on social media networking sites. fine dark continent time through c-span video library. and we defined our content any time through c-span's video library. -- and find our content any time >> now c-span is feature documentary, "the supreme court -- home to america's highest court." >> the honorable, the chief justice and the associate justices of the supreme court of the united states. >> something is different that goes on here that goes on in the capitol building and the white house. >> you need to appreciate how important it is to our system of government. >> this is the highest court in the land. and the framers created it after studying the great lawgivers in history. >> the government concedes that

the destruction of documents in anticipation of a proceeding -- >> a lot of these cases are very close. you go in on a knife's edge. we do not decide who ought to win. we decide who wins under the law that the people adopted. >> you would be surprised by the high level of collegiality. >> if any of the four of the nine of us decide to hear the case, we will hear it. we are here to decide things. the job is to decide. we decide. >> we cannot have a decision of discourse. >> we decide important questions and that means you have to do your best to get it right. you have to work as hard as you can to get it right. >> why is it that we have an elegant, astonishingly beautiful, imposing, impressive structure? it is to remind us that we have an important function and to remind the public that sees the building of the importance and the centrality of the law.

>> it all ways thrills me, amazes me, and gives me faith in our country to know how much people trust the court. >> i think the danger is that sometimes you come into a building like this and think it is all about you or that you are important. and that is something that i don't think works well with this job. >> home to america's highest court, the role of those who serve here is to interpret the constitution of the united states. outside, almost daily expressions of protest are made by those wishing the court to pick up their case or role in their favor. inside, a central space that

dominates its proceedings. all around, there are both public spaces containing the symbolism of the law and those -- and artwork reminding us of those that have served in the court before as well as beautiful private rooms that are seen by those privileged few. it is the justices, appointed for life terms, that have always defined it as a regal, very human institution, and the building in which they do their work. >> i think it is the prettiest building in washington. and it is distinctive. it is that different type of marble, much brighter, much lighter than the typical government building, which i think is wonderful. as soon as you see it, you appreciate that this is something different. it recognizes that the court is a different branch of government. it is monumental. it looks more like the lincoln -- jefferson memorial or the

lincoln memorial in terms of its visual impact than it does look like another government building. if you would like something like -- view it something like a temple of justice, i think that is entirely appropriate. >> when you first come up to the court, there are two candelabrae on either side. they have some of your first symbols, of blindfolded justice holding the scales of justice. on the other part of that are the three fates. it is the first symbolic indication that this building has something to do with the law. and as you travel on, there are the flagpole bases which have some symbols of law and knowledge indicating that the building has a purpose to the -- which is the supreme court and the law. >> the statue to the left is contemplation of justice. in her right hand, she holds a

small statue of blindfolded justice. it is a symbol of impartiality. on the right-hand side of the staircase, the other statute is authority of law. the left armrests on a book. the latin word lex means law. >> we always want to make sure that people want to come up the steps because we do the job the right way. there's not a day that goes by that we should not ask ourselves, "are we doing this right?" >> i think the supreme court is the most mysterious branch to the public. >> they do their work in a marble building where cameras are not allowed. they are not recognizable generally to the average person on the street. and then they speak to the

public for their opinions. ir opinions.here' so in some ways, they are very public. anything that they do that will matter in your life will be down on black and white in a court opinion. but they themselves will not be publicly announcing that before a camera. there is a real mystery to the supreme court. >> the role in our democracy is to give a fair and honest interpretation to the meaning of dispositions that the people have adopted, either congress in statutes or the people when they ratified the constitution. simple as that, no more, no less. >> i think it is time that americans wake up to what it is the framers had in mind when they tried to create an independent federal judiciary branch. they had a clear vision in mind and that was that the federal courts would be deciding issues of federal law, constitutional and statutory, and that those

judgments would be binding on all courts, state and federal. >> when the court tries to do that job, sometimes members disagree strongly about, they are all trying to do the same thing -- to look at all laws that exist, the constitutions, the statutes, to figure out what it means and enforce it. what the public will see eventually is an opinion with reasons. the discipline that a judge follows and what makes it unlike legislators, we have to give reasons for every decisions that we make. >> when you go in for a big case, high-visibility, where the stakes are large, where you

