massive battle to succeed her. what i think it does is it really changes the terms of the election. you know, it's become, i think, a cliche to say that, you know, this is the most important election of our lifetime. but if anything, it's an understatement this year. i think the number of things that are on the ballot now, it's not just the rule of law and everything that we've seen wrapped up with donald trump over the last four years. it's now women's access to abortion. it's now access to health care for the 20 million americans who got it under the affordable care act. it's the ability of every

american to buy health insurance even if they have a pre-existing condition. and i think the thing democrats are going to have to do over the next few months as this confirmation battle begins is they're going to have to try to win not just the vote but win the argument out in the country. and i say that knowing that it may not be possible at the end to win the vote. i mean republicans have the votes. if they hang together, they can ram a nominee through either before the election or shortly after the election in a lame duck session. but if democrats can win the argument that, number one, this is not right, that the republicans laid out the terms in 2016 of how a supreme court nomination should be handled in these circumstances, and they should follow those rules. and, number two, the issues that are at stake. if they can win that argument, they may lose this vote, but they'll win the election, and i think what you'll see is it will give fuel to a push to reform the court and add seats under a democratic senate and president biden in 2021. >> joyce vance, as a veteran of the law, how about the fact that

ruth bader ginsburg's role in american jurisprudence was cemented long before she went up the steps of the supreme court for the first time? we don't always reach the standard or the ideal, but the fact that american law is supposed to be gender-neutral, we can thank this woman for that. >> i think that's correct, brian. women like me, we owe our careers to ruth bader ginsburg because she went before us. she made the path so much easier for us to walk because of her commitment to equal justice under the law. and she had a delightful ability, a wonderful turn of phrase, as you say, to make the law comprehensible for everyone. and i always think about in the shelby county v. holder case, which came out of my part of alabama, the famous voting rights case. and she explained it like this. she said throwing out the voting

rights act when it's working, when it's protecting people's right to vote, is like throwing away your umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm because you're still dry. and that is of so much value to all of us taking her experience as a lawyer and taking it onto the bench in the way that she did. >> hey, elizabeth, do i have it right that she was, in addition to all the other things that she was, that she was in on the joke? she was a person of this era. >> very much so. she embraced her notorious rbg moniker as she has such a gentle humor about her, and she could laugh at herself. she also just had this incredible ability to connect with people. i think one of the best examples of that was her famous friendship with justice scalia. it was so genuine. he would come to her chambers and sing happy birthday to her on her birthday. she had a mutual respect for each other, and all they they disagreed on many things about the law, they agreed on the importance of civility and on connection.

>> our thanks to these three guests for adding to our knowledge and our coverage of this gigantic story we are covering tonight. nicolle. >> well, now we are joined by our very own katy tur, our colleague and friend who hosts the 2:00 p.m. hour on this network. hi, katy. >> hey there, nicolle. hi there, brian. joining us now is jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. and michael steele, former chairman for the republican national committee. gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us tonight on this extremely sad day. i know talking about election politics right now can seem so crass given what this country is going through and mourning the death of such a stately figure in our history. but ruth bader ginsburg's legacy and the supreme court are inextricably tied to politics, especially when it comes to this 2020 election, which is almost

here. jonathan, i've been talking to a number of trump allies. i've been talking to sources across the political spectrum. the agreement among everybody is that this is a momentous event. the disagreement is on who this benefits. what are you hearing from your donald trump campaign and white house sources about what their plan of action is and how they might use this on the campaign trail in the coming days? >> well, katy, you said it absolutely right. first and foremost, condolences to justice ginsburg and her family. but we of course have to look at this through a political lens. we are only about six weeks away from the election. there's been a lot of talk perhaps linked to a possible covid-19 vaccine about an october surprise. well, one has now arrived before the calendar turns indeed to october. this is, though, uncertain how this could cut. it could go either way.

certainly it's going to stir passions on both sides. it was already an extraordinary bitter campaign, one being fought amid a pandemic. the president and his allies, yes, their initial reaction was, of course, thinking this could be a game-changer, if you will. we're expecting according to our reporting tonight that the president will probably meet with some contenders from his supreme court list, a list that he has released. he just added to it a week or so ago of possible nominees for the court were a vacancy to open up. also he's expected to in the days ahead make an announcement, probably sooner rather than later. we heard from -- he tonight spoke to reporters after his rally in minnesota. he did praise justice ginsburg, her character, her life, did not mention the vacancy. joe biden, however, we know, did talk when he addressed reporters in delaware, saying that it

should wait, that it should happen after the election. the voters should choose a president, and then a president should choose its nominee. of course senate majority leader mcconnell has already made clear that he wants to bring president trump's nominee to the floor for a vote, though did not say whether or not that would be before the election or perhaps in the lame duck period. democrats of course howling that that's hypocritical since he would not do the same for merrick garland. >> michael, if you'll allow me to put this in a little bit of election historical perspective, bring it back to 2016, donald trump released his list of who he might choose for the supreme court if he were elected in 2016 the day after he clinched the nomination for the republican party. and it was intended at the time to make sure that he was going to get every single republican voter that was out there. he was in a very tough fight at the time, it seemed at least, with hillary clinton. so this was intended to give those who did not like donald trump -- and there were a number

of republicans who didn't at the time -- a reason to vote for him anyway. hey, here is my entire list. when i've been talking to some now anti-donald trump republicans, at the time not so much, and some democratic sources, they say, here's the difference-maker right now. when it comes to what is going to happen in november, this could potentially be more galvanizing for democrats because you have to look at what happened in 2018 post the kavanaugh vote in the senate and what that did for democratic voters, especially suburban women across this country and the blue wave we saw in 2018. one other point, one former republican made to me is that donald trump already has all of the single-issue voters. there's no more to get. they're already going to be on his side. they weren't going to move no matter what. in your estimation of what we're going to see in the coming weeks, what do you expect to happen? >> you've laid out a lot there because that is really the full kettle of what we're looking at.

