>> until after this event because he knew how much it meant to me. i just want to say, died, i love you, and i look forward to watching this with you on c-span very soon. now on to the reason you are all here. william j. brennan jr. was a rather obscure new jersey court judge and former corporate labor lawyer when president eisenhower nominated him for the united states supreme court in 1956. over the course of the next 34 terms brennan emerged as one of the most influential justices of the entire 20th century. i can assure you that is not just with a pc is speaking. he was also the court's most forceful liberal voice. he had his hand in every major issue of the day from school prayer and desegregation to

abortion and affirmative action, the death penalty and the rights of criminal defendants. for much of his tenure no one outside of the court knew just how influential role he played in building coalitions under chief justice earl warren and his to more conservative successors warren burger and william rehnquist. in 1986, the year justice brennan turned 80 and march his 30th anniversary of the court he tapped steve as his biographer. as reflected joke, i was in fifth grade at the time worrying more about whether the mets were going to win the world series. he granted steve unprecedented access to his papers and began what would prove to be 60 hours of interviews over the course of five years. the tablets are tonight with steve telling the fastening story of how he came to be his biographer and what that experience was like.

>> thank you. test for the record, i am a politics & prose member, too. our thoughts are with your father, as well. thank you all for being here. 1986, as you now have heard, was a remarkable opportunity. if you imagine i have been in washington for quite a while at that point and had been writing about the supreme court first for the boston globe and then the "wall street journal" permits the seven or eight years at that point. and so you have been doing something and learning about something for eight years. suddenly you have the opportunity to go inside and see everything there is to see about this subject that you have been examining for the past eight years. it was just an astounding opportunity. agreed to this because i think in 1986 he turned 80. he was celebrating 30 years on

the supreme court. he was thinking about his legacy at that moment he had not decided to did retire, but he knew there was not that much longer. so how he would be remembered in history was very much on his mind. so he looked around for a biographer. i had the good fortune to have a very good friend and mentor who was the chief judge of the u.s. court of appeals here who had also become very good friends with justice brennan. he made the introductions command the ticket from there. it astounded me, actually, how easily and smoothly the process began. at think i was a pretty good newspaper reporter. i would very cautiously. i figured out get a tape recorder and start asking questions. later i can see whether he will actually give me access to papers and files. over time i would say, can i see

this? can i see that? ever get a little more aggressive. can i take that home. can i copy that? can i get that document that is in your bottom drawer? he had this amazing resources which, at least to our knowledge no other justice has ever done. beginning in 1960. thirty years from 1960-1990. he had his law clerks prepare narrative accounts of the most interesting cases of the supreme court term. they are not so much legal documents as they are a kind of great nonfiction read. i mean, here is how the case got here. here is how the justices voted. here is which justice came to talk to justice brennan about this case. here is to be identified as the critical vote and how we went around trying to figure out how to get that vote. and so there are 30 years worth

of the sisters. that was really a treasure trove , and one that i felt i had to approach carefully and slowly and did not even really ask him to give me access to for quite awhile. again, to my amazement after a while i knew where they were. they were in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. i also came to know that it was not locked. and so after a while i just would not on the door early in the morning. he got to work at seven in the morning. i would go up to the court. the supreme court police would call a to the chambers because the secretary was not there yet. stephen wermiel is here and he wants to come out. they would escort me out. i would knock on the door and say, justice thai can i get one of the histories. he would say sure. i would walk in and take one of the histories and go sit down and read and take notes. in any event it was and remarkable opportunity.

a tremendous amount of detail and then set about the court. he was also very generous with his own time sitting for 60 hours of interviews. the interviews were fascinating, but on mixed experience as well. he was always very careful about how he wanted to be detected and portrayed. not that there aren't many, many moments of candor, but there were things that he just wasn't going to talk about. he wasn't going to talk a lot about deep, personal emotions. his first wife had died of cancer after suffering from cancer for 12 years. i could virtually never get him to talk about her. at one point she actually said dawn, i don't know how you're going to do that because at this point he has already been married his secretary.

