at 8 pm eastern on c-span, the senate debate between mitt romney and jenny wilson. to fill the seat of orrin hatch. on c-span two, massachusetts governor charlie did -- baker debates jason solace. at 10 pm on c-span, the arizona congressional district debates between democrats and republicans. all of the debates are available on tea-stain.org or you can listen on our radio app. next, for prominent figures in american law, including alayna kagan, recalled their experiences working as clerks for thurgood marshall. they discuss his personality, his skills as a storyteller and his impact on their careers.

can i will introduce our panel for this evening. a look back at thurgood marshall. to my left is justice kagan. justice kagan was with justice marshall what your?>> 1987. >> it seems like yesterday. that was after having attempted princeton and oxford and harvard for law and served in -- chambers as law clerk and all of our panelists this evening clerked for one judge or another as did i. >> a good court. >> it was a great court. >> in the white house counsel's

office under the clinton administration and policy counsel as deputy director, could not keep a job, apparently. taught at the university of chicago law school and after getting tenure moved on and settled at harvard. not very long after that he became dean of the harvard law school and could not keep that job either. he became associate justice, solicitor general and then associate justice of the supreme court. judge paul engel meyer, he is judge of the southern district of new york and has been 2011. i should see he came on the court in 2010. he went to harvard and to harvard law school as well. he clerked for judge wald on the dc circuit and was in the

solicitor's office and then he was in private practice before going on the bench. professor randall kennedy, to my left, who was a rhodes scholar, a graduate yale law school, clerked for judge kelly right. during the harvard faculty in 1984, he has been a productive prolific author of books, remarkably, he is writing books, and i thought it was interesting that he is a member of the law institute and academy of arts and sciences and philosophical association. so we have an array of three

former clerks, with myself, i was there in 1974, 1975 for the dc circuit and all of us like many, virtually all of our other alumni of justice marshall's chambers i think were very much affected in our careers and lives by the experience of having been in his chambers and in close contact with him for years. so, we will reminisce a little bit if that is okay. i'm not sure there will be more to it than that. i hope that is of some interest. and so, i will start with you, unless you want to pass. >> so, why don't you tell us about how the clerkship affected your career? >> starting with a big one.

how it affected my career. you know, i think clerking on this court affects everybody's career. it is probably more than it is justified. it is something that does, you put it on your resume and doors open and sometimes justifiably so and sometimes not. but, i think what is more important to me is how the experience of clerking for justice marshall affected who i was and what i thought was important in the world. he was, you could not survive one year in his chambers without realizing that there were things that you knew nothing about. and, it was an eye-opening

experience in many respects other than just learning about the law. and, it gave you an appreciation for people who had fought for justice all their lives and the importance of their work. especially his work. and, it made you think. about what you are doing and why you are doing it. and, one could never hope to have a career that was so much justice seeking as his was, but i think his voice in my head, it never went away in terms of trying to figure out what i was

doing in life.>> you still hear the call, knucklehead. [ laughter ] >> knucklehead was on a bad day, shorty was on a good day.>> knucklehead you had to share with everyone else. shorty was just yours. f paul, your career?>> everything she said, i agree with. from my perspective, if you came to the clerkship thinking about doing public service and you spent one year with the greatest legal public servant of the 20th century it would only reinforce that impulse. that was the case for me just like she described. i spoke to him about applying to become an assistant u.s. attorney. i was delighted that he was enthusiastic and it turned out that he was quite a big fan of the department of justice. as it happened, three of the

four of us became assistant u.s. attorneys and he was encouraging of that. for my point of view in addition to what she said, hearing his stories about trial court, it lit a fire under me to be a trial lawyer and to engage with the craft being in a courtroom and he reminded me of how important it is to know the facts and the record. one lesson you learn from justice marshall was as important as the law is facts are more important. and listening to the way he recounted cases in his career and how decisive evidence and witnesses had been really, the craft involved, getting one with the evidence. as a judge, i think about him almost every day and i think about him in this context. i think about the defendants, the family members, in