if you permit me to just offer my condolences on behalf of my family as well to the family of justice ginsburg, and as they say in the jewish tradition, blessed is the true judge on this night of her passing. so i think there are a couple of things to look at here. one is everything is on the table in terms of what the republicans are prepared to do to get this sixth conservative justice on the court. for them, it doesn't matter if it happens before the election or after the election. it doesn't matter what was said in 2018. it doesn't matter what was said in 2016. it doesn't matter what was said during the obama administration. none of that matters. this is a clean slate. so i think everybody has to understand politically how republicans are looking at this. so you can quote back to lindsey graham and to mitch mcconnell

all day long. it will not matter. you might as well be talking to a blank screen because they won't hear it because the objective now, as mcconnell has made clear from the very beginning, was to put a conservative on the judiciary at every vacancy, at every opportunity. and this vacancy presents that opportunity. so there is that. for the democrats looking at this, there is a little bit of strategery here. the republicans do, despite what i just said, they do have some fault lines. they've got six seats right now that are in a precarious bubble which will almost likely be galvanized around the question of the court. and so the question for mcconnell is weighing, do i still want to be majority leader in 2021, and this is my hurrah going out the door, or do i want to do something different? so democrats can play this a little bit better than one may think.

they've got some cards here, particularly with lisa murkowski has already said she's not voting for a nominee. susan collins, cory -- senator -- i'm blanking for a second -- from utah is also -- >> gardner. senator lee? >> lee, yeah, and cory gardner. all of these players are now in play in that regard. so there is, i think, a lot of room here to have something done, oddly enough, in which the decisions made will wait, will actually wait because it may be better looking at the election from the republicans' perspective, trump gets re-elected. we'll still get to fill the seat. and that's a risk they'll consider. but i think the democrats may have a little bit more room than one may think given the dynamics of the six seats and possibly

more that could be in play next year -- i mean this november. >> i think you might have actually meant -- i think you might have actually meant senator romney from utah. >> yeah. >> michael steele, thank you so much. >> yeah, cory -- yes, exactly. romney from utah. but i was thinking colorado, yeah. >> well, cory gardner is in the fight for his life in colorado, and the majority of coloradans believe that if you're going to take one supreme court decision that might come up or was likely to come up again, abortion, the majority of coloradans believe that abortion should be legal. michael steele, thank you so much. jonathan lemire, thank you as well. brian, nicolle, i'll toss it back to you. i'll leave you with this one thing, though. i was talking to a schumer staffer earlier tonight. i was asking him what they were going to do to delay potentially this vote if mcconnell brings it to the floor. and the response i got was, we're going to delay it as long as we possibly can and, quote, fire and fury. >> wow. i saw one of your other bits of

reporting tonight, katy tur, on social media. it's not tv-friendly, but i'll try to paraphrase. a trump source said he's one lucky mother-bleep. so, katy, you've been full of fresh reporting tonight, and we're grateful to have all of it. i want to tell all of our viewers that you are hosting a special documentary on the life of ruth bader ginsburg at the top of the hour just a few moments from now. brian. >> we are happy to be joined by the pulitzer prize-winning author and historian jon meacham, a guy who we often turn to, to explain and sum up what it is we are covering in our day jobs and, in this case, the loss we have witnessed tonight. jon, i'd like to begin in an unusual place. justice ginsburg, as has already been said this hour, famously said she had three strikes against her when out of law school and looking for work.

she was a woman. she was a working mom. and she was a jew. and i'd like to begin by talking about her jewish faith, which was so important to her. i was reminded tonight that in the jewish faith, those who die on rosh hashanah are believed to be blessed with an extra type of divine righteousness. it was deeply a part of who she was as a thoroughly modern figure and as a woman like justice o'connor, despite having sterling, first-class credentials, a huge intellect, had such a hard time breaking in. >> and isn't it amazing that it was all the day before yesterday? we're honoring a woman who faced those barriers 20 minutes ago. and like john lewis, like justice o'connor, someone who we were able to watch move from a

place of exclusion and of limited opportunity to the pinnacle of power. and once at the pinnacle of power, always remembered from whence she came and how she had to open the path for others. and i think that part of the legacy here for justice ginsburg is her life now becomes part of a living debate in the life of the country. she has gone -- slipped the bonds of earth, but she will be a vibrant force in what is arguably the most important presidential election since either 1860 or 1864. she believed firmly in the rule of law. she believed in the capacity of the constitution not to remain in a kind of 18th century amber

but saw it as a living document that could in fact be part of the enlightenment era project that america at her best has been. it was not a matter of reflexive authority or simply following what was written down but was to use the god-given gift of reason to assess changing circumstance, to assess changing data in order to arrive at a more perfect union. and is there anything more fitting than a constitutional order that is so clearly on the ballot will now have a vibrant, contentious doubtless, but a vibrant battle not only over article i, the congress and its power, not only over article ii, the presidency and its powers,