can feel the tectonic plates of the constitution actually beginning or potentially beginning to shift, you would just be brutish if you did not have an awareness of what a high level of sensitivity to the importance of that moment. >> the court is very much aware of history. the place is one where continuity is very important, and history really does influence the way the court works. >> at top of the west step, the symbolic bronze doors which recognize the history of the law. just on the other side is the ceremonial core of the building. >> there is an impressive marble hall that separates the front doors of the building from the doors that lead into the court room. that marble hall is called the great hall, and is

characterized by marble columns -- and often when i go home at night, the building is vacant and i walk through the great hall and i look around at the pillars. it really impresses upon me the importance of the work that we are doing. as many times as i walked through that hall, it never ceases to have that impression on me. >> between the columns are busts of previous chief justices. as you walk from the beginning, you can see john marshall, taney, taft, charles evans hughes, earl warren, and at present there are busts of all of the chief justices. in a certain sense, you are walking through the whole

history of the court. >> the story of the court is defined not only by its different shapes over time but through a continual addition of new associate justices to the bench. >> the white house operator tells you that the president is on the line. i had my cell phone in my right hand and i had my left hand over my chest. trying to calm my beating heart, literally. and the president got on the phone and said to me, "judge, i would like to announce you as my selection to be the next associate justice of the united states supreme court." and i said to him -- i caught to my breath and started to cry and said, "thank you, mr. president."

>> justice sotomayor, are you ready to take the oath? repeat after me. i, sonia sotomayor, do solemnly swear -- >> i, sonia sotomayor, do solemnly swear -- >> when the court gets a new member, it changes everything, everybody. simple changes. we move the seats around in the court room by seniority. there will be a shift there. but more fundamentally, it can cause it to take a fresh look at how things are defined. -- it can cause you to take a fresh look at how things are decided. the new member will have a particular view about how things should be addressed, and it may be very different from what we have been following for some time. it is an exciting part of life at the court. >> the institution does not change at all. i think the relationships change.

you lose a friend and hopefully acquire another one. i miss a lot of my former colleagues on the court, from blackmun, white, to bill brennan. -- byron white to bill brennan. but that is the process. >> it is different today than when it was when i first got here. i have to admit -- you grow very fond of the court that you spend a long time on. there was a period there when chief justice rehnquist and justice o'connor, we had a long run together. you get comfortable with that and then it changes. and now it is changing again. >> it is a new court. when i was trying jury cases, the juror had to be replaced, because one reason, it was a different dynamic, it was a different jury. and the same case -- this will

be a very different court. and it is stressful for us because we so admire our colleagues. we wonder, will it ever be the same? i have great admiration for the system. the system works. >> i think it is healthy for the court to have members with different backgrounds. i saw a television program recently when someone said there should always be someone who served in the armed forces on the court. i think there should always be someone who has had practical experience in litigation, and experience in other branches of the government would be very helpful. >> i think the experiences that i've brought to the job are going to help me a good deal. being solicitor general, you get to see the court in everything it does, just from a different point of view, from the point of view of the advocate rather than the judge.

it has been a whirlwind. drinking out of a fire hose. always something different, a lot to learn, the learning curve is extremely steep. sometimes it seems vertical. >> all of my colleagues have been extraordinarily warm and welcoming. each one has offered advice. each one of them has invited me to call them with questions. and i do not know if i can identify anyone in particular that i have been turning to. it depends a great deal on whether i am meeting them in the hall. there is always a question on my mind. i go with the question on my mind. when i meet someone in the hall, i go up and say, can you or would you, and they each have been delightfully generous in giving me time, to walk me through whatever is that i am asking about. >> from its first chief justice, john jay, to its

current one, john roberts, the court continues to make decisions that impact the lives of everyday americans, taking on only a limited amount of cases per term, compared to the number of those requested of them. >> 8000 each year ask us to hear their case. that means about 150 week. 150 what? 150 requests to hear the case. here they are for this week. >> i think undoubtedly to my mind, the most onerous, and for the most part, the uninteresting part of the job is ruling on all the cert petitions that come to the court. they have increased since i've come to the court. -- increased enormously in the time i have been here. >> we don't look at the cases