i don't know how you're going to do that. his secretary would have a fit. we have on tape my conversation with him in which i said you were married to this one for 50 years. surely you don't think you're going to and read a biography and not write about your first wife and two she was and what she meant in your life. he would never talk about her. every time i brought her up he would say, oh, how she suffered and that was the end of the conversation. so there were many ways in which the interviews were guarded and cautious. there were ways in which he was being guarded and cautious and we learned a tremendous amount about him. i would ask him -- at first i did it not intentionally. at first there was a genuine and sincere question. there were two things aston that would just drive him nuts. i would ask him, how could it be that your religion doesn't affect your decision making.

again, the first couple of times it was a sincere question. every wanted to know what he would say. he was so -- it was almost like i pressed a button that play back a recording. he would give me this kind of pat answer. acted the same oath to uphold the constitution that every other judge and justice did. my religion has nothing to do with that. the next time i asked the question it was remarkable. i did exactly the same answer like a was buying back my on tape. but i kept asking the questions because i really wanted to see what would happen. he got madder than hell. six interviews later i would ask him again. he would say, we've talked about that, and i've told you it had nothing to do with it, and i don't know why you will understand that. to me that was very valuable. i began to get a sense that that was not just a pre-recorded message.

really was what he felt. the other question that i asked with some regularity was a variation on that, how can you possibly separate your personal views from your decision making? that is the thing everybody wants to know. can anybody really do that? and he would say the same gang. he would get kind of angry and say, you know, what i think in my personal life is not really what matters when i'm trying to decide the case. we decide the case on the facts and the law and the issues before us. that is what makes a difference. talk a little bit more about some of the insights that that led us to in what i think is one of the more interesting aspects of the book. so this went on for a number of years. as i said, it was like the world's most wonderful tutorial. i did not really wanted to end. and so when it came time to

write the book i didn't really want to write the book. i wanted to keep being able to ask more questions and learn more about the court. as many of you know i did not write the book for quite awhile. i put it down for a long time and then picked it back up and put it down. after a while i concluded i was not going to get it done without somebody to help me do it. so i was introduced by a good mutual friend. he joined the effort in 2006 and just did a remarkable job. he wrote most of what remained to be written at that point and organize the material in a herculean fashion. the book really would not have been completed without his extraordinary effort. that is the story behind the book. let me say a couple of quick things and then turn it over. what did i see in all of that and what did i learn?

and member of, i think, important and interesting fangs. if you have ever read anything about him you have heard what a remarkably kind, and assuming, generous, warm individual he was all of that was true. i got to see firsthand the same story that anybody that ever met him will tell you. when you walked into a room he would let you in the eye, shake your hand firmly and genuinely make you feel like you were the most important person in the room, even though you were standing in the presence of the supreme court judge. and he had a remarkable ability to do that that never stopped. i saw a man with an incredibly prodigious memory. it is good for me to see this because i don't think would have believed it otherwise. his law clerks would tell you

that they would be talking about the case sitting around his desk and suddenly he would swivel in his desk chair and turn to the bookshelf behind him where there was an entire wall of the u.s. reports, the reports of supreme court decisions. he would pull of volume off the shelf and open a page. it would be the case they were talking about. again, if i had not seen him do it myself i would have said, come on. that's ridiculous. nobody can do that. but i saw him do it. it was absolutely amazing. he would turn around and pull the right volume out. he would turn to the right page and say, what do you want to know about this case. one of the most interesting thanks. seth made the point in his opening comment. we did not know. if you were following the supreme court in the 60's and

even into the 70's, he didn't know about justice brennan. he was the best kept secret in washington. it was the warren court. there were towering intellectual figures on the court. hugo black, william of douglas. earlier on a felix frankfurter, john harland. these were supposed to be the intellectual giants of the court . william brennan was just this guy from new jersey that nobody had ever really heard of and had no particular reputation. it really wasn't until later that we learned what an incredible influence he had behind the scenes in the warren court and continued to have in subsequent years. i think the book documents that, and i hope that is one of the values of the book. suddenly it was one of the great values of the access to all of the papers to his being willing to talk about what went on.

one of the great revelations he told me and i asked of the people of round the court for different amounts of time about this. perot warren would come in and have private meetings to talk about how to decide the cases and to home to assign opinions and so on. i don't think even other members of the court knew that those meetings for taking place. i knew that the law clerks to of the justices did not know that those meetings were taking place. so there was this remarkable that this person who helped shape our legal and constitutional landscape for three and a half decades was playing for may be the first 15 or 20 years of those three and a half decades, and i don't think anybody knew about it. that's one of the values of the book. that may have -- let's set have a turn. will keep going back and forth.

