>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with debate analysis, the second presidential debate which took place last night in st. louis. we talked to jonathan karl of abc news, bob costa of "the washington post" and frank luntz, a republican strategist. >> trump had a debate performance that exceeded expectations, very low expectations of his party, so he stopped the bleeding to a degree, he didn't see an ex cues of republicans leaving him in the hours after the debate but he certainly has nowhere near turned his campaign, and the party has turned its resources to every other race except the presidential. >> rose: we continue can tom barrack who offers his insight into trump. >> he's saying, look, i deal in

an environment where i have to build constituencies, and in doing that i may have different points of view and portray them differently the to each constituency and may talk differently to each, but at the end of the day, good or bad, i'm a businessman. i've built businesses, lost businesses, capital gains taxes i paid, tax carry forwards and all this has become an issue, but at the end of the day, let's separate words from actions. >> rose: we conclude this evening with part one of a two-part conversation with associate justice ruth bader ginsburg of the united states supreme court. >> i went to the library and, inside of a month, i had read every law review article, every federal decision that had to do with gender-based differentials. it was no mean feat. there was precious little there and all of it was bad. all of it was -- whatever lines

based on gender that the law draws, it's okay with the courts. >> rose: politics and the court, when we continue. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with an analysis of the second presidential debate. hillary clinton and donald trump exchanged character attacks and accusations for 90 minutes at washington university in st. louis. moderators anderson cooper and

martha rat its fielded questions from voters in a town hall format. trump faced severe criticism after an 200 2005 video surfaced friday in which he makes lewd comments about women. in the debate trump expressed regret saying it was locker room talk but many thought it was bragging about sexual assault. many in his party withdrew their support, some calling for him to withdraw with from the raissments paul ryan said he would no longer back trump. according to a new nbc news "wall street journal" poll, clinton leads trump by a 14 points. a cnn poll found 57% of debate watchers thought clinton won, 34% said trump won. >> you bragged you sexual assaulted women. do you understand that?

>> i didn't say that. this was locker room talk. i'm not proud of it, i apologize to my family and the american people. certainly i'm not proud of it. >> he has said that the video doesn't represent who he is, but i think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is. it's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of donald trump is not in charge of the law in our country. >> because you would be in jail. secretary clinton -- ( audience reacts ) > did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying federal income tax >> is this of course, i do and so do all or most of her donors >> if you were president, what would you do about syria and the humanitarian crisis in aleppo and i want to remind you what your running mate said >> he and i have not spoken and i disagree. i think we should knock out

i.s.i.s. >> rose: joining me with bob costa from "the washington post," jonathan karl of abc news and frank luntz, founder and chairman of luntz global, a consulting and polling firm. pleads to have all of them. jonathan, after the release of the video and the debate and what paul ryan said this morning, where are we with respect to donald trump and his campaign and what might we expect the rest of the week >> is this we're at the point where the most powerful republican in the land will not defend his party's nominee or campaign for him. he technically said he unendorsed -- hasn't unendorsed him, i don't know what that looks like if that's not. trump had exceeded very low expectations in the debate >> rose: so he was better compared to the first >> yes, so he didn't see an exodus of more republicans leaving him in the hours after the debate, but he has certainly

not anywhere near turned his campaign away. as a practicicle matter, the party has turned its resources to every other race in the country except presidential >presidential i think jonathan is spot on. there is a sense the g.o.p. is box in because trump met the threshold in the sense he roused the republican base that for 25 years has been looking for a searing attack on the clintons that deeply personal and incendiary especially going after the former president's past. because trump did that, he excited a lot of the g.o.p. base, so the party leadership are reluck tapet to have a mass exodus. at the same time, the trump campaign is running almost not as part of the republican party. he is the standard bearer but he's running a populous outsider insurgency full of political stunts and pot shots that's different than anything we've

