Legal Shortcuts
Back in 1953, college student Ruth Bader wrote a letter to the editor of the Cornell Daily Sun carrying the provocative title “Wiretapping: Cure Worse than the Disease?” As she begins to delineate her arguments against the balance of good versus evil afforded by governmental eavesdropping of private conversations, she engages a particular pithy bit of imagery to underline her essential point:
“It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper into a poor devil’s eyes than to go out in the sun hunting the evidence.”
Why the Need for the ERA?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a powerful force behind the push for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in her role as Counsel for the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. In an article published in the American Bar Association Journal in 1973 she outlines in detail the “need” for passage of such legislation using her judicial strengths of existing precedent calling for an overhaul. Taken together this amounts to literary imagery which culminates in the jaw-dropping example of legal statutes still on the book in Georgia at the time excerpted here:
“The husband is head of the family and the wife is subject to him; her legal civil existence is merged in the husband’s, except so far as the law recognizes her separately, either for her own protection, or for her benefit, or for the preservation of public order.”
The Opera
Extensive excerpting of lyrics from the arias sung in an opera about the friendship between Ginsburg and fellow Justice Scalia offer what may effectively be termed the most memorable examples of imagery in the book. Especially memorable is Ginsburg’s reply to Scalia’s argument against legally approved racial discrimination:
“And saying that our future’ll
Be suddenly `race-neutral’
Is acting like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand— Because it cannot stand
To see what plagues our land.”
John Adams: Founding Schlemiel
There is a perfectly good reason why John Adams is mentioned in some of the lyrics of the Broadway musical Hamilton, but does not actually appear onstage as a character. He was a man of limited intellect and charisma who stumbled into fame by being surrounded by those much wiser and visionary. In describing the perspective of the unlikeliest of successors to George Washington on the subject of expanding voter representation, Adams is quoted and the imagery he uses speaks itself on the subject of his worthiness of one day being represented on stage alongside such superior intellects as Hamilton:
“New claims will arise; women will demand a vote; lads from twelve to twenty-one will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level.”
