Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, sex, like race, is a visible characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability. Sex, like race, has been made the basis for unjustified, or at least unproved assumptions concerning an individual who can't reach a woman.

I think people who want to keep women down would like nothing better than to women go off in the corner and speak only to women. Nothing would happen.

You need to persuade men that this is right for society. Part one of her strategy? Choose your words carefully. I had a secretary at Columbia who said, I'm typing these things for you and jumping out all over the pages, seconds after Don't you know that the audience you are addressing, the first association of those men with the word sex is not what you're talking about.

So why don't you use a grammar book term? Use gender.

And I think go slow is...

Because in Oklahoma State at the time... Oklahoma had a very silly law. Girls could buy beer at age 18, but the boys had to wait until 21.

So the thirsty boys at a fraternity brought this case.

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the courts.

My answer to that question is no, in part because such a law has an insidious impact against females.

Against females, it stands then docile, compliant, safe to be trusted.

I think there is discrimination against males.

My response to that, Mr. Justice Stevens, is that almost every discrimination that operates against males operates against females as well.

No, I'm not trying to avoid the question. I'm trying to clarify the position that I don't know of any line that doesn't work as a two-edged sword.

No, my case depends on your recognition that using gender as a classification, resorting to that classification. is highly questionable and should be closely reviewed.

I don't know of any purely anti-male discrimination.

In the end, the women are the ones who end up

We wished that the court had picked a less frothy case to make that announcement, but of course we were very, very pleased that after that...

The best of the house of Krakentorp. have open but not empty minds. The best are willing to listen and learn. No surprise then that the most valorous Krakentorpians have been women.