00:00Female citizens of Louisiana are denied equal protection by the total absence of their peers
00:06from the jury.
00:07I thought the new theory was that there's very little difference between men and women,
00:12so why wouldn't a men jury be their peers?
00:14Well, I'm not aware of that new theory.
00:16They didn't get it.
00:17They didn't understand the issues that women were facing, or they didn't see them as issues.
00:23Because women had, in their minds, women had a place, and it wasn't where Ruth Ginsburg
00:30was suggesting that it ought to be.
00:32Men and women are persons of equal dignity, and they should count equally before the law.
00:38You won't settle for putting Susan B. Anthony on the new dollar.
00:45When they would say things like this, how did you respond?
00:49Well, never in anger, as my mother told me.
00:53That would have been self-defeating, or always as an opportunity to teach.
00:59I did see myself as kind of a kindergarten teacher in those days, because the judges didn't
01:06think sex discrimination existed.
01:10Well, one of the things I tried to plant in their minds was, think about how you would
01:16like the world to be for your daughters and granddaughters.
01:20The gender line helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.
01:29One of the things that I'm struck by, as I look back on it, is how unprepared the defendants
01:35were to fight back.
01:37We won because the strategy was brilliant.
01:39We won because we were smart and prepared, and we fought hard.
01:43You couldn't miss what Ruth was doing during the 70s.
01:46She was creating a legal landscape.