seen perhaps in history >> rose: frank, where are we? what was fascinating to me is all the angry republicans, the ted cruz-type republicans who moved to gary johnson were on the sidelines, they watched trump in the focus groups yesterday and moved toward him. he said what they needed to hear >> rose: attacking bill clinton? >> not in the personal way. the sense of accountability. the sense of saying what did you do with those e-mails, how do 30,000 of them disappear? the sense he was going to take on washington, d.c. i recognize -- and i'm not a trump apologist, i think he truly unders mind if not destroyed the american psyche and is going to take us decades to get out of this >> rose: what does tiflia look like today? -- i think he's going to philadelphia today. i'm not sure but i thought i saw pennsylvania >> a series of polls in pennsylvania show him down in double digits, and pennsylvania

is key to his strategy to putting together 270 electoral votes, but i think, charlie, we've gotten beyond that. i think pennsylvania is a state that is virtually lost to donald trump, even if he put in a stellar performance in that debate. right now, if you talk to republican leaders, it's about trying to keep this from being a catastrophic landslide loss that takes the house and the senate with him >> rose: you're saying most republicans believe this is an unreasonable election for donald trump? >> it's already lost >> rose: and they will do everything for their senate and house >> that and maybe you need to prop him up >> i don't believe that >> rose: you believe there is a path for him to win >> a narrow one >> rose: has to include pennsylvania >> and has to include

october 19. it means he needs a stellar performance without any of the histrionics or the personal attacks >> how does he do that? that's not part of the plan. he's never been able to do that. he's never had the discipline and focus. i am not a trump apologist, but we have called him dead -- he's truly a cat, but he's had nine lives, already >> rose: bob, what's the plan? i think the most telling scene i've covered if the last year came last night around midnight. he had steve bannon and rudy giuliani and kellyanne conway and other trump advisors piling one black suv here at weren't university in st. louis and they were actively talking about how the commission of presidential debates stopped them from putting women who accused president clinton and secretary clinton of things in the past including sexual assault and misconduct in the family box and

that this was something they were about to have as a stunt on national tv up until three minutes before the broadcast went live. this was on record from rudy giuliani. the plan was to have these women walk out and confront president clinton in that moment where usually the spouses shake hands. they wanted the women confronting president clinton. this was at the top to have the agenda of the trump campaign confirmed from both sides to have the discussion. this idea that the trump campaign is thinking of the party, i'm not really hearing that in my report, when i spoke to trump at saturday at length, he said the republican party doesn't mean that much. he thinks they'velogs in the past before because they don't have the guts, as he put it, to challenge the status quo and the clintsens. so this is a candidate and campaign consumed with their own agenda and strategy, not really thinking about what speaker ryan or mcconnell wants >> rose: let's go back to the plan you and dan balch wrote

about today, aim correct? >> yes >> rose: they wanted to put those women part of the press difference in the vip box. now, would they want them to be there where bill clinton was? what was the purpose and who stopped it >> frank farencob stopped it. rudy giuliani was going to escort them to the box, is that correct? >> they were going to be escorted to the box, but not only that, they were going to be the people who walk out instead of melania trump. it would have been four women to walk out to shake bill clinton's hand or see if he would shake their hand. if you remember last night the family vip boxes were elevated near the stage. they wanted the four women near secretary clinton before the

debate. this was nearly executed before a national television audience >> i was in the hall last night. the v.i.p. box, unlike the previous debate, were the only seats there on the stage on the actual stage. i mean, these were to close you could basically reach over and tap martha raddatz and anderson cooper on the shoulder. these were the four seats set aside for the family. they were going to put the four women, one who accused bill clinton of rape, there in that box on the stage in the eyesight of hillary clinton for the entire debate >> rose: the same box where bill clinton was sitting? >> the two boxes are separated but not by much. but each family had a box on each side >> rose: whose brain child was this, bob? bannon, trump? >> steve brannen former head of brite parenof -- breitbarten ney

giuliani and trump thinking of how to rattle hillary clinton >> insteathis is why you have 6% unfavorability rating, why 45% of americans could not even consider voting for him. this is the problem with the system right now. the system is so inherently broken, charlie, we're still 28 days from the election. what happens on day 29, on the day after? how are these people going to govern and talk to each other? how are they even going to sit in the same room? and the republicans are so divided now that paul ryan is not absolutely assured of being reelected speaker, that there are enough republicans that will vote against him >> and they're divided not just on donald trump and the personal baggage, you know, where were

