across the country and what they are saying to voters along with first-hand accounts from political reporters, updated phone numbers, fundraising data, and campaign ads. watch friday nights at 7:00 eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org or download as a podcast on c-span now our free mobile app or whatever you get your podcast. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. next week on the c-span network, congress returns with the house debating several bills on car emissions and student loans. this it it will continue to work on judicial and executive nominations. on tuesday fbi director christopher wray testifies before the senate judiciary committee on oversight. on tuesd unirsity professors ononfronting anti-semitism on college campuses before the house education and workforce committee. witnesses include dr. claudine

gaye, the president of rvard university, liz magill, president of the university of pennsylvania, and dr. sally kornbluth, t president of the massachusetts institute of technology bank ce from wells fargo, but -- bank of america, j.p. morgan chase goldman sachs will be among the leaders testified before the senate banking committee focusing on industry oversight. watch next week li on the c-span network or c-span now, our free mobile video app. headed to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on-demand anytime. c-span. your unfiltered view of government. >> at the beginning of november the george washington presidential library at mount vernon celebrated its 10th anniversary with a symposium titled "the great experiment: democracy from the found into the future." guests on the initial panel included

historians h w brands from the university of texas, brent brinkley of rice, joanne freeman of yale, and edna green medford of howard university. one point of the discussion was the mount vernon pole that found two thirds of americans pessimistic about the country's ion and dissatisfied with the political climate. >> historians hwb and, douglas brinkley, joanne freeman, and edna green medford on this episode of notes plus. look notes plus is available on the c-span now free mobile app or wherever you get your broadcasts. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government funded by these television companies and more. including. >> fast reliable internet connection is something nobody can live without. wow is there for customers with speed, reliability, value, and

choice. now more than ever, it all starts with great internet. >> w supports c-span as a publicervice along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. >> former u.s. supreme court justice sandra day o'connor has died at age 93. friday in phoenix, arizona. she was the first female supreme court justice serving from 1981-2006. a decade ago she spoke at a washington dc synagogue about her first job out of law school, the phone call from president asking her to be the nominee the u.s. supreme court, her devotion to civics education and supreme court traditions. following her speech she answered questions from the audience. .

in an ideal world, i would do it differently, but it hasn't settled down yet. and i hope it will. i have been involved with some projects concerning educating america a little bit about what the framers of our constitution had in mind when think es judicial branch at the federal level. i think that people have sort of lost sight of that overtime.

when our estates first formed, they all followed the pattern set by the federal government. with gubernatorial appointments of state judges and confirmation typically by state legislative action. president andrew jackson persuaded states to take a different approach. he was what we call a populist. it was his thinking states should elect judges in popular elections. what happened was, georgia was the first state to say, yes, that is a good idea. they changed the popular election of judges. many other states followed suit. followed suit. and we can talk more about that later, but it hasn't been a wonderful development over

time. >> i refer back to the book you wrote in 2002 in preparation for our intro today, you talk about the work of art in the supreme court courtroom, called the majesty of the law and how has important symbolism for you. would you talk about that symbolism. >> it's just the symbolism that the supreme court itself has. as the court in our country that has whose opinions are binding on all of the lower courts, whether state or federal. of course, the supreme court is only responsible for deciding issues of federal law, whether it's statutory or constitutional. the court does not get involved in trying to interpret and apply state law. it's up to the states.

but the symbolism is that this is the highest court in the land. and the framers created it after studying the laws in history and taking a look at what they thought worldwide was important for the judicial branch to do and how it should be structured. and as you know, the courtroom contains representative figures of great law doers in the past. and that concept was carried forward by the architects i think with the knowledge that the framers had also considered contributions from the great law gives of history. and so we have i think a very majestic courtroom representing, indeed, the majesty of the law and the process of governance. >> you write in the book as the

first time you really experienced an oral argument as a brand new sitting justice. do you still have strong memories of that day? and can you tell me about that? >> my first day on the court -- it is such a remarkable feeling to have been sworn in as a justice of the court, a position i never anticipated holding. i never aspired to that. i didn't think it was a realistic aspiration and i never spent time thinking about it. and all of a sudden, out of the blue here came inquiries about my ability to talk about a position on the court. that was a shock. i didn't believe that it would occur because in the first place already serving on the court was one of my classmates from law

school, william rehnquist. he had been a good friend. he lived in arizona. i knew his wife as an undergraduate. we were good friends. and it was just incon seeivable to me we would be asked to serve on the court at the same time. there are many states to this day never had anyone serve on this court. and so for the small state of arizona to all of a susessen have two at the same time was unimaginable to me. and when i was interviewed by william french smith and some of the cabinet members in the reagan administration, i didn't believe for a minute that i would be asked to serve. i went back to arizona after those interviews and said to my

