Ladies if you're in need of a role model and a prime example of just how much one woman
can accomplish in a lifetime, look no further than my personal celebrity obsession, Supreme
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [Cheering sounds]. You can't spell truth without Ruth. Oh.
Why am I so obsessed with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? First of all, she nodded
off during the most recent State of the Union address because as she admitted she had had
a little bit too much wine beforehand. Her answer to the question 'How many women on
the Supreme Court is enough?' is nine. She followed her passion into law even though
she greatly disappointed her family who wanted her to be a teacher instead because that was
a more acceptable role for a lady. At Harvard Law School she was one of only nine women
out of a class of five hundred and in fact she had to finish her law degree at Columbia
University cause Harvard Law didn't want to graduate her even though she ended up at the
top of her class. Also during law school she managed to not only rocket to the top of her
class, help her husband get through testicular cancer and law school and also be a new mom.
In the nineteen seventies as a professor and litigator she argued some of the most important
and foundational court cases regarding women's rights before the Supreme Court and guess
what? She won. Which leads me to my next badass fact she is the most successful litigator
on the Supreme Court bench. High-five Ruth. That was only my hand, I was just pretending
it was yours, in which case I should have been much gentler, because you're pretty small.
In nineteen-seventy the notorious RBG co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter which was
the very first law journal in the United States devoted to looking at gender equality issues.
Ginsburg also co-founded the Women's Rights Project with the ACLU to focus on issues of
gender discrimination. She became the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School.
In nineteen seventy-four she co-authored the very first text book on sex discrimination
law which you might be thinking who cares whether she wrote a textbook or not to which
I say it's actually really important because she wrote the first meaning that it was taught
meaning that other people learned about the very important issues that is sex discrimination
law. In nineteen ninety-three Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman ever appointed to
the Supreme Court bench. In nineteen ninety-nine and two-thousand nine while undergoing treatments
for colon cancer and pancreatic cancer respectively, she never missed an oral argument. Yeah. More
recently, her scathing dissents often read from the bench on cases involving things like
voting rights, reproductive rights and employment discrimination have been considered almost
as important as the very Supreme Court Justice decisions themselves. At eight-one years old
she still pulls all-nighters. You want to know why? Because she remains one of the Court's
most prolific Justices ever. She keeps it real. 'You can't have it all at once,' the
notorious RBG said. 'Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods
of time, things were rough.' Her advice to young women is this. 'Don't take no for an
answer. If it didn't work today, tomorrow is another day.' Her excellent career advice:
'Work for things you're passionate about.' Her relationship advice: 'When Marty and I
were temporarily miffed by something one or the other of us said or did, I would take
several deep breaths and remember that tempers momentarily aroused generally subside like
a summer storm.' Her advice on dealing with unpleasant people: 'Sometimes people say unkind
or thoughtless things and when they do it's best to be a little hard of hearing.' And
her important observation about how she knew she really really liked the guy who would
become her husband: '[Marty] was the first boy I knew who cared that I had a brain.'
Remember that people. I don't care what body your brain is in. The Ruth, the Ruth is on
fire. The Ruth, the Ruth, the Ruth is on fire. What would I do if I met, if I met Ruth Bader
Ginsburg I umm, would, I don't know what I would say. I would probably just umm, I would
do what I did when I met Barack Obama, because yeah that happened and I would just uhh, lose
all my words and just say thank you and collapse into myself. Thank you.