Hear U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talk about her career, law, and advice for the law students at Northwestern University, 2009

OFF CAMERA: Justice Ginsburg, I was curious, what advice have you given or would you give Justice Sotomayor?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Justice Sotomayor has done just about everything one could do in the law. She was a prosecutor. She was a partner in a commercial law firm. She was a trial judge. She was on the district court. She was on the Court of Appeals. She doesn't need a whole lot of advice. She's very well-- what I will tell you is, she did call me, asking me about something just a couple of days before I came here. She said, "I so liked the robe that you wore yesterday, please tell me--"

How did I become a lawyer? Because I was a student at Cornell in the early 1950s, not a very good time for our country. It was the heyday of Senator Joe McCarthy. I had a government professor and his name was Robert Cushman. I was his research assistant, and he wanted me to see that our country was straying from its most basic values by some of our politicians who were seeing a communist in every closet, but that there were lawyers who were defending the rights of these people to think, to speak, to write freely.

And his point was that if you are a lawyer, you are able to make things a little better for your skill. And that idea, that you have a license to practice law, you can make a living, but you're not going to really be satisfied-- if you're like a skilled artisan, like a plumber, you do a day's work and you get a day's pay-- but you have a skill that enables you to make life a little better for someone else, for your community.

And my tremendous satisfaction is that I was able to use my skill as a lawyer to make things a little better for other people. And so I hope that the law students here will use their license to practice law in that way. To give back to their communities, and to make life a little better because you have been there.