husband how interesting it was to visit washington, d.c., and to meet the people around the president and indeed to meet the president himself and talk to him, but i said thank goodness, i don't have to go for that job. i didn't want it. and i wasn't sure i could do the job well enough to justify time. i have often said it's wonderful to be the first to do something, but i didn't want to be the last. if i didn't do a good job it might have been the last. indeed when i retired, i was not replaced by a woman which gives a pause to think oh, what did i do wrong that led to this? but i'm sure that the future will show that we have other women serving on the court. it's hard to be the only woman on the court, which i experienced for about 10 years

or so. and in a population which these days produces at least 50% of law school graduates being women. it's realistic to think in terms of a number of women on the court, not just one. >> after that initial oral argument having not come from the federal court system, sitting there and going through that process and what was it like? >> it had a sense of unreality for me because i still didn't believe that i was the person asked to serve on the court. it just didn't seem real. and the arguments that the court are not long. there's only an hour allotted per case unless extended time is granted. half an hour goes quickly for each side particularly if the lawyers are asked a number of

questions. i discovered that indeed we did have members of the court who liked to ask a number of questions. so the time that the for the oral argument went by quickly. i was hesitant to ask questions at first because of my lack of experience in the courtroom at this level. and my lack of knowledge about how my new colleagues acted in that setting and just learned how often they felt it was appropriate to ask questions and to learn how they asked questions and how the whole process unfolded. i had a high learning curve at first. i had to see how the cases unfolded in the courtroom in oral argument and what was appropriate and what wasn't. >> when you are sitting on the bench and watching the lawyers

before you, are you cognizant of the public and conscious of what is going on? >> normally focus is on the lawyers making the case. there were a couple of times when someone created a bit of a disturbance in the courtroom and that was quickly resolved and that would divert your attention. for the most people, people in the audience are very quiet. and the staff of the court escorts them quietly and explains they should try to be very quiet while in the courtroom. they are told not to sit there taking notes. really, the focus is on the lawyers and what they have to say. and some focus is on your colleagues if they're asking questions. you are interested in what it is troubling your colleagues.

they can lead you into a new area of inquiry that perhaps you didn't have yourself. >> to your early days on the court was wrought with symbolism. we talked with justice scalia that members of the judiciary continue to wear robes. what would your robe look like? >> they were very robes available. i didn't know anybody who made robes for women justices. and i think most that was available was something like a choir robe or an academic robe often used for academic proceedingses and graduations from universities. i think that was all that was available. and i just got what was available, put it on. harder a choice for a judicial collar.

when i first sat on the court i had a plain plaque robe that i used in arizona and i brought that robe with me and it was very simple and i did not have a judicial collar in those days. i put it on whatever i was wearing. and i was given a note that had been written by someone sitting in the audience one day in the courtroom and it said, dear justice o'connor, i have been in the audience watching the court today and i noticed that you did not have a judicial collar. now, all your colleagues were wearing white shirt collars and they showed under the robe and you looked like a washed-out justice to me. what is happening here. i took that note to heart and i said maybe i should find kind of a white judicial collar i could

wear because i didn't always have a white shirt under the robe and it was hard to find. nobody in those days made judicial white collars for women. i discovered that the only places you could get them would be in england or france. i did manage to get a collar from france and there was a woman who had been the first female judge in the state of delaware. she was older at the time and i had met her and she gave me her judicial collar, which was kind of a lace thing she acquired somewhere down the line and it was delicate and i used that as well. but finding an sproapt judicial collar for a woman turned out to be a task. >> our cameras visited the robing room not when justices are there. can you tell us what the procedure is like on the day when arguments are being heard,

in the robing room? >> first of all, a buzzer is sounded in each chamber of the justice about 10 minutes ahead reminding you that in 10 minutes you are supposed to be on the bench. at that point you need to go to the robing room and get your robe on and go into the courtroom. chief justices don't like to be late as you can imagine in the courtroom. and the robing room has narrow sections of a larger cabinet in which the justices' robes are hung and judicial collar if you have one can be on the shelf. you go there and there are attendants there and you can pick out the robe that you are going to put on that day, if you have more than one and help you

into the robe and get it fastened in front. and in my case worried about getting the judicial collar on can be a challenge. and then all the justices walk as they are finished with that into the conference room and sit around the table and confer on the cases and at that time, it is the custom happily so that every justice shakes each other's hands before going into the courtroom. that is a great custom. not all courts do that. i think it's wonderful. if you take someone's hand and shake it, you are much less likely to hold a grudge. there is something about human contact that matters. >> in the preargument conference what happens there? are you asking who might ask certain questions. >> you walk into the conference room, you have put your robe on

