was just a small committee room. i think it was 30 by 35. and then eventually in 1810, the supreme court got their first chamber on the ground floor of the capitol building. so that's the era that john marshall comes to washington and leads the court. >> john marshall had a great fondness for madeira wine, which of course as you probably all know is a fortified wine imported from the portuguese islands of madeira. he was not alone. madeira was very popular with most of the founding fathers, including thomas jefferson, his rival. apparently, the shaking and the saunalike conditions in the ship's hold gave it a very complex caramel flavor that they liked. so katherine, tell us a little bit about john marshall and madeira. >> well, i think john marshall also gained his taste for madeira in richmond. in fact, he was part of a -- and

i'll hopefully pronouce this correctly -- but a quaits club in richmond, which was essentially a barbecue club for gentlemen. and john marshall was one of the founding members. and the coits club had their own punch and madeira was one of the primary ingredients along with cognac, rum and sugar and mints thrown in for fun, i think, but madeira was one of the primary ingredients. coits was a long game at the time, kind of akin to horse shoes and they would throw these iron rings at megs. and one of the reasons they got together was to have this bond. and supposedly, john marshall was vigorous in enforcing his laws that politics and religion was not to be discussed. and if anyone was caught discussing those, they were fined a case of champagne, which would then be consumed at the next meeting. >> and apparently, he had

bottles labeled "the supreme court" to bring to the boarding house to share? >> i think there were others that played on their fondness for madeira. and yes, there was a supreme court label madeira. >> which sort of gave it the seal of approval, if john marshall buys it, it must be good? so, marshall had a great ally on the court, a man named joseph story, who was appointed from massachusetts. and apparently, storey had a weak stomach, and he was a tea-totaler when he arrived in washington. that didn't last long. and he wrote to his wife that the justices tried really hard not to drink too much wine. they had a rule that only on rainy days and for medicinal purposes would they. but apparently, this was not a bright-line rule. >> this is true.

>> you know the story about the rainy day, which is told in various versions. they drank only when it rained. and the chief justice said, he looked out the window and the sun is shining brightly, and he said, "somewhere in the world it's raining." >> mm-hmm. >> justice ginsburg, you have an anecdote about joseph's wife, sarah, as well. >> yes. sarah and joseph's story were very close, and she didn't like him to be away at the capitol city for weeks at a time. so she decided she'd come along with him. and that made chief justice marshall rather uneasy. he said it would be all right if she dined with him. she would add a civilizing

influence. but she mustn't be around when they are discussing cases. she didn't want to distract justice storey from the work he was to do. as it turned out, sarah's stomach was no better than joseph's, and the boarding house fare did not agree with her. so she left before the term ended, but it was the beginning of the end of the boarding house. one justice or another deciding, why should i have this boarding house fare when i can be living with my family? and i think johnson left and then another and another. and what happened when the boarding house style of living end ended, the fence began to appear

in the court. john marshall did a remarkable thing. the tradition was, the tradition we inherited from england, was that each justice wrote his own opinion. so, say there was a panel of five judges, there'd be five opinions, and then the lawyers had to figure out what the decision meant. marshall's idea was that there should be only one opinion, it would speak for the court, there should be no dissents, and he would write the opinion. it's remarkable in that early marshall court, almost all of the decisions were written by the chief justice. but when the boarding house living broke down, so did the unanimity. >> so, there's evidence that the marshall court justices liked to share regional food products with each other. they were very proud of the foods from their hometowns.

for example, john marshall sent virginia hams up to joseph story in boston, and story reciprocated by sending down salted cod along with a recipe for how to cook salted cod, because it's not easy. you have to soak it, and he wasn't sure that the virginians would know what to do with it. so, my question is for both justices, starting with justice ginsburg. are there modern examples of justices today on the court bringing food from their hometowns or back from their travels? >> on their hunting trips. we had an intrepid hunter on the court who would bring everything back from fish to fowl to bambi to wild boar, and he was very generous in sharing. >> justice breyer not so long ago decided that he needed to introduce his grandchildren to

pheasant caught by our colleague and presented the pheasant, cooked it and presented it at home to his grandchildren but explained that they had to be careful because there might be pellets in the game. >> yum. >> and they refused to eat it. so, he ate it alone. >> another favorite was -- it's called beef jerky. it was made by sandra day o'connor's brother on the lazy b ranch, the family ranch. and, oh, a couple of times he would bring a large supply of beef jerky and distribute it. >> did you try it? it's apparently quite spicy. did you -- >> it is very spicy. >> yeah. >> i would have loved it. >> and i understand that justice breyer and justice kennedy have