you when in terms of the trump campaign, but they're divided on the fundamental issues that the party stands for. is this a party of free trade? is this a party of immigration reform? is this a party of entitlement reform? what does this party stand for? >> rose: is anybody undecided in this election at this point? >> no, they're uncommitted but not undecided. they decided who they're going to vote against but they will fight you on who they're going to vote for, which is what makes it fascinating >> rose: has it become, in the end, as the democrats hoped it would become, a referendum on donald trump? >> yeser, and donald trump has himself to blame for it. it was his language, bhairvetion tactics and antics that caused this to happen. the problem is you can't get over it. i cannot emphasize this enough. this has gone so deep into the public psyche that it's going to take years to rid ourselves of

this poison. >> the extraordinary thing is republicans see what an opportunity they had with hillary clinton perhaps the most flawed nominee democrats have put forward in modern times. you saw her apology on e-mails look about as sincere as donald trump's apology for anyone of his litany of things and you saw her inability to give an answer on what she was talking about in the goldman sachs speeches, her idea of public and private per persona, perhaps uh donald trump's best response where he invoked abraham lincoln. you saw a situation where obama care is facing severe crisis ant

dynamic of political campaigns is not happening. that dynamic is not occurring. what we're seeing right now is trump in conversations with the post-and others and his people are thinking the same way, they can't stand the media, the republican party around don't like the democratic party and they're disengaged from all three institutions and think there is a conspiratorial collusion among the three groups creating what frank has been referencing repeatedly that there is this psyche out there, not only a psyche, it's a large group of voters that are now disengaged from these institutions that have really held together american political life and where that goes i'm not sure but that's something that's actively happening and being stoked by trump. >> so we have to not allow him on the night of the election to use the phrase, this election was rigged because, if he does, there will be, i think you will agree, tens of millions of

people who will believe him and never accept the new administration, forget the money moon, that there will be no affirmations of democracies as we know it which is that the loser accepts the loss and embraces the winner. >> he was talking about putting her in jail in the presidential debate. just allow that moment to sink in. i mean, to see him say that he would -- >> rose: and call her a liar about ten times during the debate. with respect to the russians, any news with respect to how the u.s. government and the f.b.i. and the national security council and n.s.a. see the actions of the russians? >> the intelligence community has come out with their finding that it was the russians, that it almost certainly had to be approved by the most senior level of the russian government. the big question is now what, what do they do about it? i don't see -- you know, i don't think that's clear at all. i mean, we've put that question to the white house --

>> rose: they say we don't know. >> we don't know. the fear is and we discussed this a while back. >> rose: will have to retaliate in some way. >> there is aeries falcon they retaliate. you've talked to richard clark about this. if they retaliate then the russians retaliate. what happens if they take out the electrical grid in new york city? cyber war is an entirely new frontier, and it's dangerous and, sure, we have the capability to retaliate in kind. it would be interesting to see, you know, vladimir putin's e-mails or banking transactions play out on some version of wikileaks, but what's the retaliation to the retaliation? >> rose: bob, you expect more disclosures to come out about what trump may or may not have said to howard stern or some other entertainment or media outlet that will simply keep this whole pot being stirred by

disclosures as people realize that there is a whole lot of stuff out there because donald trump has been a celebrity and in pursuit of attention for a long time? >> certainly. "the washington post," other news organizations are looking into it, and you also have the trump campaign, based on my reporting, fully aware of different tapes and videos that are out there and possibly coming out. in fact, trump center circle is bracing this morning and afternoon for more things to come out later this week. there is just an expectation in trump tower that that's going to happen. but the gold mine is really the apprentice, the producer to have the series is owner of many tapes, b role, things never broadcast, featuring trump. he has been reluctant and not released those tapes everyone is trying to get ahold of the

apprentice tapes: >> 12 season of them. i talked to a guy who was the sound guy and they don't destroy it. the if donald trump said it, it's going to come out. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: tom barrack is here, he oversees a firm of $20 billion in assets. also a longtime friend of donald trump and close advisor of the campaign serving on the add viz ricouncils. pleased to have him back on the program. >> it's a privilege being with you around the wooden table snits been here 25 years. tell me about the at the bait last night. >> you know, my personal view has been the same for a while, and this idea of trying to show the rest of the world a piece of

