Supreme Court

A Woman On The $10 Bill — The Case For RBG

We certainly hope Justice Ginsburg doesn't die any time soon. But with the Treasury announcing a woman will be added to currency by 2020, we'd be remiss not to say Justice Ginsburg's earned the honor.

By Joe Patrice on June 18, 2015 3:34 pm

Only the most obsessive of political junkies kept up on the nascent movement to place a woman on the $20 bill. Until last night, when Twitter ran wild with speculation after the Treasury Department announced that, five years hence, it will place an as-yet-undetermined historic woman on the face of U.S. paper currency for the first time since Martha Washington got her mug on the dollar bill briefly over 100 years ago. No more $1 coins, the hitherto ironic economic choice for expressing women’s rights, since $1 coins themselves are as useless as tits on a bull.

It’s a victory — of sorts — for an organization known as Women on 20s, who spearheaded a mostly under-the-national-radar campaign to replace Andrew Jackson’s visage on the $20 note with a historic woman’s portrait. The group went so far as to hold an online survey, asking people who should take Jackson’s place. Harriet Tubman prevailed.

Tubman is a fine choice. Though I’ve heard some in the African-American community express concerns over coopting the Tubman’s image on the currency of the nation that bought and sold her and those she helped. A fair point to consider as well. Which woman would grace the new $20 was a contentious decision.

What shouldn’t have been controversial was replacing Jackson on the $20 bill. Not just because putting a woman on a TWENTY in the year TWENTY-TWENTY has all the obtuse manufactured cuteness that we expect out of Washington, but because Jackson sucks. He’s a traitorous, backward, inbred hillbilly slaver who spent his presidency in a state of perpetual orgasmic joy at the thought of Native genocide. So deep was his commitment to white supremacy he treated the Constitution itself as a towel rag while flippantly ignoring Supreme Court authority, as embodied in his most famous quote in response to the law’s (already limited) protection of Native Americans (an accurate sentiment, though never actually said by him) “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

This national embarrassment is an obvious candidate for removal. Indeed there’s only one good reason to keep him.

https://twitter.com/edsbs/status/611350733305217024

You’ve got me there. But maybe not quite enough.

And yet, the Treasury Department shocked the world last night when it declared that (a) it heard the plea of the Woman on 20s movement and will move forward placing a woman on hallowed U.S. currency (“Yankee dollars” if you’re in Texas), and (b) that it would place that woman on the $10 bill instead.

Come again?

Twitter user @ObscureMemory put it best when he wrote “they literally split the difference between 0 and 20.”

Gah! Even from a purely financial perspective that makes no sense. Take this billionaire’s word for it:

Right.

That was my first reaction. Poor Alexander Hamilton. Not a perfect man by any stretch but a far cry better than Jackson. And he gets gunned down by an actual traitor and now bowled over by the government’s bizarre commitment to protecting Jackson. If Jackson hadn’t been dead for 170 years, I’d suspect he has naked daguerreotypes of someone influential.

But no, Hamilton isn’t actually gone! Apparently Hamilton will just be “joined” by a woman on the bill, which is even dumber.

Whatever. The die is cast. Time to move on to the speculation about the new bill.

https://twitter.com/JustinRaimondo/status/611350308464136192

Don’t even joke about it.

But seriously, among the many names seriously floating around — including Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Abigail Adams, Emily Dickinson, Sojourner Truth, Amelia Earhart, Frances Perkins, Beyonce and face-on-money retreads Susan B. Anthony and Sacajawea — let’s add Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Yes, Justice Ginsburg is not dead. And hopefully, she lives a long and healthy life well past 2020. That said, if Justice Ginsburg were to pass before her 87th birthday, America could hardly do better than to honor one of the only 4 women to reach the highest judicial office in American government.

Add in Justice Ginsburg’s early career as an advocate for the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union — a career that Natalie Portman will soon portray on the silver screen — where Ginsburg won the extension of the Equal Protection Clause to protect women’s rights and was integrally involved in the legal struggle to shape sex discrimination jurisprudence, and it’s an entirely defensible argument that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the most direct impact on the advancement of women’s rights in the history of the country.

Sounds like someone who deserves to be on money.

That said, this isn’t Justice Ginsburg’s first run in with currency portraits

Ginsburg’s last case before the court was another winner; her last question from the bench was the most memorable of her career. Justice (now Chief Justice) William H. Rehnquist — always the one least inclined to vote for Ginsburg — leaned toward his microphone at the end of her oral presentation.

“You won’t settle for putting Susan B. Anthony on the new dollar, then?” he asked, slyly.

An answer, one fit to sum up not just a case but a career, jumped to Ginsburg’s mind, she later recalled. “We won’t settle for tokens,” she considered saying.

The $10 bill is not as much of a token as a $1 coin — literally only used in subways — even if sharing the space with a man is. At least the $10 bill is something everyone has to handle on an almost daily basis. It’s something children have to learn at a young age.

And if every 4-year-old in the country has to point to a picture of Justice Ginsburg and ask, “who’s that, Mommy?” well… that’s not a bad thing at all.

Redefining Fair With a Simple Careful Assault [Washington Post]

Earlier: Natalie Portman Will Star In Ruth Bader Ginsburg Biopic
‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ Does Not Supersede The ‘Supremacy Clause.’