particular that this may be the only day for these people in which they are in a courtroom and one thing you learn from justice marshall is you want to make sure there is decency and honor and dignity. so for the people in a federal court for only one day, they leave feeling ennobled by the experience and treated fairly. that was something i learned from him and something i have taken with me. i have his picture up in my reception area in my chambers, a picture of him on the steps of the supreme court on may 17, 1954. i walk in every day and look at it and it reminds me that we are in the justice business. >> i have a lithograph as him, as well, and my office. something i am pleased to have. i acquired it long after leaving chambers. >> well, it was a great pleasure

working for justice marshall and it made a big impact working for him, a big impact on my career. i did not know i would be a legal academic but i turned out to be a legal academic and one subject that i write about is race relations law. for preparation than working for justice marshall known before he got on the bench as mr. civil rights. over the course of the year, one great benefit of working for him was he knew everyone, he had many stories and he was very generous with his time. very generous with his recollections. and i would ask him a lot of questions. and it turns out that much of what he shared with me became of use in my professional life

as an academic. still, very much of use. >> we have been joined by mrs. marshall this evening. welcome. i will come back to you, alayna. tell us about a memorable opinion by the justice.>> yes, i will give you two. one will be not surprising and one may be more surprising. both were the year that i clerked for justice marshall and we used to call him judge, we used to call him p.m., we never called him justice marshall. but, here is the one that maybe won't be so surprising. this was one that really brought on the knucklehead elation. it was a case called -- and it

was about a schoolgirl, a 10- year-old, girl, a white girl in kansas, i believe, and she lived some miles away, more than 15 miles away from the nearest school and there was a bus service but they made you pay. they would not give a waiver for even indigent students. the result was that this girl did not get to school. and, it was a challenge for the fee schedule, the idea of a state charging fees for a school bus which was necessary for her to get to school. and, it was a constitutional challenge, brought under the equal protection clause and we walked into his office and i laid out the arguments and i said to him, judge, i think it

is going to be hard for i think her name was -- to win. and he said why and i said, you know, indigency is not a suspect class and education is not a fundamental right and that means rational basis applies. and the state has a rational basis here. and he looked at me as though i must have lost my mind. because, his basic idea, what he was there to do, was to ensure that people like her got to school every morning. and, as long as he was going to be on this court, he was going to vote to make that happen. we dissented in that case and the justice dissented, i think it was 6-3 or 7-2, most of the court decided the case, just as

i basically laid it out again, and justice marshall wrote a dissent and the reason i say i was called knucklehead a lot with this case is because of all of the cases that i worked on it was the one that he was most passionate about and the idea, i think what moved him more than anything was trying to get rid of these entrenched inequalities in american life, this involved race but it was the same to him. and, i would bring in a draft of a dissent and he would stay stronger and i would bring in another and he would stay stronger and i would bring in another and it went on like that for quite a while until he felt like i got the right level of passion and discussed. in this dissenting opinion. obviously, he communicated some of his own. his blue pencil

and marked it up quite a lot. >> that's the one that i think won't surprise you, but i think the one that will surprise you was also that term and it was a case called torres and it was a group of hispanic employees had brought an employment discrimination suit. and they had lost and they filed filed. and one that filed an appeal left out their name on the notice of appeal that went up to the court and the question was whether leaving out that name was going to mean that the court had this one employee of the group. the case came to us and all the clerks that thought this would be an easy case, it is just a

secretarial mishap and you are going to deny this man of his claim? that is a crazy thing and justice brennan dissented, but justice marshal wrote the opinion for the court saying yes, in fact, the court did -- leaving out the name made all the difference and the court didn't have jurisdiction to take the appeal. and this is what he said to us. i spent all my life litigating cases and you can't expect anybody to bend the rules for you. the only thing you can expect is that they apply the rules straight. and indeed, indeed people that i litigated, their salvation was in the rule. if he had a chance for success, it was because of the rules and

