The Power of Judicial Dissent: Justice Ginsburg and the Promise of a Better Tomorrow

“I like to think most of my dissents will be the law someday,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a lecture audience in 2015. In this episode, the hosts discuss the important role of reasoned dissents at the Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg continued and refined a tradition championed by Justices Thurgood Marshall and John Marshall Harlan of pointing out the failure of majority opinions to accurately reflect the real-world truths underlying the cases before them. These dissenters understood that the Constitution, like society, continues to evolve, and that putting the truth out there, can foster this progress.