but now article iii and the judiciary and that founding project that because of our appetites, because of our ambition, because of our limitations, no one of us could be trusted with absolute authority. >> jon, i think the vibrance of articles i, ii, and iii may only be visible to historians tonight. i think most of the people i've heard from feel shared despair. it was already a moment that was already difficult and got more difficult in our history. >> sure. >> what do people reach for? do they -- does trump bring back some of those people despite his reprehensible conduct and joe biden's gains among republicans and moderates, or does this rally people who believed and saw the world the way ruth bader ginsburg did, which is the opposite way that donald trump seems to view the world? >> you just framed the question of the next 50 days. that is exactly the question

we've been debating at my household. i know you have too. who does this help? who does this hurt? do the suburban moms come out because of this, or do the red states because of their obsession with the supreme court since the brown decision? you know, we've had all those conversations. but at the heart of it, i think, is -- and perhaps this is hopeful. i think it's rational. at the heart of it is this example of ruth bader ginsburg, who as brian just said, began life with a very limited horizon and crossed that horizon and showed us a path to a better, fuller, freer nation. and so despair, i think, is a sin when you look at the american experience. and i don't mind to be panglossian about it or pollyannaish about it, but look

at -- we're 100 years in to women being allowed to vote. you were disenfranchised until 1920. 55 years ago, my native region lived under functional apartheid. a woman who dies tonight is a hero of the republic, couldn't find a job that she was more than qualified for when she gets out of law school. that's not to say, oh, so it's better now, so we stop. quite the opposite. we've seen how fragile and tenuous those kinds of gains can be. but they are gains. and so what the historian has to do and i would argue what the citizen has to do is look at it as a case study and try to figure out what was it that got ruth bader ginsburg from not being able to find the job she was qualified for to sitting on the united states supreme court? and what got her there was that more americans began to actually

see that the declaration of independence didn't just apply to people who look like me and brian, right? it applies to everyone. >> yeah. >> that was the central claim of the black freedom movement. that's the central claim of the american revolution as we should understand it. and this idea that somehow or another everything gets frozen at a certain point, a certain year, and that that's where america is great and we have to go back to that, that's ahistorical. that's just wrong. >> right. >> so my sense of hope comes from the fact that we live in a country that had a justice ginsburg, and we have to fight and work every minute of every day in this big, complicated, contentious country to make sure there are more justice ginsburgs. >> and that's why jon meacham is a pulitzer prize-winning author and presidential historian.

it's also why we ask him to join us on nights like this. jon, my friend, thank you very much from us both. and we've just been handed this from former president barack obama. the quote from his statement is this. quote, 4 1/2 years ago when republicans refused to hold a hearing on an up or down vote for merrick garland, they invented the principle that the senate shouldn't fill an open seat on the supreme court before a new president was sworn in. a basic principle of the law and of everyday fairness is that we apply rules with consistency and not based on what's convenient or advantageous in the moment. as votes are already being cast in this election, republican senators are now called to apply that standard. obviously, nicolle, that was the part of the former president's statement not dealing personally with the loss of justice ginsburg, which every american feels tonight. but dealing with the natural questions of law and process

that comes up. may i take this moment to thank you so much for being my wing person on our coverage tonight. >> thank you. >> this was really important, and it was really important for you to be here and a partner in it and a part of it. for the two of us, that's going to do it for this hour, for this broadcast, for tonight, and for this week. as we mentioned, stay tuned. katy tur hosts a special hour on the life and legacy of justice ruth bader ginsburg, gone tonight at the age of 87. on behalf of all of our colleagues at the networks of nbc news, for us, good night. >> announcer: this is an msnbc special presentation. >> it's amazing that at the

advanced age of 86, everyone wants to take a picture with me. >> she became a pop culture legend as an octogenarian. >> ruth bader ginsburg. [ applause ]octogenarian. >> ruth bader ginsburg. [ applause ] also known ads ts the notorious. >> laws of this quality have to keep women not on a pedestal but in a taj. >> she is in my opinion one of the most person americans ever to live. >> now ruth bader ginsburg's lark clerks, a select group who helped her shape the law on the supreme court for a quarter century, tell us how she changed their lives and the nation. >> she thinks of her clerks as kind of an extended family. >> she is super human. >> it's like clerking for madonna. >> justice ginsburg impacted the law in a way that made countless people's lives better.

[ applause ] >> it's bizarre to see justice ginsburg who's this very buttoned down person, very establishment oriented, loves opera, certainly doesn't have a very radical self-presentation. why is she the notorious rgb? >> she doesn't always speak in the loudest voice, but she is extraordinarily strong. >> i box, as you might imagine professional boxers are very tough people. but they're not the toughest people i've ever dealt with. the toughest person i've ever dealt with is justice ginsburg. >> she dramatically through her advocacy and later through her position on the supreme court altered the way that this country thinks about gender roles, in a way that opened up opportunities for everyone.

