in a mall and i can hear my dad playing background on a song, and that's quite a feeling. c-span: who is your favorite jazz musician? >> guest: miles davis. and i think it's because i actually met him, and he was pretty cool back then, and i've always felt that there was something about him, and as an eight or nine-year-old, to have a person -- i didn't know how cool he was then but he was nice to me. c-span: you are probably not old enough to have been to mr. kelly's or the london house in chicago. >> guest: i knew about the london house, my dad played at the london house with the soulful strings. a group that they took things and this was a quarter tet --

quartet, i knew that the london house. c-span: i saw earl -- at the london house. >> guest: that was a -- c-span: long time ago. >> guest: chicago was quite something for music and still is. c-span: dr. carla hayden the new librarian of congress. >> guest: thank you. >> presidential candidates hillary clinton and donald trump have written several books, many of which outline their world view and political philosophy. democratic candidate hillary clinton hays ruin it five books in one she remember he 2008 presidential campaign and her time as secretary of state in the obama administration. in 2014, booktv spoke with secretary clinton about the book, and you can find that interview on our web site. published in 2003, "living history holiday is secretary clinton's condition of her time as first lady. she released a children's book about letters written to her

family pet, and also authored a coffee table book about life as first lady. and in her first book, "it takes a village" she argued society shares the responsibility with parents for raising children. republican presidential candidate donald trump has also written many books. his first several titles released in the 1980s and '90s are accounts of his business transactions and real estate companies. in the early 2000s he released self financial self-help books. in his two most recent books "time to get tough toy and" crippled america "he outlines his vision about american prosperity. self of these books have been discussed on booktv and you can fine them on our web site, booktv.org.

[inaudible conversations] good morning. welcome, i am president of aacc, national capital region, and i welcome you today. on behalf of the chapter, i think i can speak for everyone here about exactly how excited and how honored we are to have justice ruth bader ginsburg and former solicitor general, ted olson here with us today. [applause] >> i also want to thank so much james williams, who is a former member of our board of directors. jim veil los angeles our vp for

programming, and eileen reed our executive directyear for all of the work they put into this event and they deserve a round of applause. [applause] >> , with that i want to turn things over to james and he will do the introductions. thank you. >> thank you for those very kind words. it's a tremendous honor to be here today to introduce our guests, and it's always difficult when we have guests of this caliber to find the right superlatives and adjectives and terms to describe them. a few come to mind. titans, dedicated, principled, dynamic, engaging, brilliant, thought leaders, and pioneers. what has been most personally inspiring for me has been the role also civil rights leaders,

whether it's the fight for racial or gender equality or marriage equality or freedom from discrimination based on sexual ore general addition or gender identification, both have ensured that across all the fronts our country continues to honor its promise, equal justice for all. justice ginsburg was nominated by president clinton as an associate justice of the supreme court, taking her cincinnati 1993. prior to her appointment to the supreme court, she served from 1980 to 1983 on the bench of the united states court of appeals for the district columbia court. she was professor of law a at rutgers and columbia law school. she is also served on the fact can i of the seminar at american studies and the as spend institute for humanistic studies and is a visiting professor at many universities in the united states and abroad.

in 1978 she was a fellow at ther in for advanced study and behavioral sciences in stanford; so her commitment to civil rights and gender eve quality, goes back for men decades. lastly but not leastly, she definitely has the distinction of having the best nick name in the history of any supreme court justice. the know towerol rbg. -- notorious rbg. ted olson is a partner in washington's d.c. office. ted was solicitor general of the united states during 2001 to 2004. from 1981 to 1984, he was assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel in the u.s. department of justice. he has argued 62 cases before the supreme court, and has prevailed in over 75%. let me say that again. 75% of those arguments.

remarkable achievement. his cases have involved separation of powers, federalism, voting rights, the first amendment, equal protection and due process clauses, sentencing, jury rights, punitive damages, takings of property, the commerce clause, telecommunications, the 2000 presidential election. think we remember that one. bush versus for. campaign finance. mcconnell vs. mcc and citizens united. same-sex marriage, again, a civil rights pioneer. and other federal constitutional and statutory questions. i'm grateful for all they've done. at the end of the chat, justice ginsburg and ted will take a few questions from the audience and we'll have a chance to interact. without further adieu, justice right ginsburg and ted olson. [applause]

