there is already reaction on feeling justice scalia's vacant seat, a statement from the senate majority leader efforts of his condolences to the family. and senate minority leader harry reid as his condolences. >> the reality is the best presidents, the greatest presidents have been willing to recognize they were not the smartest person in the room. and to surround themselves with people they felt were smarter than themselves. announcer: sunday night on q and

a, former director of the cia discusses his book a passion for leadership, lessons on change and reform from 50 years of public service. he served under several presidents, most recently george w. bush and barack obama. >> at the end of the cold war when i was director of central intelligence, i came to believe very strongly that the american pathe had given the cia a on a lot of things because of this existential conflict with the soviet union. and i believe after the end of the cold war, we were going to have to be more open about what we did and why we did it, and even to an extent, how we did it to help the american people better understand why intelligence was important to the government and to presidents , and why presidents valued it. announcer: sunday night at eight eastern on q and a. announcer: supreme court justice

antonin scully a has died -- antonin scalia has died. he was 79. he was interviewed in 2014. he spoke about the role of the court, the job of supreme court justices, the process they used to reach a discussion -- decision, and arguing. this is just over 30 minutes. associate justice antonin scully a -- scalia, would you discuss what the role and responsibility of a supreme court justice is? to comescalia: to try out the right way on cases that the court has agreed to hear. and also, secondly -- and this is the only respect in which the job differs from the job of a

court of appeals judge, to decide on which cases the court should agree to hear. there are essentially two functions areas the latter is prior, decide what to put on our docket, and speculate what is on the docket, try to get it right. susan swain: what is the supreme court saying in society today, and it hasn't changed over your tenure -- has it changed over your tenure? justice scalia: i do not think it has changed. its proper role is in democracy to give a fair and honest interpretation to the meaning of dispositions that the people have adopted, it either congress in statute or the people when they ratify the constitution. lesse as that, no more, no . i think we are a leader of social causes. we are not pushing the society

ahead the way you were supposed to be interpreting the law for the people they have made. susan swain: what do you like best about the job? justice scalia: justice scalia: what do i like best? i like figuring out the right answer to legal questions, believe it or not. and not everybody does. i think some people have left, become an appellate judge, they find it quite unsatisfying when they get there. you have to have a rather work mind to wantrped to spend your life they bring out the answer to legal questions. it is a very isolated job. -- the only time you see people from the outside is when you are listening to arguments from counsel. other than that, it is very ,isembodied, intellectual work

probably most closely resembles the work of a law professor, which is what i was before i was here, so i am no more unhappy than i was before. susan swain: after two decades of doing it, is there any aspect of the job, if you had a choice to pass on to somebody else and avoid? justice scalia: i think undoubtedly, in my mind, the most -- what should i say? onerous and for the most part on interesting part of the job -- on interesting part of the job is an rolling court cases. when i first arrived, if i am correct it was something about 5000 a year. no is approaching 10,000. 10,000.t is approaching every one of them we have to

consider, if not by reading the actual petitions, we rarely do that, by reading the summaries of the petitions law clerks have prepared. 10,000 of those a year, that is not a lot of fun. susan swain: with the increasing number of petitions, why always 80 to 100 numbers a year? justice scalia: we have been averaging actually 75. linenumber is not out of with other supreme courts in other jurisdictions do. i think we could do more than a hundred 75 -- we can do more than 75. i don't think we could do 150. hy? your guess is as good as mine. i certainly have not changed my standards for deciding what cases we should take, and i don't think my colleagues have.

if i had to guess, i would say that what has happened is that in my early years on the court, , it was ad years ago lot of major new legislation that had recently been enacted, -- bankruptcy code, marissa there is not that much major legislation in recent years. and new legislation is the principal generator of successful petitions, because it takes 10 years or so to get all of the ambiguities in the statute result. d. resolve that is our main job. we don't take cases because they were decided wrong. becausely take cases the analysis of the courts below reflect disagreement on the

meaning of federal law. and you can't have two different federal laws in different parts of the country, so we will take one or both of those cases. as i say, those have been on significant questions, which have been rare in recent years. we do not always sit down at the end of the term and say, how many cases do you want to take? 120? that is not what happens. they trickle in, we vote on those we think are worthy of our consideration. the last few years, at the end of the term they have been adding up to about 75 or so. susan swain: when you make those decisions, are you aware at the time which ones will be the blockbuster cases? justice scalia: usually. you can usually tell which ones pertain to a major piece of legislation, a legislation that is a major impact on society, sure. susan swain: does it affect your decision process? justice scalia: not mine.