>> amazing as this may sound, i think he is understating the degree of access see actually has. can you talk a little bit about sitting in on the morning coffee, when they were talking about cases, having free rein to foot a copy whatever you want when pending decisions were sitting there? >> i will take another two minutes. i don't want to eat up all the time. one of the amazing opportunities that i had. this came after a while. it was not something i would have asked to do a first. he would come in at 7:00 a.m. the clerks would arrive at 730 rate. they would have coffee every morning for an hour. talk about the court, the events of the day. after a time he began to invite me to join them, which was a remarkable opportunity. i would hear what their relationship was. i would hear about what was

going on. they would talk candidly about other justices and the court. that was a great insight. the other thing that meant a lot to me because the image of the court in the 1980's shaved my other books and writing about the court, this kind of deeply political institution. if you read what was written about the court in books in the 1980's you would believe that there really was no difference between the court and congress. it was just a different location. people walked around the halls trading votes, slapping each other on the back, making deals. they just happened to have black robes on the back of their doors rather than briefcases to fly home to their districts with. i believe when i started and convinced myself even more through the time that i spent with judge bring in that was totally a false image of the

court and have it worked. and so the other thing i had the opportunity to do was sit in with justice brennan when he met with his law clerks on several occasions and prepared for oral arguments. he would have his law clerks come in and actually go over the case with him. they would present the basics of the case. he would ask questions. they would argue about different positions and ways of thinking about the case. the short version of this is what i saw was what you would hope to see, which was a process that worked seriously, thoughtfully, delivered to flee. it was not about horsetrading and backslapping. it was about, you know, how important this aspect of this legal test and where will we find the fifth vote for that test or could we compromise on this aspect of this test and if so, who are we going to compromise with?

what is the impact of diminishing the test or increasing the test for whatever the case may be. it is not such an exciting way to tell the story, but the story was that the court was a serious, thoughtful, deliberative institution. even at times when it was deeply divided and making decisions that are divisive in our country . >> well, i joined steve in 2006. the first thing that he did was he handed me a copy of the transcript of their interviews. it was faster than a phone book. i read through that. a little intimidating. the next thing i did was went into steve's basement where there is an entire wall lined with file cabinets. all the materials that he accumulated over the course of many years. i spent a year going through all of those files, started taking

notes. eventually had 1800 pages of notes. i did additional research. some of the justices who have served with justice brennan, their papers became open only after he had begun his research commandos were particularly fruitful. paul, black men kept meticulous papers. they saved every scrap of paper that he exchanged with another justice of the bench. paul saved every internal memo he shared with his clerks. whenever he wrote in the margins. he would say this is ridiculous. who is he calling an activist. extraordinarily insightful little jottings on the side of his memos. i did additional interviews. every interview many of the clerks and members of his family were very generous with their time. people tend to be a little more candid with the passage of time that justice brennan was no

longer alive. they felt a little more comfortable sharing their opinions. very much in sync on how we were going to approach the riding of the book. in three ways. there are some justices who had really fascinating pre court lives and wouldn't be merit biography. a pioneering civil rights leader. earl warren, the chief justice to have been a three term governor of california. justice brennan, there would be no biography of a new jersey state judge and corporate labor lawyer. we purposely convinced that part the focus here really is on his tenure as a supreme court justice. the second is that we really wanted to go down the middle. we were not looking to just celebrate him. you were not looking to condemn him. we were going to take it or average went. i hope it reflects that.