>> thank you, james, thank you, louise. you can imagine what a pleasure it is -- pardon? >> is this microphone working? >> can you hear me? i think someone is in the way of the camera. you can imagine what a pleasure it is for me, an advocate. to be able to ask questions of a supreme court justice. [laughter] >> however, suspect you'll hear her turn the tables on me very soon after we get started. and at the risk of repeating a couple of the things that james said about justice ginsburg. i wanted to add a word or two of my own before we start our dialogue. i don't know where the fireplace is. think it's behind -- [laughter] >> as james i'm sure felt, the toughest thing about introducing someone like justice ginsburg

it's tempting to say ear their too much because she has accomplished so much and has led such a distinguished life in our society or coulter, or too little because you already know who she is and what she has done and you're here to hear from her and not frommer. -- not from me. but i can't resist the opportunity to say a couple of words about this remarkable woman, and remarkable career and a life we all admire. i understood this event sold out in an hour and 15 minutes. that's a tribute to the fact that people have such great respect for you, justice ginsburg. if i was limited to five woffords, couple of. the came up when james was introducing -- i would say pioneer you. said that. commitment, courage, passion, and to me, most of all, warrior. and i'd like to explain that. justice ginsburg grew up in brooklyn. her older sister died when she was six.

he mother struggled with cancer. throughout justice begins burg's high school years and passed away the day before her graduation. a very daunting beginning for her. she attended cornell university, was elected identify beta kappa and graduated first among the women in her class. then harvard law school, one of nine women in a class of 500. when her fellow student and husband, marty ginsburg, whom she met on a blind date, was diagnosis evidence with cancer, she attended class for both of them, took notes, type her husband's papers and cared for both him and their infant daughter. when he recovered and took a job in new york city, she transferred to columbia law school. she became the first woman to be elected two major law reviews. columbia, and harvard. i saw the picture in the book, the rbg book, i'm going to mention in a moment.

two women, not -- out of 60 on the harvard law review, and they have your picture equally balanced, the two women among all the 60 men. tied for first in her graduating class at columbia, was turned down for a united states supreme court clerkship because, by justice felix frankfurter because she was, as "the new york times" reported, because she was woman. if she was discouraged she remained undaunted. as a professor, the second woman to join the law faculty at rutgers. she founded the women's rights law reporter and chaired the women's aclu rights project. and the first tenured professor aft columbia law school where she authored a book on judicial procedure in sweden. after mastering swedish. somewhere early in our relationship she saw the name

olson and that might that might be swedish and skiffed could i speak swedish. i had to point out i was norwegian and i didn't speak swedish or norwegian. she later transferred the swedish code of civil procedure into english. now, civil procedure is tough enough. but but swedish? as an advocate for women's rights and gender equality, she changed the world. she personally argued six cases in the supreme court, winning all but one, and when a summary reversal in another case without even an argument. the cases she won started an avalanche for gender equality. justice ginsburg served for 14 years on the d.c. circuit. the second woman, after sandra day o'connor, appointed to the supreme court. she replaced justice byron white. she is now the most senior of three female justices on the court.

just a word or two more. she was diagnosed with colon can center 1999 and underwent surgery, arrestation, and chemotherapy. she missed zero days on the percentage bench inch 2005 she was congratulationsed with and underwent surgery for pancreatic surgery, 12 days after sure she was again back in court hearing argumented. her husband for over 55 years, martin g.i.burg, an internationally respected professor died in 2010. she was back in court the next day. just as he would have wanted. you'll find out today that justice ginsburg has a wicked, miss -- miss cheffous send of humanyear and i have from person experience argued eve e over 50 cases she is as well prepared or

better prepared than any jurist i have ever experience it. often the fir justice to break the ice and ask a question. those questions are penetrating, focused, and tough, and as an advocate very intime dating. so i wanted to say to the fuse words about you because i did have the opportunity to do this, and if thought we'd start off with there is about to be published or is being published -- you can telephone us the date -- >> october 4th. >> october 4th. who is paying attention, right? this beautiful book, "my own words" which has excerpts of justice ginsburg's speeches, speeches about her, some things about marty ginsburg and other things like that. it's got a beautiful cover, beautiful pictures in it and i'm going to ask you to tell me a bit about -- tell us a little bit about the book, but first of all i have to do what james did

in the other book, which is really fun, is the notorious rbg, which is a fabulous book, with all kinds of fun stuff in it and little lessons about how to be ruth bader ginsburg, if you can think about that. you are an icon. who -- what justice on the supreme court is named after a rapper? my wife, lady, pointed out on the way here that the baskin-robbins was wanting to name an ice cream -- is that -- ben and jerry's -- i get the ice cream people mixed up. will eat any of it. ben and jerry are's wanted to name an ice cream ruth bader ginger and i heard something about a preying mantis. >> it is absolutely true. >> tell me about that. >> praying mantis named after