people decided to take the rules seriously. so the rules and playing by the rules was to him one of the most important principles in the justice system. and sometimes it worked against you and they put in the wrong name. but in the end, especially for people who were disliked and disadvantaged, they needed the rule. so you need system where the rules are there and i don't think he convinced think one of us. but it was a powerful explanation more so than talking about karita and the bus in equality. this too was as powerful or more powerful lesson about the

importance of rules and of law in our society. and even when sometimes it doesn't cut your way. . >> anybody want to comment. >> the one is richard versus krosen when the court went for affirmative action racial, this is in richmond virginia and he was very, as you can imagine the outcome there. one of the things that was interesting to me was not just his fundmental point that affirmative action is different from out and out official racism, but his focus again on the facts. and he said to me as the clerk assigned to the system on the case, i want to make sure that we make the point that this is

the capitol of the confederacy. i want to make a point there is something ironic here the capitalist confederacy bending backwards about race and then bending down. he was a deeply knowledgeable historian and wanted to make sure what came out of his chambers was rich in history and social context and not airid. that's one of the distinctions i had. >> my favorite case -- mitt favorite opinion was a concurring opinion in a case called batson versus kentucky. and in batson versus kentucky, the supreme court of the united states reversed an earlier opinion swan versus alabama.

and in swaine versus alabama said prosecutors using peremptory challenges was immune from question. in the case they wanted to question, using peremptory challenges, based on race. and the court said peremptory challenges are immune from question. if a prosecutor is using a peremptory challenge for trial-related reasons, any reason whatsoever, that's okay. well, two things about batson versus kentucky. first of all, batson versus kentucky was triggered by the justice's use of dissents from denial of certiorari. so people don't pay attention to certiorari, but the court issued dissent after dissent after dissent to basically alert the bar that there were a couple

justices, him in particular, interested in the issue and secondly, i think to educate and try to persuade his colleagues. and over the course of a year he succeeded. he succeeded in persuading other justices to come along with him and he triggered the -- he triggered a reassessment of swan versus alabama. and then the court agreed with his position, agreed to reverse swan versus alabama. but then the justice wasn't satisfied with that and he said i agree with what the court is doing, but the court isn't going far enough. should get rid of peremptory challenges altogether. and it makes me think that's the

justice thorough good marshal that i revere. since you mentioned two opinions, i will mention another. it's not just one opinion, it's a series. so justice marshal came to the conclusion that capital punishment is in violation of constitutional standard, so he dissented in all capital punishment cases in which someone was sentenced to death. and that stand too is a stand that makes me salute him. >> let me ask you to elaborate about that because justice marshal and justice brennan reiterated that dissent in every case that came along, as opposed to once something is settled and

you dissented or maybe reiterated dissent once, that's it. or do you think this was -- was this because it was justice marshal or capital punishment or philosophical against jurisprudence. >> i think it was capital punishment. justice marshal was such an unusual person. he had such a broad, long, varied career. he had represented people who face capital punishment and indeed he represented people who were executed, that ought not to be executed. he represented people who were put to death. so in fact they were factually innocent. and i think that had something to do with the fervency, the passion with which he saw this particular issue. there were many issuings -- several issues about which he

was deeply em passioned, but none more so than the question of the government taking someone's life. >> can i jump in on that? >> please. >> i think it also had a deeper view of that stare desisis he had. and we ought to not feel assessing. if you look at the constitution, he says exactly that and the glory of the constitution was its amendability and eventually the court got it right. absolutely capital punishment based on his own perm experience as a criminal defense lawyer was something he cared deeply about, lug but there was also a philosophical view not to be

locked into what he regarded as a wrong decision. >> i'm not sure if everyone is fully aware that justice spent by far the better part of his career trying criminal cases, defending sexual assault and murder charges time after time in very unsafe venues for him. >> i remember once he said to us, he said well, when a jury brought back the sentence of life impressment, that's when he absolutely knew the guy was innocent. >> yeah. well, he told a lot of stories about -- from that period and others in his life. and i'm not sure whether this was true when you-all were talking about him. and i was to come back from

