On September 18, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bud Ginsburg passed away. The nearly 90-year-old American woman has become a pop culture icon in the minds of young people, revering this feminist strivers as a "liberal hero" and a true "queen". But when Ginsburg became a "totemic" figure on the left, her own complexity was stripped away. And why has Ginsburg become a "net celebrity" sought after by social networks? On September 26, local time, President Trump nominated Amy Kony Barrett, who is favored by conservatives, as a Supreme Court justice. Barrett, a former aide to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was conservative on issues such as gun ownership, immigration and abortion. With the nomination announced, the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States will once again stir up controversy.
【Text/Hualun, "Suddenly Left and Suddenly Right" Cheng Yanliang】
The elder with black-rimmed glasses, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Budd Ginsburg, has died.
Since the beginning of this year, news of Ginsburg's ill health has come out from time to time. What makes her special is that every time there is news about her health, the whole United States will immediately pay attention, and you can search for relevant news from various channels such as social media and news reports.
This may be closely related to her experience of battling the disease. Ginsburg, who died at the age of 87, had suffered from cancer three times and won many battles. The first was colon cancer in 1999, the second was pancreatic cancer known as the "king of cancer" in 2009, and the third was a lung cancer surgery in 2018, when Ginsburg returned to work at the Supreme Court just a few weeks after the operation.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (15 March 1933 – 18 September 2020)
Left and Right: Ginsburg's life experience has also sparked a lot of controversy, especially about the tenure of justice. In addition, she herself can be said to be a real "Internet celebrity" in the United States, and even in recent years, she has gradually penetrated into the field of Chinese social networks. After Trump took office, Ginsburg seemed to have become a "totem" figure on the left. Why is Ginsburg so important?
Hualun: Her most important and well-known status is that of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, but she has attracted so much attention on social networks because of other hashtags on her, such as insisting on speaking out on women's affairs, fighting disease, and aging fitness. Now you can see a lot of her videos or GIFs on the Internet, which is actually a comprehensive creation of Ginsburg's overall image.
Left and right: There are even some young people and rappers in North America who tattoo the contents of official documents such as her sentences on their bodies.
Hualun: Yes, the name "Notorious RBG" comes from the legendary rapper star "Notorious B.I.G.", a stout black male and a skinny white grandmother, whose image contrast makes the name deeply rooted in people's hearts.
Notorious, which means "notorious" in Chinese, and Notorious B.I.G, apparently borrowed that meaning. In the American culture of the 21st century, anti-heroism is a major feature, and in this cultural context, it can be called "the most heinous crime", "notorious", etc., and its real connotation is to make people feel frightened and prestigious. Therefore, "Notorious RBG" is definitely not a pejorative meaning of Ginsburg by the American right or conservative forces, but from the voice of supporters.
While Ginsburg's legendary life story is familiar, there are a few key issues or controversies that are worth revisiting here. First of all, when Ginsburg entered law school, the vast majority of American law schools did not recruit female students, so she confronted the gender discrimination faced by women from the beginning of her student days. She went to work after graduating from law school, and no law firm was willing to hire women lawyers. Ginsburg became famous in the 1970s because she fought several civil rights lawsuits, which were meaningful lawsuits for women's rights and became a defender of the early feminist movement, which is one of the reasons why Ginsburg has been commemorated and has become an idol chased by women.
It wasn't until the 1980s, when Jimmy Carter was president of the United States, that she entered the federal court system, starting with magistrates and gradually rising to regional judges. She was previously a civil rights lawyer, a university professor, active in the field of gender rights, the postwar Women's Movement in the United States, and one of the first professors to open a gender and law course. At that time, there were not many female lawyers and professors, and in fact, Ginsburg did not enter the U.S. High Court until 1993, and until now, it has been a full 27 years.