me. >> does this praying man mantis do things other praying mantises -- >> the pictures i've seen, looks like she is wearing a collar. >> tell us about this book "in my words" in -- on my own words, tell us about how it came to be and what is in it. >> well, this book was originally planned to come out after my official biography. i have two official biographers who chose the speeches and the articles in that book. they started writing about me in 2003, and it's still a work in progress. so i say let's flip the order. let's do the articles and

speeches first. this was down with my writings and introduction to each section by mary hawthorn and wendy williams, my official biographer. they came to me in 2003 and said, like it or not people are going to write about you, so you might as well select people you trust, and we volunteered that -- >> so far you still trust them? >> yes. ted, you have read some of those italicized introductions. they're very good. they're both very good. >> i saw in one of them -- i can't remember which one of the books -- the advice you got from your future mother-in-law about marriage? >> from marty's mother, yes. the best advice i ever received. it was on my wedding day, and we were married in marty's home.

his mother took me aside and said, dear issue would like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage. and the secret was, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf. and with that she handed me a pair of ear plugs, the best ear plugs. that advice i followed through 56 years of a wonderful marriage. and in every workplace, including my current job, is something thoughtless or unkind is said, then just tune out. >> works in the supreme court, too? >> yes, it does for me. >> what is it like to be such an

icon? that -- what does it moon to you that people know who you are, the notorious rbg. that's right an opera named of you and justice scalia, and all of these things -- what does that mean to you? is it awkward or do you kind of enjoy it? >> i think it's amazing. that how i -- i'm 83 and everyone wants to take a picture with me. this notorious rbg is the creation of a second year law student at nyu, now graduated. and it started when the court announced the decision in the shelby county case, that declared unconstitutional part of the voting rights act of

1965. this student was displeased, angry, and then she said, well, i heard from someone i admire that anger, enhaveenenvy. useless emotions and don't advance anything so best do something positive and the something positive was to put my dissent in the shelby county case on the tumblr and then took off into the wild blue yonder from there. and when one of my law clerks heard about this tumblr, they said do you know who where notorious rbg comes from? i said, of course i do. the notorious b. i.g. and i were

both born bred in brooklyn, new york. >> have you thought of writing any of your dissending opinions in rap? they're doing it on broadway now with that. >> let me ask you, tell me, it's so much fun, i have to talk about the opera. you're a grate lover of the opera and shakespeare and peer talking about these things bass they're such fun things and you'll have a chance to ask the deeper more probing questions about the supreme court but your relationship with justice scalia, a lot people are mystified by that because you were on so somewhat opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. you served together on the d.c. circuit. wound up often on opposite side odd okays didded by the supreme

court. sometimes justice scalia wrote in such colorful fashion, would be pretty harsh in his language, and yet you were great friends. why is that -- hough did that happen? why were you such great friends and what does that tell us about life on the court? >> our friendship should know heat been surprising to people who watched the court. they would have known that justice scalia was exceedingly fond of justice brennan, who was also on the opposite side in many cases, and justice brennan usually enjoyed justice scalia's company, also i do. did. he has an extraordinary ability to make you smile, even laugh, even when we were on the d.c. circuit together, three-judge panel. and justice scalia would whisper

something to me that would just break me up and i had everything -- all i could do to avoid laughing out loud. sometimes i would pinch myself. people sometimes ask me, what was your favorite scalia joke? i said i know what it is but i can't tell you. [laughter] >> it was such fun being a super at the washington nationals opera with him twice. and to be part of this scalia -- some of my feminist friends say why is it ginsburg to me ginsburg is of bet include. is it -- as ted knows very well, seniority is very important in my workplace, so school ya, although he was three years younger, he was appointed to the court many years before i was.

that why it is scalia, ginsburg and it's a comic opera, as you would expect. it will be -- it had it world premiere in castleton, virginia, last summer. it will have its next production at the opera festival at cooperstown, new york. so if you're interested you back to the baseball hall of fame and go to the scalia-begins -- ginsburg. the setup -- i should tell you hough it dime be. very talented young man, derrick wayne, a music major, a masters in music, and then decided it would be useful to learn a little bit about the law. so, he enrolled in his home town law school, university of maryland, he is taking a constitutional law course, and

he is reading these dueling opinioned, scalia, ginsburg, and he said, to him, this could make a very funny opera. and i'll give you just a taste of the opening pieces. it started out with scalia's rage aria which geese like this the justices are blind. how can they possibly spout this. the constitution says absolutely nothing about it and then i explain to him he is searching for brightline solutions to problem that don't have easy answers but the great thing about our constitution is that like our society, it can evolve. so that's the setup.

