Sisters in Law

One is Catholic, the other Jewish. One is from the open West, the other from teeming Brooklyn. One was a Reagan conservative, the other an FDR liberal. What these two influential justices were able to accomplish as the first and second women appointed to the Supreme Court goes beyond their differences and speaks to their commonalities. That's what this fascinating audiobook is all about. Narrator Andrea Gallo's engaging, open voice has a slight rasp but is eminently compelling and inviting. While she doesn't have an elastic range, she does adjust her tone to capture the momentous nature of the decisions the Court made during the shared tenure of these two judicial leaders. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

July 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.

Starred review from August 1, 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

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 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.

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Starred review from September 1, 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)