brought wine for the court to sha share? >> only on very special occasions. but it was the traditional dinner before the state of the union message. and one year, justice kennedy came with his special bottle of opus 1 from california. >> he's also brought duck from california. >> that was the first time i fell asleep during the state of the union. >> well, justice sotomayor, i remember -- i understand that when you first joined the court you brought a treat with you from new york for the other justices. >> well, i shouldn't be telling tales, but the colleague on this panel with me i was told enjoys sweets. and so, i brought a box of new

york pastries with me for our first conference together. i only learned later that the treat she's most fond of is muffins. >> and now we have our own pastry chef on the court. >> so, many justices have had food-related traditions with their clerks. harry blackman famously liked to have breakfast with his clerks every morning in the supreme court cafeteria. and chief justice warren burger, who was a great lover of good food and wine and a good chef, would make bean soup for his clerks on saturdays. i've been trying to get a recipe, an exact recipe for that bean soup, but it seems to be a little of this and a little of whatever was around, but quite delicious. i'm going to ask both justices, do you have particular food traditions with your clerks?

>> lots of them. >> okay. >> i love food. and so, i do. routinely on weekends when the bagel shop near the court was open -- it's now closed and i'm heartbroken -- i would bring bagels in on the weekend and buy all sorts of cream cheeses, and we would spend a lunch hour eating fresh bagels. i eat with my law clerks at home fairly regularly. they come over to my place every couple of months. and their charge is to find a new delivery place that can send, that can deliver something, some food that's new for us. it's also in my clerks' manual that one of their responsibilities during the year is to identify a restaurant i haven't eaten at. and it has expanded my knowledge of d.c. restaurants that way.

so, yes. and i guess my final food-related tradition with my clerks is when i travel, particularly abroad, but anywhere in the united states that might be different than the local spot, i bring back chocolates from that place or their traditional sweets. and if you come to my office, almost always, there is candy, which is a very unusual thing for a diabetic, isn't it? i once had a child ask me, how could a diabetic have candy in her office? and my response was people like it, and they come to talk to me more when they know there's candy in my office. >> it's true. i have to say, sometimes i make a detour just so i can stop by, especially around halloween when the supply is enormous in your chamber. >> i have a really big halloween bowl. >> justice gunsburg, as you

mentioned, getting back to the 19th century, so by the 1940s, the justices were bringing their families with them and living in washington. they became part of the washington establishment, part of washington society. you were instrumental in helping the supreme court historical society get published the memoir of melvina harlan, who was the wife of john marshall harlan who served on the supreme court from 1877 to 1911. so, could you explain a little bit about the elaborate social functions that supreme court wives had to undertake in that time period? >> let me say a word about m melvina's memories. i was trying to get information for a talk for the supreme court historical society on the lives

of supreme court wives. and there was precious little because most correspondence, the men's were saved and the women's wasn't. the library of congress found buried among the justice's papers this manuscript called "memories of a long life." and it's the story of melvina harlan, a girl who grew up in indianapolis in an abolitionist family. she marries john marshall harlan, harlan from kentucky, a slave state. it's a remarkable book. and thanks to the supreme court historical society, it was the first publisher is now out in randomhouse modern library book. but one of the things that melvina describes is at home

mondays. the justices' wives were expected to have tea for anyone who wanted to come. it could be 100 to 200 people on an at-home monday. they would serve scones and cakes and sandwiches. sometimes they would hire musicians so the young people could dance. all of this was not paid for by the federal government. it was the private responsibility of the justices. and then some time in the course of the afternoon, the justice would come out for 15, 20-minute appearance. this went on for a long time. >> yeah, until the great depression, when it finally put an end to all those sort of social traditions. very expensive for the families to bear the cost of. >> but they continued to have

into my appointment at the court a ladies' dining room where the spouses met. it got to be a little embarrassing when two of the spouses were men. so the story of how we changed that -- the supreme court is a very tradition-bound place. sandra o'connor and i thought how should we suggest to the chief that the ladies' dining room should be renamed? and she came up with a brilliant idea. let's tell him we want to call it the natalie cornell rehnquist dining room. his wife had died some years before. he was devoted to her. and so, we now have the natalie cornell rehnquist dining room in lieu of the ladies' dining room.