U.S. Supreme Court justices are tenured, with judges having the option to retire early and judges dying in office. In 2018, for example, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, and he was the neutral vote in the U.S. Supreme Court at the time. However, now that the president of the United States appoints the Supreme Court of Justice, he is more inclined to follow the party position, and the president of the Democratic Party may choose a more Democratic point of view, and the Republican Party is the same. But in Ginsburg's time in the High Court, the appointment of justices did not have such a tendency to be politicized, and the influence of politicization increased as partisan competition became more intense and extreme.
Before the Supreme Court justices officially take office, they all need to participate in congressional hearings, which is actually a place of struggle between the two factions. At Ginsburg's hearing, many familiar faces can be seen, such as the current Democratic presidential candidate Biden, who is the politician who recommended her to the high court, including some very famous conservative politicians.
Ginsburg's entry into the Supreme Court in 1993 is also seen as a major landmark in defending women's rights. But from the 1980s to 1993, Ginsburg served as a federal judge at the regional level and was no longer a front-line women lawyer in the civil rights movement. These ten years seem to have become a "vacuum period", during which some right-wing justices have taken advantage of some cases to pull back the steps she and other strivers have already taken. After Ginsburg entered the Supreme Court, he returned to this position.
Ginsburg, and Justice O'Connor, who entered the Supreme Court slightly earlier than her, have become to some extent the guarantee of female justices and the benchmark for women in the legal circle.
Nominated by U.S. President Bill Clinton, Ginsburg attended congressional hearings in 1993. From the Library of Congress
Left and right: We all know that the United States is a country with three separate powers, in the specific operation process, how can the judicial power not interfere with each other with the other two powers?
Hualun: The United States is a political system with three separate powers, and one of the powers is the judiciary. We all know the "nine-man" system of the U.S. Supreme Court, but during World War II, Roosevelt, then president of the United States, once wanted to expand the number of nine to fifteen, because it coincided with the implementation of the New Deal, and if it could be increased to fifteen, he could add six justices with the same political views as himself, but in the end he did not succeed. Since then, the nine-member system of the Supreme Court has also been basically consolidated. On this point, you can flip through the book "The Nine", which basically elaborates on the Supreme Court from Chief Justice William Renquist (1982) to before Obama took office. The Supreme Court at this stage is also very interesting, because American society itself is facing a period of rapid post-war development, after several presidents, this generation of justices may have been born around World War II, personally experienced the great transformation of society, so there are also some interesting personalities, such as Justice David Sutter is a well-known "hermit" justice, there are no electronic products in the office, and only an apple and a box of yogurt are eaten at noon every day. In the Supreme Court at that time, there were many such hermit-type justices.
As the pole of the American political system, the Supreme Court's most important power is the power to interpret the Constitution. When the structure of the Supreme Court stabilized, it became a very powerful force. For example, if the president or Congress passes a new bill, if a certain force in society believes that the bill is unconstitutional, whether conservative or progressive, it can appeal to the Supreme Court, which will determine whether it is unconstitutional. This is a very effective means when opposition forces want to oppose certain policies of the ruling authorities.
Ginsburg played an important role in the American civil rights movement, which was able to flourish in the 1960s and 1970s as the Warren Court (Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1953-1969), when the justices passed many important civil rights cases, some even passed 9-0, thus laying the foundations for society, such as the Civil Rights Act.
At the same time, the Supreme Court has expanded its power to some extent in this way to recognize the legitimacy of these bills, such as the "Miranda Warning" we hear when we watch Hollywood movies, which is also a case passed at the Warren Court, which seems to be just a sentence, but its formation may involve a complex case, and there were many such cases at that time, which ultimately appealed to the High Court.
The U.S. judiciary is so powerful that, for example, when the president issues an executive order, the Supreme Court and even a lower federal district court can make a "temporary suspension" decision to prevent the bill from being implemented. Of course, this is also the effective side of the Us judicial power.
Left and right: In recent years, U.S. Supreme Court justices have received wider attention, especially as Ginsburg has become a social media "celebrity", in large part because of some of her "out of line" remarks. During the 2016 US election, Ginsburg publicly expressed concern about Trump's election and severely criticized Trump; when the election was over, she continued to comment on the gender factor behind Hillary's defeat. At the time, some people stood up and questioned whether Ginsburg, as a justice, should avoid these topics.