donald that they haven't seen, which is a more cadenced, professional, controlled demeanor. it's not that he didn't have it, and it's not that he wasn't willing to do it and, as we've talked before, when you mention the word pivot to him, he's not very excited about it because his view is that this lack of political etiquette is the key to the door he's trying to establish. but i think it was imperative that people see h he had control, demeanor, poise, that he was intellectually up to the issues and that he had the temperament to be presidential in whatever view that was. >> rose: the question is whether he did better in the second debate than the first debate. that's a relative question because there is a consensus he didn't do well in the first debate. you share that?

>> i do. >> rose: okay. both candidates have had a large amount of disapproval, and it's not the first time in america. we go back to jefferson and jackson and the feuds they had and jefferson and hamilton, the feuds they had. but this seems to be a new level of bitterness. you share that? >> i do. i think -- and by the way, just going back, i think donald shares it. in other words, as a disruptor, his view is, if you would have listened to people like me or us at the beginning, he wouldn't be in this position. he would still be a reality show talk host. he would be back on the apprentice, right. in other words, the disruption is what carried the day for him in finding this -- >> rose: with whom? the constituency of white working class men? >> right.

well, and i think when we talk about women -- and i would like to just make one comment, i've known him 40 years in interesting vignettes. i've known all the women in his life. i've close to two of his wives, and ivanka since she has been a baby. women in his organization are incredibly important. norma federer came to him when he had three employees and a secretary. she blossomed into controlling his entire entity. over that time i watched him interact with her and all the other women in the organization with unbelievable elegance and softness. totally different than what we're perceiving from this personal banter. of course, technology makes it all difficult. if we all had technology intervening in our personal conversations, it probably would not be a great thing.

the difference is, and i think he did it, of saying, look, this is inappropriate, i'm sorry it happened, it shouldn't have happened. >> rose: he described it as locker room talk and a lot of the athletes said it's not the locker room i've ever been in. >> locker room is a gigantic misstep and it started a tsunami. >> rose: what do you mean? to say "locker room" was inferring in a nice way of saying, look, this is the kind of conversation that man to man in a private setting without women involved who might be insulted might engage in. it was a misnomer because every word you say gets trance muted into different environment. >> rose: we seem to be questioning the character and integrity of him because of the fact that he has reflected in his own use of language in a way that causes that to take place. in other words, he's responsible for this emphasis on it.

and you seem to be saying, and you know him and you're his friend and you have been a business partner with him and you helped him with the plaza hotel and other things and you have been there with a friend and still are -- you sat on two economic council, international and security council -- you seem to say whatever he does is okay because he's being a disruptor and he believes that's the way to win and the end justifies the means and people saying, no, the presidency is different, it's about character and quality and something other than simply as finding the deepest, darkest place to try to disrupt. >> yeah, and, i mean, let's be clear, i'm not making a value decision that anything is okay. what i'm doing is portraying what i see is the context. >> rose: and trying to help us understand him is what i think you can do. >> i think the takeaway here is

he's saying, look, i deal in an environment where i have to build con stitch wednesdayy, and in building constituencies, i may have different points of view and portray them and talk differently to each constituency. but take my track record. i'm a businessman. i build and lose businesses, i have capital gains tax i pay, i have tax carry-forwards and all this become an issue but, at the end of the day, let's separate words from actions. >> rose: mainly when he has cast dispurse -- dispersions on a whole range of people and that has become the issue at the end of the day. >> and a lot of these things, for sure, if he didn't go after the muslim mother, it would have been a much better thing. he didn't need to do that. he didn't need to talk about the miss universe situation. people get it. >> rose: why does he do it?