>> let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the lunch break. katherine, i understand that in the 19th century, oral arguments went on for a very long time, and so court sessions lasted from 11:00 to 5:00, and then they were shortened from 12:00 to 4:30. what did the justices do about lunch? >> so, believe it or not, while oral arguments were going on, one or two justices at a time would slip behind the bench, and their messengers would set up tables, and the justices would eat lunch behind the bench while oral arguments were actually going on. >> so if you were sitting in the courtroom listening to oral argument, you couldn't see the justices eating because they were behind the bench or a screen, but could you hear them? >> you could. i mean, kind of much like we're kind of raised in the courtroom, the bench is raised as well,

then there was a partition and there was an opening behind the three center chairs. but there was a partition. and so, the justices would be seated kind of at these tables. but you could certainly hear the clattering of knives and forks and dishes. the messengers sometimes would bring meals from the senate restaurant. and if you're wondering why i have this little prop here, there's also a story that's repeated that one of the justices decided that they wanted to have a split of champagne with their lunch. and as the messenger was trying to open the bottle, supposedly, the cork flew out over the bench. >> and weren't some of the oral advocates concerned that there wasn't a quorum on the bench when a couple of them had slipped away? >> there was. there was one instance when two members did not attend an oral argument because they were ill. and then again, we would have

one or two justices kind of slipping behind the bench to have lunch. and so, as the story goes, an attorney asked the justice, asked the chief justice and kind of paused and asked the chief justice, well, are we sure there's a quorum? and at that time, there needed to be a quorum of six justices. and chief justice fuller at the time assured the attorney that even though you can't see them, you can probably hear a few of my colleagues eating, you know, behind the bench, and asked the attorney to proceed. >> brave lawyer. >> and so, when did the lunch break first get inaugurated? >> so, i think a few weeks after that incident, around 1898, the court then initiated a lunch break, a half hour only between 2:00 and 2:30. >> but i've been working on, researching a supreme court cookbook, and i found so many anecdotes about justices bringing their lunch boxes with them to the court and brown

bagging it. why would they do that if they had the senate cafeteria? >> well, i think as we will hear a little bit later on, we had certain justices that liked certain things for lunch. so, i think that's one of the reasons that the justices brought. and i think also because of the timing, and within that half hour, it wasn't like the justices could go and have lunch at a restaurant. and then there were times when the senate restaurant was also closed, because when the court was meeting, sometimes, you know, the senate wasn't in session. but i also learned that the senate also had these little luncheonette counters that were not too far. and since the court kind of inherited space from the senate over time, i think they were kind of close to the senate restaurant and these luncheonette counters, so sometimes food would be brought to them. >> so in 1935, the supreme court got its own building. and what were the facilities like? >> so, chief justice taft was in

charge of the supreme court building commission. and so, one of the many requirements for the new supreme court building when they were finally able to get a home of their own was that there would not only be a cafeteria for the public and for the attorneys, because again in that short window, the attorneys were also trying to go out and find something for lunch. there would be a cafeteria and the justices would also have their own separate dining room, and it had to accommodate at least 18 people and it had to be in close proximity to the justices' conference room. >> so, the half-an-hour lunch break lasted until 1970, when chief justice burger expanded it to an hour. so i'm going to ask both of the justices -- well, actually, i'll start with justice ginsburg. so, you now have a full hour. you have a beautiful justices' dining room. what goes on during the lunch

break? and do the justices all generally try to attend on days when the court's in session? >> i will defer to my colleague for that one because she is a regular at the lunch table. i will show up whenever the court is conferring or we confer in the morning at 9:30, and then by the lunch break, i will go with my colleagues for lunch. and occasionally, other times, if when justice o'connor came to town or nowadays when john paul stevens is with us, and for birthdays. now, that's a nice tradition is whenever a justice has a birthday, the chief brings in some wine, and we toast the birthday boy or girl and sing "happy birthday." we're missing our chorus leader,

because truth be told, most of them can't carry a tune. >> i'm one of them who can't. i go regularly. and it's a wonderful experience. we have lunch planned after every court argument day or morning and after every conference day. and ruth comes to the lunch regularly on conference days. there generally is at least five people attending, five of the nine justices. occasionally more. all of us have fairly active schedules, so it's hard to make it, even for myself, every lunch. but justices will come somewhat regularly on their own pattern of regularity. almost everybody will come when

some of our retired justices return for a visit, whether it's justice stevens or justice o'connor. we do have the birthday celebration. you asked what do we talk about. we have a rule similar to chief justice john marshall's rule, which is we don't talk about -- well, no, different than his, because they used to talk about cases. we don't talk about cases. that's our absolute rule. there is no topic that's off limits, but we try to avoid controversy. so, we're very guarded about raising topics that we think might create hostility in the room. that doesn't mean we don't talk about politics, but it's not in the great depth that we might do in the privacy of our home, okay?