you may have to talk to other people, but i don't think it does. i put in as much blood, sweat, and tears on big went as i do little ones -- the big ones as the little ones. people ask which site you have been on the bench, you would not want to know. it is a relatively insignificant case. it was relatively hard to figure out. there is no relationship whatever between how important it is and how hard it is. susan swain: can you tell me now that you have discussed it? justice scalia: you don't want to know. susan swain: i would like to ask the clerks role in what you do. you have had many of them over the years. do you stand with them? justice scalia: we have an class kirk -- clerk reunion. it is great to see them.

it is one of the most enjoyable parts of the job. you work closely with four young people every year. there are new ones every year, full of them and vigor, they are not jaded. it is all new to them. it rubs off on you. and you work closely with them over the year and you become very close. and they go off. it is like acquiring four new nieces and nephews every year, none of whom will be a failure. doy all go off to significant things. it is fun to follow their careers. susan swain: what jobs -- how do you use them? justice scalia: i can say how i do it, but that isn't necessarily how the others do. i let them take the cases they want to work on. something like an nfl draft,

first pick, second pick areas i figure they are less likely to do cases they are not interested in. so i let them take the cases. i usually discussed the case very briefly with a law clerk who has chosen it before oral argument. and after oral argument, i sit down with that clerk and the other three, who know something about the case but not as much as the clerk who really is responsible for it. and we take it around for as long as it takes. it could take an hour or two. and then, if i am assigned to thatpinion or the dissent, clerk will normally do a first draft of it all. what is supposed to be in it, he will write it out and i will put it up on my screen and take it apart and put it back together. not, i tell them at the reunions, i am indebted

to my law clerks for a lot of the quality of the work that comes out of my chambers. i could not do as well without the assistance of brilliant young people. susan swain: in a week when the court is in session, how many hours you spend in the court? justice scalia: i have no idea. susan swain: 40 hours, 60 hours? justice scalia: one of the nice things or the non-nice things, you do not have to be here to be working. i could, and some judges on the court of appeals do only come into court when there is oral arguments. i could do this job from home. the main thing it would deprive me of is consultation with my law clerks. it would deprive them of my company too. so i like to come in. it has no relationship with how many hours i am putting in.

i never counted the hours in the week, but i almost always worked weekends. not all weekend, every weekend, but some of the weekend every week. susan swain: is there ever really a break in the summertime? justice scalia: yeah, the summertime is great. we clean our plate before we leave at the end of june, so it is really a summer without guilt. the only work we have to do over the summer is it stay on top of theren petitions because is a monster conference at the end of the summer to vote on all of the circuit petitions that have accumulated during the summer. you've got to stay on top of them. that is a manageable job. for the rest of them, we have continued to function the way all three branches of the federal government used to function. the used to be concerted, there would be nobody here. -- deserted.

there would be nobody here. now we all come back in september to get ready for the arguments in october. during the summer, you have time to do some of the reading you did not have time to do during the court term, and to sort of regenerate your batteries. susan swain: you ventas that the court has -- mentioned that the court has retained what the other branches used to have. the court is also quite well-known for other traditions. a few came to mind, including the courtroom itself, the selected formal address. i wonder why they matter to the process and why they are retained in 2009? thinke scalia: oh, i traditions in a way define an

institution. an institution is respected when it is venerable tradition, and certainly one of the remarkable things about the court it has been here doing this job for 220 years. remind,traditions remind people of that fact. you know, i guess we could sit in a bus station and not wear robes but just business suits or even tank tops, but i don't think that creates the kind of image you want for the supreme court of your country. susan swain: on the road, looking at a little bit of successesour earliest here, you did not wear them? justice scalia: did not wear robes? susan swain: according to the documents. justice scalia: john j, over your shoulder, was the first

chief justice, and that was before 1800. he is wearing a glorious robe, not just black but black and red , but what you told me is news to me. susan swain: i will go with john but let's say it is 2009 and tank tops aside, what is the symbolism behind the rope -- robe? why do people continue to wear them in our society? justice scalia: i'm sure we could do our work without the roads, without this glorious that you are designing to have this conversation in. the roads are like the building, in part to the people who come , the is the significance importance of what goes on here. that is nothing new. public goings don't look like bus stations. we should not.

-- they should not. susan swain: this is a symbol of the american initial process internationally. when you come to work here, are you conscious of that when you drive up here after doing it for such a long time? being part of the american judicial process? justice scalia: i can't say it is in the middle of my mind. i usually thinking about what case i am working on that day. you get used to it. you take stuff for granted that maybe you should not, but i take for granted working in his glorious building, i take for granted wearing a robe when i go out on the bench. susan swain: when you have the opportunity and it is quiet around here, are the special places in this building where you might reflect on the history? justice scalia: not really. i hang out in my chambers most of the time. the center of the building, what is really the reason the building is here is the audience

