Judges decide cases, not the laws upon which those cases are decided. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is mad that she can no longer do the latter so easily. Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at Goodyear Tire, sued the company after she claimed it paid her less than her male peers. She based her suit on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which clearly states that such claims must be filed within 180 days of the offense. Ledbetter waited years instead. Thus, five members of the Supreme Court reversed lower-court decisions that would have made her a millionaire. On Tuesday, Ginsburg read a dissent from the bench for the second time this year. "Title VII was meant to govern real-world employment practices," Justice Ginsburg explained, "and that world is what the court today ignores." Does it? The court merely read the law as it was written. It didn't rewrite it for the benefit of Goodyear, as Ginsburg proposed to do for Ledbetter. Ginsburg tramples on the law when it conflicts with her political prejudices. That's the injustice. Just imagine me reading this dissent to Ginsburg's dissent from my bench.

The whole idea is of course, bunk. If firms are paying women less, it can only be because they feel a woman is, ceteris paribus, worth less than a man in a given position, for whatever reason. Whether that is morally justifiable or not is irrelevant for our purposes. Take away their option to hire a woman for position X instead of a man, for wage of Y-1 instead of Y, what will they do? They will of course simply hire the man every time.