the most common conversation is about a fascinating book that one of the justices is reading. all of the justices are veracious readers. and someone is always reading something that they think the rest of us would like. we sometimes have conversations about interesting exhibits in the wonderful museums of d.c. that's how i learn they're here. i don't have to look them up. i just wait for a colleague to tell me that they've gone, and i figure out which ones i want to go to, okay? we will tell funny stories on each other. someone will tell about an experience on a vacation or an experience with a grandchild or a child. there is just the normal type of conversation that people have who want to get to know each other as individuals rather than as justices. >> you left out one major topic,

to which i don't contribute, but you do, certainly, and that's sports. >> ah, yes. i'm sorry, ruth. you're right. but actually, i only contribute really on baseball. the real sports person is elena kagan, our colleague. >> and it used to be -- we should start this up again -- every once in a while, we would invite a guest to liven the lunch table conversation. thinking back on past years, we've had supreme court justices, one from south africa, one from india. we've had secretaries of state. condoleezza rice was a lunch guest. the head of the zoo, which is a

smithsonian institute. and michael khan, who heads the shakespeare theater. we've had presidents of the european court of justice. you had only two so far who have been repeat lunch guests. and those were alan greenspan and jim wilkinson, who not so long ago headed the world bank. and the reason is that those two have an uncanny ability to eat lunch and speak at the same time. [ laughter ] >> but ruth, that's stopped since i got there. >> it has. we should start it up again. >> i don't know. i wasn't a part of that tradition. but i do know that the justices have fascinating guests who come join them.

and every once in a while we will get a smaller group of justices together in someone's chambers to meet that guest. i know ruth i invited you when i had -- >> martina -- >> exactly. when she was receiving the kennedy center honor. and steve has invited me. but i think there are lunches, smaller lunches of that type that do go on. >> speaking of lunch, i've been researching the lunch habits of various justices and i find that they fall into two paradigms, the healthy eaters like louis brandeis who brought two pieces of whole wheat bread with fresh spinach in between. and on the other extreme, you have justice harlan, who was what they called in his day a gourmand. he loved french cheese, he loved

wine, and his wife would send him giant platters of french cheeses for his lunch. so justice ginsburg, i'm going to ask you first, where do you fall in that spectrum, and how do you sustain yourself during the day? >> for 56 years i was married to chef supreme. my husband was a great cook. we didn't mention the spouses' lunches. >> we'll get there. >> we'll get there later? okay. he was a big contributor to food at the court. he would make cakes for everybody's birthday, all of the justices' birthdays, or my law clerks' birthdays. and in the days when we didn't have outside food before the

state of the union, he cooperated with sometimes marion scalia, sometimes mary kennedy in making the pre-state of the union dinner for the court. >> for those of you who don't know, justice ginsburg was lucky enough to be married to martin ginsburg, who was a brilliant lawyer of tax law and also a remarkably talented chef. i'd like to maybe just get back to the question about what you eat for lunch, justice sotomayor. [ laughter ] we don't want to let you off the hook. i know you've been very open about managing diabetes since your childhood. how does that play into how you sustain yourself during the day. >> i'm assuming that because of the culinary skills that ruth tends to eat relatively lightly

at lunch and i don't think that you vary it greatly. am i wrong, ruth? you don't vary your lunches. >> no. >> they're pretty simple. >> but my dinners, my husband died in 2010 and my daughter has taken on the responsibility of making sure her mother is properly nourished. [ laughter ] it's only right because she phased me out of the kitchen at an early age when she learned the difference between mommy's cooking and daddy's cooking. [ laughter ] so she comes once a month, fills the freezer with food, when there's an overflow i bring it to the court and put it in the court freezer and we do something nice together in the evening. >> i vary my lunch and i shop for myself every week.

the day varies on the availability of time and i bring my food in and have it put together so that i can experience something different everyday. every once in a while i will order in. my favorite order in are two, one, a local japanese sushi place and another a local indian place. but most of the time i do eat very healthily, i have a lot of salads and i love salads because you can vary them with the ingredients so no two salads i have that are ever identical. i have occasional sandwiches but i also like making sandwiches in interesting ways with healthy ingredients. so i'll put turkey or tuna fish

or boiled eggs but then i'll put roasted peppers on it, pickles, sometimes, whatever suits my fancy to increase the taste. i eat a lot of fruit salads because i can vary those with the types of fruits that i eat. so for me eating is sacred. you should not waste a meal. [ laughter ] and so it can be simple and healthy but it has to be tasty. >> with respect to food, we span a wide range because in contrast to sonia who has a very well prepared diet, it was my dear colleague david souter who ate one thing only for lunch. plain yogurt. [ laughter ] no fruit, just plain yogurt.