the plot is roughly based on the magic flute. justice scalia is locked up in a dark room, he is being pup u-ed for excessive dissent -- being locked up for excessive dissending, dissenting and i coe to help him out i enter the scene through the glass ceiling, and as in the magic flute i joan him for the last trial and we sing a duet. we are different, we are one. different, in our approach to the interpretation of legal text, but one in fondness for each other, our reverence for the constitution, and the institution we serve. >> that friendship and that relationship tells us so much about how maybe we all could

learn from that, relationships with people who have different perspectives, justice school scalia was fond of saying you made his opinions better because he would run them by you, correct me if rhyme wrong -- you would point out various vulnerabilities or weaknesses in his opinion. heed go back and sharpen his words or try to make what he said your participation. he had leonard this when your were together on the d.c. circuit. you exchanged opinions and he respected your intelligence so much that he wanted to run them by you. is that -- >> well, i'd say i was the beneficiary of that relationship more than he was. when i wrote an opinion and scalia wrote his dissent, he identified all of the soft spots so eave opinion of mine, whether scalia dissented, is much better

than the first draft. he was also an excellent gram marian, and sometimes would call me, whether we were on the same side or not,,, and talk about a slip i had made in grammar. sometimes i would call hill and say, -- call him and say, why don't you tone it down. this is so strident, you're going to lose your audience. you'd be mow eek fifthtive if you just -- effective if you just put down the decibel level. most of the time he did not listen to me. >> i can tell from reading some of his dissenting opinions particularly, a difference between when you have to write for the court and when you're writing a dissenting opinion. you were explaining that me the other day. he obviously didn't temper some of the language, and i'm thinking of the marriage

equality cases, the two cases and so forth, but -- >> you could also think of one of the 25% that you didn't win, the bmi case. that was a zinger of a dissent. >> let's talk about that case. argued that case. for the virginia military institute. i represented the commonwealth of virginia and bmi, as you know, everyone here, knows was an all-male institution, a part of the university of virginia system and was a relatively small component of the system and it was taught oned ad a very cereal system on the theory that some young men needed to be in an all-male environment -- >> to get through the rat line.

>> so the challenge was it violates the equal protection clause because women were denied admission to vmi. some i argued that case, and justice -- it was a 7-1 decision. got one vote. >> guess what? i had six people, the chief concurred in the judgment, not the opinion, and you captured justice scalia. you didn't need to capture him. >> you moon my advocacy wasn't necessary to win him over. and it didn't do any more than that. >> i was just telling a story about the aftermath of the vmi case. had a letter from a vmi graduate, saying that, in his

life he had met many women who were at least as tough as he was. he had a teenaged daughter and was glad she would have the opportunity if she wanted it to attend vmi. and then i heard from him some six months later -- i keep the letter where i can see it every time i want to be lifted up. in the letter was some tissue paper. opened the paper and it was -- looked like a toy soldier. it was a pin. the letter said: this is a a cadet pinch it's given to the mother of every vmi graduate at the graduation ceremony. my mother died last month. i think she would want you to have her cadet pin because in

some way you are a grandmother, to the future generations of vmi students. [applause] incidentally, i will be at vmny february, along with -- >> that sort of takes us to -- that's a beautiful story. takes us to the fact nat you were such a pioneer. not every justice on the supreme court has argued cases in front of the supreme court. john roberts, i think, argued 39. when he was in civil practice for a long time. you were with representing the aclu and you were the -- one of the few -- earliest people to bring these case busy gender equality. challenging federal statutes particularly that denied equal

rights to women -- >> or men. >> or men-that's right. and tell us -- what was it liking are argue those caveses? you were a bit alone. when we talk the other day i said it reminded me of justice thurgood marshall who was with the naacp legal defense fund arguing cases and you pointed out, why don't you say the difference, but then segway into what it was like for you. >> i copied his strategy and that is he developed the law up to brown v. board in steps. you probably remember the first case in that series. when texas realize it it couldn't deny admission to law

