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Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World
Author:
Hirshman, Linda
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Class:
920
Age: Adult
Language: English
Demand: Moderate
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LC: KF8744
Print Run: 50000
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ISBN-13: 9780062238467
LCCN: 2015002577
Imprint: Harper
Publisher: HarperCollins
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Pub Date: 09/01/2015
Availability: Available
List: $28.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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xxiii, 390 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.29",
1.38 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
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Bibliographies:
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New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Adult Nonfiction
Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 16th ed.
Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 17th ed.
Rise: A Feminist Book Project for Ages 0-18
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Awards:
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Booklist Starred Reviews
Library Journal Best Books
Library Journal Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Law
Women's Studies
Biography, Collective
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BISAC Subjects: |
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Lawyers & Judges
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women
HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
HISTORY / Women
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LC Subjects:
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Ginsburg, Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader,, 1933-2020
Judges, United States, Biography
O'Connor, Sandra Day,, 1930-
O'Connor, Sandra Day,, 1930-, Biography
United States., Supreme Court
United States., Supreme Court., Biography
Women judges, United States, Biography
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SEARS Subjects: |
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Publisher Annotations | 05/21/2015 |
| The author of the celebrated Victory tells the fascinating story of the intertwined lives of Sandra Day OConnor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first and second women to serve as Supreme Court justices. The relationship between Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg-Republican and Democrat, Christian and Jew, Western ranchers daughter and Brooklyn girl-transcends party, religion, region, and culture. Strengthened by each others presence, these groundbreaking judges, the first and second to serve on the highest court in the land, have transformed the Constitution and America itself, making it a more equal place for all women. Linda Hirshman's dual biography includes revealing stories of how these trailblazers fought for their own recognition in a male-dominated profession-battles that would ultimately benefit every American woman. She also makes clear how these two Justices have shaped the legal framework of modern feminism, including employment discrimination, abortion, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and many other issues crucial to women's lives. 'Sisters in Law' combines legal detail with warm personal anecdotes that bring these very different women into focus as never before. Meticulously researched and compellingly told, it is an authoritative account of our changing law and culture and a moving story of a remarkable friendship. |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 09/01/2015 |
| From opposite ends of the nation and opposite poles of the political spectrum, as the first and the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justices O'Connor and Ginsburg have advanced issues of gender equality and stand as icons of the women's movement. Hirshman, an attorney who has argued before the court, details the separate journeys the two took to the nation's highest court. O'Connor, not as overtly feminist as Ginsburg, worked her way through the state legislature of Arizona, supporting conservatives including Barry Goldwater. Ginsburg was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, arguing case after case, building toward legal support for equal rights for women in groundbreaking legal battles. Hirshman intertwines the stories of the two women, their very different backgrounds and personalities, and how they managed the delicate balancing act of supporting women's issues and challenging the old boy's club of the legal profession from law school to the Supreme Court. Hirshman details their impact on momentous decisions on issues including abortion, affirmative action, sexual harassment, employment, and women in the military. This is an absorbing history of the struggle for women's rights in the legal arena and the two extraordinary women who helped to advance those rights. Bush, Vanessa. 416p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2015. |
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| Library Journal | 08/01/2015 |
| In addition to its clever title, this book offers an illuminating analysis of the ascent by Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court. A lawyer and women's studies scholar, Hirshman (Victory; A Woman's Guide to Law School) excels in portraying the enormous obstacles encountered by women attempting to enter the legal field. O'Connor and Ginsburg both attended top-tier law schools and graduated at the top of their respective classes. Nonetheless, both struggled to obtain their first professional jobs. Still, the women persisted and succeeded, despite the prevailing male-oriented culture. The two could not have been more different: O'Connor grew up on a ranch in the West, Ginsburg hailed from Brooklyn; O'Connor was a prominent Republican, Ginsburg was a card-carrying Democrat and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney who fought to advance the Equal Rights Amendment; O'Connor was a politician, while Ginsburg was a tactician and legal scholar. Nevertheless, both made history in shaping the law as we know it today. VERDICT This superb book unpacks the remarkable achievements of the first two female Supreme Court justices, "sisters in law," indeed. Perfect for readers relishing Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine. [See Prepub Alert, 3/30/15.]. Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., Morgantown. 416p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 09/01/2015 |
