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>> i am delighted to be here today we work with the anti- bribery group that works internationally and i am delighted to be here to introduce to you evan thomas, a longtime friend

>> so ultimately she skipped classes and stanford is a wonderful. she calls it we had access to all the correspondence and the very first night that she's buts there, 16-years-old and she walked up to a veteran and asked him to dance and just is not done them. he's still in love with her, his name is andy campbell. it didn't work out. i love it when she was on the review at her father gave her a car pitch is pretty grand so she went to the parking lot and painted her own parking space.

>> four times that we know of. this is 1951. it is a different era and for a woman is ringed by spring because if you didn't it's not like you're going to start working. she had lots of suitors and one in particular. this was our one in th the bucks they mentioned they had access to the correspondence and we were looking for the love

letters between sandra and her future husband john o'connor. thervisit the love letters betwn sandra and william >> i'm sure it wouldn't if they had looked. but there it was.

imagine >> a very graceful and in figure and pose and very ladylike the father would have a drink and bully her mom. she wasn't passive. so cap dignity.

and with that self-reliance. so this is very useful she would not allow herself to be provoked. so my favorite story about this is tom goodwin the house appropriations committee chairman. but goodman was drunk by 10:00 a.m. and said if you are a man i will punch you in the nose and said if you were a man you couldn't. [laughter] and she did that thing very rarely. that she picked her shots.

she knew when she had to stand up and retreat to fight again another day. all the while able to make deals, very pragmatic. >> into the arizona senate is a bit of a mess and that he was promoted in arizona ultimately looking for someone intelligent as a top aid to the majority leader. [laughter] >> so this goes all the way through the book, she was the first woman

, if we could peel back the gender issue. >> you never. >> was in the organic talent? >> there was no affirmative action. she earned every bit. she was smarter and tougher she was very bipartisan and had a party four times a year for both parties. republicans and democrats would can't get drunk at her swimming pool. she could be stiff and frosty that he played the role of the lawn and he knew the types of dream she got past the time of legislation and this is a very revealing story. >> she introduced it in the legislator and let it die in committee. how could you betray us the women thought that she sold out because she was friends with barry goldwater. >> so sandra knew the era would lose on the floor with deliciously why pick a fight?

today should go on tv but i'm not going to pick a losing fight, instead as majority leader, she changed every single local law that discriminated against women. list of them are in her hand she methodically and went through and changed everyone. she give up on the big flashy thing that all the little battles that made a difference to women they were not small things. property ownership, if you can get a credit card, these are not small things for women. >> so arizona's role is irrelevant. >> it doesn't help pass the amendment. but that was a labor-intensive revolution all through the pragmatism is very clear. also her parenting, her role

as the mother is important because it's not just as if she would hand that off but is quoted in several places as an important thing to her. >> and went to a judicial conference. in 1982, the law was incredibly mail and

my wife, yes, we are at law school they only had women for a few years. with the new thing. she said that because she meant to freeze the she gave them a lot of rope would be home by six, don't speak ill of anyone else and don't hit your brother. [laughter] and every recipe in the julia child cookbook one year and her friend said you have to be perfect at everything? >> page by page.

so to go through to value every single right now that would take forever and cost a lot of money. she brought in internal sense splitting up the one cuts and the other chooses. if you make the division that the other person gets to choose. so it was done like that. >> one creates a list and then it was 15 minutes. we all do that with the kids. it's very over very quickly. now she sets her sights on the supreme court. and i had no idea maybe this is naïve of me but how political it gets and you need to have real champions and she had been cultivating them for a long time. so along the way, one of the people she helped out was william rehnquist who after

law school they both go to phoenix and become lawyers. they are two couples and play charades together. rehnquist goes to washington a hot justice department official but he was controversial in various ways and needed help. and sandra gave it to him the following way because in her files there is a letter right after rehnquist is confirmed to say i'm writing you first. why? because when they would round up support, they went to find lobbyist, not lawyers but thinkers because bankers are the campaign finance chairman of other senators. rehnquist proved once again that bankers are more powerful than lawyers.