there are things about justice brennan that he did that we point out that are, perhaps, worthy of question or criticism. those include is hiring -- refusal to hire women clerks long after he had written pioneering women's rights decisions. he decided to withdraw an offer to a clerk in the 1960's because of that. >> alleged ties to communist groups. it was not necessarily a moment of bravery on his part. so hopefully what we have done is taken a middle-of-the-road approach. he is called into question when merited. he gets the credit he deserves. a couple of games i thought i would talk about a little bit that are in the book and are some of the key insights. there is this notion that a liberal justice or judge reads his own personal preferences into his decision.

that really is not the case. the man that we write about is a very conservative person. as i mentioned, he refused to hire women clerks in 1970 when he was recommended the first one by his former clerk. he basically said send me someone else. he then went on to write a pioneering women's rights decision. the sampler comes back and suggests another woman. he says no again. at that point as we reveal the clerk writes him a letter. with all due respect your hypocrite. not only are you a hypocrite but you could be sued under the very precedents that he wrote. and to his credit he relented and hired his first woman clerk. there are other areas where we see that. he wrote some of the opinions and privacy decisions that paved

the way. he helped craft the roe v wade abortion decision. he was personally uncomfortable with abortion. he is a champion of the first amendment and a free press. he distracted reporters. they infuriates him. he points out help infuriated he was by bob woodward and scott armstrong. they absolutely infuriated him. makes it all the more fascinating. some what of an outsider in this project. here is this justice that is an extraordinarily private person his close friends and colleagues would say they really did not feel like they knew the injustice. he distrusted reporters. on more than one occasion he was very angry about things that appeared in the "wall street journal," whether the news pages or the opinion side. yet he opened his entire life in a way that, perhaps, no other justice has ever had to journalist.

he gave steve free rein to his entire life. steve talked about the case histories, materials. he also gave him free rein in his personal correspondence. every letter that he ever wrote to another justice, a lawyer, to any member of his family, their is a letter that steve found in one of his tours, a desk drawer. he kept his most cherished possessions. he kept the wedding ring of his first wife. he , the last letter he got from his brother charlie, the brother he was closest to who was killed in world war ii and the philippines. he got that letter just days before the military informed the family that his brother had died that letter was in his court. steve got a copy of that. it is just extraordinary that such a private person opened his

private life to a reporter. the new the consequence of doing so. it is a fascinating contrasts between some of the decisions that he made into he was as a person. let me just say a couple of things. a couple of medicine that i think we tried to counter. an irish catholic. for 30 years he was the only catholic on the court. 1936 until justice scalia joined him. a stream so extraordinary now. but 30 years he was the only catholic. he was stereotyped from the beginning. this happy leprechaun. he was a small -- not a tall guy . he was a very personable man. very friendly. it was genuine. you see stories from his confirmation describing a jaunty irishman. is very much how his replacement

was character and stereotyped as a fiery latina. unfortunately that stereotype stock. it played into his second notion . how he did his job as a justice. there was this notion that he was this irish or boss. going through the hallway, shaking hands, making deals, slapping backs. he deeply resented that idea. in many ways rightfully sell. his success was not due to the fact that somehow he was a politician working the room with all. he was an extraordinary consensus builder. he had extraordinary skills. interpersonal was only a piece of it. he also had an extraordinary gifts at a time when there were moderates on the court unlike today where it is pretty sharply divided. he had people who he could work

with and convince. not on every case, but he could find a way to accommodate their concern, build a majority. and the bigger the majority the better. on the other hand -- and this is the last thought. i think he liked to portray himself as less of a politician that he was. he likes to portray himself as a detached, almost in an ivory tower sitting in his chambers just exchanging written memos. that is certainly true, but he was a very skilled politician in the sense that he was very good at addressing the needs of his other colleagues. he deployed his clerks, particularly in later years after earl warren was no longer chief. his clerks served as a diplomat. he let them loose finding out what was in the other chambers, figuring out what the needs were, how to accommodate them. so it is also wrong to suggest

