"When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."
"We may be anxious to reduce crime, but we should remember that in our system of justice, the presumption of innocence is prime, and the law cannot apply one rule to Joe who is a good man, and another to John, who is a hardened criminal."
"I remember envying the boys long before I even knew the word feminism, because I liked shop <manual labor class> better than cooking or sewing."
The general late-life public image of the "notorious R.B.G" is the one of a stern, gaunt woman in her distinctive collar over judicial robes. In these photos, US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) radiated dutiful, severe public rigor, and it's no wonder that her typing on PersonalityDatabase is ISTJ, and even the Socionics votes type her LSI (with some INTJ and LII dissent). This indeed reflects a major part of Ginsburg's character, but she does deviate from the canonical LSI on one dimension. While the "pure" LSI is more Di-ish than Qi-ish, Ginsburg was the opposite, boosting the LII and ESI columns in her hypothetical Talanov test profile.
Despite her strict character, Ginsburg, especially earlier in life, was quite shy. Attorney Kathreen Peratis recalls in her memories, "By her own admission, she was 'diffident, modest, and shy' in those early years as a professional, a characteristic that I can affirm never completely went away. Ruth pondered every answer to every question, even 'How are you?' Many is the person who shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, awaiting her reply." The shyness is more a LII trait, but doesn't contradict LSI, either, and the social cluenessness reflected her is definitely more introverted-logical material. Her dutiful workaholism — she was the fastest opinion-writer on the Court by nearly a month, and scheduled her cancer surgeries so she would not miss a day on the bench — points to her being very high on the rationality pole (rationals are more workaholic in general). Even her refusal to retire, which ultimately cost her a part of her post-mortem reputation, can be seen through this lens of finding it hard to change once decided course.
Ginsburg's concern for individuals impacted by injustice is definitely a reflection of Qi. Her stated position on dissenting is essentially a doctrine of it: a dissent speaks to a future age, the writer appealing over the majority's head to a court that doesn't exist yet. Her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, in which the female plaintiff correctly claimed gender-based pay discrimination, also points to it — as Wikipedia sums it up, "the majority interpreted the statute of limitations as starting to run at the time of every pay period, even if a woman did not know she was being paid less than her male colleague until later. Ginsburg found the result absurd, pointing out that women often do not know they are being paid less, and therefore it was unfair to expect them to act at the time of each paycheck. She also called attention to the reluctance women may have in male-dominated fields to making waves by filing lawsuits over small amounts, choosing instead to wait until the disparity accumulates." She was enough concerned about violation of individual freedoms to dissent from a decision allowing drug testing on school students where there're no specific concerns about school drug risks, and viewed suppression of police evidence in cases of officer misconduct "as a way to prevent the government from profiting from mistakes, and therefore as a remedy to preserve judicial integrity and respect civil rights." Your typical LSI, on the other hand, tends to adopt a "dura lex, sed lex" and "we don't have irrepplaceable individuals here" (falsely attributed to Stalin, there are also tales about Stalin applying this phrase to himself). Ginsburg's friend, the conservative justice Antonin Scalia, was closer to that kind of LSI — he, at least, on occasion, considered following the rule to a repugnant outcome a matter of judicial integrity.
Still, Ginsburg's social mission was more enforcement of an existing code than discovery of something original and new, unlike the very canonical LII, law professor David Schraub. Her violations of the typical LSI image were more in the Qi than in Ne matters. Socionavigator/Danidin once referred to the Ti+Qi-Ne combination as resulting in someone who pays a lot of attention to the exact correctness of their speech, and this definitely describes her legal meticulousness well. "Her speaking style is slow, meticulous and careful. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s communication is illustrative of her approach to the law: just what is needed. She tells her law clerks: 'Don’t write sentences that people will have to re-read. Same is true of public speaking." And her systematization instinct and the relative lack of relationship focus prevent an ESI verdict for her.
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