Hualun: Actually, this contradiction has always existed. In the judicial circles, there is a word called "judicial initiative", some judges judge cases from the perspective of judicial initiative, he believes that he can influence the political affairs of the current president through existing cases, but some judges do not think so, he believes that according to the power conferred by the Constitution, the power of the executive pole belongs strictly to the president, and the judge is only responsible for hearing and interpreting judicial cases. Theoretically, the Supreme Court, as an important part of the separation of powers, should not interfere with the executive power in this way. We can think of the Supreme Court as a passive body that cannot issue a directive on its own, such as denying entry to a certain part of the population; but it can be judged by a case. Ginsburg was criticized at the time, precisely because of this. If a passively set up agency takes the initiative to criticize the incumbent president, it will of course be questioned by the outside world whether there is bias and interference in the administration.
So, is there a constraint mechanism for the behavior of Supreme Court justices?
Hualun: It's actually more difficult to limit, or at least there is no mechanism for forming at the moment. Because it is already a pole of power, and justice is a lifelong system, although some state Supreme Courts allow elections, but the U.S. Supreme Court is a presidential appointment for life, so there are not too many restrictions on it.
In fact, in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court did not appear in public discussions as often as it does now, and Supreme Court justices did not give so many public interviews. For example, Justice Suter, he is eager to push away all interviews, summer holidays back to his hometown to climb the mountain, this is a typical justice practice. Sutt did not retire until 2009, and the term coincided with Ginsburg for a certain period of time, which shows that past practices like his are not very distant, and it is only a dozen years.
The new problem facing the Supreme Court now is that political participation is so high and appears so many times in the news media. For American politics, there is no time to deal with this phenomenon.
Left and right: Earlier, the Los Angeles Times published an article by a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who proposed from the perspective of the profession of a legal person that there are many mythical Ginsburg voices in the current society, and he uses the adjective "rock star", which is quite critical, and directly points the finger at The 1986 Justice Scalia, who is actually a conservative Justice.
Hualun: What the law professor meant was that before Scalia, justices were reluctant to give interviews on television, newspapers, and even if they were interviewed, they were reluctant to talk about their views on a case, but Scalia would openly sneer at the views of the justices in which she did not agree. At that time, television was a very dominant form of media in the United States, and Scalia's practice would greatly affect the direction of society. However, in the era of Internet social networks, the situation has changed again, and it is possible that the justices are no longer on television, but talk about their views through various other media channels. Now that presidential candidates are on online shows, people wear T-shirts with the heads of justices, and it's not impossible for justices to express their views online.
Justice Anthony Scalia (1936-2016) from Reuters
Left and right: Now, to some extent, Supreme Court justices are merging with public intellectuals. In traditional agenda setting, the justice should play the role of "arbitrator behind the scenes", whereas today it is equivalent to the judicial involvement in populist politics, if populism is used as a neutral word here.
Hualun: Why are SPC justices tenured? This design is to take into account that the voices of these elected people will not change with social changes, there is no need to worry about elections, there is no need to be kidnapped by the voices of the people, which is the benefit of lifelong system. If you continue to participate in social discussions, the result is not necessarily that you guide society, and when entering public discussion, there will be problems whether your opinion can continue to remain independent. I've met older generations of legal people who are very reluctant to participate in public discussions, and some who respect tradition, who think they're legal people and wouldn't write about it in their own cases because there's an environmental movement out today.
But at the same time, we must also see that in law schools, some students and professors are moving in this direction, which is a trend in the new era. Justice Scalia was involved in a lot of events and was often on shows, but it's hard to imagine Scalia becoming a pop figure, giving him a song or a T-shirt. He does appear in public discussion, but he is entertained to a low degree, always presenting himself as "I am an intellectual" side, and his private life is rarely revealed in the public eye.
Left and Right: Does this have to do with Scalia's opposition to the liberals?
