An account of the life—private, public, legal, philosophical—of the 107th Supreme Court Justice, one of the most profound and profoundly transformative legal minds of our time. A book fifteen years in work, written with the cooperation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself and based on many interviews with the justice, her husband, her children, her friends, and her associates.
This extensively documented account, incorporating more than 100 pages of chapter notes and a bibliography that cites hundreds of resources, is also quite engaging and very easy to read. Expect plenty of interest.
... exhaustive ... This version is designed for the historical record — though it’s history from Ginsburg’s perspective, and no less partisan than 'SNL.' Written with the justice’s cooperation, it is in many ways like its subject: scrupulously researched, largely humorless, and so intent on collegiality that it seems to name-check every single person involved in the 1970s women’s movement.
And Ginsburg’s role in the law-related aspects of that transformation will be familiar, at least in general terms, to anyone drawn to this weighty book (546 pages of text and 111 pages of endnotes, to say nothing of the bibliography and index) ... De Hart’s lengthy narrative, strong on facts, is less so on analysis. (And her grip on Supreme Court procedure is shaky: The court, for example, does not have a 'spring term.') We are left to wonder what it was, beyond obvious dismay at the court’s conservative turn, that transformed a judge known for singing the virtues of minimalism and consensus-building into a famous dissenter...
