the u.s. with tom lee. thursday, a look back 100 years at german u-boat campaigns during world war i starting with the u-boat tack. -- attack. on friday descendants of truman mckinley johnson share their stories. watch american history t.v. this week in primetime on c-span 3. >> we have news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, we look at the role of women in the 2018 campaign. and then democratic strategist donna brazil on how the democratic party is trying to appeal to female voters in

campaign 2018. and liz mayer tries to talk about the republican parties's ef -- party's effort to attract female voters. join the discussion on tuesday morning. >> caroline shapiro is the co-director on the supreme court of college law and joining us on a historical perspective on supreme court nominations. you wrote about the hearing process, but if you applied it to the confirmation process overall, you said it is -- it is exciting and part disappointment. what did you mean by that? >> in part it is aspect cal. it is exciting to hear this person who may become a supreme court, get a sense of who they are in terms of their public personality and intelligence. i think that is regardless of

who the nominating president is. it is frustrating because the nominees don't tell us things that people really want to know. >> has that been a constant theme of those appearing for -- ap peering before the -- appearing before the senate or is that a more recent thing? to some extent the more recent thing and to some extent there's somal -- historical patterns that play. they would say how they would vote if they hadn't previously spoken about that matter. but they talk more openly about well-established precedence. they talk more openly about things they have previously written about and they talk more openly about general judicial philosophy. >> kagan wrote a book on this. she said highlighting the bork

hearings presented to the public the roll of -- the role of the court. subsequent hearings has presented a hallow charade where personal anti-doets -- anti--- antic doets. can you expand on that? >> i don't think that is accurate. between 1987 and 1993, there was a pretty sophisticated discussion about the philosophy in the hearings. if you look at justice ginsburg who is often touted as creating the ginsburg rule that you shouldn't say anything actually talked about a lot of different cases and points of law and expressed her opinions about them. justice thomas talked about the role of natural in his

understanding of the constitution. they may not have said specifically how they would vote on particular matters if they had not talked about those in their writings or speeches, but they talked a lot about how they thought about the constitution and how they thought about law. in the new millennium, 2005 and going forward, we have seen a shift. the nominees have moved away even from herring their judicial -- from sharing their judicial philosophy. if aed head -- go ahead. >> please go. >> we don't get much of a sense of what motivates each nominee's approach to the law. they say things like, all i do is call balls and strikes as if there is something subjective about law that all you have to do is look at it long enough and

hard enough to determine the right answer. it is the hard cases, the cases most of us care about in the supreme court, are the cases that involve a lot of judgment, they have ideological components, it weighs their principles and answers. there is no right answer that can be deduced. >> caroline shapiro is here to talk about historical perspective on the confirmation process for the supreme court. you can call us. and independents can call as well. so everything that you talked about previous, talk about the recent round of confirmations -- confirmation hearings what history has taught us and what we saw applied during what we heard from juf. >> -- judge kavanaugh. >> the difference between judge

kavanaugh and justice gorsuch is how they talked about the case of brown v. board of education. judge gorsuch was reluctant to say that you thought brown was rightly decided. he eventually said it but he circled around it a lot. i think the reason he was uncomfortable saying that is because he didn't want to talk about other cases and whether they were rightly decided. kavanaugh was more forthright about brown and more forthright than justice gorsuch about his judicial philosophy, but all of that came eclipsed by two other things. one is the senate democrats's concerns about previous testimony that he had given in his earlier confirmation hearings and things he did in the bush white house, and, of course, dr. ford's allegations and everything that happened

after that. so, in a sense although there was some serious discussion about judicial philosophy, it was overshadowed by all of this other stuff. >> when it comes to judge kavanaugh himself, you were part of a letter that went out opposing the nomination? >> that's right. after his testimony at the reopening of the hearing after dr. ford testified his demeanor his temperment, his extreme partisanship struck me and thousands of other law professors as inappropriate. a letter was circulated, and i believe in the end more than 2,400 law professors signed it. i was one of them. >> how about how the court handles scandal during the confirmation process? >> well, there are two other examples that i can think of historically. one is justice thomas, of

course, who had to -- had to deal with sexual harassment. i think justice thomas works very hard at maintaining good relations between the justices, and that's not just for the sake of having good relations that's for the sake of being able to do the work and talk to each other about hard questions of law. they would maintain a minimum cordial, if not warm, relationships among themselves. there's a lot of specks that -- speculation that justice thomas's experience led him to harden his views. he says -- he doesn't seem to be interested in enganling with his -- engaging with his colleagues on a substantive level about the law and it is impossible to know if that has anything to do what he found to be a pretty scarring experience in his hearing, but it might.