Hualun: Maybe there is or maybe not, it's hard to say. But I am afraid that this point has something to do with the times, and now in the United States we can hear a lot of very free voices, and they will take the initiative to attack some phenomena and praise some "stars", not only Ginsburg, but also young female congresswomen like Cortez and so on. The most critical change in the background of the times is that a populist president has been elected, conservatives have risen, political trends are turning in this direction, and instead, there will be a countervailing force to push this force back.
In fact, the political spectrum in the United States was not like this decades ago, such as Justice O'Connor, the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but many American feminists did not like her, in large part because O'Connor was Republican, and her attitude in many cases would be very ambiguous. O'Connor is from Arizona in the southwestern United States. It was a time when the Democratic Party was large, corrupt, and unsympathetic, and the Republican Party at the time represented an image of hard work and approachability, which laid the foundation for O'Connor's political views.
Left and right: This also shows a stereotype of the US vote bank in the outside world, the east and west coasts are different, the intellectuals are mostly inclined to the Democratic Party, and the central and central and western regions, mostly peasants, are inclined to the Republican Party. You read in Arizona and were deeply exposed to the ideas of the Republican stronghold.
Hualun: Yeah, I went to undergraduate school in Tennessee and I basically felt that. But I have a relatively benign view that I have friends who live in New York or California, basically nothing, they don't go to Tennessee in years, and the impression of people in these places comes from the New York Times or CNN. California and New York are more special in the United States, they are the home base of the Blue Camp.
As an international student, when you come into contact with these real people in the local area and feel the customs and customs, you can relatively understand the more real situation, just like a foreign student who goes to China, he will go back and say that China is not what you think. They do not oppose anything, they take guns to the streets every day, everyone has dozens of rifles in their homes, they will also go to the community every week to volunteer, very willing to help others, meet and greet, boo cold and warm, have warm social values, etc.
In 1981, President Reagan appointed Sandra O'Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the middle of the photo is Justice William Renquist.
Left and right: Justice O'Connor as a female justice, but she is not liked by many feminists, can you compare Ginsburg and O'Connor?
Hualun: One thing to mention here is that my law school is called O'Connor Law School, so of course we often mention these two female justices. One of the more interesting points is that I mentioned Justice Renquist earlier, who went to the Supreme Court earlier than both O'Connor and Ginsburg, who worked in the High Court for 29 years, both of whom were on the right, both grew up in Phoenix, met as children, dated stanford, and later met in the Supreme Court. We talk about Renquist because the Netflix documentary "The Infamous Ginsburg" mentions that Ginsburg fought a feminist lawsuit in the Supreme Court during the civil rights movement in the 1970s, "Durham v. Missouri", and Justice Renquist said with a joke, "You will not be satisfied with printing Susan Anthony on a coin", Susan Anthony was the standard-bearer of the early feminist movement.
Of course, Ginsburg is best known for quoting sarah Flinkaal, an abolitionist and feminist in the United States, in a trial defense that I just want men to take their ones off our necks. But the funny thing is that this sentence was spoken by Sarah, but now that social networks are spreading, many people may think that Ginsburg said it. As you can see from these examples, the Supreme Court justices at the time were all men who were not so sensitive to these issues.
Ginsburg is the second female justice on the Supreme Court, and compared with the first O'Connor, the style and value orientation of the two are obviously different. O'Connor's biggest "stain" was the most crucial 5th vote in the 5:4 vote of the Justices in Bush v. Gore. In the 2000 presidential election, florida vote count was controversial, when the difference between the Democratic candidate Gore and the Republican candidate George W. Bush was only a few hundred votes, because the two sides still did not obtain more than half of the electoral votes, so Florida's 25 electoral votes can finally determine the outcome of the election, involving the issue of re-singing votes. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided by 7 votes to 2 that the recount of the ballot paper was unconstitutional, and 5 to 4 votes decided to prohibit any new round of ballot focus work, and finally George W. Bush was elected president.