>> in the imamajestic -- the legendary jurist. >> the clerks are young lawyers. it's one of their first jobs out of law school. and they're essentially the confidential advisers to the justice. >> with some 10,000 cases submitted to the court annually, the clerks who typically serve a one-year term helped the nine justices decide which ones merit consideration. >> it's not just an administrative job. they really are sort of junior justices. >> as members of this exclusive club, clerks maintain a certain discretion about what goes on behind the scenes. >> you would never, ever, ever disclose the substance of anything that you worked on to folks on the outside. >> but justice ginsburg's former clerks have a lot to say about the woman who profoundly

impacted not only their lives but those of countless americans. >> i feel so lucky to have had her as a model. her even temperament, her careful attention to language, her fair dealing with others. >> seeing how much she cares about the people of this country. you don't want to let her down. >> i would never call her the "r" word. ruth -- it might be the only time i said in my life right now. it is always justice, and that will never change. >> away from the court, ginsburg has, of course, become a pop culture icon known as notorious rbg. some diehard fans have even gotten rgb tattoos. >> why would you make something that can't be removed on yourself? >> notorious rbg is a nickname that i coined.

it is sort of an encapsulation of justice ginsburg's larger than life force that she brings to the supreme court. it's a reference to the notorious b.i.g., the late, great rapper from the '90s, brooklyn, one who also spoke truth to power and used words to do so. >> to her clerks, rbg's power was apparent from the moment they arrived for a job interview. >> i walked into her office for the first time, and there is justice ginsburg and she's standing there. she works standing up, though she does not have a standing desk. but i remember sort of being struck by both how small she was and then how giant she was because she is an absolute icon. and the thing about justice ginsburg is she talks very slowly and deliberately. every single word that she says is carefully chosen, and there are often a number of pauses during the conversation as she formulates precise words for her

next sentence. >> i was very careful to not step over her words. i would let three you've elapse and make sure she was done before responding to any questions. >> at public events like this one at the national museum of american jewish history in philadelphia, admirers rallied around the legendary justice. >> that one my daughter calls mother as scarlet o'hara. >> this visit included a tour of a traveling exhibit that chronicles rbg's only life. >> we talk about your mother and the role brooklyn had on your life. >> justice ginsburg was born in 1933 in flatbush, brooklyn, to nathan and celia bader. >> nathan bader had immigrated to new york partially to escape

anti-semitism in his native odessa. >> i am the beneficiary myself of my father being able to leave the old world when conditions were not good to come here and make a living and raise a family. that is america to me. [ applause ] >> while jews in the u.s. didn't face the peril of those being rounded up by the nazis during world war ii, the bader family wasn't protected from prejudice. >> she recalled seeing "no jews allowed" signs and not being allowed to go to classmates' homes because she was jewish. justice ginsburg experienced being discriminated against, influenced her decision to work on behalf of others who were marginalized in this country. >> that included women like her mother, celia. >> she graduated from high school at the age of 15. but she never had the chance to

go to college because all of the family's money went to her oldest brother's tuition at cornell. >> it was celia who encouraged her daughter's education, regularly taking ruth to a neighborhood library. >> i learned to love the smell of chinese food in those days because the library was one floor above a chinese restaurants. >> growing up, ruth bader faced a series of emotional hardships. >> their older sister marilyn was 4 years old when ruth was born, but very sadly ruth has no memories of marilyn because she died of meningitis at the age of 6. >> this was something that her parents never got over. my mother says that every night when her father came home to work, there was a picture of maril marilyn, and he would come, look at the picture, and break down crying pretty much every night. essentially there was a ghost in the family. >> as ruth entered high school,

her mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer. >> it's something that she hid at the time. she didn't want people to feel sorry for her. >> but two days before ruth's high school graduation, her mother died. >> as a result of her mother's death, she was unable to speak at her high school graduation even though she was at the top of her class. it's something that really stuck with her. >> the future justice honored her mother's memory by getting the education that celia could not. and then would go on to transform america for all families. r all families

after greating near the top of her high school class, ruth bader entered cornell university in the fall of 1950. >> there were four men to every woman. so for parents, cornell was the

idea place to send a girl. she couldn't find her man there, she was hopeless. [ laughter ] >> the ratio appeared to work in her favor. she was just 17 when she met a student from long island named marty ginsburg. >> there was something amazingly wonderful about this man. he cared that i had a brain. [ applause ] >> nine days after she graduated from cornell with a bachelor's degree in government, ruth and marty married. >> justice ginsburg loves to tell the story of the advice that she received from her mother-in-law on her wedding day. according to justice ginsburg, her mother-in-law handed her a pair of eagle plugs and said the secret to a good marriage is to always be a little deaf. >> that turned out to be very good advice, not only in dealing with marty but even to this day in dealing with my current

colleagues. [ laughter ] >> to justice ginsburg's clerks, marty provided a counterbalance to his sometimes serious spouse. >> there was one episode at one of her clerk reunions when in the process of putting his arm around her, marty had taped a sign to the justice's back, and the sign said "her highness." when she realized it, she chuckled. i love that story because it's a window into the banter that was at the heart of their wonderful love affair. she followed him to oklahoma where she was in reserve officers training. she got a job as a civil service worker at the social security office. when they noticed she was pregnant, she actually got demoted. >> discrimination wasn't something that was abstract in her life. it was something that was real and present and that made her i think sensitive to the experience that so many people

