2020年经济学人 美国最高法院大法官鲁斯·巴德·金斯伯格(4)（在线收听）

Her arguments in discrimination cases were based squarely on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Gross generalisations about “how women were” or “how men were” had to be forgotten. Her dream was a world in which men and women cared for their children equally and had equal opportunities themselves. And the constitution had to embrace everyone: Lilly Ledbetter, struggling to achieve equal pay; Stephen Wiesenfeld, trying as a widower to get the same benefits as a widow would; Maetta Vance, afraid to tell a racist supervisor to buzz off; the young men of 18 in Oklahoma who just wanted to buy a beer, as girls of 18 could.

鲁斯在歧视案件中的论点完全基于第14修正案对平等保护法律的保证。关于“女人是怎样的”或“男人是怎样的”的笼统概括必须被忘记。她的梦想是一个男人和女人都能平等地照顾他们的孩子和拥有平等的机会的世界。宪法必须接纳每一个人：莉莉·莱德贝特，努力实现同工同酬；斯蒂芬·威森菲尔德，作为一个鳏夫，他试图获得和寡妇一样的福利；梅塔·万斯，不敢让一个种族主义上司走开；俄克拉何马州18岁的年轻人只想买杯啤酒，就像18岁的女孩一样。

She spoke for all such everyday people. As the court shifted steadily rightward she became more determined to stay on. She redoubled her exercises, despite her age and the bouts of cancer, colorectal and pancreatic, which annoyingly forced her one day to take part in oral arguments from her bed. She found herself becoming an icon, a face on t-shirts and the subject of biopics: Notorious RBG, mystifying but fun.

鲁斯代表所有这些普通老百姓说话。随着最高法院稳步向右转移，她更坚定了留下来的决心。尽管鲁斯年纪大了，患过癌症、结肠直肠癌和胰腺癌，她还是加倍锻炼，这迫使她有一天不得不在床上参加口头辩论。她发现自己成为了一个偶像，t恤上的一张脸，以及传记片的主角：臭名昭著的鲁斯·巴德·金斯伯格，神秘而有趣。

What did not change was her regard for her colleagues, conservative or not, in the wonderfully civilised family that was the court. For each of them, after all, their basic motivation was the same. At the end of “Scalia/Ginsburg”, the two famous foes-and-friends sang together the aria which was her favourite: “Separate strands unite in friction/To protect our country’s core... And this is why we will see justice done./We are different;/We are one.”

没有改变的是，在一个非常文明的法院家庭里，她对她的同事们的尊重，不管他们是保守的还是不保守的。毕竟，对他们每个人来说，他们的基本动机都是一样的。在《斯卡利亚/金斯伯格》的结尾处，两位著名的战友一起唱了她最喜欢的咏叹调：“不同的观点在摩擦中联合起来/保护我们国家的核心...这就是我们将看到正义得到伸张的原因。/我们是不同的；/我们是一体的。”