lunch into the clerk's bull pen, three of us in one room, sit down in a leather easy chair and just start talking for maybe 30 or 45 minutes, virtually every day and telling stories. and there was some repetition over the course of the year, but he had a huge repertoire. there was a lot. and those stories were unforgettable. was he doing that there? >> he wouldn't so much come into the clerk's office, but we would go into his office when we would talk about cases and the way it typically would work is we would talk about whatever was on the court's schedule, many more cases that are on the court's schedule, about 140. >> 160 when i was there. >> okay. and we would talk about the

cases and then at some point we would be finished and he would segue into what was sort of story time in justice marshal's chambers and it was quite the most unforgettable experience. and my one regret of the year was that not one of us was smart enough to write them all down because i'm sure i have forgotten 95% of them. and i will tell you, doug, i don't think he ever repeated one. you know, it was remarkable how many stories he had and how he kind of remembered which he had been through before. but a lot i couldn't begin to capture a lot of it. he is really the greatest story teller i have come across and it was a real kind of make you

laugh, make you weep because a lot of the stories he told were pretty rough, pretty hard. and there were stories about his boyhood. there were stories about what it had been like to chris kros the gym crow south as a the gym crow and from the mobs and police. they were terrible stories a lot of them, but he was also a great comic story teller and a great comic generally. he was so darn funny in his facial expressions and intonations and sometimes you were kind of laughing when you thought, what am i laughing about? this is a horrible story. but it was an unforgettable experience. the content of the stories he had to tell and just, you know,

listening to a master story teller tell them. >> i will elaborate on that. of all the stories he told, brown and all the theorizing that got there. what sticks in my mind is being a defense attorney in mississippi, alabama, western florida and the physical risk he took. he told a story about almost getting lynched himself. he told a story about clients that were lynched. he told of arriving at bus or train stations and having to be tucked into the back seat of a car, so he could be driven to a supporter's home sight unseen and then to another home just to stay safe and all the while he is telling jokes about this. i remember he said to us "there

is an easy way to tell if a confession was coerced. ask the question how big is the cop?" and then joking with another member of his league team who was going to sleep nearest to the window in case a bomb came in. he was telling these horrible stories. but if you haven't read devil in the grove, that is the best way to capture many of these stories in a 200-page write up. it captures how he had these like to kill a mocking bird experience. >> the story that i remember the most is a story about his experience in tennessee

tennessee after world war ii, there was black veterans defending themselves. they had arms. they were charged with various crimes. he defended them and got most of them off. the local police got angry with him. he was leaving the courthouse. he was with another lawyer by the name of zee alexander luby. so as justice marshal was driving and the local police pulled him over and hustle him into their car and the police tells zee alexander luby to stop following the police. he just follows and follows. according to justice marshal, he thought he was a goner for sure, he thought the police was going to turn them over to the ku klux

klan and got cold feet because he was following him. then they go back to town and they charge justice marshal with driving under the influence. and they go to a local magistrate and the local magistrate says "why are you bringing this man here?" and the police says "well, this man is driving under the influence." and the magistrate can tell if he was driving under the influence. he says breathe into my face. and justice marshal, he doesn't flinch. this man hasn't touched a drop of whisky. release him. justice marshal gets in the car, drives off, gets where he is going, calls the naacp and says you know what? i had not touched any whisky before, but now i am about to

get drunk. again, it is a horrible story. it's also a true story. there is a very nice book about this particular -- this particular event. but he always would punctuate it with his own brand of humor. >> i will contribute a couple. i mean, the stories, would you say harsh, hard? but not in the language necessarily or anything like that or even in the event. but one was in a bank. it was rape trial in florida, black defendant, complainant and the jury went to deliberate wait