>> i understand occasionally he had an apple. [ laughter ] >> later in the day. [ laughter ] >> and he ate the core. [ laughter ] by the way, justices do have different eating habits, a number of my colleagues order from our cafeteria. i dare say that the chief orders from the cafeteria and he has a salad generally brought up. justices kagan, breyer and thomas will vary their lunches. justice kennedy and sam alito bring food from home and sometimes i see sam's fare and i think maybe i should eat dinner with him more often. [ laughter ] as with justice kennedy, because

both their spouses are wonderful cooks. some justices like justice stevens ate a cheese sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off virtually every day that i sat with him for a year. and i understand -- and ruth can tell me this because i didn't have the privilege of knowing his wife well -- she was a wonderful cook. >> she was a dietitian so she was a very healthy food provider but there was a time when he was on a diet and he had grapefruits cut in half, he ate both halves. >> that was before my time. >> i'd like to get back to martin ginsburg just a little bit. justice ginsburg, you were talking about the wife's teas in

the late 19th century and the role supreme court wives were expected to play but your husband played an extremely important role internally at the court by being such a joyful participant in the spouse luncheons. spouse luncheons are held -- is it four times a year? and they're -- are they potluck? no, two or three of the spouses take the initiative to organize them. so my question to you, justice ginsburg, is do you remember your husband going off to his first spouse luncheon and what his impression was of it and what he made for that luncheon. >> he made veal tonnato, which is very popular. it's in this book. this book "chef supreme" was conceived by martha ann alito. and she thought the perfect

tribute would be a cookbook so this has some 30 odd of his well over 150 recipes that he had on a disk. the choices were initially made by martha ann but then my daughter looked at the table of contents and she said "mother, those are not the recipes daddy would have picked." [ laughter ] so i said all right, jane, you pick the recipes. and in the table of contents there's one recipe, it says "jane's cesar salad." she contributed one of her own. >> ruth, she's as good as her father, i understand. i had one meal at her home in new york and the food was fantastic. >> she's very good. >> the tributes to martin

ginsburg in the cookbook by the spouses are wonderful and i'd like to just briefly read a snippet from kathy douglas stone who was the widow of william o. douglas. this is what she wrote about martin ginsburg. "he arrived dressed elegantly in a sports jacket with a handkerchief in his breast pocket." the spouse luncheon. "his smile gave the impression of perpetual amusement as though he had just heard some witty remark. he was soft spoken. aware that one aspect of a spouse's job is to bind in an institution defined by differences, he seemed eager to do his part. we departed our lunches with marty feeling fulfilled and always closer to one another. i think john marshall would have really enjoyed martin ginsburg. my question to you, justice ginsburg, is did he just love to

share good food or do you think he was aware of this sort of important service he was doing for the court and binding it together? >> i'd say both. marty began his fondness for the kitchen i think shortly after i made my first meal. [ laughter ] and he said he owed his skill to two women, first was his mother and the second was his wife. i don't think he was being fair to his mother but he was entirely accurate when it came to me. it was -- marty began cooking when he was in service in oklahoma and i came back to give birth to jane. my cousin sent him a cookbook, an english translation, and said "this will give you something to

do while your wife is away." and so marty started on page one with the basic stocks, he had been a chemistry major at cornell until foul practice interfered with the chemistry labs so he treated this book like a chemistry book. after after two years he was already quite a good look. >> he was a fabulous baker. >> yes. >> and made wonderful bread. >> he said there wasn't a decent loaf of bread in the entire city of washington, d.c. so he made his own bread. >> justice sotomayor, let's talk about your food traditions. in your autobiography "my beloved world" you write that your mother cooked rice and beans and chuletas.

did you learn to cook puerto rican food growing up? >> you know, i'm not a bad cook but i'm a horrible cook of puerto rican food. and i know why, because i've tasted the best from my mother, my grandmother, my uncles, my father, i can't duplicate anything they make so i've really -- have lost heart and don't try. i am now trying to figure out how to make my mother's chuletas so every time i visit her in florida she still makes them for me, i dutifully watch and they're never the same. [ laughter ] for years i thought it had to do with the pan she was using or pans because they had to have been seasoned in a particular way. so i've taken three of her pans -- [ laughter ] -- over time, every once in a

while when we're in the kitchen cooking with a new pan she'll look at me and say "i wonder what happened to the last pan." [ laughter ] it days pared shortly after the last visit. but it's not that. she's a traditional cook which to me is someone who doesn't cook with recipes. every meal she cooks, tastes the same but is better because something has changed and improved, and so i don't think i'll ever duplicate her. but i do cook a lot of other things. >> well we're almost out of time. i just wanted to get one last topic in, and that is some of the other traditions of the court involving food. since the 19th century there have been welcome and farewell dinners for justices when they arrive at the court. justice ginsberg, do you remember your welcome dinner in 1993?

