CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, family friend Jack Levin spoke to NewsNation to discuss the life and legacy of the iconic U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Levin said he was informed of the news Friday evening, just about three minutes after Ginsburg’s passing, by her son James.
“He told me the sad news just that three minutes before, Ruth had passed away,” said Levin. “He knew how hard I would take the news and how upset I would be and he was so kind to have called me.”
Levin also reflected on her marriage to Martin Ginsburg, who passed away in 2010.
“Well, Ruth and Marty were a perfect couple. Ruth was brilliant. Ruth had all the right instincts,” Levin said. “She was warm and genuine and she had a desire to improve an imperfect world all the time. And her husband Marty was outspoken, jovial, cracking a joke every five minutes. They were both brilliant. She quiet and he quite outspoken. And they made a perfect couple. They did everything together.”
Levin also recalled Ginsburg’s friendship with fellow Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Her best friend on the Supreme Court was a person exactly on the opposite end of things, but a person whom she went to Harvard Law School with; And they always got along extremely well on the Supreme Court. That is Nino [Antonin] Scalia who was — as you probably will recall — on the opposite side of most of the issues that Ruth was. And that just demonstrates how both Nino Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were the kind of extraordinary people who held no harshness, no hostility with respect to people who believed differently than they did.”