and the prosecutor came over to justice marshal and said see the bailiff over there lighting a cigar? yeah, i see him. what about him? i bet you $5 that jury comes in within 2 minutes of the time he finishes that cigar. what's that got to do anything? how long does it take to smoke a cigar? the jury has been sitting there all day. i'm sure they would like to have a cigar too. that's the kind of story that stays with you. the other one was about -- i think it's in one of the books. might be in lawrence fish burn's play. i'm not sure. he came out of the courthouse i think in texas, about an hour's drive from dallas where he was staying, and so he was driving

there in the morning, being driven there, picked up by highway patrol somewhere along the way and escorted all the way to the court house and when he came out at the end of the day, there was also a police car there and followed him to some place halfway back to dallas and then dropped off. and when this happened the second day and he got to the court house, he went back and talked to the driver of the police car. he said "what is going on?" described just what i described. and the sheriff's deputy said "the sheriff says you are not to get killed in this county." . >> what was your first impression when you met the justice? >> well, my first conversation with the justice actually came before i met him. at that time he was -- he picked

clerks without interviewing them. he had some former clerk who did his clerk ship selection. so i had been through his process and he decided to make me a job offer and he called me. it was the summer after i graduated from law school and he called me, and i remember the call actually came into the law review office and they had to run and find me and get me and i came back and found a phone. and finally got him on the phone, and he said "so you want a job?" and i said "i would love a job." and he said "what's that? you already have a job?" and i was like oh, my gosh, he doesn't hear me. "no, i just said i would love a job. no, i want this job and i don't

have a job. i don't know if you already have a job." and this one time, i said three or four times before i figured it out and he took pity on me. i don't know which happened fist. but the thing i remember about that conversation before i hung up the done "i hope you like writing dissents." and we wrote our share of dissents. >> so what about your first impression? >> similar phone call without the "you already have a job?" but same thing, you want a job?" and you got it.

get ready to write dissents. and i got ready for the bar and this all happened within 45 seconds and i was thinking somebody pulled a prank on me. and then the next three hours trying to figure out for sure if thoroughgood marshal -- >> i met him face to face and i was very nervous. and the reason i was just -- i mean, it was a big deal in any event, meeting a justice, a person you are going to work for. but it was even bigger than that for me. because i heard about him all my life because my father in columbia south carolina went to

see justice marshal argue a case rice versus elmore, one of the rice and throughout my childhood, i heard my father talk about the importance of that case for him. now, my dad didn't -- we didn't know what the legal issue, legally, action issue, but he didn't pay any attention to that. the thing that my father talked about over and over and over again was that the judges in the courtroom called thoroughgood marshal "mr. marshal." and the thing why that is so

significant, gym crow et cat, you are to be called mr. so and so. typically black men did not get the honorific mr. it was how distinguished thoroughgood marshal was that the judges and other lawyers called him "mr. marshal." i heard about that all the time growing up. so with that backdrop, of course it was a tremendous thrill. >> why you became a lawyer? >> in part i'm sure. my father -- again, i'm sure that it influenced my brother. i have an older brother that is a lawyer. but we heard about -- we heard about that argument 100 times.

i don't know whether it's one of the books, through there is a story about the justice was practicing in the early 50s and he needed to see the chief justice and the chief justice was not to be found. but he knocked on the door in the hotel, a hotel in connecticut where the big conventions are. big hotel there, knocked on the door. >> mayflower. >> mayflower, somebody had given him a tip and there was the chief justice, he was playing poker. he was playing poker with president truman and two other men. don't know who they are.

