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Hawaii joined the country in mourning the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the governor ordering the immediate lowering of the flags to be flown half-staff Friday afternoon until her interment.
Ginsburg formed strong ties with the University of Hawaii’s William S. Richardson School of Law, as evidenced by a judicial collar adorned with pink Niihau shells she often wore.
In the 2018 documentary “RBG,” Ginsburg takes out a box from her office closet and opens it, revealing a gift from the law school: A Hawaiian lace jabot (judicial collar) made from delicate lace and 49 rare pink kahelelani Niihau shells.
Avi Soifer, retired UH law school dean, said he and other faculty gasped when they saw the film and heard her say it was from the University of Hawaii.
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The UH law school presented her the gift on her February 2017 visit, when she served as the law school’s jurist-in-residence. It was her third and final visit, having also come in 2004 and 1997.
Associate Dean Ronette Kawakami, who designed, sewed and presented the jabot to Ginsburg, said she wanted to create something significant with a genuine Hawaii connection, and bought the loose shells from a Niihau artisan, and sewed the individual shells onto the lace.
She was devastated and saddened by the news of Ginsburg’s death, “like most people I know, anyway,” she said. “I was truly devastated and cried my eyes out for hours.”
“She was a trailblazer, the woman who went before, who had this invisible armor that went into battle for the rest of us, and did it with such grace,” she said.
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Kawakami also admired Ginsburg’s ability to take a stand, completely opposite from close friend Justice Antonin Scalia, and did not let that get in the way of their friendship.
“The likes of her, I don’t think we will see again,” she said. Kawakami said she appreciates “the fact that she existed and was there for us to emulate, and for the next generation to take up the mantle and go forward, and take us all the way home for equality.”
Soifer caught glimpses of Ginsburg’s “focus, her brilliance, as one of the giants of Supreme Court history, one of the great Supreme Court justices,” he said, adding she made her mark as a litigator, challenging the status quo on women’s equality and the right to be treated equally.
During the 2017 visit, Soifer was left to inform Ginsburg of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision against President Donald Trump’s travel ban limiting arrivals from six predominately Muslim countries.
“What I found very moving was that she just stood in the middle of the room, and the rest of the world had fallen away,” he said. “She just started intensely reading the Court of Appeals decision. She was imbibing this opinion.”
“That evening, she said, ‘I promise you at least four more years,’ which she almost made,” Soifer said.
He recalls the high energy she possessed, going paddling and swimming one morning.
While at the beach, she had to take a call, then returned. The phone call required her opinion on a death penalty case. “Pretty memorable,” Soifer said.
She went horseback riding that afternoon, and attended the opera that evening, he said.
During that five-day 2017 visit, Ginsburg attended gatherings of law school students, UH undergraduates and students at several high schools.
Soifer said, “She really taught a master class with questions about the Constitution” with the high schoolers.
“‘We the people,’ she started. ‘Who are the people?’ she asked.”
“‘They were white men,’ a Radford high school student answered.”
Soifer said Ginsburg loved Hawaii, where she blossomed, enjoying hula and wearing lei.
He noted that she didn’t really make small talk, and would think before she spoke, so you really wanted to hear what she had to say.
Ginsburg never forgot her Brooklyn roots. “It was still a part of her,” Soifer said.
Soifer said in his last year as dean of Boston College Law School that he invited Ginsburg to an event, and wanted her to meet his 12-year-old daughter.
“Our daughter, without parental urging, wrote to her, and said, ‘I’m sorry if it was difficult making conversation together. I’m often shy and more comfortable in writing,” Soifer related.
Ginsburg took the time to write her back, saying, “I was that way too.”
During that 2017 visit, Ginsburg addressed the UH law students, and spoke on a topic that remains timely.
She talked of her own nomination in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, saying the vote was 96 to 3, and that her biggest supporter on the judiciary committee was Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch.
“There was a collegiality that existed,” she told her attentive audience. “I wish I could think of a way to get back to the way it was because the most recent appointments to the court, on both sides of the aisle, there was voting along party lines.
“Now we have a dysfunctional Congress, but at least we know we could have a legislature of the kind that the United States should have,” she said. “And maybe there will be wise women and men in both parties who will blow a whistle and say, ‘Let’s stop this nonsense.’”
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