In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • “Remembering Public Life: Writing Policy into Biography”
  • Leandra Zarnow (bio)

“Our craft is best practiced, according to the traditionalists among us, when we stay off the streets, out of legislative corridors, and away from the tape recorder,” commented Jane De Hart in 1993. Graciously defiant, De Hart has shaped her academic career by moving carefully through the forbidden paths of contemporary history. Comfortable in legislative corridors and many a street, she has demonstrated the benefits of keeping a tape recorder close by, most notably in her 1990 co-authored book, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA. Navigating the choppy waters of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) ratification process even prior to its 1982 death knell, De Hart did not let “contemporary passions cool” before documenting this policy history. Instead, she exhibited what she calls “probationary restraint” during lengthy interviews with ERA opponents and supporters, taking the viewpoints of antiratificationists seriously even though they did not match her own.1 De Hart demonstrated what legislative ethnography might look like, analyzing what she described as the nuanced meaning “of belief in the self-understanding of observers.”2 Fully aware that “memory is an act of imagination,” De Hart nevertheless determined to locate significant reoccurring patterns in memory in order to gain understanding of the equally messy and layered process of legislative development.3 Oral interviews, she demonstrated, enable policy historians to measure how individual political actors develop their belief systems, policy agendas, and lobbying strategies, as well as assess how these actors operated within the bounds of prior institutional structures and normative political culture. The only catch is that living subjects talk back. [End Page 448]

Jane De Hart acknowledged as much in her Journal of American History essay: “One of the rewards as well as the hazards of writing contemporary history and relying on oral sources is that those sources can talk back.”4 In 1993, she could not foresee the extent to which she would grapple with this problematic aspect of contemporary history in the years to come. Once again, De Hart chose to tackle a project where she could not solely depend on textual archives. This time she determined to scrutinize the early work of one of the most formidable legal figures of our time—Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In De Hart’s forthcoming study, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Before the Bench, she considers the legal development of sex discrimination cases—such as Reed v. Reed (1971) and the lesser known Struck v. Secretary of Defense (1972)—which Ginsburg litigated as director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. ACLU records provide clues about how Women’s Rights Project lawyers argued sex discrimination cases, just as Supreme Court records reveal how Justices reacted to oral arguments and crafted their opinions. Tracing Court and organizational records could not, however, reveal the legal consciousness of the ACLU’s leading litigator. Faced with a reluctant subject, DeHart turned to indirect ways to gather information about a woman who did not want a biography, compelling Ginsburg to fill in details only she could provide.

What do Ginsburg and De Hart’s careful conversations tell us about working with contemporary public figures before they conceive themselves to be historical subjects? To address this methodological difficulty, I consider De Hart’s work-in-progress as well as my own political biography of Congresswoman Bella Abzug. Although Abzug has passed on, this quandary still exists because her legacy is closely guarded by devoted family, friends, and followers. Like Ginsburg, Abzug was keenly aware of her iconic status. In interviews conducted by Columbia University oral historians, for example, she carefully crafted her answers to match the political biography she had often repeated to reporters. Thus, both De Hart and I must grapple with how to get beyond the surface of these larger-than-life public figures, as well as how to read the celebratory narratives provided by adoring family and colleagues. Second, we both consider Ginsburg and Abzug not solely as biographical subjects, but as mediums through which historians can assess major shifts in jurisprudence, policy development, and political culture. Our research raises these questions: What is the advantage of approaching policy and legal...

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