and you shake every other justices' hands and all nine are there and accounted for, the chief justice says it's time to go and people line up in order of seniority. they are seated on the bench. and you line up, cross the hallway to enter the back of the courtroom and they divide three justices on the left, three in the middle and three on the right depended on where you are going to be seated. and the chief justice gives the signal to some member of the staff, then the gavel drops in the courtroom by the marshall and people enter the justice go up the two steps and stand behind their chairs until the formal introduction of the court is made by the clerk of the

court. >> is it always a very solemn process? >> well, yes, it is. you don't go in there making a joke. you're not laughing or talking. until the court, the last gavel is down and you are seated and someone behind the chair helps you get your chair seated and the chief justice will normally call for the lawyers who are going to introduce and propose admission to the bar some new member of the bar. that usually occurs first and then the chief justice will call upon the lawyer for the petitioner in the first case and will call by name and they come and proceed. there are lights at the podium for the lawyer who is making the argument. and when the lawyer has only five minutes remaining, a yellow

light goes on. and when the time is up, red light goes on. and depending on the chief justice that can be closely observed or somewhat relaxed. when bill rehnquist was chief justice, he made them adhere to the time limits very strictly. >> you mentioned that you line up in order of vermonter -- seniority. seniority is important. as the years progressed and you were able to move your seat, does that make a difference in the way you approach the argument? >> it makes a difference in what part of the line you are in when we are all lined up, you change your position, it doesn't change anything about the argument. you still are what your one of the justices and some like to ask questions and some don't. we have justices who seldom ask

questions and justices who always ask questions. >> what was your own approach of asking questions? >> i asked what i thought i needed to know. we read the briefs before the oral argument. we spend a lot of time preparing. we read the briefs filed by the parties. in this court unlike most courts around the world, they allow friend of the court briefs by other interested groups. and if it's a timely request and there is no objection, it's granted. and so we typically have a number of friend of the court briefs in addition to the ones

filed by the parties. that means you have done a great deal of reading before ever coming into the rheum. -- courtroom. and the justices are familiar with the arguments that are going to be made. and i'm sure most of the justices, as did i, had a tentative opinion on a case before the argument gn. how it should be resolved. we have done our homework and you cannot do that and not form some views about the particular case. the facts and the law. when you go into the courtroom you have tentatively one thing or another about the case. but oftentimes you have questions. you would like to know about some factual background or some legal position that is being urged and what if kinds of questions. what if the facts were so-and-so

instead of what it is in this case and lots of things you can ask. >> you talk about justices having a tentative opinion before oral argument. we have learned about the initial vote that happens in conference after the cases have been heard. tentative understanding of which direction the final outcome might be. but we have gotten to the final stage of the process. how do you arrive at the final vote tally. take us from that conference room and the assignment of the writing of the opinion to the final outcome? >> first of all let me go back to the conference discussion on the merits of the case because that's very important. that discussion does not take place until later in the week during which the oral arguments are heard. the nine justices get together

around the table in the conference room and talk about the merits of the case. normally, there is only one discussion that takes place and it's that discussion. sometimes there are cases where there isn't a clear consensus and there has to be a second discussion. that's the exception, not the rule. so normally, it's the one discussion that occurs in that conference room in the week following -- in the week of the oral argument. and as you have heard, it starts with the chief justice and does down the line to the junior justice. and those discussions lead the justice to conclude ten taytively to affirm or reverse a particular case. that vote is not cast in concrete. you are not walking on wet concrete yet. you can change your mind.

occasionally a justice will do that. but a writing assignment is made based on that first conference discussion. and if the chief justice is on the majority of the case, the chief justice makes the writing assignment to someone in the majority, you write or i'll keep it myself or whatever it is. now the dissenting view is also typically assigned by the most senior justice on the dissenting side if there is going to be a dissent. sometimes but that's in a minority of cases. i don't know what it is at present but normally it runs 15% or 20% of the cases being unanimous. once the person assigned to write for the majority opinions circulates an opinion draft, then the other eight have a chance to weigh in. and normally, they start acting

within a day or two. they'll read it and say dear sandra, i've joined. or dear sandra, i'll wait for the dissent or dear sandra, i want to give a little more thought to this before i act. or dear sandra, if you change a, b, c and d to e, f, d and h. and if there is a dissenting opinion to be written, often people will wait and look at the dissent before casting their vote. once the dissent circulates, it could be so powerful that it causes someone who tentatively had been with the majority to change their view to some extent. so all of this -- the details are worked out not around the conference table but in the writing of the opinions that the persuasion takes place. and that's appropriate because

when you're sitting around with an oral discussion, it's too general, you can't be specific. if you see the words on a printed page, then you can get very specific on what it is that you might find some question about. so it really occurs in the writing. >> did you enjoy the intellectualism of the job? it seems like there's so much that challenges one intellectually? sandra: there is a lot, deciding your view of the case itself is challenging. some of the issues are really tough, some are not. some are clear cut but some are enormously challenging and some cause you to want to wait yourself until you see other views expressed before being firm in your own view. and it is a help to see it in writing. and it's a help when you have to write to have to put it down in words rather than just think it

