Why We Should Worry About the Cult of RBG politi.co/2EJyYZK via @politicomag
Like the highly successful “RBG” documentary released earlier this year, “On the Basis of Sex” satisfies a yearning for a liberal heroine in a time of disappointment and cynicism.
As a work of cinema, it paints a vivid picture of an era, now passing from memory, when women were completely, rigorously excluded from power.
It also offers an intelligent rendering of the struggles to achieve legal equality for women...
As a cultural artifact in the deification of RBG, however, you might say that it—like some of the court decisions it calls into question—sets a dubious precedent.
As a cultural artifact in the deification of RBG, however, you might say that it—like some of the court decisions it calls into question—sets a dubious precedent.
In the broader sweep of American history, this is an inopportune moment to present a current Supreme Court justice as a political hero.
Last month, after Trump dismissed a ruling against his migrant policy as the action of an “Obama judge,” Chief Justice Roberts took the unusual step of responding directly.
He declared in a statement that “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Trump shot back on Twitter: “Sorry, Chief Justice Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”
By the standard of civic disagreements in the Trump era, this was a high-minded exchange, and a revealing one.
Another element to the politicization of the courts, though. That’s the visceral sense of approval and validation that judges get when they please their fans.
Until recently, Justice Ginsburg wasn’t particularly noted for her influential dissents, any more than, say, fellow Justices Elena Kagan or Stephen Breyer.
But in the larger Ginsburg mythology, she’s a symbol of everything that’s foul and corrupt in Trump-era Washington; her history as a fighter, her constancy, her aged wisdom all combine to make her a kind of priestess for a younger generation.
There’s a further irony to the emergence of RBG as a political icon: She would never have succeeded in rooting out some of the double standards in American law had she not argued before some fair-minded, apolitical judges.
In “On the Basis of Sex,” the male professors, law-firm partners and Justice Department attorneys are all irredeemably sexist and connive to preserve their privileges; the male federal judges, however, are not and do not.
Though they’re lower-court judges, they’re portrayed by character actors resembling Earl Warren and William Brennan and other Republican appointees who were attuned to social change.