chamber, where we all argue. as the august nature of that chamber suggest, we have a ceiling so high you can barely see it from the ground. that is the center of the court, of course. susan swain: let's talk about what goes on in that court and the process of oral argument can you talk about how you use oral argument and white, in fact when there is so much paper before hand on making all of these cases, oral argument is even needed? justice scalia: a lot of people have the impression it is just a pony show. aread and 60 page brief by petitioner, a 60 page brief by the respondent, a reply brief, some very often by the solicitor general. a dozen other because briefs, not all of which which i will passages i have seen

where there is nonsense in the margin -- what someone can tell me in half an hour will make a difference. the answer is it is probably quite rare, although not unheard but it is quite common that i go in with my mind not made up . a lot of these cases are very close. you go in on a knife's edge. persuasive counsel can make the difference. there are things you can do with oral argument that can't be done in a brief. you can convey the relative importance of your various points. sometimes, so you have four points and one of them is very complicated. it is not the most important, it takes a third of your brief. a week ago,ur brief

i have a misconception of your case. veryth the oral argument, often the third point, the difficult point may be the first point you address in your brief because that is the logical order. you put jurisdiction last, it is first. -- you don't put jurisdiction last, you put it first. even if it is the most complicated, in oral argument , wecan say, "your honors have five points that are worth your attention, but what it comes down to, that they point here." ectomy a difference. -- it can make a difference. counsel, is there some reason why this point is not nonsense? sometimes, they can tell you. so i am a big proponent of oral argument. it is very important. you would be surprised how much

probing can be done within half an hour, an awful lot. susan swain: what is the quality of the council who come before you? justice scalia: you know, to chiefs ago, chief justice burger used to talk about low quality of counsel. i used to have just the opposite reaction. disappointed that there were so many of the best minds in the country who were being devoted to this enterprise. -- a public defender from quahog, and this woman is really brilliant. why is she not out inventing the automobile or doing something productive for the society? lawyers after all don't produce anything. they enable other people to

produce and go on with their lives efficiently in an atmosphere of freedom. that is important, but it does not put food on the table. there have to be other people that are doing that. i worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise. maybe here in the court, maybe the ones who will only argue once and never come again, i'm usually impressed with how good they are. sometimes you get one that is not so good. by and large, i don't have any complaints about the quality of counsel except maybe we are wasting our best minds. -- how can i put it in another way? law clerks of law firms spent enormous amounts of money to get the very, very brightest.

there is a small amount of difference between that guy and the next, but it is worth it because the law is complicated and complex. the legal system probably should not put such a premium on brands, but it does. lawyers are really good. lawyers generally are smart people. susan swain: moving on to the next stage, content. can you tell about how that looks -- talk about how that looks? tooice scalia: i can't talk much, but if we sit down together and there is nobody else in the room -- i am not giving away anything because chief justice rehnquist wrote a book in which he acknowledged the conference is probably a misnomer. it is not an occasion on which we try to persuade one another, very few minds are changed in conference. states his or her

and how he orse she votes right around the table. and if in the middle of somebody's presentation you disagree with something that that person says, if when john stevens is speaking he says, weight john, why do you say that? or if it did happen, you do have your turn, john. when we get all around, at the end you can speak a second time and raise somebody's question, but it is not really an exercise in persuading each other. it is an exercise in stating your views and the rest of us take notes. and that is its function. you get assigned to the opinion, you know how to write it in a way that will get at least four other votes beside your own. that is the principal function.

susan swain: when it comes to said inopinions, steve our conversation that he worked fair to be fair with the dissolution -- distribution of assignments. are you able to lobby if you are particularly interested in a case? justice scalia: i wanted to if i could. , i likerare occasion that case. i bet more than three times i have been on the court -- i pretty much take what i am given. both of the chiefs that i have served under tried to be fair in badng you good ones and ones. sometimes, what they think is a good opinion you don't think is a good opinion. chief justice rehnquist used to love fourth amendment cases involving searches and seizures. i just hated those.

jury question, whether this variation is among reasonable search and seizure, reason number 542. yeah, i will write the opinion, but i don't consider it a plus. chief justice rehnquist thought he was entitled to give you a dog. susan swain: you are a writer. you have written two books now, is that correct? justice scalia: two books. susan swain: two? wedding is something it seems you enjoy. justice scalia: you don't want to be an appellate judge if you are not good at writing. susan swain: do you enjoy writing in exchange for the precise words -- justice scalia: as i have put it, i don't enjoy writing, i enjoy having written. a very muchen

difficult process. i rewrite, i write again. out,e the opinion goes clerks say it is going out this afternoon, do you want to read it one last time? yeah, i will read it one last time. almost every time i will change it something else. it has to be wrestled from my grasp and sent down to the printer. writer, butt a fast i think writing is a job that is worth the time you spent on it. susan swain: as technology in this time here made the process easier? justice scalia: we have word processors when i arrived, so i cannot say it has made it easier. i had wordprocessors when i was a law professor. job of writing, especially when you are editing someone else's first draft, in a misleading or simple.

