case? the joint tenures. >> the most likely to be confused would have been justice souter and briar. >> they look something alike. >> i might have been. i'm not sure. there were misstatements up there and i remember one of my former law clerk who is made the mistake. you know, he knew who was. he gets so nervous. >> it was a former solicitor general and a law professor. >> i think people -- it is a tense time for the advocates i'm sure. they get up there and are so concerned about everything. anything can slip out in terms of calling names. >> your comment about justices

suitor and briar reminds me of a story. he was out to dinner and someone came up to him and said justice prior, i think you are the greatest justice on the court and admire your work. you can me who is your favorite justice on the court? justice souter said by far the greatest intellect is david souter. . >> you know the story about the national association of women judges reception after my appointment. they presented us with t-shirts. sandra sandra's read i'm sandra, not ruth and mine read i'm ruth not sandra. >> the lawyers confused the women on the court. i think it might have been

justice gipsburg and sotomayor that were confused. 20 minutes later, the same lawyer confused two men on the court. i think the second was purposeful. darned if he wasn't going to do it again gender-neutrally. >> that's the different that three makes. we haven't been confused. the three of us have not been. >> i thought it happened once and i think it was you and i. i am told you can't always hear where they are coming from. >> what were your biggest challenges? probably different kinds of challenges. you being the trail blazer.

>> trying to write opinions to deal with the issues, but in a way that is useful and long lasting. that will be a challenge. many of the issues are issues that are ones where the total courts will be in disagreement and for a long time or the court wouldn't have had to take them. when you have to put down on paper permanently the tests that are you going to apply and see how it works, that's a challenge. every single time. you really want to do it well. you won't know until many years have gone by how well you have succeeded. you can't tell instantly. . >> for me opinion writing was not new.

i have been on the separate floor 13 years. what was new was the death penalty case. i had no idea that the supreme court deals with so many 11th hour applications. >> yes, yes. it was a whole new thing. >> justice sotomayor? >> it was walking into a continuously running conversation. you are a newcomer. i can't say how many other conferences a justice would explain his or her condition. i thought the explain was coming out of left field and would take justice stevens or sometimes

they would see my note. what are they talking about? to lean over and that wasn't argued by the parties and i hadn't anticipated. that went on frequently. i remember the first time when justice kagan came in and leaned over and said what are you talking about. there was a sense of satisfaction that i could actually explain something. you are working with the same nine people. the same are working together. the >> once saying to me that he had been on the court for a couple of decades at that point and the

thing about serving so long is you have seen all these cases before. the issues are very similar. they come up near after year. justice kagan, you are a veteran after a term and a half. are you still -- are there still challenges for you adjusting? >> every day is a challenge. for me, i had never been a judge before. figuring out the mechanics of the job. i have these four clerks, what do i do with them and the best process for drafting an opinion. when do i read the briefs? the day before? the week before? all the things that most of my colleagues have figged out what processes work for them, i was very much last year and continuing to do trial and error and experiment and figure out what worked for me. >> right. serving as solicitor general,

did you find it helpful and useful? >> hugely helpful. you are looking at the court from a different haven'tage point and spending your time thinking about the nine people and what they are doing. sometimes i think that the job doesn't really change at all. my life was spend trying to persuade nine people and now it's trying to persuade eight people. >> they both served as the only female on the court during a period of time and you both i recall expressed hope for another female appointee during those times. it may be obvious and it should be given the conversation. why is it so important to our country and to the court to have? >> maybe you haven't noticed, but i think about 51 or 52% of

the population are female! i think they notice when their public bodies are dominated entirely by one sex. i think that's part of the deal. >> it is indeed. when you join the court, the court heard 184 cases that term. heard 82 cases last year. >> isn't that amazing? it shows they are not working. >> i was going to ask. as they were saying in kentucky, do the youngins have it easy? >> they do. it was a devastating amount of work. i will tell you. you had to go through the petitions for certerary and that

was new to me. i couldn't do it quickly. i could after many years, but that was hard. that was very challenging. i still work. going into the night, i don't think the job is any easier. i do think one thing has been reduced substantially. that is in the old days when they were hearing 150 cases, you would get the terribly fractured opinion where is someone would announce the judgment of the court and an opinion in which the justice joined part 1 d and i think with fewer cases is less of that kind of fracturing. >> it would be. >> i think yes, from external