and he was so grateful that when ronald reagan promised to put a woman on the court, justice rehnquist secretly lobbied for her with the justice department to say i know a really good woman in arizona. and ken starr in another part of his life. >> she is here today. >> yes. once upon a time the top assistant to the attorney general and one of the jobs was to sweep the search for the woman justice and he told us the most effective advocate for her was william rehnquist. >> which is a little unusual for somebody already on the supreme court. >> i don't know the rules but is not something he did publicly. >> and we know supreme court

pics are political by party but that is within the party. because they are interested in another candidate. >> the true believers thought reagan was not serious about his promise. down by ten points in illinois and a political advisor said promised to put a woman on the court. so the true believers thought he was in serious. getting ready to put bob bork on the supreme court with the conservative credentials and attorney general smith said no he is serious. he wants a woman. james a baker said nancy had something to do with that. [laughter] >> ken starr and our colleagues fly out to phoenix and she makes them lunch. >> cold salmon moose. and of course and charms them.

and we sit next to one of them in church. he was still shaking his head as he is recounting the tale and then ask questions about the constitution. the least favorite course was the constitution she had a be a quick study and perform because she doesn't deal with the constitution and the court of appeal. >> that happens very quickly and she moves to washington. >> 99 / nothing in one person was absent. >> so the right to life, the moral majority, and jerry falwell senator helms, because o'connor had voted to decriminalize abortion as a state legislator, this got out

and immediately the antiabortion crowd was upset. it look like trouble for the reagan administration but he didn't want to fight those social issues and so they finessed it. so they set her up to jesse helms office and she just charmed them. >> talk about the relationship with the other justices. one that leaps off the page is her relationship with scalia. >> yes we asked justice stevens do you think justice o'connor moved to the left as a justice? he said yes. and i said why?

how? the two word answer was justice scalia. sandra day o'connor did not get along with him. initially they did she thought he was sleepy and old by the late eighties but scalia suffers that all of you will recognize as the smartest kid in the room syndrome and in this case it was the courts conference room. he would hand out the amino grahams and correcting them on their grammar and that did not go down well. but more than that in public he would write to these dissents that ruth bader ginsburg told us that she went to scalia and said you are hurting yourself. you are not as effective as you could be because you are alienating your fellow justices particularly justice o'connor about one of her abortion decisions he said you

cannot be taken seriously. very harsh and gratuitous thing to say about your colleague she never dealt with this publicly she never fought back publicly but when her courts would draft her opinions, they would put in zingers and she would take them out. she did not want to pick public fight she had a sense of humor he was going on about affirmative-action and she said how do you think i got my job? [laughter] >> at one point refers to her as a politician, not a judge. >> that's a very harsh thing to say. >> her relationship with ginsburg, she had to wait a long time. >> 12 years. >> that's an interesting relationship as well. i am curious if you have given

thought to why rvg has such an incredible fan base when sandra day o'connor was more muted? >> justice ginsburg deserves her fan base. both movies are great. i recommend them. she is a hero to many people. it is legitimate and miss o'connor is less well-known she is older and not a crusader or activist. she did a ton for women's rights but she did a behind the scene scenes, she was not out there the way o'connor was justice ginsburg is the least shy shy person i ever met. [laughter] and justice o'connor as many of you know, has dementia now probably alzheimer's. so she is not out there.

this is the age that we live in as a bold crusader will get more attention than a compromising pragmatist it's almost quaint to that way. >> that is fair although o'connor did a great deal for women when she was on the court with roe v wade aside and the challenges to that but she meant toward a number of women clerks. >> she sure did half of her clerks there were over 100, half for women. she really cared about them, and the men to she is a little scary to work for. if you are a supreme court clerk you are accustomed to being praised by adults and then they get there they are editor of harvard law review and whatever and then on the

lazy the ranch where she grew up was not a lot of gratuitous praise so they would take a xerox of her hand and put it on the wall underneath the sand one - - underneath the sign that says if you want a pat on the back lane here. [laughter] and she was tough and i spent the first couple of months crying by the vending machines but then they became closer. she tried to pick their husbands for them. and then she said how many kids do have and mandatory 8:00 a.m. aerobics. which they had different views. the men did not but she cared about them being in shape. one told us he was eating an i.c.e. cream cone and she came around the corner and he put it in a drawer. [laughter]

