Trailblazing director for Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic

As the first woman accepted into the American Film Institute, Mimi Leder is set to bring a unique perspective on the Jewish jurist

By Yaakov Schwartz

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20 July 2017, 12:46 pm

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Yaakov Schwartz is The Times of Israel's deputy Jewish World editor

Mimi Leder is gearing up to direct the upcoming biopic “On the Basis of Sex,” about the rise of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a career fraught with challenges.

Appointed by then-president Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg is the first Jewish woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and the second female overall, after justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

It was an uphill battle for Ginsburg, to say the least, but one that has made her a hero in the eyes of many — and even earned her the role of protagonist in the award-winning Jewish children’s book “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark,” by Debbie Levy.

In the film, Ginsburg will be played by veteran English actress Felicity Jones, who brings a fair share of star power after appearing in features including “Star Wars: Rogue One,” “Inferno” and “The Amazing Spiderman 2.”

If her religion wasn’t doing her any favors, Ginsburg’s troubles on her path to the Supreme Court were compounded by the fact that the Judicial Branch, like so many other institutions in the United States at the time, was a veritable men’s club.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, February 6, 2015. (Carlos Osorio/AP Images via JTA)

Despite a trend set by the first Jewish justice Louis Brandeis of hiring Jewish law clerks, justice Felix Frankfurter, also Jewish, refused to even interview Ginsberg for the position of clerk because she was a woman. Frankfurter broke through racial barriers when he hired the first African American law clerk, but could not bring himself to repeat the moral victory.

Appropriately enough, director Leder herself is a precedent-setter. The New York-born and Los Angeles-raised filmmaker is the daughter of Jewish parents herself, her mother a classical pianist and her father an independent filmmaker.

After growing up steeped in film and film culture, Leder was the first woman to be accepted into the American Film Institute.

It should be interesting to see the perspective Leder brings to the story, given her past.

And though the role of Ginsburg was previously slated to go to Natalie Portman, another Jewish favorite, we’ve got great expectations for Jones when filming begins this upcoming September in Montreal.