Ginsburg: law school was a trial

Olympian news services

Originally published Sunday, March 10, 2002

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg says when she attended law school in the 1950s, she felt at times as though her gender was on trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court justice was one of the few women in her classes at Columbia Law School in New York.

"We felt that if we performed poorly, it would reflect on all members of our sex," the U.S. Supreme Court justice told an audience of judges and lawyers Friday at the Ohio Bench-Bar Conference.

Although women now hold high positions throughout the justice system, Ginsburg said she's reminded the fight for equal treatment goes on.

Ginsburg said a professor had urged her to take up law at a time when citizens were questioning government intrusion into their personal lives.

"He made me appreciate what was going on and that lawyers could do something about it," Ginsburg said.

LOS ANGELES -- A man ordered to stay away from actress Meg Ryan has been found competent to stand trial for allegedly breaking into a home he believed belonged to her.

John Michael Hughes, 30, of Navarre, Fla., is scheduled to return to court Thursday in Malibu to schedule trial. He faces a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized entry.

Hughes is accused of breaking into the Malibu home of Tomas and Andrea Ryan on Jan. 6, thinking it was Meg Ryan's house. The actress is not related to the couple.

Authorities say Hughes was dressed in black and had $2,700 in cash, a night vision scope and bottles of alcohol in his car when he was found eating ham and green beans in the couple's home.

He told police he broke in because the actress forgot to leave a key under the doormat for him.

Ryan has a three-year restraining order against Hughes.

Hughes was convicted last year of trying to sneak firearms into the Crawford, Texas, ranch of then President-elect George W. Bush in December 2000. He served six months in jail for the offense and also spent several months in a federal psychiatric hospital.

EUGENE, Ore. -- Ralph Nader told an international gathering of environmentalists that if all pollution contained red dye, people would be more interested in cleaning it up.

He said that with aesthetics being the second-greatest human motivator behind self-preservation, the red dye staining everything would cause the kind of public outrage that harmful, invisible pollutants don't.

"Does anybody here know how to put a harmless red dye in pollution and effluent?" he asked the crowd. "It would have an enormous impact on the environmental movement."

The former Green Party presidential candidate, giving his keynote address to 1,300 people gathered for the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon, said the movement is losing ground.

"It is now more difficult to be an environmentalist than it was in the '60s," Nader said.

He said major environmental groups are making too many compromises and losing touch with the public.

"How can we ever start a green political movement if the major environmental groups are going to continue to say we've got to support the Democrats because the Republicans are worse?" Nader asked. "Never settle for least-worst. Once you get into least-worst mode, both will get worse every four years."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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