must have had an affidavit. mr. marshal, is all of this true? and he said "yes, sir." signed the paper, left, never noticed it was the president in the room. never said anything to him. if he noticed, he never said anything to him. . >> chief justice saying you have got the guts to open the door. i have got the -- >> any first impression when you finally met him? >> he was a large man and very

imposing. i think nowadays sometimes, you know, the views get into sort of an evunkular completely welcoming. he was a tough boss. and intimidating. and he definitely laid down how he wanted things done and he knew how he wanted things done and you paid attention from the get go with me in any event, i was very attentive to him. andover time i suppose the intimidation went away, but i always found him opposing. >> i think it was the combination of his physical

stach which you are stature and manner. it was intimidating or overwhelming at first. >> i was -- >> saying he -- as intimidating as he was , i think back also on how accessible he was, in the sense you really understood as his clerk what he was thinking about, the cases he was thinking about, the cases he was rekounding. he certainly didn't hide the ball. he would tell you who the villains were, what he thought about theed a vogue cig advocacy. he would read letters he was

going to write to the holiday party. essentially the following." dear chief, as usual i will not attend the annual christmas a party. i still believe in the division of church and state." so he gave us access to his take on just about everything. >> and he was -- you know, he cared a lot about what we thought about things. he listened to us, asked us questions. there was a real dialogue between the clerks and the justice. but gosh, did he know who was boss. sometimes you would get this treatment, he would point over to a wall and he would say, "now, what's over there? can you take a look at that?" and then "whose name is on that commission?" and sometimes people would say you have to do

x or y and z, you have to -- in that case i told you before you have to vote for mr. torres and he would say "there are only two things i have to do, stay black and die. ". he didn't repeat stories, but that expression he repeated a lot. >> i remember one that goes along with that, i remember arguing with him about a case, and he said thank you very much, you know, and his hand up. "let me try again." and i did this a couple times and finally, justice marshal, "let me say 2 years ago you said this. and if you go the way you want to go, that you are proposing to go, it will be just completely contradicting what you said 2

years ago." and he looks at me and he says "do i have to be a fool all my life?" . >> before i forget, i want to say about the stories, as many as there were, i never heard one in which he was the hero. he just told me what happened. >> you had so sort of look it up afterwards to find out. >> i mean, he was not self-grandizing in any way. he just wanted to pass it on to us a real sense of what it was like for him. but many years later he did sit down with lon williams and told

these stories that he hadn't talked about for publication before. i thought the only thing -- the only jarring note was the sub title of the book. it was thorogood marshal, revolutionary. revolutionaries were out in the street and he had no affection for people out on the streets, none. >> i'm sure randy has something about this generally. >> pell, it was a complex one. on the one hand, he was mr. civil rights. and over a long period of time through just extraordinary work, amazing diligence, amazing persistence, along with extraordinary skill created the

groundwork for the civil rights revolution. at the same time he was -- he viewed the world very much through a lawyer's lens. and his way of doing things was to attack through the courts what you didn't like, have those things invalidated and after they were invalidated, then moved. he was not a fan of direct action, and there was tension, i think, you know, documented. there was real tension between him and the students who were -- you know, the people who engaged in incidents. there was real tension between him and martin luther king, jr. there was tension. he respected them, and they with good reason respected him. and to move the world in a way

that the champions of the civil rights movement moved the world, you needed all sorts of people. you needed division of labor and people that saw things in different ways and pushed in different ways, but, yeah, it was a complex relationship with some of the other members of the you know, champions of civil justice. >> division of labor among the clerks, did you have anything like that. >> what was that? >> division of labor among the clerks, brison took all the cases. >> served him well. >> took all the civil rights and anything related cases, and i got what was left. and so that was, you know,

international case of securities and labor, and there was -- there was never a moment in which we -- never a matter in which we had any disagreement or had to work out, you know, exactly what he wanted to say because we were completely on the same wavelength. in that respect he was a conservative person. he wasn't trying to upset the securities laws or make waves just to make waves. >> the way he did it with us, he made it very clear early on that we were to be looking over one another's shoulders. he tells us early on, if i'm mad with one of you, i'm mad with all of you. and so we would look over, you know, one another's work, and we were particularly conscious of his -- and he was completely