school to african-americans simply because of their race, it set up a separate law school for them vastly inferior. thurgood marshall argued separate but equal is not before the court today. these schools are so plainly unequal. but i said -- i'm up easy when people make that comparison because it's a huge difference and that is thurgood marshall's life was in danger when he went to a southern town to represent someone. my advocaciy was a challenge but my life was never in danger. and another difference is people understood that racial discrimination was odious, but

when i started out arguing cases , endeavoring to strike down arbitrary gender lines in the law, the judge assumed i was arguing had a hard time getting it because they thought of themselves as good husbands, good fathers, and they thought that women were on a pedestal. women were sheltered. they were protected. then justice brennan had that wonderful image he used one case -- >> one of your cases. >> yes. all too often the pedestal turns out to be a cage. that is is protects women from achieving whatever they could

based on their god-given talents. so getting judges to understand that gender discrimination was bad for society, bad for women, bad for men and bad for children. none of the cases that -- in which i represented a complainant, number of those cases were test cases. these were everyday people. shall i read the first one woman from boise, idaho. made her living by caring for disabled people in her home? had a young son, was given custody of the boy when the boy was, quote, of tender years.

the boy reached his teens. the father plied for custody, saying enough this boy needs to be prepared for a man's world. sally fought and the father's becoming -- she was up successful. she was sadly right. the boy one day was -- when he was in a severe depression and he took out one of his father's guns and committed suicide. so sally wanted to be aopinioned administrator of his estate. probate court said, i'm sorry but this is what the idaho law says. between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent's estate, males must be preferred to females.

the great thing about sally reid's case is that she took it on her own dime through three levels of the idaho courts. i didn't get involved until there was -- an appeal to the supreme court. but this was an everyday woman who had such faith in our legal system, that she could write what she conceived to be an obvious injustice. and eave one of them, frontier, in the air force didn't get a housing allowance when she married -- her husband didn't have access to enemy and dental facilities on base, or steven wiesenthal, a man whose wife died in child birth and he was left as sole surviving parent.

there was social security benefits when a child is left in the care of a sole surviving parent if she is female. not if she is -- he is male. so, steven wisen -- wise 'that thought that was an obvious injustice and believed that we have a legal system where people can complain and will be heard. >> you think that the nature of those cases helped you be successful because so many cases had come before, were similar issues had been raised and they were just essentially summarily dismissed, back of the hand kind of thing? you changed -- you had to change the culture as well as the law. i'm wondering, was it the nature

of those cases, plus your advocacy, of course, but -- how do you think that happened? we're not there completely yet, of course, but it's a completely different world. now people hear about those cases, the think, of course, but you make a big, huge change. >> i was there at the right time. because -- feminist, men as well as women, had been making the same arguments as you just pointed out, before society was ready to listen. the cases -- there was -- a woman who owned a tavern, her daughter was a bartender. michigan passed a law that said to tend bar you have to be male unless your husband or father is the owner of the establishment.

well, that law put these two women out of work, and the supreme court made light of it. made jokes about the old air house in chaucer. gwendolyn hoyt, we call hear battered woman. one day her husband had humiliate her to the breaking point ship took her young son's baseball bat, hit him over the head, and in their argument, became another murder prosecution. didn't put women on juries. and the supreme court, the liberal warren court in 1961, said that was okay. and then a decade of the '70s there was one case after another in which gender lines were struck down. why had that happened in not because of me.

it is because society had changed. society was moving and of course our reactive institutions -- they don't lead the way, but they can perhaps accelerate the direction of change. so it was the first case you read in 1971 that was already the burg are -- burger court, and a whole series of cases and the court saw the light. the statute books into the '70s had a certain vision of the way women are and the way men are so the men were the bread winners, and were -- the woman's domain was the home and

raising children. so if you didn't fit that rule, you were out of luck. but in the ten years from '61 to '71, there really was an enormous change in the way people were ordering their lives, and i can illustrate that by comparing my -- my children are ten years apart mitchell daughter was born in 1955, just before i started law school. she was four when i graduated and there are very few working moms in her kindergarten class. ten years later, when my son was born in 1965, two earner families were no longer unusual.