>> so some of her decisions what surprised me is mississippi university for women. the first time she had an opportunity to write about gender equality. >> . . . . rotate as she always, and as it happened, she had lunch with ruth bader ginsburg is a federal court of appeals

judge. he looked at her and said did you make this? they were on the same page. in fact when justice ginsburg came to the court, sandra was glad to see her and they finally put a ladies room next to the conference room of mor but moren that, she had an ally. and although again o'connor is not an activist, they were pretty much the same place on these issues and this shows how they work in the case. the supreme court struck it down in the case and that was beside to justice o'connor in conference. o'connor said no, ruth should have it because of all the work

she's done. she told us i loved her for that and when the decision was handed down, they looked at each other and exchanged -- >> and decided to university of mississippi for women. >> so, they were not cozy. justice ginsburg told us -- interesting -- not once did justice o'connor come to the chambers to talk about the case. this is partly coming you have to understand how the court works. it's not like they were talking about cases. they communicate by nano because of the procession into the written word you don't ge have t conversation. and partly because they are up there and don't have to like each other. they have to work together but they don't have to like each other, so there isn't that much traveling down the hall to talk to another justice. there were important exceptions to this. people that do that and relationships to form, but they were more the exception than the

norm, and ginsburg, one final story about them o'connor learned to driv drive a tractort the age of ten and ginsburg didn't start until she was in her 30s when she moved to washington so in the basement of the supreme court was a garage for the justices and justice o'connor's messenger told us that actually justice o'connor, excuse me, justice ginsburg not once but twice crashed into the car. the first time it was a hit and run. so we saved this question for last. we said is it really true that you drove into justice o'connor's car. she said yes. i've never driven again, she says. she explained she was so busy trying to destroy justice scalia's car -- [laughter]

>> you talk about them not necessarily being friends but they have to work together. but clarence thomas tells an interesting story about the efforts to promote more collegiality. >> they have lunch once a week roughly and only four of them showed up. half don't even show up. part of it is the brother ben had just come out and they didn't really trust each other, but it wasn't just that. they didn't all get along so she made it her business to get justices to come to lunch. she would go to the chambers and sits there until they went to

lunch. you can imagine how she thought about that. felt about that. and justice thomas said i was there and i felt hammered by these hearings and really put out and so after the very first conference he's walking down the hall to the chambers. those hearings were damaging. he says you've got to come to lunch. he's a jolly warm guy and sandra

day o'connor was the glue. she made this place is civil. if anybody has questions and can come to the microphone so we can see you clearly her relationship with rehnquist changed and deteriorated from having been a senator when they drifted apart. i don't pretend to know these things. but i do know it's a foreign place when you are out there, and she was lost in serious need of help and he did not help her. part of that coming an important part was his back was killing him and he was on drugs. in fact, he have to detox that

winter. part of it i'm guessing here in little help with his clerks to. at the beginning particularly on federalism issues but over time he diverted a little bit. and she becomes in a way more powerful, she becomes the swing vote. they call it the o'connor court. actually in 25 years she cast 330 decisive votes. that's a lot of power and she didn't like this word swing vote and she thought herself an of hd was a principled person but she had more power than rehnquist.

at the end there was a complicated story and again i'm going to be a little careful here is a chief justice rehnquist has cancer and she's at the height of her power and sacrificed moving to washington giving up this very good career in phoenix with a.

they talk back and forth and say i'm staying. i'm going to leave. this is the front end of the conspiracy theory that he sort of forced her off the court. therefore, giving reagan two chances to appoint conservatives rather than letting her stay on for the democratic appointee. so, there is a whole conspiracy theory, like most i think it is bogus. actually, she really wanted to leave the court and it didn't have to be persuaded. and in his case he wanted to live. she wondered if he had been totally forthcoming.

