Bennet Reflects on Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Future of American Democracy In Senate Floor Speech

VIDEO: Watch Bennet’s speech HERE 

 

Washington, D.C. – Today, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet spoke on the Senate floor about the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Senate’s responsibility to work toward a future worthy of her legacy to make America more democratic, more fair, and more free. 

In his speech, Bennet said: “For more than a quarter century on the court, Justice Ginsburg authored rulings that promoted fairness, advanced equality, and secured hard-won rights. They upheld affirmative action and protected a woman’s right to choose. Her dissent in one gender discrimination case was so powerful...it inspired the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the very first legislation President Obama signed.”

Bennet continued: “As we reflect on her legacy...I would say, Justice Ginsburg, herself, should be thought of as a founder of our country. Not because she had an important title or wore a black robe -- although she wore it as well as anyone in the countless images of her reproduced on T-Shirts and tote bags and onesies as the notorious RBG -- but because she knew where we had fallen short and dedicated her life to calling America closer to our best traditions of equality, liberty, and opportunity for all. Because the young Joan Ruth Bader knew America would be worse off without her, Justice Ginsburg made America more democratic, more fair, and more free.”

“In Mitch McConnell’s Senate, words have lost their meaning. And, the rules are what you can get away with, politically. That’s the outer boundary of where you can go. And it’s moments like this that I remind them this is not the first republic that’s failed. And when words lose their meaning, when promises mean nothing, when commitments mean nothing, that’s when institutions fail. I for one hope that we’ll put this era behind us, and not return to some old era -- I’m not interested in that -- but build a Senate that’s actually worthy of the 21st century. Worthy of the example Ruth Bader Ginsburg set. Worthy of the expectations our kids and grandchildren have of us, and that we have of them, and of America’s place in the world,” said Bennet.

Bennet’s remarks as delivered are below:

In the summer of 1920, America ratified the 19th amendment. This breakthrough in our history, born of decades of setback and struggle by many unremembered women who never lived to actually cast a vote – for what to us now is a self-evident proposition that women in this country should have the right to vote – moved this country one step closer to equality. And that’s why I think it’s so fitting that, a century later, we pay our respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, more than anyone, advanced the cause of equality between men and women over her remarkable career.

Justice Ginsburg’s commitment to equality was not the result of lofty idealism, but the hard experience of her life. Thirteen years after ratification of the 19th Amendment, Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born to a working-class family in Brooklyn. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and her father sold furs at a time when no one would buy them. Tragically, her mother died of cancer before Ruth graduated from school. But these challenges, like others she would face, did not defeat her; they didn’t prevent her from graduating first in her class at Cornell; they didn’t exclude her from Harvard Law School, where she was one of only nine women in a class of 550 and had to justify to the dean why she had taken the place of a man. 

She finished her law degree at Columbia, where she once again was first in her class, and not a single law firm would hire her. She applied to clerk for Justice Felix Frankfurter on the Supreme Court, who said that although she was an impressive candidate, he wasn’t ready to hire a woman. She understood these early, first-hand experiences with discrimination not merely as barriers to her obvious talents and potential, but as a vicious threat to our country’s full potential.

She knew that any country that would deny a single person’s chance to make a contribution on account of their race, or their gender, or their religion, or whom they loved, will never fully flourish. Tearing down these barriers became the cause of her career.

She rose to become a full professor at Rutgers Law School and founded America’s first law journal on gender issues. Later, she returned to Columbia Law School, where she became the first woman to hold a full professorship. She worked pro-bono for the ACLU, co-founding their Women’s Rights Project. 

She quickly became one of the most accomplished litigators in the country, writing a brief the Supreme Court cited in Reed v. Reed to rule, for the first time, that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s arguments led the court to overcome centuries of narrow views about the proper role of women in American life. As a result, the Court’s holding redefined American law.

Ruth’s accomplishments led to an appointment to the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and in 1993, President Clinton named her to the Supreme Court. Her nomination sailed through this body with 96 votes, a reminder of a time, not so very long ago, when the Senate actually understood its constitutional responsibility to advise and consent, and what that actually meant.