the other example is justice gorsuch -- the justice in the 1960's who was nominated by president johnson to be the chief justice when justice warren stepped down. there were a lot of questions about some of his ethical lapses or concerns about etsdz ka cal -- ethical lapses including the advice with giving people jobs at the executive branch. he was -- even primarily because of those concerns. the filibuster had a lot do with his views of race and on voting rights and on criminal procedure, he was filibustered by conservatives many he did step down under an ethical cloud. he did not stay on the court

after a scandal -- maybe that's an overstatement, but a confirmation hearing that brought to light a lot of different views on his ethics. >> carolyn shapiro is here with us. troy is on the republican line with caroline shapiro. >> good morning. it is interesting that justice fortis was brought up. it has been a couple of years since i read "the brethren" but i was wondering if ms. shapiro could go over the attempts in the 1970's by the nixon administration, i think, to try to impeach -- i'm forgetting the justice now. he goes back to f.d.r.

justice douglas. >> justice douglas was extremely -- i think he could be the longest-serving justice on the court. he was famously extreme lyly further lacked any other justice according to many scales as people measure them. the interesting thing about justice douglas is that he was personally something of a wild man. he was certainly known as a woman eiser, among other -- womanizer, among other things. when he was confirmed, he didn't have a confirmation hearing because that didn't happen back in those days. the stories that he told about himself and his biography turned out not to be true. so in later years there's been some pretty fascinating biographical work about the things that he said about himself that turned out to be untrue. in today's world that couldn't

happen. you couldn't create a false biography for yourself and be nominated and then confirmed to the supreme court. >> from the california, the independent line. kathleen, good morning. >> good morning. your last comment makes me more interested in the idea advice and consent. yesterday eleanor clinton said how do we know there hasn't been another allegation since the clarence thomas hearing? this whole weaponizing of the process and i think a lack of respect of the process is curious. what would bring this kind of national disgrace that we have seen in the last two weeks?

>> well, it is not actually clear these things have to be handled confidentially. there is a process to handle certain types of allegations or issues raised in a sort of an executive session by the committee and in a sort of more confidential way. but there's no rule that says an allegation of sexual abuse can't be discussed publicly, and then of course, it is not unique to either justice thomas or now justice kavanaugh to have allegations related to someone's personal life come out during their confirmation process. justice kagan, for example, had to have college friends go on t.v. and talk to the press about her sexual orientation which you know, really shouldn't necessarily have mattered at all, but there was a lot of rumors circulating that had -- a number of people who who known her for many years said

publicly, no. but that certainly must have been embarrassing for her. i don't think it is unique to this particular process that we have embarrassing details or allegations come out. i think it would have been much better for dr. ford's allegations to have been handled initially by the fbi in its initial investigation and some determinations could have been made about how to go forward. but i don't think it is necessarily improper for the country as a whole to know if there's a seriouses allegation of misconduct against a nominee. >> next up, mary lou, independent line. >> yes, good morning everyone. i am 86 years old. i was born the year franklin roosevelt took power, and roosevelt was going to cut the

cord with all democrats and that was a big worry then. well so, we got over that. i mean, i've lived through roosevelt, kennedy nixon, johnson, reagan, everybody and it all p comes out in the -- and it all comes out in the wash, and i don't know another thing with this past experience with brett kavanaugh. he said that he is -- i worked for the court for ten years and they do go with precedent. they look in their law books and see what happened from another case that is like that and that's what they do stick to that. >> okay, mary lou thanks. >> juf talked -- judge kavanaugh talked a lot about precedent which is why the senators asked

him about roev. wade. they have these conversations about precedent and he says he respects precedent and, of course, i'm sure that's true, but the supreme court can and does overrule long-standing -- they did it in the past term in two different cases and in close votes, as a matter of fact. so the supreme court is uniquely situated when it comes to precedent in that the powers overrule precedents in a way that lower courts don't. to say you respect precedent as a nominee doesn't really tell us what you're going to do with what precedents you think about. >> you talked about the process of testifying how did robert bork affect the process? >> well, everybody thinks -- the conventional wisdom that what happened with judge bork, he talked openly about his

judicial philosophy, answered questions candidly. some people would say he was unfairly defeated, some people would say he was fairly defeated since his philosophy was different. i think that what -- the impact is actually much more subtle than that because in the years following judge bork's nomination through 1995, nominees did speak pretty candidly about their judicial philosophy and what they thought. what changed after bork was the attitude about what the other side, for lack of a better word is wlky to do about a -- about nominees that they don't like. on the right, judge bork is a rallying cry and people -- many people right, believed that what happened to him was unfair and that began a process of

