“One is that we were betraying our most fundamental values, and, two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on.”” (21) The then student Ginsburg would take that advice to heart, especially later in her academic career as she began arguing cases in front of the Court and promoting feminist causes writ large. It would be at Cornell that she made her first foray into Constitutional law in a letter to the Cornell Daily Sun wherein she questioned the use of wiretapping against suspected communists by the federal government: “In the first place, what is the purpose of the criminal sanction? Is it just to put a man behind bars, or is it to attach the moral condemnation of the community to certain forms of behavior? Unless moral judgment is involved, the cost of enforcing the criminal code might well be employed in other areas.” (22) Her later jurisprudence would reflect this attitude. Of Justice Ginsburg, it is said: “Always, she pays careful attention to the history and purpose, fairness and effectiveness, of the rules that shape and direct our justice system. Throughout her speeches and writings, she includes “sideglances” at the justice systems of sister democracies for the light they shine on our own and offers homage to the waypavers and the pathmarkers who have improved our world through law.” (193) These “sideglances” are seen in sections such as one discussing Brown vs. Board of Education and another from a speech discussing the value of diversity. The book also includes several of her own Court opinions and dissents in which this principle is illustrated – namely, her dissents in Shelby vs. Holder and Gonzales vs.
“One is that we were betraying our most fundamental values, and, two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on.”” (21) The then student Ginsburg would take that advice to heart, especially later in her academic career as she began arguing cases in front of the Court and promoting feminist causes writ large. It would be at Cornell that she made her first foray into Constitutional law in a letter to the Cornell Daily Sun wherein she questioned the use of wiretapping against suspected communists by the federal government: “In the first place, what is the purpose of the criminal sanction? Is it just to put a man behind bars, or is it to attach the moral condemnation of the community to certain forms of behavior? Unless moral judgment is involved, the cost of enforcing the criminal code might well be employed in other areas.” (22) Her later jurisprudence would reflect this attitude. Of Justice Ginsburg, it is said: “Always, she pays careful attention to the history and purpose, fairness and effectiveness, of the rules that shape and direct our justice system. Throughout her speeches and writings, she includes “sideglances” at the justice systems of sister democracies for the light they shine on our own and offers homage to the waypavers and the pathmarkers who have improved our world through law.” (193) These “sideglances” are seen in sections such as one discussing Brown vs. Board of Education and another from a speech discussing the value of diversity. The book also includes several of her own Court opinions and dissents in which this principle is illustrated – namely, her dissents in Shelby vs. Holder and Gonzales vs.