what is it about him that makes him feel like he has to do that rather than talking about how he wants to change the country in terms of policy? >> i think, in his mind, what he's doing is communicating to what he thinks the average voter is, saying you fight for what you actually believe in and accept the consequences, even if the consequences are the media and three-fourths of the voting population is going to think what i'm say is absurd or taken out of question but i know i'm right on tissues. >> rose: according to the "wall street journal," not a single chief executive of a fortune 100 company has donated or endorsed him. >> yeah, because if you're a public company and you endorse somebody as lightning bolt as him, that's not a very good thing. but let's talk about the market.

people say the market decides the debate. the peso goes down if donald wins the debate. if we could all treed market, we wouldn't be here having this conversation. so i think for sure the disruption in every form is frightening to everybody in the establishment, including big business, and big business can't support these outlandish positions for exactly the reason that you're leading the very good argument for most people of saying there is something wrong in the consistency of the man delivering the message. i don't think that. i think the opposite. >> rose: i think they're saying something wrong in the fitness of the man delivering it. >> and the frustrating thing to me is i know the man and the man is perfectly fit. the dialogue that we have been in is very confusing. so at this point, to me, if i were advising, would they actual listen to me? >> rose: he doesn't listen to

anybody, that's the point. >> he listens, but he honestly, firmly believes the track he's on is the correct track. so to get to where he could do it, we could come sit with you, the best thing for him would be to come sit with you for an hour and a half and let you drill on him on these real substantive issues. i promise you would be more impressed than what you think. >> rose: well, have him here tomorrow. >> i'll try. >> rose: thank you so much for coming. great to see you. >> really enjoyed it. thanks, charlie. ruth bader ginsburg is an associate justice of the united states supreme court. she game the second ever female supreme court justice when nominated by glinten in 1993. she had been serving as a judge on the d.c. court of appeals since 1980 when jimmy carter appointed her to the bench. she had a an dills distinguished

law career. she earned a reputation of the thurgood marshall of the women's rights movement. her book is a collection of writings and speeches. i met with her at the supreme court on the occasion of the at conversation.on and here is justice ginsburg, thank you so much for this opportunity to talk to you. >> it's a pleasure to talk to you, charlie. >> rose: thank you. my own words, ruth bader ginsburg, written with mary hartman and wendy williams, this is the first book you have written since being a justice of the supreme court. > yes. not first book ever. the first book was the best seller called "civil procedure in sweden." ( laughter ) >> rose: i missed that one. but you've always been interested in procedure. >> yes. i taught procedure for 17 years. >> rose: at rutgers and columbia. >> at rutgers nine years and eight years at columbia. >> rose: it's called "my own

words" and this is a collection of speeches that you have and writings about you and about the law, when did this love affair with the law, how did it begin? >> my interesting in becoming the lawyer was sparked in the 1950s when i was an undergraduate student at cornell. it was the hay day of senator joe mccarthy. it was not a good time for our country. it was a huge scare, and people were being called before the house on the american activities committee, the internal security committee, and interrogated about some youth group that they belonged to at the height of the depression in the '30s. >> rose: and lost their jobs. there was a black list in the entertainment industry.

but my professor on constitutional law for whom i worked as a research assistant brought to my attention the lawyers that were appearing before the people, called before the committees, lawyers who reminded congress we have a first amendment and we have a fifth amendment, and they were straying very far from those fundamental precepts of our system. >> rose: you saw the law as a protector of individual liberty? >> yes. yes. i thought it could be a way to make a living. plus, to do something that would make conditions in this society a little better. so that's what led me to take the l.s.a.t. when i was a junior, the law school aptitude test, when i was a junior at

cornell. >> rose: you were at cornell '50 to '54. >> yes. >> rose: another student there decided to become a lawyer, too. >> my dear husband. we sided whatever we would do, we would do it together. medicine dropped out early on. marty started out as a chemistry majors but his true major was golf, and labs were in the afternoon, interfered with golf practice, so then it was either business school or law school. in the '50s, harvard, for some reason, marty was determined that harvard was the right place for us, but the the harvard business school didn't admit women until the middle '60s, so the law school. and i was very pleased that that was my number one. >> rose: so you both set off for harvard law school. >> yes. we did not immediately. we married the same month i graduated from cornell, and then

