Chapter 12 Chapter Nine: The Deified "Female Rights Fighter"

In 1992, Blackmun has been regarded by the world as "the barometer of American women's rights." Through his judicial experience, people have witnessed the ups and downs of women's abortion rights.His performance in the "Roe v. Wade case" strengthened his image as a feminist fighter.It is widely believed that Blackmun not only stood up for women's abortion rights, but also fought for women's other rights.In fact, the reason why Harry Blackmun became the idol of feminists is, to a greater extent, the result of unintentional intervention.Those who tried to "mythologize" him late in his legal career were fond of offering old-fashioned compliments at dinner parties and speeches, but the object of their praise was not what they thought they were.In Roe v. Wade, Blackmun's initial focus was not on women's interests, but on physicians' rights.This truth has been gradually obscured by the fog of memory and deliberately created myths.Re-examining the judgment of the "Roy case", we may have a glimpse of Blackmun's original intention:

This decision upholds the physician's right to administer treatment according to his professional judgment, which shall be protected until the state has sufficient and reasonable cause to intervene in the state's interest...but not before the state intervenes , the decision to have an abortion is ultimately a medical judgment that rests entirely on the doctor's diagnosis. Indeed, in the early 1970s, Blackmun made great efforts to study the cases sent to the Supreme Court by feminist activists, sometimes even more attentively than abortion cases and death penalty cases.The issues involved in the abortion case and the death penalty case can be understood by Blackmun through common sense, such as: the necessity of legal and safe abortion; the social problems that the death penalty may cause.However, the issue of gender equality is different.Such cases usually challenge policies that have been around for a long time and seem reasonable.The related issues did not involve life or death, and were even trivial, which caused Blackmun quite a headache.For the demands of feminists, he did not respond to every request, but he has always paid attention to them.

Of course, Blackmun does not exclude feminism.He has one daughter with a law degree and another with a Ph.D. in psychology.When the family lived in Rochester, Dottie Blackmun was already a partner in a store called "Designer Woman", which exclusively accepted female customers and made a variety of clothing for them.It was a time when sexism was still entrenched, but Blackmun appreciated the accomplishments of the women around her.By the time of his retirement, he had employed more female clerks than all other sitting justices combined.During his final decade on the court, the vast majority of his assistants were women.

Blackmun, on the other hand, never set out to make things difficult for the feminist movement. In the early 1970s, the feminist movement was in full swing. Relevant people continued to create issues to attract the attention of all parties, and gradually brought the focus of the issues to the courts, hoping to remove obstacles that hinder women from participating in social activities.The Supreme Court is naturally the best target, and people try to completely eliminate sex discrimination from the judiciary through carefully planned various cases, just like the abolition of racial discrimination in the past.However, these "planned" cases aroused Blackmun's vigilance and even disgusted him.In his view, these cases are too man-made and the plaintiff's tone is often condescending and aggressive.An earlier case, Reed v. Reed, petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down an Idaho law that gave priority to men over women if the deceased died intestate property inheritance rights.Representing appellant Sally Reed was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a law professor from the American Civil Liberties Union.The parties appealed to the Supreme Court, of course, not only to resolve an unfortunate family dispute.In the "Reed case", a couple had been at odds for a long time, and after their adopted son committed suicide, they left no will.The purpose of this lawsuit is to let the justices apply the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, just like racial discrimination was treated in the past, and declare that any laws that contain sex discrimination are unconstitutional.

Blackmun was skeptical about the case from the start. "This case is basically a test case, and it is nothing to do." In October 1971, he wrote before the trial, "The value of the real estate involved in this case is not even $1,000. It is necessary to make a big deal out of a molehill, and use such Is the case coming to the Fourth Court?" He also complained about Ginsburg's complaint, saying it was "arrogant" and "dramatic, full of emotional insights, and historical descriptions of the inferior status of women." Truth be told, for a complaint, 68 The length of the page is indeed the longest in history, and it is indeed exaggerated when used in such a case that Blackmun considers "insignificant".The complaint claims, "American women have been branded as the upper class in history, and today they also suffer from widespread and in-depth discrimination. Being a woman means that she cannot escape the fate of the lower class for life."

