Before She Was Notorious: RBG and the Lost Art of Incremental Change
Let me begin with a disclosure.
I am a conservative Republican. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I would have disagreed on many important legal questions. Our sharpest disagreement would have concerned abortion.
My admiration for Ginsburg does not require me to surrender those beliefs. Respect should not require agreement.
Antonin Scalia understood that principle. He and Ginsburg often stood on opposite sides of the Supreme Court’s most important cases. Their disagreements were real. Yet each respected the other’s intellect, character, and commitment to the law.
Jane Sherron De Hart’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life makes that kind of respect easier—at least through most of the book.
De Hart does not present Ginsburg only as a cultural icon. She introduces readers to the lawyer behind the lace collars, sharp dissents, coffee mugs, and “Notorious RBG” merchandise.
Ginsburg’s life cannot be separated from the history of American law. A biography that ignored the cases would feel incomplete. A book that treated every case like a law-school lecture would become tedious.
De Hart avoids both problems, particularly in the earlier chapters.
She places each case within the story of Ginsburg’s life. Readers meet the people affected by discriminatory laws. We learn why Ginsburg chose one case and passed over another. We see how one argument prepared the way for the next. The legal history builds in a clear and logical order. Each victory becomes another step in a longer climb.
Before Ginsburg became a symbol of liberal resistance, she was a careful legal strategist. She did not ask the Supreme Court to erase every legal distinction between men and women in a single ruling. She chose cases that exposed unfairness one step at a time.
Some plaintiffs were women. Others were men harmed by laws built on stereotypes about women. A male plaintiff could help male judges see that sex discrimination did not protect women without cost. Rigid roles could harm anyone who failed to fit the assigned role.
Ginsburg understood the Court she faced. She knew how far the justices might move. She built arguments from principles the Court had already accepted. One precedent created a foundation for the next.
Her approach resembled the civil-rights strategy used by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP. Neither lawyer began with the broadest claim possible. Both built a line of cases that made later victories easier to reach and harder to reverse.
My admiration for Ginsburg’s early work goes beyond respect for her skill.
She was right.
Women should not have been denied opportunities because lawmakers assumed every woman would become a dependent wife and mother. Men should not have received legal preferences because lawmakers assumed every man would become the family provider. Government should not force citizens into roles based on old stereotypes.
Equal treatment under the law is not a liberal principle. Equal treatment is an American principle.
A conservative can support Ginsburg’s campaign against sex discrimination without adopting every position she later took. Her strongest cases asked courts to treat men and women as individuals. That goal fits comfortably within conservative respect for personal responsibility, equal citizenship, and limited government.
Ginsburg also understood that lawsuits alone could not secure lasting change. Court decisions mattered. Legislation mattered, too. Public education and political persuasion also mattered. Judges could strike down an unfair law, but judges could not build every part of a new legal order from the bench.
Her concern about Roe v. Wade offers an important example. Ginsburg supported abortion rights. I do not. Yet she questioned whether the Supreme Court moved too far and too quickly in Roe. She worried that a broad ruling had cut short a political process already underway in the states and made the Court the center of the fight.
Ginsburg recognized a difference between winning a case and settling an issue. Roe did not produce a durable political settlement. Neither has Dobbs. Legislatures have acted, particularly in the states, but Congress and the country have never reached anything resembling a stable national agreement. Unlike the major civil-rights victories, abortion rights were never firmly reinforced by broad federal legislation. The courts therefore remained at the center of a dispute that the political branches never resolved.
Ginsburg remained a liberal justice. Calling her a moderate without qualification would misstate her record. Yet she often showed moderation in method. She understood precedent, narrow rulings, workable coalitions, and institutional legitimacy.
My enthusiasm for the biography weakened, however, during the final chapters.
De Hart is at her best when tracing Ginsburg’s early life, legal strategy, and rise to the Supreme Court. The cases provide a natural structure, and the author generally allows Ginsburg’s work to speak for itself. I could admire the story even when Ginsburg’s liberal views differed from my own.
The tone becomes less even as the book reaches more recent political controversies. De Hart’s own political sympathies begin to shape the narrative more noticeably.
No single passage struck me as especially outrageous. The problem comes from accumulation. Small judgments, selective descriptions, and subtle changes in tone gradually become difficult to ignore. Any one example might seem harmless. Taken together, the commentary begins to overwhelm the more balanced biographical voice found in the earlier chapters.
Every biographer brings a point of view to the subject. Complete neutrality may be impossible. Yet the final chapters sometimes move beyond explaining Ginsburg and begin defending the political world around her. The added commentary rarely strengthens the biography. More often, the commentary distracts from Ginsburg’s considerable achievements.
The shift is unfortunate because the earlier chapters demonstrate how compelling Ginsburg’s story can be without political prompting. Her intelligence, discipline, courage, and strategic patience need little help from the author. Readers can admire those qualities—or dispute her conclusions—without being guided toward a preferred political judgment.
I finished the book with my conservative principles intact. I still disagree with Ginsburg on abortion and parts of her judicial philosophy. I remain wary of courts that move beyond interpreting law and begin making policy.
But I also finished the book with greater admiration for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Before she became an icon, she built cases. Before she became famous for dissenting, she learned how lasting change is made—one argument, one precedent, and one act of persuasion at a time.
De Hart has written an engaging and deeply researched biography. Her account of Ginsburg’s early life and carefully constructed campaign for women’s equality remains the book’s greatest strength. Readers interested in the Supreme Court, women’s rights, legal history, or political change will find much worth reading.
The political commentary in the later chapters, however, keeps me from offering an unqualified recommendation.
My rating: ★★★★☆ — Four stars. Recommended, particularly for the excellent treatment of Ginsburg’s early life and legal career.
End note: Readers interested in the later controversy over Ginsburg’s decision not to retire during the Obama years may also read Nadine Epstein’s thoughtful defense, “Why You Should Stop Being Angry at RBG.”
AI disclosure: I used artificial intelligence to help organize, edit, and refine this review. The opinions, judgments, political disagreements, book rating, and any remaining mistakes belong entirely to the human author.
Dave, thank you for another thoughtful contribution to our American discourse.
I agree with your emphasizes on taking a career long assessment of Ginsgerg’s effect. Viewed over the years, has there been a more successful activist Justice?
You have now studied RBG as a contributor to American history. How did RBG perceive the difference between Democracy & Republic?
Ciao, Andy