through. it's a real challenge but exciting. susan: were there any particular types of cases you were most attracted to? sandra: no, i don't think so, at all. even a case on a subject that you think of is kind of boring can turn out to be enormously challenging at the end of the day. it could be anything. so i don't think subject matter determines the extent of your interest in it. it's the challenge of solving this particular question of law and making it work. it could be on any subject. susan: when the dissent or commentary written in the opinions, sometimes when you read them can be quite sharp and sometimes sound a bit personal. did you take them that way? sandra: yes, and if i thought it was too unfortunate, i would go to the justice and say, you know, i wonder if you really want to say that that way.

wouldn't it be a help if you removed this sentence or that sentence and said something a little more gentle? i was not averse to making that request on occasion. susan: you write in "the magesty the law" the warm acceptance of the justices of your arrival. as a whole, is this court much like a family? are the justices friends outside of the building as well as working in the hallways here? sandra: yes, by and large it is a very collegial group, and i was very blessed for 25 years here to be at a court where that was the case. it was not always that way in the court's history. there have been times when certain members of the court had strong an pip ate to someone on the -- strong atipathhy to

someone on the bench. it was good it wasn't that way when i was here. susan: first the building itself, you've had a bit of a distance and come back now to a place you spent a quarter century of your life. what's the thoughts on this complex and building in particular and its effectiveness of the judicial process? sandra: the building is beautiful, the architect gilbert thought he had done such a great job that the u.s. capitol should be moved so people would have a better view of the court? did you know that? susan: i didn't. sandra: that was his view. i do think he created a beautiful building but there's no way the capitol is going to be moved to provide a better view. it's built in the, i guess, overall theme of a greek temple and it has the beautiful steps up in front, it's marble from different places in the united states. and you walk through the marble

hallway through the main entrance and into the courtroom which is much like the greek temple design. and it is an inspiring area. it's smaller than you might think if you haven't been here before. it's not a huge courtroom. there are courts of appeal courtrooms that are larger than this one and the offices of the justices are not large. there are many circuit court justices and even some district court justices in federal courthouses around the land that have larger chambers than those of a justice on this court. so it isn't size that makes the grandeur or the specialness of the place. it's what it symbolizes and what goes on here that makes it special, and it is. susan: to you have any favorite places inside this building you tend to retreat to? sandra: there's no place to

retreat. you retreat to your own chambers if you want to get anything done. but we have a beautiful library upstairs, a reading room and there are tables upstairs. there's been a few times when i have had to use material from so many cases we occupied two or three of those tables, leaving the books out so the law clerks and i could go up there and sit up in the reading room and actually refer to all those passages in the preparation of an opinion. but that's not often. normally we can put them on a cart and get them downstairs to use them downstairs, the books. in these times you can find it on a computer screen so you're more apt to use a computer screen. when i first came to the court, we had very massive computers that were hard to use, they were called atex machines and they were not simple and you were not at all tempted to go to your computer. today they tend to be small and

agile and much easier to use. susan: you said at the outset you've been spending a great deal of time hoping to tell people about the role of the supreme court. would you reflect the role of the supreme court in society and what you think people's opinions are that you think they should perhaps be educated about? sandra: the court, the supreme court in general has been respected by the american people. it's one of the institutions that's most respective. obviously the legislative branch has a mixed -- creates a mixed impression among citizens because you have members from both political parties offering very different views of things. and the president himself sometimes can be criticized by some groups and admired by

others. but the court in general has had the respect and admiration of the people. i hope we can keep it that way. there have been more criticisms of judges in general that i've heard in the last 25 years than has been typical in previous years with a few exceptions. and that distresses me. so i think it is time the americans wake up to what it is the framers had in mind when they tried to create an independent federal judicial branch, they had a clear vision in mind, and that was that the federal courts would be deciding issues of federal law, constitutional and statutory. and that those judgments would be binding on all courts, state and federal. that was the framers' concept.

and they provided no term of years for the service. it says that federal judges will serve for good behavior. they provided the salary of a federal judge could not be reduced during that term of service of a federal judge. so the framers very much did not want the other branches of government imposing sanctions on federal judges by virtue of some decision with which they disagreed and that was a remarkable concept. susan: you told us at the outset when you came home from the interview with william french smith this was a job you didn't think you wanted. now that you've had the job and left it for a few years and look back, can you ever imagine what you had said no, what your life would have been like? sandra: my life would have been fine, thank you. but i've been very privileged to be here and it was a great privilege. and it enabled me to