Although Blackmun was very dissatisfied with the complaint filed by the ACLU, he still took the case very seriously.His position was also greatly affected by the complaint.The pretrial memo he wrote was only four pages, but it seemed to be an internal monologue, full of contradictory passages, from which the judge's inner struggle between instinct and prejudice could be interpreted. “Overall, I am inclined to think that gender, like race, is a dubious classification,” he wrote. Still, that doesn't mean every law that uses gender as a distinction is automatically invalid.We must assume the premise that any gender classification can be challenged, and that proponents must provide strong reasons to justify such a classification.There is no doubt that women have been oppressed throughout history, no matter what field they are in.

It is certainly fascinating to use the Fourteenth Amendment as an analytical tool.In other words, whether this law survives or not depends on the Fourteenth Amendment.But the law may have had nothing to do with gender when it was passed a hundred years ago.It is conceivable that if this case appeared in the Supreme Court in 1890, the justices would not apply the Fourteenth Amendment at all.On the other hand, it seems to me that constitutional provisions are somewhat flexible, even open to expansive interpretations, because theoretically, we have gained a deeper understanding of the concept of equality.

In the end, Blackmun convinced himself that the Idaho law was unconstitutional.He wrote: "We can definitely solve the problem with a short and powerful judgment. I don't want to be involved in a time-consuming, labor-intensive and emotional women's rights discussion. The appellant's overly lengthy historical materials, It's completely negligible." The Supreme Court quickly reached a consensus on Reed v. Reed, and the case was pronounced less than a month after the trial.Berg's written judgment is only 6 pages long, and the content does not involve in-depth discussions.The opinion pointed out that Idaho is particularly biased towards men when appointing real estate heirs. The relevant regulations are arbitrary and unreasonable. However, it is not necessary to apply the "strict review" standard to such cases and use judicial review.

In 1972, Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and sent it to the states for ratification.If three-quarters of the states ratify the amendment, it would realize the dream the ACLU was trying to achieve with Reed v. Reed: imposing strict standards of judicial review on laws that discriminate against women, directly It's invalid. Soon, all the controversy surrounding this amendment was condensed into a new case accepted by the Supreme Court, that is, the "Frontino v. Richardson case". The plaintiff of the first instance in this case was a female Air Force officer. Prove that the husband is supported by her. However, according to the regulations on military welfare, male soldiers can directly claim that their wives are supported by them. However, if female soldiers want to prove that their spouses are supported, they must prove that half of the husband's living expenses are borne by themselves.

"Such regulations must be abolished," Blackmun wrote in a pretrial memo on January 17, 1973. As a constitutional "dubious classification"?The controversy within the Supreme Court dragged on for weeks, with justices all but Rehnquist disapproving of the gender classification in military rules.Brennan intends to apply the "strict scrutiny" standard, which in his view should have been done as far back as Reed v. Reed.But Berger expressed strong disapproval of the notion of "dubious categorization" being used lightly in gender equality cases. In Frontino v. Richardson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a 70-page brief urging the Supreme Court to apply the "rigorous scrutiny" standard.Blackmun's clerk, James Ziegler, found the pleadings very convincing and suggested that the justices define the gender classification as a "dubious classification" but Blackmun disagreed, arguing that the rational basis standard was sufficient to deal with it. a question. On March 5, 1973, he told Brennan: "This case has troubled me for a long time. After some internal struggles, I feel that we need not put gender standards in the same category as race, origin, and nationality. The juxtaposition is suspicious. The scope of classification. For me, it is enough to refer to the 'Reed v. Reed case', and there is no need to disturb the muddy water of the Equal Rights Amendment because of this case."

