Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the recent same-sex marriage rulings demonstrate the "genius" of the U.S. Constitution, in a talk in Philadelphia last night, the AP reports:
Ginsburg said equality has always been central to the Constitution, even if society has only applied it to minorities — be they women, blacks or gays — over time.
"So I see the genius of our Constitution, and of our society, is how much more embracive we have become than we were at the beginning," Ginsburg said in a far-ranging discussion of her work at the National Constitution Center, steps from the nation's founding at Independence Hall.
And as far as judicial activism goes, Ginsburg had more to say:
Ginsburg criticized her majority colleagues for what she called "activist" decisions that overturned laws better understood by Congress, such as the Voting Rights Act, which had been extended by a series of bipartisan presidents, most recently George W. Bush.
"That's an example of striking down legislation on a subject that the people in the political arena are better informed about than the court is," she said.
Ginsburg became the first Supreme Court Justice to officiate at a same-sex marriage last week.