that he was not political. not in the sort of grass and retail politics that a stereotypical politician. so with that at dank everyone here for coming, and will be happy to answer your questions. >> while people are coming up to the microphone to ask questions, please, i want to set the record straight that i did do other things besides rifled through his desk drawers. >> as of roman catholic did he feel any pressure from the church or from his own conscience on the decision that was rendered with respect to abortion? >> i think his identity as a catholic is a key theme that we explore throughout the book. he never made a decision to end here to what he thought the

catholic church might want, but some of his decisions cost of a great deal of anguish due to the reaction of the church. he saw that early in his tenure on school prayer. certainly later with abortion. i think he had a behind-the-scenes role in roe v wade, which is the case in many other decisions. there was the case in little rock where is name was not known for decades. he was happy to have a behind-the-scenes role. he did not want to be up front. he did feel like the house catholic. there was a note saying, can you read a portion of this opinion, give it and i as a catholic to mackey was not comfortable in that role. there was a backlash. he was subject to a. there was a call to excommunicate him.

>> i would add one additional thought. he never actually wrote an abortion opinion except in the cases where the issue was the the funding of abortions for poor women. he never wrote a substantive abortion opinion about the right to abortion. the only time he ever wrote a separate opinion was when it involved the funding. >> yes. you referred to my question twice this evening that was in the book regarding women's rights and his role in enabling them to be higher than before. yet he refused to hire a woman. i don't understand that. at all.

i don't know if you can explain it, but it seems incredible. >> he came from a different era. when he arrived at the supreme court he had never had a woman as a professional colleague. don't think he had seen a woman lawyer appear before him in the 30's and 40's. fifty's. he had never had the woman colleague is a judge. there were nine at the supreme court. there were scarcely any women law clerks at the supreme court. i mean, obviously not defending it, but it was a different era. he did not come from a background in which he had exposure to women as professional equals. so he had not a lot of experience with it. this old-fashioned guy. there was a certain amount of women who belong in the home

quality to his view. he learned. the group. his daughter helped educate them about women in the workplace and the need for women to have protection under the constitution. i think to his credit he learned a lot and cruel lot because he wrote the major decisions that, you know, set the foundation for that. his personal experience was very different. >> being here in washington, i am a washingtonian. i was born here. the supreme court is here. i called this man's paradise. there are so many women here. i still find it unbelievable. >> let me just add this comment. what steve was saying about him being a man of another era was not just our answer. we spoke with her. in the 1970's she was the key

legal strategist. she was the thurgood marshall. she was the one arguing the case is an essentially educating him. what did you know at the time? she had gotten a letter at the time. she did not remember the letter but said it does not surprise me. he was a man of a generation. justice ginsburg said she had to educate. she was teaching the justices to think about women in a different way. that is the best that we can do. >> both sandra day o'connor and ruth bitter ginsberg have trouble getting jobs. i mean, that is the world that he came from. >> i have i'm multi pronged question. i apologize. a find the length of time interesting. i'm basing this on the new york times article. the fact that it took so long to get the book published.

all of the access. my first question is how long -- what was the last time you spoke to justice brennan before he died? how much was your access after he was off the court? also, if you could explain in a little more detail what your process was and why it took so long. another you found a mutual acquaintance. did you try to find anybody before that? how did it come together that you finally got things moving in the right direction to get it published? >> the first part of the question, i interviewed him probably a half-dozen times between his retirement in july 1990 and his death in 1997. we rely less on those interviews in the book. people have tended to forget the reason they retired was because

he had a stroke. so i could see often when i was interviewing him that his memory was not as sharp anymore. i can look at those transcripts now and say, that's wrong. that's nonsense. i don't think that happened. and so i was less willing to rely on those interviews. there are probably another ten hours of interviews on top of the 60 after he retired and before he died. the process -- death has nothing to do with the delay. the delay is entirely mine. he is the answer to the end of the delay. don't blame him. several things happened, some of which is simply rightist bloc. justice brennan had always said that the one condition on the book was that it not be