have. >> from oklahoma, the couple moved to boston in 1956 to attend harvard law school. ruth ginsburg was one of just nine women in the program. >> the dean had a practice of each year having only the female students come to a dinner at his home. the dean asked each woman there to say why were they taking the place of a male law student at harvard. >> there are so many possible responses to that question. and justice ginsburg tells us that she responded so i would have something to talk to my husband about. of course, she cooperate have meant that. was she possibly put on the spot and didn't know what to say? that's possible. >> at home, there were more serious challenges. in 1957 when their daughter jane was 2, marty was diagnosed with testicular cancer. >> my second year in law school, marty's third year, and there was massive surgery followed by

massive radiation. there was no chemotherapy in those days. we just took each day as it came. my routine was i would attend my classes, i would then go to mass ger general, the hospital where he was, in the afternoon. i started typing the notes that his classmates had given me from his classes, reading whatever cases i would read for the next day. and maybe i got two hours sleep. >> law school alone as a single person is incredibly challenging. but to do all that is incredible. and i think she developed the habits that allowed her to manage all of these different parts of her life successfully, and she's carried those habits throughout her career. >> marty recovered and graduated harvard law school on schedule a year before his wife. >> given what he wanted to do and given that he was jewish,

there were very few firms that he could possibly have worked at in boston. and so he needed to take a job in new york. now they had a young child, and he was newly recovered from cancer. and so the idea that she would stay in boston was not really in the realm of the possible. so she left harvard and went to columbia without having any assurance that she'd end up with a degree. >> ginsburg graduated number one in her class yet didn't receive a single job offer from a new york law firm. >> she was essentially discriminated against for three reasons. she was a woman, she was a mother, and she was a jew. and that experience really helped her realize what feminism was all about. >> it was only through the intervention of her columbia law school professor, gerald gunther, that a judge for the southern district of new york, edmond palmieri, took her on as a clerk. >> palmieri said, well, i'm not

concerned that she's a woman -- i've had a woman clerk. but she's got a 4-year-old daughter. how can i risk it? i might need her even on a sunday. so the proposal was if you don't give her a chance, i will never recommend another columbia student to you. [ applause ] >> a lot of highly successful women of her generation understood they had to do everything a little better and a little cleaner and more flawlessly than the men around them if they were going to be taken seriously. and she has never stopped working that way. working that way

even after graduating at the top of her law school class, ruth bader ginsburg struggled to find a job. it was the 1960s. gender discrimination was practically the law of the land. >> if you watch "mad men," you will see that portrayal of how it was for working women. courts actually said if your boss grabs your ass, it's just a pi pi picadillo. that was a mainstream view. >> in 1963, ginsburg was teached at law school. when she became pregnant with her second child she told no one outside the family. >> she made the decision i'm not going to make the same mistake that i made when we were in oklahoma. i'm not going to tell anyone i'm pregnant. and the way she got away with that is her mother-in-law was one size larger than ruth.

and so her mother-in-law lent her her clothes to finish out the semester. >> when she started as a law professor at rutgers, it was no longer legal to pay women differently than men. however, when she went to her dean to ask him about this, the response was, well, you have a husband in a high-paying, good job, you don't need the money. >> marty ginsburg rejected such traditional notions about men and women. at home, he was in charge of the family's kitchen. their daughter jane once joked that in their house, daddy did the cooking, and mommy did the thinking. >> there was a certain repetoire of not particularly good dishes that my mother could put together. but over time, my father took over even more of that role. >> i remember in particular being invited over to their house for dinner one night. and marty's serving an amazing homemade baguette that my husband who had grown up in france said was one of the best

he's ever tasted. >> in addition to marty ginsburg's culinary talent, he brought a powerful legal mind to the table. >> marty ginsburg was almost certainly it the best tax lawyer of his generation, one of the leading figures in mergers and acquisitions law. >> in 1972, the married lawyers teamed up on a project. a case that marty had found and one that ruth thought might shake up america's deeply rooted gender bias. >> our goal in the '70s was to end the closed door era. there were so many things that were off limits to women -- policing, fire-fighting, mining, piloting planes. >> but the victim of the discrimination case the ginsburgs took on wasn't a woman -- >> it box office this guy named charles moritz. and he took care of his mother, and he wanted to get a tax

benefit for the caretaker who he hired to take care of his mother when he was away or unable to be there. >> the tax code did not recognize males as primary caregivers. so combining the forces of marty ginsburg and rbg, rbg argued that that was sex discrimination. >> the united states court of appeals for the tenth circuit eventually agreed. >> they used that case as a vehicle, and it was the first of many that she used to explain how gender stereotypes actually work in two directions. they don't just hold women back, they actually hold men back. >> at 39 years old, ruth bader ginsburg's reputation as a legal dynamo was growing. she co-founded the aclu's women's rights project and would soon be tested in the highest court of the land. between 1973 and 1978, ginsburg

argued six gender discrimination cases before the supreme court's all-male bench. >> i was kind of a teacher. i knew that i was speaking to men who didn't think there was any such thing as gender-based discrimination. and my job was to tell them it really exists, and they wouldn't want the world to be that way for your granddaughters. >> in at least two cases, she talked for over ten minutes without ever being interrupted. >> sex, like race, is a visible, imutable characteristic, bearing no necessary relationship to ability. sex, like race, has been made the basis for unjustified or unproved assumptions concerning an individual's potential to perform or to contribute to society. >> i think what that tells you is that she was educating the court and opening their eyes to