he made a bet he was going to live. because of the case we should talk about. bush v. gore is a tie in florida. bush wins by a few hundred votes or is certified diabetes hanging chads. so, the republican secretary of state certifies the bush victory and goes to the supreme court. by the vote of 5-for a number oo court to stop the recount and the effect is to elect bush. they are all conservative republicans.

the four in the minority are liberals, so it looks like a brazenly political decision and people are really upset about this. and rightly so. it looks like republicans of life, democrats before. that's it. so, because she's right in the middle of this, she's a lifelong republican. what was going on his face. she was a very practical person. she was looking down the road of what happens if the recount continues. there would be two. certified by the republican secretary of state.

the tie is broken by the governor of the state. his last name was bush, jeb bush. so she thinks banana republic. so she decides we are going to get this over with. a patient person, we are going to get this over with now. we are not going to let this case go on and come back to congress. ruth peter ginsburg told us about this. looking down the road, more than any other supreme court justice of her time, she looked at the practical consequences of the supreme court's decision. she didn't really go for doctrine and theory. she cared about the consequences. in this case it was going to be a mess. she did and weaknesses and that is why she voted the way she did. >> that morning, she told her son correctly half of the country is going to hate me, and they did. although she was suddenly very

decisive and have few regrets. on this one, she did. she was uncomfortable being asked about it and 12 years later she told "the chicago tribune." afterwards she started by saying no question. >> uncharacteristically defensive on her part. >> for the challenge for the personal timing, she didn't feel coming afeelthem and you did a f this in the book that sort of been the next morning now that we have another republican president resigned, retired because it would look like she had a van in the tank so she could leave for the republican president. she wanted to leave but had to wait. >> this is why a biography can be done on journalism. newsweekly broke the story that

on election night, john o'connor, her husband, was watching tv. first it looked like al gore was going to win. he said this is terrible. we wanted to re-sign, and so, this story got in the papers and actually i broke the story. i didn't do the reporting, but i wrote the story. and so, that became she voted for bush so that her husband could resign. if the exact opposite. she told her family that once he won, they couldn't respond because it would look bad. it would look like she voted for bush just so they could resign, so it basically trapped her on the court for another five years before she was able to resign. >> and the love story between us both in all the way through the

book you come back to it in several places. >> they would stand up and sandra was interesting about this, justice o'connor, interesting about this. she was very sociable, yes. she was the most sociable justice in history. that may be a low bar, but she was always in the social pages. and why? partly because she wanted to, but if john was a great dancer and storyteller and gave her the chance to shine, his career wasn't going well, but in the evening, he was the big man and

she would ask him to tell stories and she told me i would have gone home earlier. i have to read a thousand pages a day in the cod event that gret made it harder for her to do that. >> he was a fantastic support all the way through and made that clear marrying the right person, we know is the key to all things. and now we have a question from the floor. >> you may think this is all prearranged. >> is it true the story? >> some of you may remember he is a great redskin hero and a congressional dinner i had too much to drin drink and passed ot under sandra da sandra day o'cos table'stable but before he did,d to her was shaking, sandy, baby?

[laughter] they were mostly amused by it. years later he was in a play and brought him flowers and roses at the stage door. people would say weren't you offended by this if she had been in the arizona legislature. i want to know if i'm hyperventilating a little bit here. the way the supreme court has changed in recent years i think these proposals sound good. but instead of lifelong tenure we ought to have justices nominated for term terms in thay each president will nominate one

or more etc. but they won't have the same sort of situation where the suprem supreme court can lok walked in a certain direction for the next 30, 40 years. >> are you asking my opinion of that order is? >> it is an invitation that could have unintended consequences. we didn't talk about this, this is the way she thought to be ofe weary of unintended consequenc consequences. her decisions were often very limited. narrow, limited the facts she did believe coming into this is quite interesting that the supreme court was not the last.

