Upstate New York greats include U.S. Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson and, for four undergraduate years at Cornell University, Ruth Bader of Brooklyn, who in time became Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and “Notorious R.B.G.”

Connecting and influencing them was Dr. Robert E. Cushman, constitutional scholar and government professor at Cornell. Cushman was a Jackson contact and friend who became RBG’s most influential teacher and mentor—he introduced her to law and to civil liberties and urged her to become a lawyer.

On May 6th, Professor John Q. Barrett, a Jackson biographer, and Irin Carmon, a Ginsburg biographer, spoke at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York, about Cushman, Jackson, and Ginsburg.