we had a gap period. we had two years, 1954 to 1956, in the u.s. army in fort sill, oklahoma, the principal artillery base in the united states. >> rose: right. he became a great chef. there is a book called "chef supreme" or "supreme chef." >> yes. >> rose: his recipes, he cooked till he died. >> yes. >> rose: was he cooking then or was that an acquired talent? >> he was learning then. i had a cousin who sent marty the great french chef cookbook and marty treated it ac a chemistry text. he started with page one, the basic stocks, and then he moved

on to sauces. in two years, he became an excellent cook. i still have the cookbook. it's falling apart and has food saints to show how well used it was. >> rose: you said what happened in your life is that you were the weekday cook, and he cooked on weekends and for special occasions and special visitors. >> for any visitors. i was never allowed to cook for guests. >> rose: but at some point your daughter basically said we don't want you to cook anymore. >> yes, because mommy had a routine. i had seven things i made. we got to number seven, i went back to number one. the only cookbook i used was called the 60-minute chef. that meant from the time you entered the apartment until dinner is on the table, no more than one hour.

>> rose: you did transfer to columbia law school. >> yes. >> rose: you were at harvard and you transferred to column yanchts yes. >> rose: both great law schools but why transfer? >> marty was one year ahead of me. he had his first year at harvard and was called into service and returned two years rater when i started. so he was one year ahead of me. in my second year, his third year, he had a testicular tumor, and in those days it's most uncertain whether he would live. there was no chemotherapy. he had massive surgery, massive radiation, and we wand to be

together for as long as he would live. as it turned out, he lived many years after that. he was one of the first survivors of that form of cancer. and jane was then three years old, my daughter was three years old, and i didn't want to be a single mom. so i left harvard and asked if i could have a harvard degree if i successfully completed my legal education at columbia. the answer from the dean was absolutely not. you have to spend your third year here. and i said, but you accept transfers into the second year. you say the first year is by far the most important. you will give a degree on the basis of your two and three, but not one or two. that doesn't make sense. and i was told a rule was a rule and that was that. i went offer to columbia. i didn't ask if they would give

me a degree because contemplating three years of law school and no degree from either institution was just too much. >> rose: sure. but columbia gave me a degree. they transferred me from the harvard law review to the columbia law review. columbia was very good to me. >> rose: and harvard didn't give you a degree. and marty comes to uh you, though, and says, don't go back and accept anything from harvard unless they're willing to give you an honorary degree. >> well, like he said, when my dear colleague elena kagan became dean of the harvard law school, every year while she was dean, she would say, ruth, we would love to have you at harvard law school, and marty said hold out for an honorary degree which i received in 2011. >> rose: and there's a picture of you in your chambers of you

and domingo. >> yes. >> rose: and he's singing to you in the red harvard graduation robes. >> yes. >> rose: and your title for that picture is what? >> woman in ecstasy. that's me. ( laughter ) i had no idea. it was a thrill enough to know that we would be seated next to each other because they lined us up in alphabetical order. so domingo was just one -- but then when they called me to receive my honorary degree and he stood up and goes to the microphone and sings words that the students had written to the tune of shall i say, it was a thrilling moment. being so close to that great voice was like having electric

shock run through me. >> rose: three loves of your life, marty, the law, and domingo and the opera. >> yes. >> rose: so you went to teach at rutgers and columbia. >> yes. >> rose: why teaching? i wanted to be a law teacher eventually. my plan was that i would work at a law firm for about five years and then go into teaching. teaching is a very good life for someone who likes to read and think. >> rose: and you like to write. >> yes. but i had an offer from rutgers in 1963 at a time perhaps when there were 16 women teaching in tetenured positions in law schos from coast to coast.