published while he was sitting on the court. he never made clear an additional concern which was that there might be some questions about his comfort level if i were publishing it when many of the people with whom he served were still sitting on the court even after he retired. he always said he was going to go out with his boots on. he would die on the bench. and so, frankly, i was caught totally off-guard when he retired. in fact, i said that to him. i had a conversation with him several months before he retired in which a said, you know, i have done a substantial amount of research. if you are thinking about retiring at any point in your have the notion that i should be writing the book because you're going to retire it would be

great if you give me some morning. you know, one year's notice, a couple of years' notice with the wonderful to try to have that obscenity. and so he called me at 730 in the morning on july 20th 1990 and said, and i can remember vividly the inflection in his voice. he said, i have decided i'm going to retire me this was the two years' notice he was giving me except there was about two hours' notice, not two years. in his mind he remembered that he promised me he would give me an exact advanced warning. this was the advanced warning. that knocked me through a loop. i was not ready to start writing the book. i was not in a position to start writing the book. i was still working full-time. i had not even really thought

about writing the book yet. i stopped and tried to read a couple of chapters. i got them done, but had to go back to work. that story continued. i change jobs and careers. i had a wonderful daughter to help raise. remove cities several times. so i kept finding difficulty getting it done and putting it aside and tell my daughter was going off the, pinch. if it seemed like the up chin moment. i decided to look. >> if i could have done that. this is going to sound entirely self-serving. at think it is a better book for coming out now.

it is better because of the papers that simply was not available at the time steve started working on this. some of the best insights we found about the internal workings of the court or from those. was better because clerks and family members were more willing to be candid about their views, personal issues. it is a better book because technology has changed. the ability to do. >> searches of every major new surgery in the country. the red bank register, the local paper where he sat as a new jersey state supreme court justice is now fully digitized and on the internet. i found every last article referencing justice brennan, when he sat, and about his life. in that sense it is a better book. we will leave it to the reviewers and historians to decide whether it is better or what was lost in the interim.

>> i guess i would also add i think it is a better book because we have more perspective on what is legal legacy was. when he was still sitting in 1990 the notion that the death penalty was inherently and in every way unconstitutional was something that he and thurgood marshall were the only two that subscribe to the view of. since he retired several other justices have expressed severe reservations about the death penalty system in this country and at least a couple have come out and said that they probably think it is so bad that it may well be unconstitutional. that is a helpful perspective to have for the benefit of evaluating justice brennan's contribution. that is just on one issue. there are lots of other things.

>> one last thought. did justice brennan, he had the stroke. did he ever express frustrations? he wanted to see the book before he died. did he ever explain an interest to see it? was his memory that failing to mack how did that turn out? >> he let me know that he would like to see it. he got to read one chapter which he said he liked very much. you know, he was too nice to get mad at me. he was unfailingly nice. if i said i'm working on it and hope to have its in a few months , you know, as i said, he would make you feel like you were the most important person. don't you worry about it. you just keep doing what you're doing. it's marvelous that you're doing this at all. i knew that he was frustrated.

sure. >> thank you. >> where a man comes out on a significant problem often depends on his early upbringing and education. would you talk about justice brennan's early upbringing, his education both through the schools, before college, his college and law school, and how that affected his life on the court and his decision making. >> absolutely. his upbringing, he grew up in newark, new jersey where he was born in 1906. he was the son of two irish emigrants to both grow up in county roscommon. they grew up 10 miles apart and would have never met and they stayed in ireland. his father was a stationary firemen. he helped operate the boilers at a brewery.

then he rose up through his union and became a much beloved city commissioner. he served many years as a politician. his influence on justice brennan cannot be overstated. was a formative influence. his namesake sun. he was someone who believed deeply and economic justice. he saw that in his work as a union leader and what he said as a public official. but you can't say everything came from his dad. his death as a public official also was pretty willing to step on people's civil liberties. he was a public official in the 1920's and participated willingly in crackdowns on communists and subversives. so that was something that justice brennan really came to later. i think the formative experience really was harvard law school. he learned much about civil liberties. his father shaped the course of

his career. there is this notion that his father would have rolled over in his grave had he known that the union leaders father, his son, became a corporate labor lawyer. the truth is he wanted him to go in that direction. he wanted his children to step out the socioeconomic ladder. he put them on a course at the university of pennsylvania and then harvard law school. it really was his father has set him on this trajectory that people the sound would be contrary to his father's wishes. >> the only thing i would add is about the early education. he was unmarried. he studied all the time and worked hard. he had numerous after school and before school jobs. he talked about running a gas pump to make money to make spending money. his and her brother would milk cows. he would deliver the milk.