seeing an issue through an entirely different lens. >> in her quest to change the country's perceptions on gender, she found a case with another male plaintiff. steven wisenfeld, who'd been barred from receiving his late wife's work benefits. >> you have a father whose wife has died. he wants to stay home and care for his young son, but the laws are set up in a way that make it disadvantageous for him to do that. and he wanted to challenge those laws so that he would get the equal amount of benefits that his wife would have gotten. >> he wants to be a stay-at-home father after his wife has died. so that's justice ginsburg's vision of an ideal world. one in which men and women are equal partners. >> for wisenfield, in fact the principal wage earner, is treated as though her years of work were only of secondary value to her family. in practical effect, laws of this quality help to keep women

not on a pedestal but in a cage. >> ginsburg was victorious in the wisenfeld case. in the 1970s, she won five of the six cases she argued before the supreme court. >> what is most striking to me when i look back and read those cases was how carefully they were chosen and litigated so that each one built on the last in a way that the justices could understand why laws that discriminated against women were unconstitutional and why they should be struck down. >> but as a new decade dawned, she was ready for a change and a move to the other side of the bench. >> she was largely done with doing the big things that she wanted to do for women. i think she was ready to do something different, and what she wanted to be was a judge. >> she was nominated by president carter in 1980 to be

on the d.c. circuit. one of the things he felt very strongly about was changing the face of the u.s. judiciary. >> for the next 13 years, ginsburg became known for consensus building with more conservative colleagues. and the thoughtful judgment that would lead her from the d.c. circuit to the supreme court. >> what's funny is that her law clerks always called her rbg. when she was on the d.c. circuit, there was another judge ginsburg. so it was never clear who you were talking about. people got in the habit of saying "rbg" instead. >> at the time, no one could have imagined how those three initials would become a permanent part of the american vernacular. vernacular of america.

when we open the door for others to compete, we fulfill the promise of one nation.

when supreme court justice byron white announced he would retire in 1993, president bill clinton launched a nationwide search for his replacement. ruth bader ginsburg made the list of candidates, but she wasn't at the top. behind the scenes, her husband marty worked hard to change that. >> he was ereally the campaign manager for her to get on the supreme court. >> marty started a well-worn path of gathering forces to support ruth to be considered. >> he knew the constituencies that he wanted to weigh in, and the women's movement was one of them. >> there was some discussion

among the progressive women's rights organizations about whether or not she was their justice, but it's absurd thinking about that now. >> i remember where i was standing when marty called me to say, "we won." i said, "what are you talking about? " he said, "we won. he's chosen ruth." after careful reflection, i am proud to nominate for associate justice of the supreme court judge ruth bader ginsburg of the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia. >> after clinton introduced her to the nation, judge ginsburg made an emotional tribute to her late mother who'd been denied a college education so many years earlier. >> i pray that i may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when daughters are cherished as much as sons.

>> but she still had to be confirmed by the senate. >> the degree of drama was much smaller then than it is in the more recent nominations. it was all very civil. >> even on hot-button issues like abortion. >> i appreciate that i am never going to please all of the people all of the time on this issue. i can only try to say what is my position -- >> i agree -- >> and be as open about it as i can. >> you have been, and i agree. that as you know, admire you personally. but this is -- this is more important. >> seems so foreign today, but probably her biggest advocate during the senate confirmation hearings was orrin hatch. this very conservative senator from utah. >> you have to say that she's qualified, she's a person of great judicial temperament. >> she became only the second female supreme court justice in the nation's history after sandra day o'connor. >> the senate today overwhelmingly confirmed ruth bader ginsburg for the supreme court.

the vote, 96-3. >> my hope is i will live to see the day when the senate operates that way again instead of having these fierce partisan divide. [ applause ] >> that far more bipartisan spirit of the 1990s was embodied in justice ginsburg's friendship with one of the court's most conservative justices. >> justice antonin scalia, known in the d.c. circuit as nino the great. >> they were old friends from sitting on the d.c. circuit together, and justice scalia very much like marty had a very hysterical sense of humor. he loved to poke fun at his friend. >> that was a three-judge bench. sometimes he would whisper something to me that was so funny i had everything i could do to contain myself from bursting out into hysterical laughter. >> this is one of the the

strange couples of all time in american law. >> scalia has said that if he were on a desert island and could pick only one person, excluding family, of course, it would be my mother. >> the two shared a particular passion -- the opera. >> i would read these opinions that justice scalia would write that were kind of nasty about her opinions, and she'd be nasty going back. i would think how do they stay friends? maybe this is the end. maybe they're not friends anymore. >> i have never gotten angry at ruth or at any of my colleagues because of the way they voted in opinion. if you cannot disagree with your colleagues on the law without taking it personally, you ought to get another day job. i mean, it's -- >> just three years into her time on the court, ginds took part in one of the most significant cases of her career. in 1990 the united states government had sued the state of

virginia over its policy that barred women from attending the prestigious virginia military institute, vmi. >> what vmi had done was to set up a separate but equal school for women which was separate but of course was not equal at all. the vmi worried that women were going to somehow ruin the school. >> that's exactly what people said when women wanted to go to law school and become lawyers. >> six years later, the case came before the supreme court, and vmi's future was left in the hands of the justices. when the majority voted to allow female cadets into the school, justice sandra day o'connor, who as the senior female justice was in line to write the court's opinion, insisted that privilege go to her good friend and women's rights champion ruth bader ginsburg. >> from day one, the state-supported virginia military institute only admitted