that we think are wrong. we don't think of the cases that have a lot at stake. we try to make federal law uniform across the country. all of the cases are hard. the only reason we take them, and some of my colleagues may tell you, is that other courts are in disagreement. that means that other judges and other actors in the legal system have come to different conclusions. every case is that way. >> most people think they have a right to come to the court. for the most part you do not. not this court. maybe the court of appeals, you normally do. maybe the state courts of appeal, the courts that do not have discretionary jurisdiction. the court of last resort, maybe they have a right to go there, but our jurisdiction is discretionary. we decide who can come. >> you can tell when there is a case with a particular hot-

button issue that will get a lot of attention. but i have to say that does not enter into our process of deciding. a lot of our docket is very mundane. out of 90 cases, maybe a half a dozen will make it to the front pages. others are bankruptcy and tax cases, the federal arbitration act cases, that is a big part of our docket. all vitally important, but not anything that will attract interest. >> even a case on a subject that you think of as boring can turn out to be enormously challenging at the end of the day. it could be anything. i do not think subject matter determines our interest in it. it is the challenge of solving this particular question of the law and making it work. it can be on any subject.

>> each one gets a vote like anyone else on what cases we should hear. but it takes four votes to decide if we hear a case. we used to have a lot more mandatory jurisdiction cases. when they got congress to pass a law and say we did not have to hear all the cases, part of the trade-off was that you did not -- part of the deal that we made was that you did not have to have five votes to hear a case, four would be enough. >> these are the cases in stephen breyer's office that were heard in the courtroom. behind-the-scenes, each justice has their own suite of offices. here they work with the staff of four law clerks and several office assistants. it is within the room of chambers where their personalities and work habits come through. >> i like to work in a quiet place. i like to have the law clerks close at hand. in my regular chambers, all of the law clerks were inside.

now i have to two in my office. and to down the hall. but i like a quiet place and i like to be overlooking the courtyard. and not in front of the building so i'm not disturbed by the protesters. this desk was made here at the court. all of the chambers have similar desks. the one in this chambers is where i put a granite top on the top. >> i was very lucky to have this office. blackmun was my predecessor, and it was a lovely office. the year both for ruth ginsburg was appointed. everybody moved and obtained offices by seniority. i was the most junior. but when i was appointed, no one wanted to move. i said, that is fine with me. i like it.

-- i was lucky. >> it is this view from justice breyer's chambers that provides a window into the past of the supreme court. meeting in the basement of the capitol for the majority of their time between 1810 and 1860, john marshall oversaw the court from here during his tenure. later roger taney ruled over the chamber until the court moved upstairs into a space vacated by the senate, where they would meet until 1935. but with very little space available in the building for justices to do their work and with even less for attorneys to find a place to prepare for oral argument, one chief justice determined it was time the court had a building of its own. >> i do not think is an understatement to say that this building would not be here if it had not been for the persistence of chief justice taft. >> taft had in mind that it had a of building of its own.

-- that the court needed to have a building of its own. he believed that as president, and when he became chief justice, it became almost an obsession. >> there was some opposition in congress, but ultimately taft began to show the committee they -- chair the committee that would choose the architect, gilbert, very much his first choice. cass gilbert was one of the best known architects of his time. it was a perfect match of architect and employer. to do the whole idea was to have -- their idea was to have the a building that would comported jefferson's concepts and look right next to the capitol building and yet still stand out on its own. >> $10 million, during the great -- the appropriation taft asked for was $10 million, during the great depression, there was actually deflation. they were able to build the

building and furnishing it and still turn $100,000 back to the treasury of the united states. it came in under budget. maybe the only government building in history that came in under budget. >> they had done such a great job, the u.s. capitol should be moved so that it would have a -- people would have a better view of the court. that was his view. i think he did create a beautiful building, but there is no way that capitol building would be moved to provide a better view. >> it is a french classicism. he was very serious in his intention to create a house, a symbolic house, for the third branch of government that expressed the seriousness of what we were doing, the authority with which the third branch should be invested, and authority to work for what was right. did the supreme court justices