Brennan has been paying attention to the fate of the Equal Rights Amendment. At that time, 11 states had refused to ratify the bill. As long as two more states refused, it would be enough to make it stillborn.Brennan believes that if the Supreme Court wants to make a difference, now is a good time.Douglas, White, and Marshall all favored applying the "strict scrutiny" standard in the Frontino case, but Brennan was never able to muster five votes.Blackmun joined Powell, Berger, and Stewart in concurring that the military's benefit provisions must be equitable.Rehnquist issued a separate dissenting opinion, which contained only a short statement: agree with the lower court's view that the military's management and economic differences between men and women are reasonable. On May 14, 1973, although the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to declare the military regulations unconstitutional, the Supreme Court did not intend to apply the new standard of review in sex discrimination cases. Similar cases poured into the Supreme Court one after another, and for the nine justices, the difficulty of handling them did not ease at all.This time, they are confronting years of discriminatory policies within the government that have been taken for granted and justified.For example, in many schools, female teachers are forced to leave their jobs once they become pregnant (usually in the fifth month after pregnancy, when the pregnant woman's figure first appears), and there is no guarantee of reinstatement after pregnancy.Such rules were quickly challenged, and two such cases reached the Supreme Court at the beginning of the 1973 session, one in Cleveland and one in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Most justices believe that such a forced resignation policy is unfair, but if discussed from the constitutional level, it is difficult to pinpoint the crux of the problem.In the case, Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, Blackmun analyzed the different theories in his pretrial memorandums, baffled as to whether the case should Considered a case of sex discrimination? Any regulation of pregnancy is automatically gendered.I'm not sure there's a certainty to it, but these kinds of regulations are inherently discriminating between women, that is, pregnant and non-pregnant, not men and women.This is a bit similar to certain military regulations that require male soldiers not to grow sideburns or beards.Such regulations present differences between men and men, not between men and women. On the other hand, only women can get pregnant.Therefore, any regulations related to pregnancy will be considered as differential regulations that infringe on women's interests. However, after mentioning the above possibility, Blackmun denied himself: The above line of thinking may seem attractive, but it is not logical at all.Personally, I prefer to use other classification methods.For example, dividing people into those who lost their teaching position due to pregnancy and those who lost their teaching position due to health reasons.According to this classification method, if a person chooses to leave a job, it will be based on different reasons.So, is pregnancy any different?Of course, pregnancy is a voluntary act, while health reasons are involuntary.In addition, some elective surgical procedures also have a voluntary component, such as prostate removal, cosmetic surgery, removal of sores, enlarged tonsils, tooth extraction, etc.This type of surgery is performed at a convenient time for the patient, rather than being forced to do it passively. If this categorization is reasonable, then the Cleveland school system's policy of forcibly leaving pregnant women is inflexible and violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. Blackmun eventually joined a majority opinion written by Porter Stewart, which ruled that the forced separation policy was invalid, but the constitutional basis for the decision was not the equal protection clause, but the due process clause. On January 21, 1974, the Supreme Court settled issues in both the Cleveland case and Cohen v. Chesterfield County School Board in one decision.In her decision, Justice Stewart wrote that the "arbitrary and arbitrary" mandatory separation policy placed a "heavy burden" on women's constitutionally protected reproductive choices. Interestingly, the word "discrimination" did not appear in the judgment.Just a year ago, the Supreme Court confidently declared that it would uphold the right to abortion. Now, the justices have once again stalled when it comes to protecting the rights of pregnant female teachers. During the 1973 court session, Ruth Bader Ginsburg sent another case called "Kahn v. Shevin" to the Supreme Court.This time she represented a male plaintiff challenging a Florida law.According to this law, the state government should automatically provide widows with a $500 property tax deduction every year, but widowers do not get this credit.The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the law "contributes to narrowing the gap in economic ability between men and women" and declared it valid.For most justices, including Blackmun, there is no problem with the reasoning of the state Supreme Court's decision.After hearing Ginsburg's trial statement, Blackmun gave her a "B-" rating, which is better than her "C+" performance in the "Frontino case."And her opponent in this case in Florida, the Attorney General of Florida received a "C" evaluation. In this trial, Blackmun's comment on Ginsberg's