Ruth Bader Ginsburg Side-Eyeing Brett Kavanaugh In This New SCOTUS Portrait Is Us All

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 30 November 2018

Friday is portrait day at the Supreme Court of the United States, and you know what that means—a spot of shade-throwing by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or so it seems. The November 30 portrait is the first that includes now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Anthony Kennedy after a bitter tug-of-war about whether the multiple sexual harassment claims against him (which Kavanaugh denies) should render him ineligible. (Meanwhile, Christine Blasey Ford has only recently been able to return home due to death threats, but I digress.)

In several of the portraits, as well as in a screenshot taken by C-SPAN and screenshotted by reporter Lauren Tara LaCapra on Twitter, RBG appears to shrink away from the newest justice, who beams from the top-right of the picture. Sure, we have no way of knowing how the feminist icon feels about an accused sexual harasser sitting on the highest court of the land, but RBG's feminist credentials might suggest that she's on the side of the women everywhere who opposed Kavanaugh's nomination. (Also, she didn't look too thrilled during Kavanaugh's confirmation, either.)

Here's the C-SPAN shot:

And here are the official SCOTUS portraits:

Here's a close-up:

Don't get me wrong—I could certainly be seeing what I want to see here, mostly because RBG is a bona fide women's rights icon. (Meanwhile, Kavanaugh behaved like a spoiled child when asked about assault allegations at his confirmation hearings and got a spot on the bench anyway.) Also, in fairness, RBG has adopted this facial expression in previous SCOTUS shots that did not include Kavanaugh, so there's that.

But many people on Twitter saw what I see, too.

RBG’s face in her first pic w Kavanaugh is the biggest mood towards most men ever pic.twitter.com/87lbkZEFDxNovember 30, 2018

You just keep fighting the good fight, RBG, newly healing broken ribs and all.

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Jenny is the Digital Director at Marie Claire. A graduate of Leeds University, and a native of London, she moved to New York in 2012 to attend the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She was the first intern at Bustle when it launched in 2013 and spent five years building out its news and politics department. In 2018 she joined Marie Claire, where she held the roles of Deputy Digital Editor and Director of Content Strategy before becoming Digital Director. Working closely with Marie Claire's exceptional editorial, audience, commercial, and e-commerce teams, Jenny oversees the brand's digital arm, with an emphasis on driving readership. When she isn't editing or knee-deep in Google Analytics, you can find Jenny writing about television, celebrities, her lifelong hate of umbrellas, or (most likely) her dog, Captain. In her spare time, she writes fiction: her first novel, the thriller EVERYONE WHO CAN FORGIVE ME IS DEAD, was published with Minotaur Books (UK) and Little, Brown (US) in February 2024 and became a USA Today bestseller. She has also written extensively about developmental coordination disorder, or dyspraxia , which she was diagnosed with when she was nine.