-- >> the supreme court justices are not shy. some of the justices felt that the new building was to grand, was too grandiose. chief justice stone is alleged to of sand that justices wrote -- alleged to have said that the justices were like nine black beetles into the temple of karnak, and maybe they should ride in each morning on elephants. >> setting a record with over 75 million pounds of marble used in its construction, when it opened in 1935, seven of the nine sitting justices refused to move into their chambers in the new supreme court building. >> one of the justices at the time did not want to leave their former chambers in the basement of the senate. he said, if we leave these offices in the senate, no one will ever hear of us again. but he was wrong. brandeis said he would not come in here. the reason justice brandeis would not, is that he said the

building was so low average, it -- so elaborate, it would go their heads. maybe he was right. if you come over time, it becomes a symbol of the third branch of government, and the need for stability, rule of law, which is what america stands for. >> the interesting thing is that gilbert and taft never live to see the building completed. gilbert died before the building actually open. >> you not only see the vision of taft and his architect, but also work of taft's successor, charles evans hughes, who oversaw the completion. and while most see the west plaza, on its east side is a less often use part of the -- less often part of the -- viewed part of the building, and

its pediments above. >> the east porter co and plaza of the building is surrounded at the top by the east pediment sculpted by herbert macneil. he was given a lot of rain to design his own ideas for the sculpture, and he shows on the -- he chose for the eastern side eastern side to look toward the eastern traditions of law for his figures. the central figure is moses, and then on either side are confucius and solon, the greek lawgiver. on either side are allegorical figures, various aspects of the lot and authority. e law and authority. but cornice on either end, the allegory of the tortoise and the hair, the idea that the slow pace of justice or tortoise carries through in the work of the court and will win the day of the fast pace of the hare. above the pet -- below the pediment is the statement, ed justice, the gardening and of liberty.

-- justice, the guardian of liberty. that is what charles evans hughes wrote. i rather prefer just as the garden of liberty rather than the one of the architects' firm had suggested. ♪ >> on the opposite side of the supreme court is the west plaza, the traditional public interest -- entrance to the building, and also a place where many express their feelings about the court and the constitution. >>what we want? >> i am not sure that gilbert intended to be a convenient site for protest. and taft, heavily involved in the design, did not intended for that purpose. i understand people having strong feelings about some of the things that we do and we are involved in, but it is not a such a wish and where our decision should be guided by popular pressure.

the protests to some extent are there is a way for people to express their feelings but not directed and should not be directed at us. you would not want us deciding what the constitution mean based on what the popular feeling is. quite often in many of our most famous decisions, ones that the court took that were quite unpopular, and the idea that we should feel to what the public -- we should yield to what the public protest this is quite foreign to what it means to have a country under the rule of law. >> sitting at the top of the west plaza is the traditional entrance to the supreme court. due to ongoing security concerns, the court decided in may 2010 to close the symbolic bronze doors as an entrance. still allowing people to exit the building from here. in a statement critical of the decision, justice stephen brier -- breyer said in part, "while i recognize the reason for this change, on balance i do not believe they justify it." in making this decision, it is

important not to undervalue these symbolic and historic importance of allowing visitors to enter the court after walking up gilbert's famous front steps. as you look up from the steps of the west plaza, you see another symbolic pediment. this one pays tribute to both the history of the law and those in trickle to the building's -- some of those and circle to the buildings -- some of those intregal to the building's construction. >> what you see in the west pediment or allegorical figure. the central figure is liberty enthroned. the other figures represented are those that participated in the construction of the building. and also the history of the court. the architect is represented. chief justice taft is represented while he attended yale.

you also have john marshall represented as a young man. chief justice hughes is represented. even the sculptor, robert aitken, is represented in that frieze. to the and just under the -- >> and just under the pediment of the words "equal justice under law." it was approved by chief justice hughes. the words of taken on a larger -- the words have taken on a larger meaning since then. >> fell off of the blind in certain respects. -- justice ought to be blind in certain respects. the sense that communicates is the sense that communicates is that one can stand