so there were many people in his class where both mother and father had a paid job. so many things worked in that direction. for one thing, one very important fact, people alive nowdays much longer than they once did. there was a time when, by the time the woman had her last child, it was -- didn't have that much left to live. but now, for many it is now, women are spending most of their adult life in the household that doesn't have any child care responsibilities. so what we going to do with those empty nesters? so that was one factor. inflation was another. if you want your children to go

to college and be able to pay the tuition, then you need two incomes. the women's movement was by that time all over the world. some countries were ahead of others, but the united nations declared international women's year so all of these things were working and people were living in patterns that were not traditional. so the court was kind of catching up to a change that had already occurred in society. >> catching up but also making it happen. think there's -- i think you would agree -- that's a synergistic effect because you brought the cases, because of

your leadership, who youor, what you where are doing, people would read about the cases and then see, as you were explaining, the injustice of out, how it was unfair and those things take a life of their own, so to speak, because each thing makes it a little bit easier for the next thing, and i waves going to take that right into your in the fourth woman to be appoint told the united states supreme court. tell us about -- >> second woman. >> second woman but the fourth that has been appointed to the court. i misspoke but i was thinking of justice o'connor and tell us a little bit about her and what it meant when in 1981, when reagan ray appointed her as the first woman to be appointed to the supreme court. what is was like for her and what it meant to what came along of. >> the appointment of sandra day

o'connor is in part the result of the effort of president carter. when president carter took office, he looked around at the federal bench and observed they all looked like he. that not how the great united states looks. so, he was determined to put women and members of minority groups in numbers in the court. not as one of the time curiosities but in numbers. so i was one of the lucky 11 that he appointed to courts of appeals. he appointed at least 25 district courts. no president if went back to the way it once was. and left out people anymore, but

when reagan became president, he said not only am i going to appoint -- continue to appoint women to bench but i would like to go down in history books as the president who appointed the first woman to the supreme court. he made a nationwide search, and he came up with a super nominee, sandra day o'connor. when sandra came to the court, she was all alone for 12 years. in our room there was a bathroom labeled "men," and sandra had to go back to her chambers. the sign of change was evident when i came to the court because they hurried up a renovation in

that room and installed a women's bathroom equal in size. so the men's. >> now there are three women on the court, and there must be a human -- huge difference from the issues we're talking about that there are three, and not just one person or even two. >> i think on the public perception it is so much better when we chafe children streaming in and out of the court and they can see that women are all over the bench, because i've been around so long i sit in the middle. one side, one end is justice sotomayor and the other is justice kagan. so, we are one-third of the

court, and, ted, as you know very well, my newest colleagues are some shrinking violets and there was, i think, competition between justice scalia and justice sotomayor to see who could ask the most questions. even so, at the last argument this term, in the mcdonald case, had been performing very well, said in response to my question, well, justice o'connor -- and this -- she hasn't been with us for ten years. but nobody calls me giselle

calls me justice sotomayor. >> this is when bush versus gore and the male justices were confused. what is it like at oral arguement? when i first argued a case in 1983, there were not very many questions, and now justice thomas, famously, very seldom asks a question because he feels there's lot of questions being asked hi his colleagues but essentially eight justices, now seven, ask questions off the time. what are you trying to accomplish when you're asking questions? are you trying to find something out about the strength or weakings in of the advocate's case or speaking to your colleagues? what's going on? >> both. one is to give the advocate a last chance to face the decisionmakers, put his strongest case, the question may

be about a vulnerable point. the advocate has a chance to answer that. but more than occasionally it is the talking past the advocate to each other, trying to influence the way a colleague is thinking about the case. >> now, some people find that strange because you're in court, you're in the same building, you could talk to your colleagues without the presence of the lawyers and the oral argument. doesn't they take place among the justices prior to oral argument. >> we would have our first acquaint -- acquaint dense with withwith the case when we decide whether to grant review.

we don't often discuss cases before we go on the bench, and the reason is that -- the supreme court is a very hot bench. that means everyone is well-prepared for the oral ore argument. the first sitting is easy in the sense we're just preparing for the sitting. we have no opinions to bev writing. but as the term goes on, the treadmill moves faster and faster, and we really don't -- i am sometimes reading briefs the very morning of the oral argument. so, we haven't gotten our own act together early enough to talk about the case. there are exceptions. when we do.