>> it was made for me by justice o'connor. and thanks to kathy fitz, i have the menu some place here of what that dinner was. >> hopefully the one where i didn't forget to put part of the ingredients in the e-mail that i sent. >> it was red lettuce and chopped endive, with heart of palm, a filet of salmon, it was a pear poached in zinfandel. she had entertainment from a group, what was the name of the group? >> the metro gnomes. >> we haven't been successful in locating that group.

but the next year when justice breyer came on board, i knew just what to do. justice breyer's wife, dr. joanna breyer is the daughter of a wealthy entitled englishman. so i asked katherine fly, who ran the theater that did gilbert and sullivan's to take some of the songs and make up lyrics that fit justice breyer and his wife. but i think the best party that we had was the one when justice so connor retired. she insisted that she didn't want to have any party. so justice suitor came up with an idea that he thought she couldn't resist. and it was that she could pick any movie that she would like to see and we would watch it in the

theater and then we would have an appropriate dinner to go with the movie. well, the movie was "red river" with john wayne and montgomery cliff. it has every politically incorrect thing in it. it's sexist and racist. but we had popcorn, each of us, and then we went to the caucus room in the library and we had south western dinner. >> well, i can -- we -- our tradition on the court is that the least junior justice will welcome the next incoming justice by arranging a welcoming dinner. and so mine was arranged by sam alito. and it was a wonderful dinner.

he had a classical guitar player playing spanish music, which was, i thought, beautiful and quite, quite entertaining. the next year when alaina kagan came on board, i decided to call up one of her friends from harvard and ask them what they thought was her favorite food and the friend reported that their favorite food -- that her favorite food was chinese. well, i had a problem which is that justice stevens didn't eat chinese food and so i had to devise a menu that would satisfy him but also satisfied her. so i worked very diligent with the caterer to come up with an asian-flavored meal that everyone would like and i think that did turn out.

but during the dinner at some point i explained to justice kagan what i had done and she said "who told you i like chinese." and i told her the name of the person and she turned to me and said "i'm really grateful for your thoughtfulness but --" and i won't mention that person's name -- "that person likes chinese food." [ laughter ] at any rate, i still think that she enjoyed the dinner. and there is a memento that is given or at least in the tradition that i've been a part of at the end of the dinner, a keepsake that's presented. at mine justice alito gave me a bottle of wine with a picture of the supreme court and my name on it and the date. at justice kagan's i presented her with a chocolate gavel.

i don't know how many of you remember that during her confirmation hearing there was a picture of her in high school in a robe with an oversized gavel in her hand so in my welcoming remarks i gave -- i indicated that i thought the chocolate gavel was now well deserved. at any race the dinners are fun. a lot of the retired justices -- not all of them -- sometimes return and occasionally the spouses of deceased justices also come. >> we should mention in the dinners after the musical, the court started having musicals some time in the 1980s. it was begun by justice blackman and when he retired justice o'connor took it on for about four or five years and i've been

doing it in the years since so the artist performs at 3:00 in the afternoon and then the special friends of the artists and the special friends of music at the court have dinner together in the justices' dining room so we have had some pretty outstanding guests in that dining room going back three years, yo-yo ma, wynton marsalis >> do we have time for -- i just want one more question. do we have time? okay, so i'd like to ask each of the justices, if you had the opportunity to have a long, leisurely lunch with two supreme court justices no longer living who would you choose to break bread with? >> when you asked about this i

think both of us said the great chief justice john marshall who when he made the institution that it has become. also because i was so taken with the biography of marshall by gene edward smith. in college i had suffered through marshall multi-volumes and not very interesting but the man comes alive in the gene edward smith biography which i recommend to all of you. another possibility would be the first justice john marshall holland. think of what his parents had in mind when they named their child after the great chief justice. because, he was, as i said

before, a man who grew up in kentucky on a plantation with slaves and then he became -- well i suppose he's best known for his dissent in "plessy v. ferguson" the case that established the separate but equal doctrine but in the so-called civil rights cases he dissented when the court struck down a major piece of reconstruction legislation, the public accommodations law that gave people without regard to race access to places of public accommodation. the court said congress did have

-- did not have the authority to do that and he wrote a fine dissent, it's very much like his later dissent in plessy v. ferguson. i'd also like to have lunch with curtis, the dissenter in the dred scott case, one of the two dissenters. >> well, i mentioned john marshall and i think justice ginsburg has explained and i think everyone knows his historical importance but i started to think what are the important ingredients of eating for me? and the first is good conversation, intellectual conversation and john marshall fills that bill. second, good food and i would have wanted to have harlan fiske stone there with his platter of french cheeses. [ laughter ] because i love good food and cheese to boot.

and then story telling and thurgood marshall i understand was a justice who was on the court over 20 years and i am told by some of my colleagues that he never told a story twice. i would have loved to have been in conversation with him and to hear some of his stories. so that would be the perfect dinner table for me. >> i'll tell you, the one justice as much as i admire him but i would not want him as my dinner partner and that was justice brandeis. one of his friends reported that if you were invited to dinner at the brandeis home you would eat, before and after. [ laughter ] >> i second that decision. [ laughter ]