| That they're different as day and night is unarguable, but the first two women appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court elevated one another, and the status of women in this country, immeasurably through their combined efforts. Sisters In Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World profiles O'Connor and Ginsburg, their struggles for acceptance in a field designed to exclude them and the cases they worked on that had the greatest impact. Author Linda Hirshman (Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution) keeps the life stories brief--O'Connor's Western upbringing and the can-do work ethic it instilled contrasts with Ginsburg's Brooklyn Jewish intellectual background, but both found their calling in the law and had to fight for the chance to practice. O'Connor "worked for no salary in order to get a law job at all at the outset of her career." Ginsburg's prim appearance lay at odds with her insistence, radical to many, that women were people in need of equal opportunities, not "protection" that ensconced them in lower-paying jobs or denied them agency over their own bodies. Her long background with the ACLU could have put her at odds with O'Connor, but the two needed one another enough to navigate their differences gracefully. Before sharing the bench, they watched one another's careers closely--one of O'Connor's first written opinions relied so heavily on Ginsburg's prior work, Martin Ginsburg jokingly asked his wife if she'd written it. The book's tales of sexism in the legal profession are infuriating (wet T-shirt contest in the office, anyone?), which makes every victory for women that much sweeter. If the details of individual cases are a bit hard for lay readers to follow, it's worth the effort to watch how opinions build upon one another, sometimes only to be undercut by subsequent rulings. Sisters In Law honors a unique pair of women--a Reagan appointee and the "Notorious RBG"--and their effect on our lives, which continues to this day. Heather Seggel. BookPageXTRA Online Review. BOOKPAGE, c2015. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 08/01/2015 |
| A dual biography of the pioneering jurists whose arrival on the Supreme Court both commemorated and invigorated the movement toward gender equality. Hirshman (Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution, 2012, etc.), an attorney who has argued before the Supreme Court, counts herself among the countless beneficiaries of that trend, having in just a few short years gone from an outlier as a woman in the world of law to "a pretty normal player." It would be hard to find two people less alike than Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the one a conservative who grew up on a New Mexico ranch and entered politics with the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party, the other a liberal Democrat from Brooklyn who had been a feminist activist for years before attaining her seat at the bench. Yet both were also accomplished lawyers who broke into the profession "when there was not even a whisper of a women's legal movement," setting precedents that encouraged other women to follow. Hirshman notes what might seem to be detriments, from Ginsburg's occasional brittleness and possible legal missteps, such as suggesting that abortion should have been argued as a matter of women's equality in 1973--the author's reasoning on that count is subtle but generally convincing--to O'Connor's loyalty to William Rehnquist, who, after all, was an enemy of precisely the same attainments of civil rights for which O'Connor was in the vanguard. Yet both O'Connor and Ginsburg "recognized that women could use the law to pry open realms of life foreclosed to them by historical practices of exclusion," and they did just that. Hirshman goes on to examine not just their role in reforming the culture of the Supreme Court and the tenor of some aspects of the law, but also their work on specific issues such as affirmative action and sex discrimination. An intelligent, evenhanded look at a changing society and its legal foundations. 416pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2015. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 03/30/2015 |
| Hirshman (Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution) here offers a dual biography of Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, showing that despite their differences-as Republican and Democrat, Christian and Jew, Western rancher's daughter and daughter of Brooklyn-both have been groundbreakers in a man's profession and have made America a better place for women as they've helped shape the discussion on employment discrimination, abortion, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and more. Lawyer Hirshman is attuned to the subject, having taught women's studies as well as philosophy courses. Barbara Hoffert. 416p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 07/13/2015 |
| Author, lawyer, and pundit Hirshman (Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution) offers a dual biography of the first two women appointed to the SCOTUS: Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She explores the two justices' very different personalities and how their experiences as pioneering women in the legal profession informed their approaches to constitutional law. Of particular interest are Hirshman's descriptions of the respective paths O'Connor and Ginsburg took to reach the Supreme Court. O'Connor, an obscure Arizona appellate judge, mixed extraordinary social skills, fierce self-reliance, and Republican connections to secure her historic nomination. Ginsburg, "the Thurgood Marshall of the women's movement," parlayed her work on a number of pivotal cases regarding the constitutional rights of women into her coveted appointment. Hirshman illuminates how Ginsburg and O'Connor navigated the high-stakes internal politics of the Supreme Court, and she takes the unusual step of addressing the influence that Supreme Court law clerks can have on the Court's decision making. She also spends quality time discussing the evolution of the constitutional theories that the justices apply when analyzing such flash-point issues as reproductive rights and workplace sexual harassment. Hirshman's conversational style and deep analysis of several precedent-setting constitutional cases should appeal to both casual and professional readers. (Sept.). 416p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2015. |
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9780062238467,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 09/20/2015 |
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