Ruth Bader Ginsburg had an uncanny ability to play the long game, foreseeing legal threats before anyone else.
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Roe v Wade - the ruling that effectively found restricting abortion to be unconstitutional - is a prime example. She knew how easily it could be overturned, and said as much while she was alive.
"One of the things that happened after Roe v Wade is that women wanted women to be able to control their destiny. They won, so they retreated. And the other side geared up and we have the situation that we have today," she told the BBC in 2019.
The only thing she didn't see coming - that nobody saw coming - was Donald Trump becoming the American president. This set in motion an avalanche of adverse consequences, including the overturning of Roe v Wade.
"Trump becoming president felt like such an impossibility," says Australian playwright Suzie Miller, whose play RBG: Of Many, One, is currently on tour with the Sydney Theatre Company.
"She was looking towards a female president. She was writing these dissents that were like roadmaps that any president could pick up and take to congress. Roadmaps for how to change the law.
"She saw this miracle moment of the collision of her and Hillary [Clinton] both in power at the same time and the opportunity to affect quite significant change. And then, of course, that didn't come about."
Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, just 46 days before Trump lost the US election to President Joe Biden. Despite her request to pause the search for her replacement until after the election, Trump exercised his right as then-president to appoint conservative Amy Coney Barrett in her place.
For better or worse, the end of Ginsburg's life and career will always be intertwined with the Trump administration. That's part of the reason RBG: Of Many, One has one part devoted to Ginsburg's interactions with Trump. The other two acts focus on Bill Clinton, the president who nominated Ginsburg for the US Supreme Court, and Barack Obama, who suggested she stand down before Trump's election.
Ginsburg's dislike of Trump was no secret. The late supreme court justice spoke out against him while he was still a candidate. But it was surprising that she decided to speak out in the first place.
Core to Ginsburg's beliefs was the separation of powers - a central paradox in the late judge's life and Miller's play.
When Obama suggested Ginsburg retire from the supreme court while he was in office, the late judge took offence.
"She believed she shouldn't interfere with presidents, and they shouldn't interfere with judges," Miller says.
"She took offence that Obama would try to talk her into doing something or suggest she do something, and she stood strongly on separation of powers as the bedrock of democracy.
"But then what happened is when she spoke out against Trump, she undermined her own value system. It just shows her human fallibility and she had to apologise to Trump otherwise she would have been kicked off the bench."
RBG: Of Many, One isn't an encyclopedic biopic. Nor does it focus on one defining moment, unlike the 2018 drama On the Basis of Sex, which focuses on Ginsburg's first supreme court case, Moritz v Commissioner.
Instead, this one-woman play - starring screen and stage actress Heather Mitchell - uses the three presidents as anchors, with flashbacks to Ginsburg's upbringing, personal life, and key professional moments.
Miller is the ideal person to translate these tangled issues for a novice audience - as well as for Mitchell in preparing for the role.
Miller, a former lawyer, often deals with complex legal themes in her scripts, including the internationally acclaimed play Prima Facie.
"Until Suzie told me, I hadn't understood Roe v Wade passed through the courts on this idea of privacy between a woman and her doctor," Mitchell says.
"Suzie had to explain it to me and say 'No, that's why Ruth said that it wasn't secure enough or strong enough and can be overturned'."
As Miller says, Roe v Wade did not focus on the woman's choice, but rather the right to the doctor's freedom to practice with privacy.
"She got accused in her lifetime as being quite negative about Roe v Wade," Miller says.
"Not because she wasn't pro-choice; she was always pro-choice. But she got a lot of criticism and what she was saying was it wasn't foolproof and we might lose it one day and of course, it has come to fruition."
Ginsburg wasn't afraid of being outspoken. That's part of what Mitchell - like others - finds captivating about her.
Public vs private life
But it was Ginsburg's private life the actor wanted to draw attention to in RBG: Of Many, One.
"She had all these wonderful qualities. Professionally, she was extraordinary and fierce and had great integrity and conviction. But she listened to people; she was fascinated and genuinely interested in people," she says.
"She delighted in people who made her laugh, and delighted in her husband who made her laugh enormously, but also in [former supreme court judge Antonin] Scalia who was her adversary in a way. People whom she didn't agree with, she also delighted in because she loved finding clear arguments through things.
"She was able to interpret and find new perspectives. And I think that's what excited her was finding good arguments and finding an argument that no one else had thought of."
As much as Australians know Ginsburg, there are parts of her life that have eluded us. We know she stood for gender equality and was behind several landmark cases. But Ginsburg the person - the mother of two who was an opera lover and had battled cancer three times - is largely unknown on the other side of the world.
So why would an Australian write a play for an Australian audience, with an Australian actress portraying one of the most well-known American lawyers in recent history?
It's not just that she was remarkable; despite everything, Ginsberg's story is still relatable.
"There's certainly a great commonality, emotionally towards Ruth," Mitchell says.
"She suffered three times through cancer, she suffered the loss of her sister, she was brought up in a very poor Jewish family, she experienced anti-Semitism, she experienced inequality, she had to fight so hard among male institutions, and then to try and get work in those institutions. I don't think that the fact that she's an American matters.
"Some people might say, why tell the story of an American judge? And I say she had such far-reaching influence and opinions on far-reaching things.
"If anything, we can watch what's happening in America and draw our perceptions and feelings from it and learn from the great things and also learn from the things that we don't particularly want to follow or be like."
Miller has plans for RBG: Of Many, One to eventually reach an international audience, and is currently working on an American rewrite.
"It's a very different version," Miller says.
"In America, people know who she is ... but they're more interested in how she made her decisions."
One of the commonalities between the two, however, concerns Ginsburg's husband, Marty.
In interrogating just how Ginsburg achieved what she did in her lifetime, Miller found Marty Ginsburg's support was instrumental.
Not only did he support her professionally, but the couple also lived an equal domestic life.
"I wanted to template how a successful woman can become successful if she has a partner that's prepared to recognise that you should do as much of the domestic front as the other person," Miller says.
"I put it in there to show the men in the audience that's how you go about it. The methodology is that you do the cooking and you do half of the domestic work, half of the childcare at least. And you also advocate for your partner in the world where it's a very male-dominated world - bring her name up and put her forward and lobby for her."
During the show's run in Sydney last year, Miller says while women walked out of the theatre crying, having found Ginsburg inspiring, men walked out thinking they were already like Marty.
"I thought it was amusing because, well you're not all Martys. They just came out thinking 'I'm already there'," Miller says
"But that was specifically put in as a template because often people think, what does it mean to be a man that lives a feminist life?
"The women that went to law school with Ruth Bader Ginsburg ended up either not graduating or when they graduated just ended up rearing children, while their husbands had glorious careers.
"One of them was just as smart as Ruth and she was devastated that her life turned out so differently. And the difference was who she married."
RBG: Of Many, One will be at the Canberra Theatre Centre from April 11 to 21. Tickets from canberratheatrecentre.com.au.