For more than a quarter century on the court, Justice Ginsburg authored rulings that promoted fairness, advanced equality, and secured hard-won rights. They upheld affirmative action and protected a woman’s right to choose. Her dissent in one gender discrimination case was so powerful, Mr. President, it inspired the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the very first legislation President Obama signed.

At the same time, she could never accept decisions that nullified the right to vote or otherwise limited our democratic values, even when it was hard for some of her colleagues to perceive the systemic racism in our country. When they were gutting critical protections to the Voting Rights Act, she had the common sense to tell them you are “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you’re not getting wet.” As always, she cut through legal convention and saw with clear eyes the enduring threat discrimination poses to our elections. She knew voters still deserved the protection of the law, and all these years later, after state after state after state have passed laws dispossessing people of important rights with respect to the right to vote, she’s been proven right.

As we reflect on her legacy – and, in a real sense – I would say, Justice Ginsburg, herself, should be thought of as a founder of our country. Not because she had an important title or wore a black robe -- although she wore it as well as anyone in the countless images of her reproduced on T-Shirts and tote bags and onesies as the notorious RBG -- but because she knew where we had fallen short and dedicated her life to calling America closer to our best traditions of equality, liberty, and opportunity for all. 

Because the young Joan Ruth Bader knew America would be worse off without her, Justice Ginsburg made America more democratic, more fair, and more free.

Mr. President, I’d ask that my next remarks appear separate in the record from the last. 

(Presiding officer: Without objection)

Thank you, Mr. President. Before I turn over to my hardworking colleague from Michigan who is here later than he should be, only because that’s the kind of person that he is, working so tremendously hard on behalf of the people of Michigan and the people of this country. 

Let me just say one word about where we find ourselves in the Senate. I’m just gonna take two minutes to do this. 

But, I believe that American history can be best understood, from the very founding of our country until now, as an epic battle between the highest ideals that humanity has ever expressed in our founding documents, and the worst instincts of human beings. At the founding, that took the form of the institution of slavery, and you can draw a straight line from those days to these days. And, there is no doubt in my mind which side of that line Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on. 

There’s no guarantee that this country is gonna become more democratic, more fair, and more free. That took the work of suffragettes. That took the work of enslaved people like Frederick Douglass, another founder of this country who, in his lifetime, changed the entire approach of the abolitionist movement to argue that the Constitution was not a pro-slavery document, as they were arguing at the time, but that it was an anti-slavery document, and that we weren’t living up to the ideals of that Constitution. That’s another self-evident fact today, to us, but it wasn’t at the time that Frederick Douglass made those arguments.

And there is no doubt in my mind that if we find ourselves with a 6-3 court, and we’ve replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not with somebody that has an appreciation for the direction this country needs to go, which is to enable all of us to participate fairly and justly and equally in the society, but one where the most powerful and the most well-connected are able to get the courts to pay attention to them, while working people all over this country can’t have the basic health insurance that everyone else in the industrialized world has come to expect, we’re gonna be a poorer country for it. 

And my final point is, before I turn it over the senator from Michigan, the fact that we got here with a Majority Leader who has completely undermined any sense of integrity in this body -- with respect to the rules, not speaking personally about him -- is a real problem. Because it’s hard for me to see how this place will ever make enduring change that we need to make if the American people have completely lost faith in it.

In Mitch McConnell’s Senate, words have lost their meaning. And, the rules are what you can get away with, politically. That’s the outer boundary of where you can go. And it’s moments like this that I remind them this is not the first republic that’s failed. And when words lose their meaning, when promises mean nothing, when commitments mean nothing, that’s when institutions fail.

I for one hope that we’ll put this era behind us, and not return to some old era -- I’m not interested in that -- but build a Senate that’s actually worthy of the 21st century. Worthy of the example Ruth Bader Ginsburg set. Worthy of the expectations our kids and grandchildren have of us, and that we have of them, and of America’s place in the world. 

And we’re not gonna do it this way. We can’t do it this way. And we have a chance to make change, and I hope that we will.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and I say to my friend from Michigan, thank you for your patience and indulgence.