males. tonight, times are about to change. >> ginsburg's friend justice scalia was the lone disenter. >> you had a stirring dissent. >> it was a great disen. >> you were the only dissenter. >> four years later in 2000, scalia and ginsburg were again at odds. this time over a case that would decide the nation's next president. >> good evening. somewhat unbelievably here we are now three nights after election night, and there still is no president-elect, not even close. >> although al gore had won the popular vote, the question of who would be president all came down to the electoral college and who had won florida. >> at issue, did the florida state supreme court go beyond its authority when it ordered a statewide recount of the so-called under-votes? ballots in which no choice for president was detected. >> in a 5-4 vote, the supreme court stopped florida's recount,

effectively declaring george w. bush the 43rd president of the united states. ginsburg issued a powerful dissent saying the supreme court should not have interfered. >> the other dissenters at the end said, "i respectfully disse dissent." justice ginsburg said "i diss t dissent." for democrats, "i dissent" became a rallying cry. >> not long after bush v. gore was goinvestmentnated she and marty went out and people started to stand and applaud. marty said, i bet you didn't know there was they tax convention in town. >> the beginning of her transition from a stoic justice to a pop culture icon. >> thank you, thank you. thank . $9.95.

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ruth bader ginsburg. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. please, everyone, sit down. please sit down. >> i knew ruth bader ginsburg before she was famous by which i mean when she was merely a justice of the supreme court of the united states. but not the notorious rbg. >> this is not what i would have expected growing up. my father was really the life of the party. but i think she's really grown into that role. >> it's like clerking for madonna. you know, my clerkship stock has risen dramatically over the past 20 years. somehow the world had learned so much more and admired her so much more. >> across nearly 30 years, her many clerks have witnessed her deftly learned opinions and history-making cases. many have shared profound private moments with the justice. >> in our country when there's

an execution, there will be a last-minute appeal of that execution to the supreme court. there's usually one from each chamber assigned to the case. >> justice ginsburg was at the opera, but i needed to be in touch with her about a particular death case on which her vote was needed. so the u.s. marshals drove me in a black suv to the kennedy center to catch justice ginsburg in the intermission of the opera. she said, "keep him alive," which was beyond my power as a clerk to do. of course, i duly registered her vote. >> in 2016, sandra day o'connor announced her retirement from the supreme court, leaving ginsburg as the sole female justice for the next three years. without this important ally, ginsburg was on the losing side in 2007 when in the highly charged gonzalez versus carhart

case the court upheld a partial-birth abortion ban. >> justice ginsburg was especially offended at the language in the majority opinion written by justice kennedy when he said that women who receive abortions often suffer depression, lower self-esteem. >> a lot of the reasoning was about women regretting their decisions as a reason for why the court should intervene. and i think we see ruth bader ginsburg at that time thinking i'm the only woman here, and how could he be saying these things. and her dissent really takes issue with that and says, thank you, but no thank you. we're capable of making our own decisions. >> i don't think anybody sets out to be a great dissenter as the court became more conservative. she found if necessary to use her dissenting voice. >> for the last number of years, she carried a bag around that says "i dissent." she's embraced this perspective.

>> actually some of her most important opinions as a justice have been her dissenting opinions that are really calls to history. >> and few of those calls were as loud as the dissent she wrote on behalf of lily ledbetter in 2007. >> this was a woman who had been discriminated against by goodyear tire for years and years and years but didn't really realize that she'd been paid less than men doing the same job until very late in her career. and the question was, well, could she sue for all of the discrimination. >> the supreme court ruled that she could not since the statute of limitations for holding her employer accountable had expired. >> justice ginsburg believed the majority did not fully appreciate how hard it is to uncover when you are being paid less than your male peers. >> as part of her dissent, she urged congress to rectify this

injustice. >> i ended my dissent with the line, "the ball is now in congress' court to correct the error into which my colleagues have fallen." >> and shortly after his inauguration in 2009, with lily ledbetter looking on, president barack obama signed the lily ledbetter fair pay act into law. [ applause ] yet ginsburg knew there were other injustices that still needed to be corrected. >> i think what has pushed her if anything to be more liberal in her old age is the idea that a lot of the things that she fought for she thinks are not being carried through on. >> and there was no better example of this than the case known as shelby county versus holder. in 2013, shelby county, alabama,

a place with a history of voter suppression, argued to the supreme court that the federal rules imposed on them by the 1965 voting rights act were no longer needed. to the disappointment of many liberals, a majority of justices agreed. >> the supreme court basically said, look, we've got an african-american in the white house. things have changed in the south. and the voting rights act has basically outlived its useful fns. we don't need it anymore, they voted to essentially gut the voting rights act. >> she read her dissent from the bench which is something that justices infrequently do. it's only for the cases they feel most strongly about, they'll read a dissent allowed from the bench. >> serving effectism to diminish a minority community's ability to exercise clout in the electoral process. >> in this particular dissent, rbg compared eliminating voter protections to discarding an umbrella in a rainstorm.