observation, i would say that the opinions are crisper, cleaner, and easier to understand these days. it's probably better for the court. there several theories as to why the court is hearing fewer cases. everything from fewer conflicts among the circuits to differences. i guess my question is, are there mechanical reasons internal to the court as to why this may be the case as well? >> i would be interested to hear that too. i'm not sure why the number of cases the court is branding are fewer. i think the numbers of petitions are still there. you review petitions, over 8,000

a year. i'm not sure they managed. i know i'm at the max where i am. >> i know because i looked at many of the studies and the discussions about why the court is taking lesser numbers now. i can't sure when i read them i adhered to any reason as being the reason. even being a part of it now, i don't think that the court purposely -- conscious effort and the rest of the number. i don't think we look at the number and say we can't take more than x number this year. we will turn this case down because it adds too much to the work load. i know that for myself, but i'm conscious about is this a case with procedural vehicles or not.

a lot of those cases that i read from years before, the court wasn't even reaching the issue that they granted on because there were vehicle problems that they were addressing and resolving and never reaching. >> one contributed to it and it's not the whole part, but it is in large part. until 1988, you came on and there was still many must decide cases. the court was supposed to and the jurisdiction was mandatory. for advocates in those days, it was a great thing. you could go to a three-judge court and the challenging statute is unconstitution and you can go directly on appeal,

skipping over the court of appea appeals. that is the end of the must decides. nowadays we have some. >> that must be part of the reason. there has to be several reasons that the numbers have dropped. that could be. >> it's part. >> the current court appears to be more active in questioning from the bench. they have been gathered. is this the matter of judging or is this personality-driven or are the court conferences and know you don't disclose what's going on inside. does that add to the initiative to ask more questions from the bench and communicate with each other?

how would you explain the increase in the number of questions from the bench in oral argument? >> maybe women ask more questions. i don't know. what do you think? >> i think it was on the rise even before there were three female justices. >> women and also the law professors. >> law professors. that has to be it. >> and that -- it is very much a matter of individual style. i know when i was a new justice, justice blackman came to see me and said i want to give you advice that was given to me by justice black when i was a new justice. he said don't ask many questions. if you don't ask many questions, you won't ask many foolish ones.

what did you say? >> i was not intimidated. he was disappointed that i didn't take his advice. >> we hear a phrase now that washington is broken and the observations are made about the legislative process that appears to be at an impasse on even that is easy to pass and compromise is more difficult. never has applied. why do you think the -- is it because you make decisions and not avoid them or kick them down the road. how would you explain the differences? >> one thing is we don't set our

own agenda. we don't have an initiating role. we get reactive and we can't say this was a year we will take care of the fourth amendment or react to and we don't have an agenda. we are reacting to the petitions that people bring to the court. >> i think we have to explain our reasons and not just in a cursory fashion. i think justice o'connor, you wrote something about this a while back. you said almost every judge has an internal need or drive for consistency of some sort. you don't want to be arbitrary yourself. >> right. >> think that that makes us less

reactive to what's happening outside of our courtroom and to the legal issues that we are watching develop and participating and considering. >> what would you say attributes are of a good judge or justice? what advice would you have for young women and men in the audience who might aspire to be a judge or justice some day? >> you have to think clearly, be reasonable and rational, write well, and just have a sense of fairness, i think. all of those qualities come in and others as well.

but it's a challenging job to be an appellate court judge and to try explain well your reasons for everything you do. it is very challenging. >> i asked justice o'connor if she had a role model and she rightly pointed out that she was a trail blazer and probably didn't follow the path of many, but i will ask each of the other justices who was your role model and couple that with the question about how important it is to young women today to see you on the bench at the supreme court. >> sandra and i come from the era when women were simply not judges. very few were lawyers. i think when we went to lawsuit school, 2-3% were women.