simple.ously more you don't have to write balloons. you just highlight the part you want taken out, bang, it is gone. he put in the new parts, bang, it is in. susan swain: when you strongly disagree with someone's opinion, how do you keep it from being personal? justice scalia: you just criticize the argument and not the person. and an ad hominem argument is addressed to the argument, not the person. i feel justified in whacking the argument as hard as it deserves. that is not in feuding the individual that made the thement -- impuning individual that made the argument. susan swain: do you prefer opinion rather than dissent?

justice scalia: of course. dissent is more fun to write, because when you have dissent, it is yours. you say what you want. it is my was to join, dissent, i will say what i want to say. with majority, you do not have that luxury. you got to craft it in a way that at least four other people can jump on and actually -- you try to craft it in a way with as many people as possible to jump on. which means accepting some suggestions, stylistic and otherwise that you do not think is the best, but nonetheless in order to get everybody on board, you take them. susan swain: we have a few minutes left. we are talking at a time when the court will leave a a member and accept a new one. how does this change during the process? justice scalia: the institution does not change at all.

i think the relationships change, you lose a friend, and hopefully acquire another one on this famous states. -- stage. he sat next to me on his whole time in the court. he'll -- depending on which side i was sitting on, left or right. , and weant companion chatted back and forth sometimes during argument for passing notes back and forth. he is an intelligent, interesting good man. so that changes. i miss a lot of my former colleagues on the court from byron white to gold renin. but that is the process. they go, people come in. susan swain: during your tenure, there have been seven new arrivals.

i was wondering, when you welcome you justices into the system, when it comes from the appeals court, is there any commission process that you go through your? -- that you go through here? justice scalia: not really. it is the same job as being an appellate judge on a lower court. you hear the argument, by the opinion. we have the job of deciding what we decide, which a district court of appeals judge does not have that burden or that luxury. you take whatever they bring you and you have to. but except for that additional part of the job, it is the same. anyone other exception, on lower courts, if there is a whole line of supreme court authority that you fundamentally a disagree with, it doesn't make it easy. you just say, i think it is stupid, but you follow it. you don't have to worry about

whether it ought to be changed. whereas on the highest court, if it is indeed a stupid line of cases, it is your stupid line of cases, and you have to decide if you leave it alone, decently refused to extend it any further , or do you try to get rid of the whole thing? you don't have to worry about that on the court of appeals. you do everything. susan swain: we are out of time. let's get some closing for the picture. for people that were from the supreme court, it is just an item in the newspaper, i wonder what you would like to say about this place, how it functions, what they really ought to know about the court. justice scalia: it is not dissing to this court, but more general but applies to this court and all others. you really can't judge judges unless you know the materials that they are working with.

you can't say, oh, this is a good decision. it was a good court simply because you liked the result. because you with a person won. we don't sit here to make the law, decide who gets to win. we decide under the law the people have adopted. and very often, if you are a good judge, you don't really like the result you are reaching. you would rather do the other side. a foolish law. in this job, it is garbage in, garbage out. if it is a foolish law, you are bound by law to give a foolish result, because it is not your job to decide what is foolish and not. people across the street will do that. don't judge judges unless you take the trouble to see which provisions were issued and what they were trying to reconcile and whether they did and honest job of reconciling

them. in the words of the law in a fair fashion. that is what counts. that is what you want your judges to do. is note a judiciary that worth much. you have a judiciary that is just making the law instead of what people have decided. that is my advice. be slow to judge unless you know what they are working with. susan swain: thank you for spending time with us. justice scalia: my pleasure, thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] a look at the life of antonin scalia. also, the wilson center discusses the temporary cease-fire in syria reached by the u.s. in russia -- and russia. we will look for your calls and

facebook and twitter. >> the reality is, the best presidents, the greatest presidents have been willing to recognize they weren't the andtest person in the room, to surround themselves with people they felt were smarter than themselves. announcer: tonight on human day a" the former cia director discusses his new book. he served under george w. bush and barack obama. >> at the end of the cold war, when i was director of central intelligence, i came to believe very strongly that the american passe had given the cia a on a lot of things because of this existential conflict with the soviet union.

and i believe that after the end of the cold war, we were going to have to be more open about what we did and why we did it, and even to an extent, how we did it to help the american people better understand why intelligence was important to the government and to presidents , and why presidents value it. announcer: tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. supreme court justice antonin westa has died at texas ranch. justice scalia and ruth bader ginsburg talked about the court and meanings of freedom. they also discussed national security surveillance programs, cameras in the court, and their personal friendship. this interview was part of thekalb report. it was produced in partnership with the national press club and the