degrading the confirmation process and making it politicized. that's not historically accurate. only if you look back to say to justice marshall in their hearings, there was just as much effort to politicize and to go after them as happened with judge bork. if you go back to the founding, in fact early nominees frequently defeated that didn't like their judicial philosophy and ideology. i think judge bork's testimony and his hearing afebruaried the process in terms of people's perceptions much more. >> if you go to our web site, there is video there of judge bork's testimony before the senate judiciary committee. to show you a little bit of it during the confirmation process, he was asked about his views on the tenth amendment, that power should be put to the people or

the states. here's part of judge bork's answer. >> well, i think, that was what i was discussing when i discussed the commerce clause expanded in ways that is too late for a judge to go back and tear up. i think the framers had a rather clear idea that these powers were limited and that -- and, indeed, the government operated for that -- that way for a long while. the fact is, beginning with the civil war, up through the new deal the idea that those powers were limited and not really national in scope got lost, and now we are operating in a way in which the tenth amendment, i am sorry to say, has almost no practical significance and i

don't really see how given what has happened to the way the nation has grown. >> i wanted to see if you had any input on that. >> well, that's an example of judge bork truly saying that although he thinks it is wrong it would be hard to turn back the clock on various precedent. it wasn't clear in his testimony, to be honest, whether many of the cases that he thought were wrongly sdoided, which included, for example, griswald, which protected people's right to have access to contraception. it wasn't that he thought it was wrongly decided that he would vote to overrule them. those are two different questions. he did say a lot of things that are really quite remarkable and really, i think, inconsistent with what most americans felt comfortable with. for example, he talked about rights being something of a zero

sum game. so if one person has rights, that doesn't necessarily mean that other people have fewer rights, which is not necessarily an approach when it comes to individual rights that most americans would -- would embrace. >> this is from west virginia, republican line, madei lynch ene. hello. >> hello. thanks for taking my call. i just want to say regardless of how people talk about judge kavanaugh, if they could not treat that man the way they talked and treated him, i can't see how anyone could say they were christians or that they had

a heart when you can talk about someone like the had a heart democrats criticized him. they criticized him like he was a nobody, and everybody knows he's very, very smart. >> is there a history about people coming out right off the bat once a nominee is named about whether they will say what we saw through this process playing out? >> to some extent, sure. there were southern democrats, for example in the 1950's and 1960's, and some republicans, like senator thurmond, who would come out publicly with any nominee who supported brown v. board of education in fact, the early hearings in the 1950's and

1960's are almost made up exclusively with those who might agree with brown v. board of education. what we have seen recently -- the idea this is new or is different in terms of how nominees are treated, i think it is really quite inaccurate. >> our guest served as the former illinois solicitors general. the founder and co-director of the chicago's institute on the supreme court of the united states. a little bit about the institute, please. >> sure. so we started in 2011. we're committed to public education about the supreme court and to having some academic symposiums symposiums and conferences at the law school itself. we've had several justices visit the law school. justice scalia, justice pryor -- breyer and justice stevens.

we have law which you can find by googling it. we try to keep people abreast of what's happening at the supreme court. at a level that would of interest the sort kaetd observer -- educated observer but not in a terrible lawyerly way. >> a call from whiches whiches. >> i was wondering if has there been a member of the other party that with held things until the last week of the vote. and if you accused me of rape -- he was calm compared to the way i would be reacting. you can't accuse someone of something and not expect them to fight back. i'll hang up and listen. >> i don't think it is true that we don't expect people to stay calm when they are accused of things. we expect criminals to stay calm

and it cludz those who -- includes those who may have been wrongly accused. i'm not that sympathetic to the way that judge kavanaugh expressed his emotions was appropriate or understand. i understand him being angry but him being rangery -- angry at the senators. minimum wage if a prosecutor did that in a courtroom. that won't go well. we expect them to behave with a measure of decorum. >> hello, caller. what is your comment or question? >> i just recently learned that the supreme court is made up of six catholic judges and three jewish judges, and i am -- i am questioning why more people

don't talk about that. >> why do you think it is important to consider? >> well, i don't -- well, i don't know. it just seems like they would all be bent in the same direction, although it certainly doesn't look like it anymore. >> ms. shapiro, does religion have anything to do with the confirmation hearing? >> i don't think it -- i don't think it is appropriate to say that we have to have any kind of religious quota. it would be unkoounl if there -- unconstitutional if there was some sort of religion necessary. someone's backgrounds form their judicial philosophy, and so those things can be related to their religious backgrounds. and we have heard nominees talk about their religious backgrounds as a source of how