>> if that. >> we never saw a woman teacher. there was no title seven. employers were up front in saying that they really were not interested in hiring a woman. for us, the change has been enormous. >> yes, total change. i couldn't get a job when i got out of law school. >> we are all the better that you are now serving and i mentioned this to you before. one of my best friends had you for a course in law school and said you were the best professor he ever had. >> awe, good. he was not in any justice kagan's classes. >> that's right. i didn't know anybody what went to harvard. i don't have friends.

you are an inspiration to not just my daughters, but my sons. your work is wonderful for the country. i have a couple other questions with justice o'connor. you said your work was civic education which you now dedicated your years to. it's the most important work of your life. i tried to debate ow that point. >> i know. >> at some point. >> but there has been so much discussion. in public venues about the judicial branch of government and activist judges. i used to think it was a judge who would get-up-and-go to work in the morning, but people have other ideas about activist judges.

much criticism. it seemed to me that it was primarily a lack of understanding by many people about the role of the judicial branch. of course they have to decide questions we don't like and wish weren't there, but it's not the judges who are bringing these things. i really thought we needed to enhance the education of young people about how the government works the reason we got schools is the argument we have to teach people how the government worked and about the system the framers developed and how it helped people and they can interact within that system. we were finding that barely 1/3 of americans can name the three branches of the government much less say what they do.

the percentages of people who understand how the system works are so small. there is a real job to do. we had a conference at georgetown and had wonderful people participate and talk about the problem. it really did boil down, i think, to lack of education. i got some people together and we started a website called icivics.org. we did it with games. young people that age spend about 40 hours a week in front of a screen whether it's television and or computer. i only needed about an hour a week. that would be fine with me. we developed some games with the help of wonderful teacher who is knew what principals needed to

be included in something for that age group and we succeeded in producing a fabulous website and i spent a lot of time trying to get it in use. we have chair people in all 50 states now. we are getting about five million 8s a day. that's not nearly enough, but it's a good start. it's taking effect and it is very effective. >> that's wonderful. we are going devote a lot of time here at the museum to civic education and outreach programs. love to work with you on that. >> good. you walk in the front and the tablet in the front is the first amendment. we had a visitor here visiting with a friend of mine. he was from russia and he walked through the building and observed the exhibits here. you know, we have free speech

and free press in russia too, but the difference here is you are free after you speak. it was a profound and humorous observation, but a substantial reason for that. it's an independent judiciary that protects our first amendment rights and bill of rights. any of you have observations about the importance of that in our system of government. >> tremendously important and very fragile. it was from the beginning. is it a cartoon after the revolutionary war would show tories being halled off and the caption is freedom of speech or liberty of speech for those who speak the speech of liberty.

it really is rather recent times. it wasn't until the last century that the first amendment became a major item on the supreme court's docket. in the beginning, the perform as is nothing to rave about. it was the world war i cases when people were being charged with offenses that were related to what they were saying about the draft, about the country's political situation. it's in part due to great justices. starting out, all the law of the land.

>> we would all agree that the count vee far better off and are serving on the supreme court of the united states. we are grateful and honored that you would be with us here this evening in celebration of justice's appointment to the supreme court. >> please join me in thinking justices o'connor and ginsburg, sotomayor and kagan. we want to thank the freedom form and to find a wonderful event. i also want to thank those of you who are members for your report that suspects put on

programs like this and to tell those of you that aren't it's not too late. supreme court history.org. there is a reception in the a triskpum with that we are adjourned. ♪

>> in the years just before the civil war, she was almost as famous as her uncle, the president of the united states. harriet served as the white house hostis. harriet welcomed the prince of weals in 1859 and harriet to whom the song listen to the mocking bird was dedicated and harriet who left her will to erect this monument in meridian hill park. even then there was no rush to memorial a deeply unpopular president. until this eight-foot tall statue of buchanan was erected in 1930. few have entered with more impressive credentials. as illustrated with the figures, sharing space with the chief executive. law recognizes his early career in the proom and a temperament

more suited to the bench than the arena. diplomacy pays tribute to his service as james k poke secretary of state and u.s. minster to the court. buchan buchanan's gift seemed to desert him in the white house. he split his own party right down the middle. following the election, they left the union. he opposed his section, his now reading of the constitution persuaded the federal government that they had no right. they were almost a century after the presidency.