>> well, we've covered a lot here tonight. before i close i just want to ask my three panelists is there anything else you'd like to bring up that we haven't talked about? >> what did we forget? ruth? >> i don't know, let's look at our notice. >> i just think we should give claire a round of applause for putting this together. [ applause ] actually, before we close i would like to put a pitch out the the audience tonight. if any of you know of any recipes or anecdotes about supreme court justices and food, please get in touch with me because i am writing a cook book i would also send out a plea to all of you to go to supremecourthistory.org where we have supporting materials about the event tonight, more information about the topics covered.

we also have copies of "chef supreme" the martin ginsberg cookbook, melvina harland's memoir and justice sotomayor splendid autobiography "my beloved world." we have signed copies of that on our web site, supremecourthistory.org and we have some tonight in the hall. so now please join me in thanking our distinguished panelists for such a fascinating conversation. [ applause ] >> and thank you all for coming. please remain seated while the panelists leave the stage. [ applause ]

>> thank you again for coming, ladies and gentlemen. again, please remain seated until the panel leaves the stage. american history tv is in primetime tonight with a focus on the u.s. supreme court. our lineup cluds juinclude's ju breyer as well as a discussion on the relationship between chief justices and the president. we'll also take a look at the 1905 supreme court case lochner versus new york and its impact on state and federal labor

relations. that's tonight on american history tv beginning at 8:00 eastern here on c-span 3. next on american history tv supreme court justice steven breyer discusses the impact of foreign relations pep talks about cases featured in his book "the court and the world, the american law and the new global realities." the supreme court historical society is the host of this event. it's about an hour. honored today to have as our lecturer justice steven breyer, whose talk will be about american law and the new global realities. justice breyr is a long standing

friend of the society. he has hosted dinners, he's inti inintroduced. he's a man that needs no introduction and there's not an introduction i could that would be complete in the time a lotted. he graduated from stanford with highest honors. he then went as a marshal scholar oxford where he received first class honors with a b. a.degree in philosophy, politics and economics. he went to harvard law school where he excelled, was articles editor of the law review. he then clerked for justice goldberg and like all clerks he's very circumspect about his work there but he contributed to the first draft of the ginsberg -- excuse me griswalds versus connecticut case which is a case that recognized the right

of marital privacy. he taught at harvard both in the law school and kennedy school of government. he was chief counsel to the senate judiciary committee from 1978 to 1980 and he was nominated by president carter to the first circuit nine days after carter had lost the 1980 election. he had so impressed senators on both sides of the aisle for his work on the judiciary committee he was confirmed 80-10. he then served for 14 years on the first circuit, the last four years as chief judge when he was nominated to replace justice blackman in 1994 and he assumed the oath of office in august of 1994, so we're coming up on the 22nd anniversary. so if you'll all please join me in giving a welcome to our lecturer, whom we're very lucky to have.

thank you, justice. [ applause ] >> thank you. very nice introduction. this is a formidable group. i mean i'm talking a little bit about history but you actually know about history. quite a lot of you. i was told by a historian, anyone can make history but it takes a real genius to write it. [ laughter ] and books aren't that easy. there was -- my publish earthbound publisher is grateful for your introduction. i wrote a book once about -- it was technical. found its way into the hands of "los angeles times" reviewer. don't ask me how. he decides to write a review. he says, well, he says in the

""alice in wonderland"" the mouse emerges from the pool of tears -- they heard this story before. and the door mouse begins to read from the history of earn gland. why are your writing that? why your reading that said alice? and this is the driest thing i know. that was before breyer wrote this book. this is not about regulations, this is about the court, and it's terribly important that you support actually these kinds of things because it's important that people know something of the history of the court and so i'm very glad to be here and i'm glad to be talking about this and i'm glad you're here listening. very nice of you. what is this book about? so, i say that it is -- it's the analogy -- it's a kind of a report, a sort of a report from the front. about what?

well, if you've ever heard the charter house of palm which is a very good novel it opens with a hero is on the battlefield at wat waterloo. bullets are flying, napoleon is charging this way and that way and the hero thinks to himself, you know, he says something really important is happening here. i wish i knew what it was. [ laughter ] and that's what this is about in respect to when i hear words like globalization, or interdependence, or shrinking world. that's a good cliche. all true, course. but what is about it? i can't tell you a big answer, but i can do this. i can draw on my own experience over the last 20 years or so and in terms of that experience, which is here in this court i've seen a change. and the change is justin number