intolerant of lateness. you could not be late about anything. one minute was too late. and so, you know, we sort of had, you know, collective punishment. also want to say one more thing i remember about the year and it had to do also about capital punishment. on the night of an execution, there would always be one clerk who had to stick around for anything late breaking and some of the time of when everything had been done, the person who had to stick around had to call up the justice at home. and on those -- and i did it a bunch because my fellow clerks, all three of the other clerks were married and i was

unmarried. so i volunteered to stick around. you know, nobody was looking for me. and -- but on those evenings when i would call the house, i would pray that mrs. marshal -- i would be praying that mrs. marshal -- because it made a big difference. the big difference made was this. if mrs. marshal answered the phone, the justice would come on and he would be very civil. he would be very nice, very polite, very civil. if she did not answer the phone and you got to him first, it could be a very tough conversation. >> i remember about the capital cases that his charge to us was not merely to execute the formal dissent based on his categorical view. he said to us i want you to comb each of these cases to see if

there is some specific ground under which we can get this reversed. this is not an abstract, he wanted to save a life. so those also came with the question have you dug into this? is there something specific about this case we can say? >> this is one of my memories. for many reasons capital punishment played even more significant role in the court than it does today. first off, there were more executions, so, you know, the week there would usually be several executions a week at that time. there were fewer procedural bars, so a lot of what we do now is people on death row come up and there is no way even to hear the merits of the claim because there was put into place a whole

lot of rules that many, many, many, more claims are procedurally barred then. and i think the third thing was death penalty law at that time was much less well developed. so you didn't have -- there were a lot more open spaces in terps of what was allowed and what was not allowed. so there were very serious issues that remained open and that you could get to. randy talked about dissents from denial in one area of law. but i remember there wasn't just the typical like thing that he and justice brennan used to do about -- how did it go again, just the one liner? i forget how it went. but we spent -- we drafted so

many dissents from denial in death penalty cases, but i would be surprised if we didn't do 25 of them , 30 of them in here. >> oblivious happy interim when there was no cases, '74 and '75, that sound about right? >> yeah. goodness. chillton, where are you? how much time do we have? that's fine, but is there a question? you just tell us what your favorite recollection of the year, not just in chambers, but the year that you spent here. >> i will start. i mean, this is an outside of chambers memory. holiday time, late one day he

told us that he was going to take us out to lunch the following day at a seafood restaurant, and we get into a car. we go to a seafood restaurant and we walk into the restaurant and he is leading the way and as thorogood walk into the packed dining room, people realized who walked in and slowly one by one they all got up and stood for him and stood for maybe 60 seconds. and, you know, he nodded and everyone sat down, but it was a moment that allowed you to see him how the world saw him. and reminded you this was not the regular supreme court judge. this was clerking for a legend. that moment suddenly you realize -- put aside what we have been talking about in the conference room talking, forget about story time and forget about the individual cases.

this is the magnitude of the man. this is what he meant to our country and i think we all saw it again when he passed away and his clerks served as honor guard. we took an hour shift overnight as people streamed in there in the foyer. and people were overly -- overtly emotional. there were people brings copies of brown versus board of ed and leaving it there. but you can see the gratitude to him and the enormous space that he occupied in the 20th century. my story really is just having that window of an opportunity to look at him through other's eyes. >> i guess i would echo that and say that probably the most enduring snapshot was on the

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? >> copies of tables are available at the gift shop, along with many other books and many other gifts. the gift shop is on the ground floor of the court and will remain open throughout the reception tonight. ladies and gentlemen, the 2018 national heritage lecture is now adjourned. . >> we continue our supreme

court programming on the history of evolution of the highest court and debate over original. >> reporter: . judge ginsberg sits down with his time as a clerk for thorogood. it begins at 8 p.m. eastern.

. >> supreme court chief justice from 1969 to 1986. next new york law professor tells us about his life. he was law clerk of the chief justice and served as a law school dean. hosting this event in the supreme court chamber. . >> welcome to our 42nd annual lecture. before i do anything else, i will ask everyone to take out their phones and turn them off. even on silent they will interfere with the sound system. welcome, we are dwighted to have