the court was engaged in a long-term conversation with the other branches of government. often the reason she would send a case of result back to the courts is because she wanted the system to keep working on this issue. her standard in the abortion case even though she was personally finding i it before d come she was it a four and commissioned as the food that preserved roe v. wade for 25 years. but the way she did was adopting the standard known as undue burden meaning that the states could put some restriction on abortion, but they cannot put the undue burden on a woman's constitutional rights. what does undue burden meaning? there's been a lot of litigation and that they hate that and are

angry about it because they think that its undeclared, the e states go too far and the alternative, i think she believed everything she was right about this time it kept going down altogether. she basically saved it in the case of 92 but typically they compromise. that's the way she is kind of inching things along bit by bit. maybe she could say that it evil slowly. maybe the structures can evolve as well so they would approve the planned to have limited terms. >> i didn't ask a question about roe v. wade because i get questions from the group, but it is the case i think she certainly saved roe v. wade but with such narrow and precise decisions that it was almost.

>> it depends on your point of view. certainly they would demonstrate outside. you have to look at the context. in 1992 with the addition of justice kennedy to the court, justice kennedy said roe v. wade was akin to dread scott. that was a tough thing to say about the case and threw when the chief justice rehnquist votes in the conference he thinks that he has five votes to overturn roe v. wade and she outsmarts him by putting together what was known for metallica being political, secretly putting together justice souter who believed in this president comes up with a vote for preserving roe v. wade. and she recognized kennedy, although he had been very close to voting with scalia, fellow

roman catholic and similar politics, scalia had been patronizing and condescending them anthen and he was sick of . justice o'connor was very respectful and justice o'connor went over to their side on this and they put together this opinion in a way that they were writing about the president and she let justice kennedy do this kind of great rhetorical stuff about the jurisprudence. the she wasn't going to get kennedy's vote otherwise. it was just preserve roe v. wade. hanging in the balance of the

slight dignity. >> not surprised. another question. thank you. >> you mentioned further than passing barry goldwater once said you were best that i've ever met. she was the big power in arizo arizona. they think of goldwater as being the famous line of 64 conventi convention. we think of it as an extreme, but in arizona, goldwater is reformed politics and they were the party in power and

workaround. the republicans were the reformers in the 60s. she was a goldwater republican in that sense. the story has a widely known sad ending befitting another patient is actually his wife and no longer recognizing the. she had been so fearful having had family members suffer with it and had a clerk you write about this check in with her once a year.

a clerk in the mid-80s she said i want you to kill me every year hell am i doing here and in peace points she didn't like the idea of leaving aside dementia, getting old and slow, the long history in the supreme court, justice frankfurter, justice douglas. they stayed too long because they didn't want to give up their power. she feared it terribly. it was her greatest fear. she was diagnosed in 2014. >> before the she leaves the court to take care of her husband informs what they called a mistake in attachment. he has a girlfriend named kay and he would be sitting there with her and say i want you to

meet my wife, turning to kay. and she's publicly said i'm happy for him because he had been depressed and now he's happier. privately, it broke her heart. she would come down, sit down and hold his other hand. what was the legacy she wanted to leave behind whether it be processed or issued what she envisions a rolenvisioned over s history. >> she didn't care about this kind of pragmatic jurisprudence. but i think the larger issue of she was a rather traditional

woman, she was careful and saw herself as a bridge and had a poem about a program that builds a bridgthe bridge so that othery cross it. she saw herself as the bridge for the generations and was the first long before madeleine albright or hillary clinton or sally ride or any of them. she used her power on the court and didn't care about it, she liked power. she once said after she had been there for two years she liked being in the seat at the end of the vote putting together but the majority. she didn't care about the legacy and preserving affirmative action and she was disappointed

when her successor was justice alito. sandra day o'connor never spoke ill of anybody. but she was somewhat critical of alito because she feared that he would undermine her legacy. the. it's much more important that i'm not the last. >> it's good to be first but you don't want to be last. >> thank you so much. it's a fantastic book. really enjoyable to read. [applause]

all persons having business before the honorable supreme court of the united states to give their attention. the court is now sitting. the justices hear the case of patent and trademark office versus booking.com concerns to trademark the website. be a part of history and listen to the supreme court oral arguments as they are heard by the justices. live monday at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span. on demand on c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app.