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As a law student in 1970, the upheaval of the 60's was a part of my thinking as I sat in my first class in Civil Procedure. As I looked around the classroom in what was an old repurposed factory building, I noticed many women about to take on law school with me. I confess I was too unaware to think about how or whether their opportunities in the profession would be different than mine as a white male. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg causes me to look back and reflect on what I now know to be the way in which these women worked through the inequality and gender bias of the day with pride and determination to succeed in this honorable profession. 

In the summer of 2003, I traveled with several colleagues in the Irish American Bar Association of New York to Washington D.C. for a ceremony to be admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. I relished the pomp and circumstance of the occasion, the breakfast beforehand where Sandra Day O’Connor circled the room greeting our members, the moment the Court was called to order, the lush velvet curtains drawn back to reveal the nine justices whose decisions impact our lives in innumerable ways. I joked later that I was so close to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that she could have spit on me from her vantage point on the esteemed bench. Before the ceremony, I held my six month old daughter on my hip on the steps of the Supreme Court, taking for granted my ability to practice law, to be a working mother, the respect I received from my male colleagues, and the unlimited potential of my baby daughter to make her own choices in life - a choice of career, a choice of life partner, and a choice of family. I have Justice Ginsburg to thank for much of what we had that morning and continue to have.