Chris Van Hollen: “last Friday, our country lost a trailblazer for equality, a moral giant, and a lover of justice--the great Justice Ruth…”

“last Friday, our country lost a trailblazer for equality, a moral giant, and a lover of justice--the great Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, affectionately known as RBG. While physically small, she had a towering impact on American jurisprudence. While the volume of her voice was not high, her words carried farther and had a greater impact than the louder voices that were often around her. She famously observed that many of the laws on the books that pretended to put women on a pedestal actually put them in cages, and then she proceeded to bring cases to strike down those discriminatory walls. She transformed America's legal landscape, especially in the area of gender equality, and that was before she was even appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court. On the Supreme Court, with intelligence and persuasion, she was often able to bring others to her point of view, and when she couldn't, she could write a stinging dissent, which she viewed as a conversation with the future. She had optimism in our Nation's pursuit of justice--that her dissents would be vindicated in time, and I dare say that they already have in so many cases, including her dissent in the voting rights case with the reprehensible 2013 decision where, on a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court took a bite out of the Voting Rights Act.…”