In a sense, we can see this case as a very rare case of judicial power interfering with executive power. O'Connor, on the other hand, played a key role in the neutron. She's known during her tenure for "always being the last vote" because everyone else is 4:4 and she decides what is what it is. She made a decision in the case that was considered "notorious". It's also a point where many feminists in the Democratic Party attack her, slamming her for cheating.
So, O'Connor's biggest problem is that she has not been considered a justice with a particularly deep legal theory. For example, The right-leaning Justice Scalia, who did not fail to make very progressive judgments, made his progressive judgments on the basis of legal fundamentalist reading of the Constitution, and the results reached. The judges of this faction have a very systematic view and are very insistent on their own positions.
But O'Connor is already a bit like a politician, let's first look at this case, then look at what the whole society in the United States thinks, how should I deal with it to alleviate social conflicts, and then decide how to judge. She was a justice appointed by a Republican president, but in fact less obviously biased toward the Republican Party, and she was often the middle of the vote. A classic example is that in all the cases that the Supreme Court tried in a given year, she was on the winning side.
A group photo of 9 justices when Ginsburg first entered the U.S. Supreme Court. Video screenshots
Left and Right: Can you explain what the voting mechanism of the justices looks like?
Hualun: After the hearing, the Justices will have a period of discussion, and in essence everyone knows what they think. For example, Ginsburg had a case in her hands and wanted to get by, and she realized that if Chief Justice Roberts had a vote on my side, my opinion could be majority opinoin. O'Connor is always in the middle, "jumping repeatedly."
Some cases are "test cases", such as the famous abortion case "Rowe v. Wade" after ensuring the legalization of abortion rights, the Republican Party has tried to use many other cases, want to use the judgment of these cases to bring down the "Rowe v. Wade case", in fact, the High Court has to face such cases for many years, there are many partisan issues, so O'Connor can stand on the winning side of all cases in one year, which shows how repeatedly she jumps.
That's why a lot of people in the legal profession don't appreciate her so much, thinking that she's not really the one who stands up for her point of view. In the legal profession, there are people who insist on their own positions that may be quoted many times, for example, Justice Scalia is quoted a lot, and people may not agree with his views, but he offers an academic achievement, provides a way to look at conservatism, and recognizes the meaning and value of a conservative reading of the Constitution. Some of the newly elected justices are also more legal fundamentalist and have formed a school of thought to some extent.
Ginsburg isn't exactly what we see on our network today. Before 2010, she wasn't a particularly extreme justice, she wasn't very leftist, she wasn't the kind of justice who knew which side she was on without thinking about it. Like Justice Thomas is notoriously far right, don't think about anything, you know Thomas must be on the far right side. But that wasn't the case before for Ginsburg, a justice with her own principles in her profession.
Ginsburg's image has changed a lot in the process of "Internet celebrity" in recent years, such as the image of her P as "Wonder Woman", which has increasingly become a totem tool. In the Netflix documentary, Ginsburg's tutor when she was a child was that her mother told her to be a lady, but this is actually something that feminists do not agree with now, teaching women to be gentle and pander to views that are not particularly contemporary.
In a classic case, Ginsburg helped a man who lost his wife to obtain a child-rearing grant, which was generally limited to women until then, and through this case, Ginsburg helped a man achieve equal rights.
But in Chinese discussions, some very monolithic narrative is often used to describe a person or a thing, and social networks are even driving this trend, and real people have been stripped away and only a symbol, or a so-called political point of view, is left.
In fact, justice should not be like this. Regrettably, both factions now realize that the Supreme Court can have a pivotal impact on American politics, so they will not abandon this position, and when their tentacles reach the Supreme Court, it will be difficult to prevent this day from coming, and the Supreme Court will become a fiercely competitive battlefield between the two factions. Judges support either this faction or that faction, and if they do not support it, they cannot be nominated by the president.
Left and right: At the same time, there is also the power of the people mixed in, and they are also "creating gods".
