Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World, is a biographical account of, respectively, the first and second female US justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The main purpose of the biography is to break down the contributions of each of the women within the Supreme Court and compare against each other. Hirshman seems to take a stance on each of the women, through both negative and positive lights. However, Hirshman is much harsher about the contributions of O’Connor compared to Ginsburg. For example, Hirshman criticizes O’Connor for wanting to get ahead with her own career in the court room rather than making a difference for women. Indeed, O’Connor was the ideal type of female the men wanted in the court rooms as she was similarly conservative.
On the other hand, Ginsburg was passionate about her beliefs and was not held back by the sexist and traditionalist views of the male-dominated court room, but this instead, spurred her on and led to her success in her landmark court cases. Ultimately, Hirshman concludes that the two were essential in their own ways for making the necessary changes to the law to ensure a progression of equal rights for women’s rights that we see in the US today.