they may change. he really worked hard in school and outside the school just to have money and be responsive to. >> yes. a couple of things i'm trying to recall. the only catholic with the first catholic justice ever? >> no. i don't remember. there were about five before him . the first was actually robert tawny. and then -- >> that did not go so well. >> the one immediately before was frank murphy. there was a gap of a few years which is an interesting part of the story. cardinal spellman came to see president eisenhower on a couple of different occasions and said, hey, remember the catholic seat after frank murphy had been off the court for a few years?

remember the catholic seat? it would be nice if you got as another one some time. when eisenhower heard that sherman was retiring and that he was going to have this vacancy to fill one of the first things he said was, you know, remember the visit. >> who took his spot? >> yes. i remember hearing some folks say that there were statements by eisenhower. the biggest mistake he ever made was born and bred in. >> the answer is yes and no. there is substantial evidence that eisenhower thought that. there is no evidence that he actually ever said the words publicly even though they are too rigid to him and dozens of history books.

actually had a bizarre experience early in this process of tracing those words. you know, you go from one boat to the next. the next book cites another one. you get to another and another. eventually i came to the end of the line. there was no source. it was amiss citation. the words had been said about somebody else. but having done that i also found that there were several places where privately eisenhower expressed that sentiment. i think he felt that, although i'm not sure he said the famous words that are attributed to him. >> i would just add that justice brennan while circling more liberal he was not looking for a bedrock conservative. 1956. middle of a reelection race that are tighter than anyone expected

his health was an issue. he was looking for a catholic democrat with lower court experience. you have that up and there's not a big pool to choose from. in the sense that was the goal, those were the criteria, he fit the bill. i think -- i don't think president eisenhower expected him to become the great liberal champion that he became. as far as the immediate task this was the bill he wanted. >> in contrast to today's supreme court nomination process i don't think anybody in the entire eisenhower administration ever asked him a single question about what his impact will be on the supreme court, where he would fit or how he would decide cases. they basically asked him if he was a good judge. he was smart enough to say yes. and, you know, in the course of the nomination the question about his catholicism is an important part of the nomination

when they introduced him in the white house press room to the press corps they really only said one thing about him. not we think he's going to be a practitioner of judicial restraint or an advocate of original intent or something like that. they came out and said, this is the president's nominee for the supreme court justice, william j. brennan. a member in good standing of the holy name society. and of all the great legal justices you served with him did you sense he had the most little respect for? >> when it came to the court to one he was most afraid of, not scared every, but sort of odd bod was hugo black. hugo black's reputation for constitutional intellect was legendary.

so maybe i would leave it at that. >> all right. following up on that last question. i am curious if you could provide a particular insights into his skills as a consensus builder. you also talk about his frustration with justice marshall. if you could discuss a little bit of that it would be great. >> let me address justice marshall first. this was a topic of great sensitivity to justice brennan in his conversations with steve. he believed thurgood marshall was, perhaps, the most gifted litigator he had ever heard argue. started serving in 1956 when thurgood marshall was still arguing civil rights cases. he later served as solicitor general. he had tremendous success for his skills as a lawyer. as he explained to steve and said this with great concern about how it might be perceived by the public, he was

disappointed with justice marshall's performance once he joined the court. he had a sense that justice marshall had given up as their court majority shrank. he felt as if marshall was not doing his share of the heavy lifting to preserve the game of the warren court. that is his perception. i'm just telling you what he believed. he was extraordinarily reluctant to tell you about this, probably. he believed justice marshall had never gotten his due for his tremendous achievements as a lawyer and judge. he felt part of it was racism. he did not want to say anything that would take away from what he believed was justice marshall's do. he did not like to talk publicly. he did not give speeches. as time went on he became a bit more reclusive. he would constantly, whenever invited give talks to honor the legacy of justice marshall because he believed so strongly

