By Carol Fisher Linn
Included in the list of upstate New York greats are U.S. Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert H. Jackson and, for four undergraduate years at Cornell, Ruth Bader of Brooklyn, who became Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a U.S. Supreme Court justice and “Notorious RBG.”
Influencing and connecting them was Robert E. Cushman, constitutional scholar and government professor at Cornell University. Cushman was a Jackson contact and friend. And Cushman was RBG’s most influential teacher—he introduced her to law and to civil liberties and urged her to become a lawyer.
Several upcoming events focusing on these influential people are not to be missed. Here are two of them, scheduled on the same day – May 6th. At 2:30pm, Join Irin Carmon, journalist and co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and John Q. Barrett, Benjamin N. Cardozo Professor at St. John’s University and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center, for a book signing and discussion about Cushman – an influential constitutional scholar and government professor. It is free to the public at the RHJ Center at 305 E. Fourth Street Jamestown. 716.483.6646
At 7:30pm get prepared to enjoy All Things Equal – The Life and Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This presentation at the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts is a one-woman show, starring actress-singer-writer Michelle Azar (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0044110/) who has received awards for her work on stage both in New York and Los Angeles, as the Notorious RBG, lace collar, scrunchie and all. This presentation is produced by Scott Stander (https://www.scottstander.com) and written by multiple Tony award-winning playwright-composer-lyricist-orchestrator-conductor-novelist-singer-songwiter, Rupert Holmes. The play is directed by Laley Lippard, (https://theatre.umbc.edu/laley-lippard/). I repeat, you don’t want to miss this.
Synopsis: Supreme Court Justice “RBG” welcomes a friend of the family to her cozy chambers to convey, over the course of ninety fascinating and often funny minutes, a sense of her life and its many trials: losing her mother the day before she graduated as valedictorian of her Brooklyn high school; being one of only nine young women studying law at Harvard while also raising a daughter and helping her husband battle cancer; fighting for women’s rights in the nineteen-seventies before condescending all-male courts; and taking courageous stands for human rights as a voice of reason amid a splintering and increasingly politicized Supreme Court. An evening with a great and compassionate icon of straight-thinking American justice portrays an RBG who is not only “notorious” but victorious as she takes a stand for ordinary people facing the many challenges of a changing world.” (Broadwayworld.com)
Aside from performances at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor and the Lincoln Theater in Washington DC, All Things Equal, The Life and Times of RBG has toured across significant venues in the United States, with its finale here in Jamestown, NY. Why Jamestown? The Jackson Center is all about education, using a variety of methods including in-person and virtual programs and presentations, exhibits, available media, and scholarship.” A live theater production is an excellent education tool.
Tickets for All Things Equal, The Life and Times of RBG are on sale through the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts. https://reglenna.com/events/all-things-equal. A parking ramp is located directly across the street from the theater for those persons unwilling/unable to walk a few blocks to street parking.
Learn more about Robert H. Jackson: Robert H. Jackson, from Jamestown, New York served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954. The only person in the US to hold the office of U.S. Solicitor General and U.S. Attorney General, plus Supreme Court Justice, he also was appointed by President Truman to serve as the Chief U.S. Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals after WWII. There Jackson created a trial format which worked for all four Allied nations. He coined phrases such as “crimes against humanity” and “acts of aggression.”
Jackson was born in Spring Creek, PA, and raised in Frewsburg, NY. With only a modest education and no college degree, he spent app