of cases where you have to know something about what's going on abroad in order to decide the case correctly and intelligently. i've seen that number grow. i mean i think they were pretty rare when i first came here. now if you looked it up and said i think it's 15% or 20%, i think would you be closer. you see it's going like that. so what i've tried to do is say i'll tell you what it's like here for those of you interested. i'll tell you about these cases specifically. and i will group them. and i will show you different topics. and under each topic i will give you some examples, and then i'll say what would you like me to do about it? how would you like me to decide the cases because they call on dirjt skills and different kind of knowledge. all i'm going to do in the next 20 minutes or so, maybe half an hour, we'll have questions after. is just give you a few examples of some brilliant and some are

medium interesting. in any case, let's go to a very hot topic which has a long wind up, short pitch, and that is well-known topic, what do we do about civil liberties in time of national security. there's much less in the court u.s. reports than you might think. jackson said that once. jackson said, you know, he said looking to see what the framers thought about this kind of problem, inherent powers of the president or inherent powers of congress or powers of civil liberties he said it's like trying to -- it's like joseph trying to interpret the dreams of pharaoh. you start looking it up and discover there isn't a lot written. not in the u.s. reports. why not? well, for many, many years i think the general view of judges

here as well as judges abroad were when you have first you have security needs. like a war. or real security problem. and you look at the document, the document says this power is primarily the president's. it's congress'. not the court. what about the civil liberties. there the courts do have something to say and sometimes there's a clash. so why is there so little? i think the answer is cicero. he was not one of the founders. but they did, in fact, know about cicero and that attitude prevailed for many, many years. cicero said something like, i used to translate like this way. when the canons roar the law fallscy meant. someone pointed out the romans actually didn't have canons. that wrecks that.

in time of war, when the arms are, et cetera. you see the point. did the court live up to that? yes. you won't find that many cases during the 1812 or abraham lincoln. i mean he had a real problem, obviously. but very few cases, one maybe known in the civil war. maybe lincoln didn't get involved in civil liberties. he didn't. i mean tens of thousands of people were arrested. seward was secretary of state called in the british ambassador and said you see this bell here? i can push this bell and i can have anybody i want in new york thrown into prison. he said i can push it twice, i can have anybody i want in indiana thrown into prison. tell me he said does the queen of england have such power. there were a lot of civil liberty problems and the court

got involved after the war was over. that's different. that's justice jackson, he thought it was a good idea. he wasn't there at the time. let them do what they want and then we'll come in afterwards. but nonetheless, look and see what happened to civil liberties in the civil war. we can understand it. but the court doesn't intervene at all. well let's go to world war i and there are many books written on this about the masses, you know there's freedom of speech become interfered with here and he was alone or nearly alone. court stayed away from it until after the war. or world war ii. we know that one. my mother used to take me down, i grew up in san francisco, drove me down to the peninsula. she said that's where they held the japanese in world war ii.

and the northeast approte of apt in her voice. japanese were ordered to report and 70,000 american citizens were just moved. why? because general dewitt 6th army head said we better get out of here, the japanese may invade and they may get involved. roosevelt signed that order. it isn't what happened to the germans and italians or germans and italians or japanese in england or other places which also had problems but it is what happened to the japanese here. now they went to the camps against their will. well-known story. but there was one person, fred koramat church who said this is

ridiculous, i'm an american citizen and i don't think they should do this. if they want to look into my background, fine, but not send me to some camp and he found a lawyer. now i met him once, actually. very interesting. he was across the street where we live up in cambridge because he was 80 years old at that time. very feisty guy. i liked him very much. he was having a drink with our neighbor and ann was the daughter of ernie bezick who played poker with my father and was the head of aclue. he represented this man in this famous case. aclu wouldn't sign the brief. they got into it later. they got back into it. you see this was january of 1942. february, march, april, may, that spring of '42 and that was just after pearl harbor. and who was supporting it?

earl warren. who opposed it. j. edgar hoover. but off they went to the camps. now koramatsu said we'll win this and his lawyer thought so too. the case got to the court in 1944. in 1944 there was no risk of invasion. there was not a problem with submarines off the shores of california. they were pretty certain they were going to win and before the case went to the court, when the brief was in the justice department two lawyers got a hold of this and they read an article somewhere written by a commander in the navy who had been involved in intelligence and they got suspicious of this whole story. see because the government was saying, the defense department

was saying or army department they were saying, in fact, there had been 763 instances of intercepted communications, messages sent to submarines off shore. there were several instances of sabotage. we should look into this. he called in the fbi. no there was no sabotage, the sabotage took place after they were moved. the fcc came back and said there was not one instance of messages being sent out to submarines. what did the 763, whatever it was messages. those were all buck privates who didn't know how to work the machines. so they said that's pretty interesting, that's amazing. how did you do this so quickly, this big pile. we didn't do it now. we did it in 1942. and w