Hualun: There's a view that if the reality hadn't been this serious, Ginsburg might have retired and wouldn't have held on. Although she has said that I will continue to work until I can't move, this sentence is not considered from a political standpoint, and she does not care whether it is obama or Trump. There had been rumors that she was going to hold out until the next Democratic president came to power, but such claims were unfounded and Ginsburg never admitted it. Although she has said in public that she does not like Trump, she has never said that the reason I want to survive is that I do not like the judges that the president will elect. This is also a point that Ginsburg herself feels helpless, and the social interpretation is not something she can control herself.
Young fans' admiration for Ginsburg
Left and right: This is a very meaningful proposition in itself, reflecting one of the most complex points of American politics. In the process of extreme populism, as a benchmark figure of liberalism, she has also lost her true side in the dissemination of the Internet and popular culture.
Hualun: I can give an example of the moment, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat and Speaker of the House. How did Pelosi become popular, that is, when Trump delivered the State of the Union address, she tore Trump's speech behind her back, so it was made into a variety of memes to spread. Ginsburg is special when you become an influencer in your eighties, and when the outside world portrays you like that, you inadvertently have to follow it.
For example, Ginsburg and Scalia are very good friends, but if we only look at the image of the liberal standard-bearer and the protector of the Democratic Party created by popular culture, we can never imagine her becoming close friends with the conservative right justices in the Supreme Court.
When Scalia died, there was a terrier that was widely circulated, and the two rode an elephant, with Scalia sitting in the front and Ginsburg sitting in the back. At that time, there were feminists who asked Ginsburg, how do you sit in the back, we women should be at the forefront of the times, you should not sit behind men. Ginsburg replied that he was heavier and safer to sit in front.
In fact, at this time, sometimes I miss this friendship of theirs, and the old-school politicians are not so highly politicized and not so antagonistic. Someone has previously taken a survey on tinder (dating app), if you write RBG or AOC (Kotez MP name abbreviation) in the profile, you can significantly improve the success rate of dating. Over the years, factors such as stance and standing in line have penetrated into the field of life. Like Ginsburg and Scalia, who seem to be one left and one right, they have become very good friends in life, as if they have become rare; Ginsburg once said that I only went out to lunch with Scalia; Scalia also said on television that I liked her very much, except for her legal views.
Of course, the current situation is also good and bad. Notorious RBG is from rapper Notorious B.I.G. In the past, people's stereotype was that rap music was always related to underground and crime, but now the hit musical "Hamilton" is famous because of the interspersed rap, a cool form of expression, and even in China it is also highly sought after. For old-school political circles, it is difficult to imagine using rap lyrics to sing about a political event in history. Dialectically, the downside is the intrusion of political positions and political views into life, but on the other hand, this is also the impact of years of efforts by various institutions such as American universities to introduce political affairs to the public. In the past, universities may have spent more than a decade trying to make a person who has not gone to college understand what recent political events are, and now they can use various channels to spread political affairs to all corners of society, and the political discussions of the past were based on the participation of a very small number of people, and the majority of people were excluded. That's the two sides of the coin, depending on how we look at it.
Left and Right: There is a black economist Thomas Sawwell, a typical right-wing conservative, who once accused American universities of being the soil for brewing anti-intellectualism. His basic view is that American universities, educational venues with a strong left-wing culture, are a bit excessively involved in public affairs discussions, and he sees some signs of anti-intellectualism.
Hualun: It's a bit like the cycle of social trends, there will always be a stage where the public's participation in political discussion is very high, but to a certain extent there is blindness, and society will realize that it seems that everyone is involved, but the understanding of political affairs is very one-sided, just like the whole people participate in the discussion, but the whole people do not know what the real needs of the Iowa people are.
Left and right: This involves a philosophical proposition, is public discussion a panacea?
Hualun: It's about distinguishing between what kind of public discussion is, and ideally the talk is definitely more in-depth, willing to listen to other people's opinions, and make a statement that is elaborate and developmental. But social network-style political participation like RBG, including Sanders and Trump, is a slogan-like way, labeling RBG and MAGA, which is not really public discussion.
