Olivia: Alright Jackson, you get five words to describe Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Go. Jackson: Oh, pressure's on. Okay. Tiny. Fierce. Lace collar. Justice. Icon. Olivia: Not bad! My five: "The dissent will be televised." Jackson: Ooh, I like that. It perfectly captures that whole "Notorious" vibe she had. It’s this incredible mix of a serious, brilliant legal mind and a full-blown pop culture phenomenon. Olivia: Exactly! And that's what we're diving into today with the book Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Shana Knizhnik and Irin Carmon. It’s a book that’s as much a biography as it is a cultural artifact. Jackson: And it has a wild origin story, right? This wasn't some stuffy academic biography commissioned by a university press. Olivia: Not even close. What's amazing is that this whole phenomenon, and the book itself, started with a Tumblr blog. It was created by one of the authors, Shana Knizhnik, when she was just a 24-year-old law student. She was so blown away by one of RBG's dissents in 2013 that she created this tribute page, and it just exploded. Jackson: That’s fantastic. It explains the book's unique energy—it’s smart and deeply researched, but it also has memes and annotated pictures of her workout routine. So, before she was 'Notorious,' before the t-shirts and the action figures, who was she? How did she build this legacy that a law student would feel so passionately about in the first place?

Olivia: That is the million-dollar question. Because before she was an icon, she was an architect. A legal architect who designed a brilliant, patient, and completely counterintuitive blueprint to dismantle systemic gender discrimination. Jackson: Architect. I like that. It implies a plan, something deliberate. Not just someone who got angry and started fighting. Olivia: Precisely. And her anger was well-earned. The world she entered was designed to keep women out. We're talking about the 1950s. When she was at Harvard Law School, one of only nine women in a class of 500, the dean literally invited them to a dinner party and asked each one to go around the table and justify why they were taking a spot that could have gone to a man. Jackson: Wow. That is infuriating. Not just sexist, but publicly humiliating. Olivia: And it didn't stop there. After graduating top of her class from Columbia—she transferred from Harvard—she couldn't get a job. Law firms in New York City flat-out told her they weren't hiring women. Even a Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter, refused to consider her for a clerkship because she was a woman. Later, when she did get a government job, she was demoted the moment she mentioned she was pregnant. It was perfectly legal. Jackson: Okay, so the system wasn't just biased; it was explicitly, legally structured against her at every turn. That gives her the motivation, for sure. But how do you even begin to fight that? Where do you start? Olivia: You start with the blueprint. And this is the genius of RBG. She knew she couldn't just march into the Supreme Court and demand an end to sexism. The nine justices were all men. They didn't see the "cage," as she called it. They saw it as a "pedestal," believing these laws protected women. So, she decided to show them how the cage trapped men, too. Jackson: Hold on. So her first big move for women's rights was to help a man? That feels incredibly risky. I can imagine some people at the time thinking that was a strange choice. Olivia: It was a masterstroke. She took on the case of a man named Charles Moritz in the early 1970s. Moritz was a bachelor who had hired a nurse to care for his aging mother so he could continue working. The tax code allowed a woman, a widower, or a divorced man to deduct caregiving expenses, but not a single man who had never been married. The law assumed that caregiving was a woman's job. Jackson: So he was being discriminated against based on his gender. Olivia: Exactly. And Ruth and her husband, Marty, who was a brilliant tax lawyer himself, saw this as the perfect Trojan horse. They weren't arguing for some radical feminist overhaul. They were arguing a simple tax case. They presented it to a court of male judges and essentially said, "Look at this law. It's illogical. It's based on a stereotype that hurts this man, Charles Moritz. It limits his choices just as it limits women's." Jackson: And that’s something the judges could understand from their own perspective. They could see how a gender-based rule was irrational, without having to confront their own broader biases about women's roles in society. Olivia: You've got it. She wasn't asking for a revolution. She famously said she was just asking the court to take the "next logical step." It was incrementalism. She won the Moritz case, and with that victory, she established a critical precedent: the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause could apply to gender discrimination. She built the first floor of her new building. Jackson: So what was the next floor? How did she build on that? Olivia: She kept bringing cases that chipped away at the stereotypes. She represented a widower, Stephen Wiesenfeld, who was denied his wife's social security benefits to care for their child—benefits a widow would have automatically received. Again, she showed how a law supposedly "favoring" women by assuming they were dependents actually harmed men and their families. Jackson: It’s women’s and men’s liberation, as she would say. The stereotypes box everyone in. Olivia: And with each small win, the legal foundation for gender discrimination got weaker. This all culminated in one of her most famous victories, the United States v. Virginia case in 1996, when she was on the Supreme Court. The Virginia Military Institute, VMI, was a prestigious, state-funded, all-male military college. Jackson: Right, a total boy's club. And they fought hard to keep women out. Olivia: They did. Their argument was that their "adversative method" of training, which involved intense physical and mental stress, would have to be watered down for women. RBG, writing the majority opinion for the Court, just dismantled that. She wrote that the state couldn't rely on "overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females." And then she delivered this killer line in oral arguments that sums up her entire philosophy: "If women are to be leaders in life and in the military, then men have got to become accustomed to taking commands from women." Jackson: And they won't get accustomed to it if women aren't even allowed in the room. Wow. From a small tax case for a single man to forcing open the doors of a historic military institution. That's the long game. That’s being an architect.