it affected their lives. >> what was your -- what about ruth bader ginsburg stood out? >> what everybody says is that she created the ginsburg rule which means that nominees will not give a hint of how they will likely rule. actually, what the standout feature of her testimony is how much she did say. she talk a lot about roe v.waede, and -- wade. she didn't say anything new that people on the committee won't have known about her. but she was wlky to explore -- she was willing to explore that and she talked about whether they were rightly or wrongly decided. in recent years nominees have not been wlky to be that cap-and-trade -- not that

willing to be that candid. >> here is ruth bader ginsburg. >> you ask me about my thinking about this individual and my answer to you is it is -- it is both. this is something central to a woman 's woman's life, to her dignity. it is a decision she must make for herself. and when government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully -- less than a full human responsible for her own choices. >> i also appreciate that you present this as not only the approach but as an option that

was looked at. equal protection -- the equal protection argument, though. would -- since this may infer a right to choose on the woman or could, would it also follow that the father would be entitled to a right to choose in this regard or some rights in this regard? >> that was an issue left open in roe v. wade. but if i recall correctly, it was closed in casey, in the court most recent decision, there were a series of regulations that the court dealt with and, as i remember, it upheld most of them but it struck down one of them with

what the notice to the -- to the husband and has something to do with a matter that the chairman raised earlier. i think there was an indication in that opinion that marriage and family life is not always all that we might wish it to be and that there are women whose physical safety, even their lives, would be endangered if the law required them to notify the -- their partners. >> as you said, ms. shapiro, what was the response, do you recall? >> i actually don't recall what came after she said that. it wasn't a surprise to anybody

that she thought that r.o.e. -- roe v. wade was decided. one of the things did hes appointing to me about judge kavanaugh's testimony is that he backed away from things that he previously wrote about publicly. for example, he said previously that he thought justice -- in roe v. wade was a great opinion. at his hearing he backed away from endorsing that opinion. again, even if he thought it was wrongly decided doesn't commit him to overruling it but he, in my opinion, should have been wlky to say, yes, that is what i think. i think it was wrongly decided and i think justice rehnquist was krebt. >> again, carolyn shapiro.

the pennsylvania line. go ahead. >> have the -- had the allegations had been nonsexual, for instance, fraud. would the investigation have taken a different tone as opposed to what i hear is that because it was sexual it was pushed under the rug. but had there been another type of allegation, would the investigation have gone a different way? >> well, i will say there are two different ways of thinking about that. one is that, of course, it is impossible to minimum wage that -- it is impossible to imagine that his allegations have to do with what we're in, with the me too movement, with the anger by a lot of things that president trump has said and done with respect to women. the historical moment and the

cultural moment we're in -- we're in nervous people -- informs people's response. if there was concern about that, that could be just as major a scandal. in fact, there were a lot of people who wanted to know more about juf's -- judge kavanaugh's finances, people concerned he didn't fully answer those questions. but there -- i think it is entirely possible that such those questions. but there -- i think it is entirely possible that such allegations hypothetically. i'm not making allegations about judge kavanaugh's financings, but -- finances, but i do that could lead to a big scandal. >> from latonya from texas on the democrats's line. >> i am the chair of the local democratic party and i'm very involved and i'm very upset

about the confirmation of kavanaugh. he is a rapist, and you know, i'm very upset about -- so what i would like to know is what the democratic party is going to do about this. because i just can't stand this happening. i would like to know what is the democratic party going to do about this? >> caller, ms. shapiro, the impeachment process or impeaching someone on the supreme court over the last few days by legislators and others alike. could you give us input? >> the house first would have to vote to impeach, which is like an indictment. they would do an investigation. they would determine if they thought the allegations were true and if true were worthy of impeachment.

if the senate decided it was, then the case would then go to the senate and the senate would have to decide whether or not to remove the judge or in some cases the president, or other officials from their office, and they can only remove -- be removed by a two-thirds vote of the senate. impeachment by a democratic controlled house of judge kavanaugh is not implausible, but if i can -- i can't speak for the democratic party, but it appears there's an interest on the part of some democrats to at least investigate some of the things that judge kavanaugh said further. and it is not actually limited to the things he said about dr. ford's allegations. that includes things he said about things he did while in the bush white house, things that he said that may or may not be confirmed or refuted by documents that have yet to be released by the national

archives but will be released by the national archives, and there are a lot of people certainly senate democrats, even before these allegations that felt brett kavanaugh was not being candid. >> you can watch -- we will take you now to the east room to the white house where president trump will hold the ceremonial swearing in for supreme court associate justice brett kavanaugh. and that will get underway shortly. he was sworn in by the chief justice at the court over the weekend. senators are arriving, including the majority leader, mitch mcconnell.