in that. i think he was very reluctant to talk about it. was a matter of great sensitivity to the help we handle it with the sensitivity that it deserves. >> the other part of the question. this is starting to be a moment of true confession. have many present and former law students in the room. i'll deny ever having said any of this. law professors are upset with teaching students about three part tests and for part tests and two-pronged analyses and things that the supreme court has focused on over the years. i think part of his skill in a consensus building was that he cared more about what the end result was going to be and what the test was. if the issue is that women need protection under the equal protection clause because they are being discriminated against in our society the important

point isn't whether it's the most rigorous test or only a slightly rigorous test. the point is can you do something to bring women under the equal protection clause and recognize the harm of gender discrimination. that was the basis of much of his negotiation. i'll give away the fourth prong and settle for a three-pronged if that means that we can advance the interest of civil liberties and civil rights and constitutional. why would you be a obsessed with the test rather than with the civil liberties goal that you're trying to achieve. >> we have time for one more question. >> while he was on the court and you were interviewing him there were to efforts to impeach justices of the court. did you talk with him about

either of those justices and his views if he expressed them about the efforts to impeach his colleagues. >> did not talk much specifically about the impeachment. i don't think that he thought the effort to impeach was really all that serious or a matter of great concern. he was very perturbed by the whole episode with for this, the elevation to be chief justice, the failure of that, the impact it had on the court because it meant that richard nixon would get to pick the next chief justice instead of lyndon johnson, the ethical issues that were raised after he nominated chief justice. he found himself being exposed,

writing about financial scandals , a payment that he had taken that was deemed inappropriate. very concerned about that. so much so that contributed to his decision then in 1969 to basically withdrawal. if you watch the court in the 70's, unless you were actually in the supreme court chamber he never laid eyes on him for 13 years. he disappeared from the public. he withdrew from all speaking investments. he withdrew from financial investments. he resigned from the american bar association. he basically disappeared from the public eye, in part because his wife was suffering from cancer and he was spending a lot of time with her, but also because of the scandal. he would not take a chance that he had a finger in anything that

might involve any kind. >> i wanted to close tonight reading one paragraph. i don't want you to feel cheated we did not do any book reading. this is actually the last paragraph. i assure you we are not reading the ending. he may well have offered his best inside about how he would like to be remembered before he joined the supreme court. it came at the end of his february 1954 st. patrick's day speech in boston recall later for its veiled attack on mccarthyism. recounted a story once told by a 19th century scottish comedian sitting at his window before the advent of electricity. watch as the lamplighter worked his way down the street planning his letter to like each lamp before moving on to the next one. eventually the lamplighter was no longer visible and the storyteller could see only the lamps that he had left. brennan concluded his speech by

saying, so it is, my friends, with you and me of irish blood as we go through life. maybe be found lighting the lands of truth and justice even as our irish forebears before us so as time passes our own children and their children after them, though we be lost to view me tell the way than we went by the lance will it along life's path lai. thank you very much. [applauding] >> said stern is a reporter for congressional quarterly. former supreme court reporter for the wall street journal. currently teaches constitutional law. for more information visit justice bird in doubt,.

every weekend book tv breezy 48 hours of history, biography, and public affairs. here is a portion of one of our programs. >> we will continue to work our way around the room. >> is the motivation for women going into the military, did you find anything different than the reason that men go into the military? >> well, i think there are a range of reasons. some women told me it sounds very much like nurses. they really wanted to escape their small towns. they did not want to live like their friends who were marrying yawing and having lots of babies other women wanted adventure. they wanted to go to war. they really wanted to fight. i talked to one woman who was chairman who had actually emigrated to the united states because she was too old for the german military and she wanted to fight in more.

>> some of it was also economic. there were many women i talked to came from real poverty. very serious poverty. for them the military was a way out. .. >> there was a split largely in the vietnam