Equality

By carefully selecting a range of Ginsburg's writings, speeches, tributes, and lectures in My Own Words, Hartnett and Williams are able to illustrate the ways in which Ginsburg's career centered from beginning to end on issues of equality and human rights. Even in her elementary school editorial, presented in Part One, Ginsburg advocated for "the promotion of peace" (11). Referencing the Charter of the United Nations, adolescent Ginsburg argues: "We must try to train ourselves and those about us to live together with one another as good neighbors'' (11). In another early academic piece, "One People," Ginsburg urges her reader to consider Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim's words: "Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking" (16).

She then uses the Rabbi’s quote to stress the importance of national unity and brotherhood between all citizens and nations. Ginsburg's early concerns for equality and human justice grew and evolved throughout her...