Left and right: As the UC Law professor wrote in his article, Scalia made a bad example in the eighties, writing books and making harsh remarks in public. With the development of social networks in the 21st century, American politics may face a new problem, and the entire huge machine has not had time to respond, or has not yet made substantial progress.
Hualun: I may be more moderate, the American mechanism has never said that I am ready to deal with various social movements, it is always changing with the actual situation, such as whether Congress, state governments can keep up. It is difficult to change a law, it takes several years or even more than ten years of work, so it is always lagging behind. But lag is not a bad thing, as we said earlier, the Supreme Court lifetime system is not a bad thing, it is the same truth, we know that society will change back and forth, that is not the need to insert some stability factors in it.
Of course, it's hard to imagine a conservative justice gaining the same level of popularity as Ginsburg. There are also reasons for the boom brought by Ginsburg, such as her winning the favor of feminism, and women are the power of half of the world's population and have a strong mass base. If you only speak for a certain minority group, such as for the black community, black people are probably 10% of the total population composition of the United States. Sotomayor, a Hispanic among the current justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, hasn't been a cult follow either.
So, it's not easy to become Ginsburg, and an era can be just one or two. And it's even harder for conservatives to get so much recognition, unless the society is more homogeneous, or goes back to the situation in the sixties and seventies.
Pauli Murray (1910-1985), courtesy of the Pauli Murray Foundation
Left and right: Indeed, the mainstream of public opinion today is also left-wing, and conservative scholars seem to be hiding in some places that are difficult for the public to reach.
Hualun: There is something special about Ginsburg's ability to be a phenomenon of this era. When a review article talked about Ginsburg's worship, it was also pointed out that the "Reed v. Reed" case that Ginsburg became famous in the civil rights movement in his early years, and she co-drafted a writer pauli Murray, a mixed-race woman, who is a civil rights struggler who is more on the front line than Ginsburg, and the author explains why Pauli Murray is not as sought after as Ginsburg, such as the former is transgender, is more angry, and often participates in protests. And Ginsburg is famous for not being angry, "be a lady."
This is very subtle, what is the image of women who can gain the recognition of the whole society in the United States? Whether a often "angry" image can get to this position of Ginsburg; moreover, it should be known that Ginsburg is a woman who has had a 50-year-long heterosexual marriage, which is very much in line with mainstream American values.
So, in the end, you think you're just a civil rights activist, but you actually have to tick some of the elements.
This is something to be played against behind the Ginsburg phenomenon. Of course, it is difficult to say whether there can be another person like Ginsburg in this era, after all, she also represents the old-school era, and the current "hook" and the past "hook" may not be the same.
In fact, my personal biggest concern about the shift in society is that if the change is too fast, it will indeed bring a lot of problems. Judge Renquist was repeated earlier, who was always considered a conservative justice, but he wrote a long paragraph about women in a case at the end of his term of office, saying that there was a strong stereotype of women in society that they had to complete family tasks, which was extremely detrimental to their career development. The story behind this is that Justice Renquist's daughter, who also graduated from law school, realized the injustices his daughter experienced when she was looking for a job, and that becoming a mother was not conducive to her development in the law firm. When he experienced this firsthand, Renquist, as the most conservative voice on the Supreme Court, underwent a great transformation.
But the key is whether Justice Renqvist has made such a change after more than a decade, but whether the current society allows a Judge Renquist to spend more than a decade making such a change. It's even possible now that people go back and look over what you said twenty years ago, and if it's not in line with current political correctness, they're not allowed to turn over.
Renquist is a very influential figure within conservatives, and conservatives may not care what voices the left makes, but when important people within conservatives make such voices, it will work well.
So, I've always thought that the pace of change doesn't have to be so fast, no one listens, but instead misses the opportunity to let these gentler people get your voice heard where you can't, or give some time to others.
(This article is a conversation between Cheng Yanliang, the host of the podcast program "Suddenly Left and Right", and Hua Lun, a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University Law School, and the text was first published on the Observer Network.) ）
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