but then the conference is very close to the argue. -- >> win within the next day or so. we'll turn this over to the group in a moment but the conference is where you decide -- you express how you want to vote. >> yes. so it will be -- wednesday afternoon we talk about monday and tuesday cases and friday morning about tuesday and wednesday cases. we good around the table in strict seniority order. sometimes it's close discussion. at some point the chief or another justice will say, enough talk. it will come out in the writing. and then we go on to the next case. >> i would like to keep asking questions, but james will be angry with me. and we know that those of you

out there have questions. i want to thank you for at least my part of this thing. it's been a pleasure for me. james. >> time for questions. there's a microphone here. of you have a question for either ted or the justice, please work your way to the microphone. obviously goes bought saying but no questions about pending cases before the court. so if there are any questions, please come forward. don't be shy. we set aside this time for you. >> justice ginsburg. thank you are for being here. you talked about society and we are in at the doldrum about the discourse in society and where the world is. do you have anything hopeful for us looking forward, especially

to november? >> when i visit university campuses, i am very hopeful. i was just yesterday or the day before at notre dame. it was a huge audience, and all of the young people i met were very determined that they were not simply going to do a day's work for a day's pay but they were going to do something for the larger society of something outside themselves, something to repair tears in our system. i see it in my own grand daughter who is now a very good law student.

and very much engaged in societal problems. so, i am an optimist about the future. >> thank you, your honor. >> thank you so much for making your appearance here. it's an honor to have you. we have more in common than you might think. my wife is born and rates held in brooklyn. and also, my name is chris wallace and if you didn't know, the birth name of the notorious b.i.g. is chris wallace. but my question is, whether there's one opinion where you were on the dissent that you're particularly ashamed of or disappointed with that really sticks out to you. >> ashamed of my dissent?

never. >> no. ashamed of how the majority came out. >> i would say disappointed. >> disappointed. >> i've said this before. i was disappointed in one of ted olson's cases, bush v. gore. citizens united. shelby county. in the led-better case, but not as does appoint it as in constitutional cases because i was convinced that the court had read title vii wrong. >> in the ledbetter case, and there was no one else who could fix it. my last line in the case was, the ball is now in congress' court to correct the error and to which my colleagues have fallen. and the fair pay act was the first piece of legislation that president obama signed when he

took office. >> thank you. >> thank you for coming today, justice ginsburg. was hoping you might share with us your thoughts, since ill know you are an advocate for access to justice, and for lawyers' role in public interests work, maybe you would share with us your thoughts on access to justice issues that confront not only the profession but obviously society at large. >> that obviously -- >> society at large. >> society at large as well as the profession. >> yes. law is a privileged profession. think there's more of a monopoly -- a lawyer's monopoly in the united states than any country in the world, and because that's so, lawyers have an obligation to give back, to contribute to society.

i tell law students that if you have a life where are you wrote good good-paying job in a law firm and then you're look a plumber, you have a skill that you use but if you're a true professional you will do something as i said before, outside yourself, to give back to the community. i think community service is a tremendously important. i've thought about it -- if i were queen i would probably have a gap period after high school, after high school, so everyone would be involved to do some

kind of public service where we went to the military or help teach in a public school, but i think that would be good for society if we instilled in young people the notion of service to the community. at an early age. >> thank you. >> justice ginsburg. i am a 20-year practicer in an out of the federal courts and it's a great honor to be here today. i do have a question concerning the shelby county case. >> can you get -- speak louder. >> yes, ma'am. i have way about the shelby county case. i lived in lower south and particularly alabama for many

years, and was very disappointed with the decision, as i thought it sort of ended what i think of as the second reconstruction of the south. and i was just curious what you thought what the impact of shelby county on future civil rights legislation or existing civil rights litigation. >> you read the newspapers and see what is ongoing, that the process is no more but there have been a number of cases under section ii of the voting rights act. some of them are before the court at this very moment. so i don't want to say anymore about them except they've been in the headlines as well.

so, hope is not -- it's still a mechanism, a harder one, but as i said, i am optimistic. i don't -- i wouldn't predict that congress will change the formula, which restrictions are included, because i can't imagine a senator or representative standing up in congress and saying, oh, yes, my county is still discriminating. >> maybe better leave it at that. >> justice ginsburg, to for coming here. i guess in your remarks you

maybed your reverence for the constitution and also spoke about how principles and things can change. often times when people talk about the reference -- reverence for the constitution, it's almost in a biblical sense but the constitution can be amendment. amendmented but hasn't been for almost 50 years. do you think that the failure to amend the constitution or the -- the fact it hasn't been amended for so long is itself a risk to the constitutional system? >> do i think that the -- >> is it a risk to the constitution system that it has been made so hard to amend the constitution and it very seldom has been amended, it's been quite a while. >> some of the state constitutions that are easy to amend and they go on and on and on.

i think the framers of the constitution made the amendment process difficult for that reason. they meant those be the fundamental instrument of government, powerfully hard to change. of course, am disappointed. i was once, still am, a strong proponent of the equal rights amendment that fell short of the -- being ratified, but even sew if you asked me when the equal righted amendment went down, or something comparable to statehood for d.c. -- i'm d.c. report -- i'm glad we don't have a constitution that doesn't reseptember-bale telephone book.

