Know that there is nothing you can't aspire to do. Take offense. Bide your time. Pick your battles. Take revenge when you can - and never pull the ladder up after you.
If you had asked me moment, as a lawyer, I would have said I would rather have had a male Democrat on the court. Like most lawyers , I love to win. But I was glad to see O'Connor because she made me normal. Just the fact that she was there with a soprano voice and a ruffley collar made my physical presence less weird and less fraught.
Women and LBGT people have the advantage that they are everybody's son, daughter, cousin, nephew, aunt, uncle. They are in a position to change hearts, and you saw it happen actually. African-Americans, not so much. They are separated from the white oppressive population by geography, housing, segregation, centuries of slavery. There is a tremendous wall between black America and white. I would say you open the door with the force of law, and then you can start to change hearts.
[Ginsburg's] feminism was very sweeping and very ambitious and very consistent. Justice O'Connor had a more case-by-case, pragmatic approach to her feminism. They were not entirely the same, [but] I think that they shared the most important thing, which is the belief that they were worthy and that therefore other women were worthy.
By judging differently and by recognizing their female experiences and bringing them to bear on the Supreme Court's decision, Ginsburg and O'Connor both made it legitimate for people to be different.
O'Connor lives by the following words: You don't look back. When people ask O'Connor now, "Aren't you sorry you resigned because everything you voted for is being reversed by the current court?" She says, "You can't look back."