performance was: "Ice and snow are smart!" In this case , Brennan, Marshall, and White favored applying a "strict scrutiny" standard to overturn Florida's legislation, but Blackmun supported Douglas' view that the law was "reasonably designed to cushion the financial impact of widowhood by gender, Especially those who carry a disproportionately heavy burden from being widowed." During the 1976 session, the Supreme Court took a crucial step in Craig v. Boren, which began applying a "moderate scrutiny" standard to racial discrimination legislation. On December 20, 1976, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to strike down an Oklahoma law.Under the law, the minimum drinking age is 21 for men and 18 for women.Blackmen added that Brennan penned the majority opinion, arguing that "to use gender as the criterion, there must be important government goals, and the relevant regulations must have a substantial relationship with the achievement of goals." During the 1976 session, Ginsburg sent Califano v. Goldfarb, a case involving Social Security, to the Supreme Court.At the time of the trial of this case, Ginsburg had participated in the oral argument of the Supreme Court for the fifth time, and he was considered a "familiar face" of the justices. "In red dress," Blackmun wrote in the court transcript.This time, Ginsburg's clients were men again.Leon Goldfarb is a retired federal employee whose late wife was a New York City public school secretary who paid Social Security taxes for 25 years.Today, Goldfarb wants to receive social assistance as a widower, but the government refuses.The reason is that he was not raised by his wife in the past.On the other hand, some widows do not need to prove that they are supported by their spouses to receive benefits directly. In fact, the Supreme Court has grown weary of such cases.Blackmun lamented in the memo: "Here we go again." In the internal meeting after the trial, Porter Stewart said: "I am almost tired of these social security law cases. Like tear gas." Blackmun sees no problem with the legislation.He wrote in the memo: "My basic position has always been to leave it to Congress to solve problems in the general field. Correction. I think there is some justification for making widowers prove spousal support and not for widows. Besides, few people would be bothered by such a question.” Despite Blackmun’s thinking, the Supreme Court ruled in 5 Voting to 4 overturned the relevant statute, Blackmun joined Rehnquist, Berger and Stewart in dissent. In 1979, the Supreme Court reviewed the validity of a Massachusetts statute.This law gives veterans an absolute, lifetime privilege.That is to say, any veteran who meets the public service standards determined by the state government can be hired by the government first than non-veterans.Such regulations, of course, are very unfavorable to women.The federal district court held that the state law was unduly biased toward a particular class that traditionally excluded women, and it declared the state law invalid.“The priority is extreme and annoying,” Blackmun wrote in the memo of the case, Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney. On the other hand, from a formal point of view, this statute is "formally neutral." The state government argues that this is based on two purposes: one is to promote conscription, and the other is to help veterans return to society.Therefore, Blackmun also tried to demonstrate the rationality of such regulations. "The number of women in the military is also increasing, which may reduce this disparity," he wrote.He also wrote in a memorandum written by a justice clerk on the case: "Dare we violate the priority of the military?" He eventually voted for the statute with six other justices, only Marshall and Brennan dissented . Soon, the seven justices on the majority side of the case received a letter from a woman named Catherine Christensen in St. Peter, Minnesota. "Women, from the time of Eve, have been told to bear babies, not to bear arms," ​​she wrote, "and many enlightened societies today have learned that it is no longer the duty of man and woman to carry a gun and to care for a family. However, you are arguing that men should be more favored simply because they have been playing the roles society has assigned them for so long, and women are actually being punished in disguise compared to them.” Blackmun did not respond to this question letter.Two years later, he joined the 6-3 majority in Rostkerv,s Goldberg in favor of the military's draft registration for men only. In 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor entered the Supreme Court.The outside world is very curious, what is the attitude of the first female member of the Supreme Court to sex discrimination cases?O'Connor doesn't see herself as a feminist, and of course Blackmun doesn't expect her to be.In her first court session after taking office, the case to test her attitude towards women's rights issues came. Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan challenged the constitutionality of single-sex colleges.Joey Hogan was a boy whose admission was rejected by the School of Nursing at a women's college.He filed a lawsuit for this, and the federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that the state could not prove that the exclusion of men from the nursing profession was "substantially closely related to the goals of government management." Mississippi Women's College then appealed to the Supreme Court . Blackmun's assistant, Kit Kimbers, urged him to stand by and allow men to enter the nursing profession.To reassure Blackmun, she wrote that "the verdict will not have much impact," since, outside of Mississippi, there are only two single-sex colleges and universities in the country, Texas Women's University and the Virginia Military Academy. Unmoved, Blackmun decided to overturn the original sentence. "While the clerk disagrees with me," he wrote in a pretrial memo, "and the statute is full of clichés and the case is tricky," he said, "I am not qualified to judge that, as far as education itself is concerned, sex-disaggregated Whether it is reasonable, although this question is very controversial." On March 22, 1982, during the trial, Blackmun jotted down his predictions about the case. He believed that O'Connor would join his side in favor of overturning the original sentence.However, he was wrong.After the internal discussion, O'Connor announced that she agreed with Brennan that Missouri Women's College's admissions policy was unconstitutional.There are serious differences of opinion within the Supreme Court.Brennan, O'Connor, White, Marshall, and Stevens supported the original sentence, and Berger, Powell, and Rehnquist agreed with Blackmun's overturning of the original sentence.However, Powell believes that the plaintiff in this case could have applied for nursing majors in other schools in Missouri, but he did not do so, so he became a victim of so-called gender discrimination. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict by a vote of 5 to 4.Brennan assigned O'Connor to write the majority opinion.In her first draft of the comments circulated, she emphasized that the admissions policy of the Missouri Women's College deviates from the development of the times, and that the practice of refusing to admit boys into the nursing profession will turn "nursing into a profession exclusively for women" "as if women are born O’Connor cited the college’s 1884 charter, saying that the purpose of the college’s teaching was to train women in sewing, bookkeeping, shorthand, telegraphing, and typing as required by the state government. into these industries." "There seems to be some truth," Blackmun wrote in the margin of O'Connor's first draft.Although assistant Kimbers urged him to join O'Connor's "persuasive, well-analyzed, and relatively restrained opinion," he insisted on dissenting.In a dissenting opinion, he said: “It is long overdue for this college to change its mission, at least to keep pace with the development of the 20th century.” But, “Do we need to push that far in the field of sexism? If we forbid a state to deprive some people of alternatives and offer those opportunities only to a certain class of people, will the dogmatism cause us to lose, or destroy some of the values ​​that are so vital to the latter? ’” he warned against “unnecessary uniformity” in the name of equality. In 1983, after O'Connor took a stand in the "Akron City Case", Blackmun's focus returned to the abortion issue.The case made him realize that he had to do more to protect Roe v. Wade from overturning, and in the process he came to see himself as a champion of women's rights. In 1986, Blackmun wrote at the conclusion of the majority opinion in the Thornborough case that "seldom has there been a more intimate, more personal, more a matter of personal dignity and self-determination than the decision to abort a woman." Decided" The somewhat objective and detached tone in the "Roe case" judgment has now become more passionate.Now, Blackmun is more concerned with the rights of women than doctors. In the "Webster case" in 1989, the words "equality" and "liberty" appeared for the first time in Blackmun's dissenting opinion.He originally expected that the "Roe case" would be overturned by the majority, so he wrote in the first draft of the dissent: "I feel sad for this day. I lament this atrocity that hurts women's freedom and equality." Later, because O'Connor refused Joining Rehnquist's side, the "Roy case" was preserved.Blackmun amended his opinion, and the final version read: "I fear the future. I fear for the freedom and equality of the millions of women who were born in the days of 'Roe' and are now sixteen years old. will be compromised in the future." In 1991, Blackmun wrote a majority opinion ruling that employers should not arbitrarily fire or refuse to recruit pregnant women, even though their work would expose them to chemical toxins that could harm their fetuses.Blackmun believes that the policies of some companies seem to be to protect the health of fetuses, but in fact they have a strong paternalistic authoritarian color, and even evade the obligation to guarantee the safety of employees in disguise.In his judgment in Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, he wrote: "Decisions about a child's interests should be left to the parents who conceived and raised him, and not to his parents. Employers.” Shortly thereafter, he received a letter from Faye Clayton, a Chicago lawyer and activist who defended women’s rights to abortion.In her letter, she said she was "deeply relieved" by Blackmun's verdict. "Before this, women had long been excluded from the legal profession under the pretext of 'serving their interests.'" She referred to a notorious The case of "Bradwell v. Illinois" (JBradwell v. Illinois) in 1873.At that time, the Illinois Bar Association refused to accept Myra Bradwell, one of the first female lawyers in the country, on the grounds that "women are naturally timid and shy".The Supreme Court of the