>> that's what we did. we threw away the umbrella even though it's still raining. that dismantling of the voting rights act led in a straight line to this day to voter suppression, to voter manipulation, to all of the things so undermining of democracy. >> for all the setbacks, though, there were giant leaps forward. in 2015, two years after rbg officiated her first gay wedding, the supreme court required all 50 states to grant and recognize same-sex marriage. >> there was sort of an impromptu celebration, marriage equality on the steps of the supreme court. ♪ ♪ say can you see >> i think one of the most beautiful moments that i've ever witnessed in my life was the guy men's chorus standing out there. ♪ bright stars through the perilous ♪

>> it struck me that they were singing that in celebration in front of an institution that, you know, just a couple of decades earlier had criminalized them. ♪ and the rockets >> i felt such hope and optimism and thought about martin luther king's quote, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. >> it was a saying the notorious rbg would invoke as she entered her mid 80s, determined to fend off both reactionary forces and a series of health challenges that would alarm her supporters. ♪

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♪ others see cracked concrete, broken backboards,here. rundown courts. i see a way to bring pride back to communities. art can change it all. bright colors, a bold vision, and it can be somewhere that brings people together. for games or hangouts or whatever. a place that makes people proud like "this is my neighborhood." that's why i made project backboard and a site with godaddy. how will you make your mark? make the world you want. for 56 years, ruth bader ginsburg and her husband marty had a marriage observers envied and admired. >> my best friend is my dear spouse, marty was always my best friend. >> former clerks margo schlaneg and sam bagenstas were one of

self couples who credited the justice with bringing them together. >> at some point, justice ginsburg and marty took us and two other couples of her former law clerks out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in d.c. >> she arranged for us all to have fortune cookies with a little line from a love poem inside the fortune cookie. >> ruth and marty's love story came to an end in 2010 when he died of metastatic cancer. >> toward the end of his life, he came home from the hospital. he couldn't stand up. but he really wanted to cook. ruth managed to help him stand up at the counter and wedged her own body behind his. and that image is symbolic of their relationship. that even at the very end they were together. >> by this point, ginsburg had been battling her own health issues for more than a decade. >> i started at the court in the summer of 1999, and it was early

in the fall that justice ginsburg was first diagnosed with colon cancer. and it was very touch and go in chambers for a while. no one knew how bad her condition was or what we could expect. and we went down to the courtroom that morning for the first day of argument, and there she was. >> i was fine for ten years. and then in 2009 tiny tumor in my pancreas was detected. very early. i had surgery for that. >> the thing to remember is that she's very careful about her own health. where other people might not find out that they have x thing until it's too late to treat it, she always finds out. >> arguably the toughest justice on the supreme court is the oldest, ruth bader ginsburg. [ applause ]

also known as the notorious rbg. [ laughter ] >> it was president barack obama who nominated two other women, sonia sotomayor and elena kagan, to join ginsburg on the bench. >> during the obama administration, some of her supporters were saying, okay, justice ginsburg, you've done a great job. you need to retire now so that your successor can be nominated by a democratic president. i think she really resented that, and she would often say, who you going to find that's better than me? >> in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign, rbg made a statement that led money to question her impartiality. >> recent comments by justice ruth bader ginsburg about donald trump have even some of her supporters wondering if she went too far. >> ginsburg said this, he's a faker, he has no consistency about him. he says whatever comes to his head at the moment.

he really has an ego. how has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? the press is gentle on that. >> she said, you know, i think if he gets elected i'm moving to new zealand. that raised a lot of hackels. >> something happened recently where justice ginsburg made some very, very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people. many, many millions of people that i represent. and she was forced to apologize. and apologize she did. >> so help me god -- >> so help me god -- >> congratulations, mr. president. >> reporter: with the inauguration of donald j. trump, ginsburg's health seemed to take on greater urgency. >> it's no secret that with the receipt appointments the court -- recent appointments the court has shifted dramatically to the right. people on the left, those in the middle are concerned what that means for basic rights for reproductive choice, for matters of national importance from health care to gun violence. >> what do we want?

>> in august, 2019, ginsburg's friends and supporters worried while she underwent a three-week course of radiation for another tumor found on her pancreas. when she appeared at the library of congress book festival later in the summer -- >> please be seated. >> she made light of her predicament. >> how am i feeling? first, this audience can see that i am alive. [ applause ] >> if she had any inkling that she couldn't do the job, she would immediately stop. i've seen no evidence of it. >> i love my job. it has kept me going through four cancer bouts. instead of concentrating on my aches and pains, i concentrate on the court's work. >> as she savors the celebrity of being the notorious rbg, ginsburg has never strayed from

her mission of making america the sanctuary it had been for her late father. >> the founders of the usa proclaimed that the heart of america would be its citizens, not its rulers. >> history has a simple memory, and the simple way to remember her will be that she was in the forefront of a successful movement for human liberation. >> people look back and they will remember justice ginsburg as somebody that impacted the law in a way that made countless people's lives better. >> true we have not reached nirvana, but the progress i have seen in my lifetime makes me optimistic for the future. the challenge is to make or keep our communities places where we can tolerate, even celebrate our

differences while pulling together for the common good. well, good i am brian williams. we continue now our evening long special coverage of the news you no doubt have heard by this hour. the death tonight of supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg. this happens to be day 1,338 of the trump administration, leaving 46 days to go until the presidential election. a hugely consequential day for our country as history would have it. and tonight a crowd has gathered indeed at the steps of the u.s. supreme court. the court announced her death earlier this evening, said it was due to complications from cancer.