when you some think of some of the apples, every time the supreme court writes a headline decision that people don't like, somebody proposes a constitutional amendment. so, let's have prayer in the schools. not have busing. so, on the whole, because i see the risk of things that i wouldn't like put in the constitution, and i think it's good that our constitution is not easily amended. >> so, these three folks and will take those questions and then we'll wrap up. >> justice ginsburg, mr. olson, thank you. my name is tomberham and justice ginsburg of the father of four daughters i want to thank you for your work on behalf of women's rights, allowing my daughters to pursue things they want to do and are passionate about instead of things people think they ought to do. my question is really for both of you.

either one of you. i've been teaching law to engineers at the university of maryland for a number of years, and over the years the demographics have changed so that the great number of the students are foreign. [inaudible] >> it's hard to hear. >> we wore out a microphone. >> thank you, eileen. i'll speak more loudly. i'm been teaching at the university of -- [inaudible] -- a number of foreign students. i teach. the law. figure out i needed to teach

them the constitution and our fundamental legal structure first so they can understand it in our context. with that background background, do you have any recommendation's how to teach the students law in america and the funneledmentals of it -- the fundamentals of it and any recommendations on reading. >> i think we all appreciate that although among nations in the world, the united states is not a particularly old. we have the longest surviving constitution still in force in the world. it was an old joke about the french constitution, someone guess into a book shop and -- in the days when there were become

shops -- in france and requests a copy of the french constitution, and the shopkeeper says, we don't deal in periodical literature. not that our way is superior but it is different. our tri-part system of government compared to parliamentary systems, that take hold in most of the world, that our constitution is not aspirational. it's law to be applied here and now. many constitutions have magnificent guarantees. the right to work, the right to shelter tech right not to be hungry. but how does the court enforce that right? what's in the constitution is law. the highest law.

that you apply. so, maybe it would help if it could be out -- educational for the other students to ask the students from abroad. what is heir system? what is the place of the constitution in their system? who has the last word on whether legislation is constitutional? that was a brilliant thing that our very first supreme court did, and that chief justice marshall developed, judicial reviews for constitutionality. it didn't exist in the world and the rare exceptions until after world war ii. so, our system is unique, and if you can -- one idea i have for

you is, ask your foreign students, to compare their system with ours. and that will enlighten your students who are from the united states. >> thank you. >> madam justice, thank you so much for spending time with us today. i'm particularly interested in your view of how the in-house coup role has evolved over the last ten or 20 years and where would you like to see it go? >> perhaps ted would be a better person to comment on that. what i observe is enormous growth in the role of in-house counsel the size of inhouse counsel. >> and the responsibilities as opposed to outside lawyers.

>> it used to be in-house counsel, was a small staff, almost all the legal decisions were farmed out to a law firm. i've been heartened to see the participation of in-house counsel in pro-bono work, in the probony institute has -- pro-bono institute has a number of firms, house counsel has been instrumental in getting the younger staff to engage in pro-bono representation. >> thank you. >> justice ginsburg, thank you for everything you have done to advance equal rights for men and women. do you have any advice for us on how we can best carry on that legacy and continue to fight the

good fight for equal rights for every human being? >> the easy job is done. that is, the explicit gender lines in the law, almost all of them are gone. what is left is unconscious bias, so my favorite example of that is the symphony orchestra. there are people in the music world who conduct an audition, thought they would tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. they give the critics 0 the "new york times" the blindfold test, and he got it wrong as often as he got it right. so then somebody came up with the brilliant idea, let's drop a curtain.

so that the people who are doing the selecting won't know who is behind that curtain. it was an almost overnight change in symphony orchestras all over the country. women began to appear in numbers such as playing the harp, unfortunately you can't duplicate that in eave field of endeavor. i think back to one title vii case in which i had some involvement in the '70s. it was against at&t for disproportionately rejecting women from the middle management jobs. the women on all the standard cite tieran were doing as well as the men. the last step was what they called a total person test. the total person test is the

interviewer is meeting with candidates and then at that stage women drop out disproportionately. why? not because the interviewer is consciously biased against women. but there's a natural rapport when you're doing with one who look look you, you have a comfort level, someone is different, different race, different gender, kind of uncomfortable, you feel uneasy, and that may be reflected in your choice of who will be promoted. ...