United States actually supported the decision of the Bar Association in this case.Clayton said in the letter: "A century later, Johnson Controls is trying to exclude women under the pretext of looking out for the interests of others. Thank you for telling them that this is not a decision that employers can make for them." Blackmun takes great pleasure in being seen as a key driver of women's rights.A week later, he wrote back to Clayton: "I think the verdict in this case is appropriate and points the way for similar cases in the future. Even if the process is difficult, all the efforts are worth it. It is time for 'Bu Leadwell v. Illinois 'is over." In June 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to succeed Byron White on the Supreme Court.In the 1970s, she was a frequent visitor to the Supreme Court due to her frequent appearances. She briefly stayed away from the Supreme Court after she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980.What's interesting is that White has always opposed the "Roy case" and his successor is a leader in American feminism. Blackmun should be thankful for this, but he is very cautious and calm about Ginsberg's position Observe attitude. Indeed, from an academic point of view, Ginsberg agrees with the judgment of the "Roy case", but she disagrees with the analysis of this case. In 1985, she wrote in a law review article that "the opinion focused too much on medical autonomy and ignored constitutional gender equality issues." In 1993, she reiterated it in a speech at New York University School of Law. above point of view.After she was listed as a Supreme Court nominee, The Washington Post picked up excerpts from that speech.After reading the report, Blackmun wrote in his diary: "She's picking on 'Roe'. Yes, it might have been better if it had been adjudicated by the Constitution's equal protection clause. But, it may not have been. The purpose... This is just an 'afterthought' released by a professor 20 years later. People have to be in the battlefield at that time to understand the pressure. Now, she is about to become one of us. Can she handle AS ?” AS, of course, refers to Antonin Scalia.As we all know, Ginsberg and Scalia (nickname Nino) were friends when they worked together in the District Court of Appeals. However, Ginsberg's performance in the first court session after taking office proved that she did not intend to compromise with him in order to please her old friend Nino.At the time, the Supreme Court was hearing jEB v. Alabama, which dealt with the question of whether the Constitution allows the replacement of potential jurors on the grounds of sex.Seven years ago, in Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court prohibited the challenge of a potential juror for no reason on the grounds of race. The "jEB case" was originally a case where a father competed for child custody. Before the trial of the case, a prosecutor in Alabama used the right of recusal without reason to exclude men from the jury.Of course, such tactics are common in similar cases, because women generally agree with the prosecution's arguments, while men generally sympathize with the father who is fighting for custody.The father, who lost his case in Alabama court because the jury was all women, filed an appeal alleging the state had violated his right to equal protection under the Constitution. For Blackmun, the father's case was strong. In November 1993, he wrote in a pre-trial memo predicting the outcome of the case: "Victory is a matter of course." The debate in the internal discussion was fierce, and Scalia was particularly emotional.He said banning jury selection based on gender would be "the most radical verdict in 30 years" and that it was "terrible." However, the vote ended in a 6-3 vote to overturn the Alabama court's verdict, Extend the precedent-setting effect of prohibiting jury selection based on race to gender.Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas are dissenting parties. After Byron White retired, Blackmun became the most senior associate justice on the Supreme Court.Therefore, when the chief justice is on the dissenting side, he has the power to designate the author of the opinion. In this case, he decided to write the opinion himself. "We believe that, like race, it is unconstitutional to judge a juror's competence and impartiality by sex," he wrote.In his opinion, he systematically reviewed the history of the judicial system's handling of sex discrimination cases, citing four cases represented by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.In a footnote, he pointed out that it is still an open question whether the standard of "rigorous scrutiny" can be invoked in sex discrimination cases. None of the moderate review standards pass. "I'd be happy to add your comments, especially footnote 6," Ginsburg told him. Scalia issued a fiery dissent in which he complained that the majority was applying a "gender-neutral dogmatism" and arguing with "anti-male-chauvinist rhetoric" in an attempt to To achieve the goal of "blatant compromise to gender equality".Sandra Day O'Connor issued a separate concurring opinion, although she joined Blackmun's opinion.She always believed that the key point of the case should be the prosecutor. As a "state government official", he did not need to intervene in such a civil case. Ginsburg said nothing.She didn't need to say anything more.Harry Blackmun had said all she wanted to say for her, and in the past it would have been almost impossible, but it did happen now. Notes: