San Antonio – The community gathered at the Bexar County Courthouse steps for a vigil honoring the justice warrior who Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was before her death.
“Notorious RBG to me was a voice for the voiceless,” said Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, a judge in Bexar County. “She taught me that even though you are in the minority, it doesn’t make you wrong. She taught me that even if you have a smaller voice, you are not voiceless.”
“She was a good and faithful servant,” said Stephanie Boyd, another judge for Bexar county. “A part of being a good and faithful servant is serving the public and leaving something behind for others to build upon.”
Al Kauffman, professor of law at St. Mary’s University, said the loss of Ginsburg is devastating on so many levels.
“We have lost a great voice for equality and lost someone with such long deep experiences in our society,” Kauffman said. "On the court, she was a leader in terms of individual rights. Personal rights. Voting rights. Federal procedure. "She also represented people who were denied jobs and unemployment insurance. Survivors' benefits, equal rights in all ways. She represented persons who suffered sexual violence. She personally met them and represented them. It was great having a justice who rubbed shoulders with people she fought for and I think that is a hard thing to replace on the Supreme Court.
He said she was beyond inspiring.
“She was respected as a very thorough justice,” Kauffman said. “Very well prepared. Always read all the briefs and all the books and always got her work in on time. She was the perfect colleague. I think especially for women lawyers and young women she was a real inspiration because she was so strong, extremely hard-working, very precise, wrote beautifully and was very respected in the profession.”
As a role model, Ginsburg also stayed true to what she believed despite her fellow conservative justices who she had a great relationship with.
“I think it was an inspiration to see how people can disagree so strongly on opinions but still remain personal friends and civil with one another,” Kauffman said. “I also think one of her biggest accomplishments was just fighting for both men and women’s rights. Men who were denied social security benefits. Men who were not given the right to have military housing as a spouse, but women could. Women who could not get paid because of some unfair procedural rule. She wrote those very strong opinions and they were very important.”
At the vigil, people spoke on RBG’s impact on their lives. They also expressed their hope that the next justice be replaced after the presidential election which was her final wish.