Jackson: Okay, so I'm starting to get the picture. She was this brilliant, meticulous legal strategist, playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. But that person—the quiet, reserved academic—doesn't automatically become a pop culture icon. How does that woman end up on a t-shirt, a coffee mug, a tattoo? How does she become 'Notorious'? Olivia: It’s an incredible second act, and it happened when she was in her eighties. The transformation from Justice Ginsburg to the 'Notorious RBG' can be traced to a single day: June 25, 2013. Jackson: What happened on that day? Olivia: The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a case that effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This was a landmark piece of civil rights legislation. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, basically argued that the law's protections were no longer needed because, in his words, "our country has changed." Jackson: I can already feel the dissent coming. Olivia: Oh, it came. And it was epic. RBG had a system of collars, or jabots, that she wore over her black robe. A decorative one for when she was in the majority, and a specific, spiky, beaded one for when she was dissenting. On that day, she wore her dissent collar. And she didn't just write her dissent; she read it aloud from the bench, a rare and powerful move meant to signal profound disagreement. Jackson: What did she say? Olivia: She called the majority's reasoning stunningly illogical. And she used this unforgettable analogy. She said that getting rid of the Voting Rights Act's protections because they had been working was like "throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet." Jackson: That is such a perfect, simple, and devastatingly clear metaphor. Anyone can understand that. Olivia: And that was the spark. Across the country, people were outraged by the decision, and RBG’s dissent became a rallying cry. That law student we mentioned, Shana Knizhnik, was one of them. She was so fired up by RBG's powerful act of defiance that she created the Tumblr blog. She took the nickname of the famous rapper from Brooklyn, Notorious B.I.G., and dubbed this tiny, 80-year-old Jewish justice from Brooklyn the "Notorious RBG." Jackson: The connection is kind of brilliant. Both from Brooklyn, both known for their powerful words. It's an unexpected but perfect pairing. And it just took off from there? Olivia: It went viral almost instantly. The blog was filled with pictures of RBG, quotes from her dissents, and fan art. Suddenly, this serious jurist was a symbol of resistance. People saw in her this quiet, unwavering strength. She wasn't loud or flashy, but when it mattered, she spoke truth to power with devastating clarity. Jackson: What did RBG herself think of all this? It must have been bizarre to suddenly see your face on the internet with a crown photoshopped on your head. Olivia: Her family was apparently very amused, and she took it all with a sense of humor and grace. The book tells a great story about her meeting Shana and the other creators of the meme. After recovering from heart surgery, she invited them to her chambers. They asked her what message she had for all the young people who admired her. And this tiny woman, just out of the hospital, looked at them and said, "I'll be back doing push-ups next week." Jackson: That's amazing. And she actually had a serious workout routine, right? The book talks about that. Olivia: A legendary one! With a trainer, doing planks, push-ups, lifting weights. She was disciplined in every aspect of her life. That physical toughness became part of the 'Notorious' persona. It wasn't just about her legal mind; it was about her resilience, her refusal to quit, whether in the courtroom or in the gym. Jackson: It’s fascinating because the two parts of her story seem so different—the patient, behind-the-scenes architect and the public, fiery icon. But it sounds like they are two sides of the same coin. Olivia: Exactly. The icon couldn't exist without the architect. The dissent that made her famous carried so much weight because it came from someone who had spent fifty years meticulously building the very legal structures she was now defending. Her fame wasn't random; it was earned over a lifetime of quiet, persistent work.

Jackson: So when you step back and look at the whole picture presented in Notorious RBG, what's the real, lasting takeaway? Is it a story about brilliant legal strategy, or is it about the power of becoming a cultural symbol? Olivia: I think the book shows us it's about the powerful intersection of both. Her life's work was the slow, meticulous, often unglamorous process of changing the law, brick by brick. That was the foundation she laid as the architect. It was decades of painstaking work that most people never saw. Jackson: The quiet part of the job. Olivia: The quiet part. But her legacy, what made her 'Notorious,' was her refusal to be silent when she saw that foundation being threatened. The dissents weren't just legal arguments; they were acts of public teaching and protest. They resonated with millions because they were backed by a lifetime of action and integrity. The icon was born from the architect's credibility. Jackson: That makes so much sense. The fiery dissent means something because we know the decades of methodical work that came before it. It wasn't just an opinion; it was a defense of her life's work. Olivia: Precisely. And the book, which itself is a product of that iconic status, does a beautiful job of connecting those two threads. It celebrates the meme, but it grounds you in the history. It shows you the VMI case so you understand the Voting Rights dissent. Jackson: It really makes you think about what true, lasting change looks like. It’s rarely one big, heroic moment. It's the slow, consistent work that no one is applauding. Olivia: It is. And it makes you wonder, what are the slow, quiet battles we're fighting today—in our communities, in our workplaces, in our own lives—that might one day become a rallying cry for someone else? Jackson: That's a powerful thought to end on. And a great question for all of us to consider. We'd love to hear what you all think. What part of RBG's story resonates most with you—the architect or the icon? Let us know on our socials. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.