so there's a bird in hand. would i get another offer if i went to a law firm and waited five years? so i took the rutgers offer in 1963 and i remain there until 1972 when 1972 was the year of the woman every law faculty in the country was looking for. >> rose: and columbia came looking for you. >> yes. >> rose: when did you get drawn into the women's movement? >> in the late '60s. well, i began to think about it in the early '60s when i was in sweden because sweden had already gone much further than the united states in opening opportunities for women. so i observed what was -- how people were living, but put it on a back burner. in the late '60s, the women's

movement came alive again, and it was my students who protell me into this line of inquiry. >> rose: asking for legal advice? , asking for a course on women and the law. >> rose: ah. so i went to the library, and inside of a month i had read every law review article, every federal decision that had to do with gender-based differentials. it was no man mean feat. there was precious little there and all of it was bad. all of it was whatever lines based on gender that the law draws, that's okay with the courts so my students wanted to have a course on women at the law. i prepared for that. at the same time, new kinds of complaints were coming into the new jersey affiliate of the

aclu. women who were school teachers and pregnant and were being forced on to so-called maternity leave, as soon as they began to show in the fourth or fifth month. the leave was without pay, and there was no guaranteed right of return. the school teachers were not pleased with this arrangement. they thought they were willing, ready and able to work and there was no reason why they should have to leave the classroom just because they were pregnant. another group of blue-collar women whose place of work had good insurance coverage, health insurance coverage. so these women wanted to have health insurance coverage for their families.

the employer's rule was family coverage is available only for a male worker because the woman was not considered the head of the family, she was a pen money earn er. she could get insurance for herself but not for her family. so those new complaints were coming in, complaints that women finally had the courage to voice. it was the new clients and my students that propelled me into -- >> rose: so you not only started a course, you started a review. >> yes. >> rose: and it became really -- it seems to have become the driving purpose and the driving cause of your life. >> i had a fantastic opportunity.

there was a real possibility that there would be change in this laws. the feminists had been saying the same thing that we said in the '70s generations before, but society was not ready to listen. think of abigail adams told john to remember the ladies, and he didn't. but in the '70s, the women's movement was coming alive all over the world, not just in the united states. the united nations had declared international women's year. >> rose: right. and we had just had the experience of the civil rights movement of the '60s. so it was possible in the '70s to move the court away from the notion that whatever sex lines

are drawn in the law, they are okay. >> rose: this was the berger court. >> yes. >> rose: not the warren court. the warren court's one contribution was, in the case gwendolyn hoit's case, we would today called her battered. she had a husband who was philandering, who was abusive, who one day had humiliated her to the breaking point. she spied her young son's baseball bat in the corner of the room, she took it and with all her might, she hit him over the head, he fell against a hard floor, and at the end of their fight, beginning of her murder prosecution. florida, at that time, didn't put women on the jury rolls, and

gwendolyn hoit's view was, if there were women on the jury, they might better understand what was in my mind, my rage at that moment. >> rose: but she was convicted by 12 men. >> yes. she didn't think that necessarily women would acquit her, but she thought that at least they might come in for the lesser crime of manslaughter, not murder. but she was convicted of murder by an all-male jury. her case comes to the supreme court, the warren court in 1961, and the court said we don't understand this complaint. women have the best of all possible worlds. they can go down to the clerk's office and sign up to be on the jury rolls, but if they don't sign up, they're not there. how many men would sign up if

they were not obliged to serve? and what is a law like that saying to people? it's saying, men, you are essential to the administration of justice. women are expendable. we don't need them to be part of the system of justice. so that's where the warren court was. they just didn't get it. >> rose: right. and you can imagine gwendolyn hoit when she was told that women have the best of all possible worlds. but it was exactly ten years later in 1971 that the berger court -- >> rose: warren berger is now chief justice. >> yes, he began to move in a new direction, and that was in a case called reed v reed. sally reed's case, sally was an

everyday woman, she made her living by taking care of elderly or disabled people. she had a young son, and she and her husband separated and then divorced. sally got custody when the boy was what the law calls "of tender years," need add mother's care -- needed a mother's care. then when the boy reached his teens, the father said to the family court, now he needs to be prepared for a man's world, so i should have custody of him. sally fought that. she thought the father would be a bad influence on her son. sadly, she was right. the boy became severely depressed and one day took out one of his father's many guns and committed suicide. so sally wanted to be appointed add administrator of his estate and she applied.

not for any economic reasons, there was very little there. the father, perhaps out of spite, applied a few weeks later and a probate court judge said, salary reed, the law controls what i must do in your case. it reads, "as between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent's estate, males must be preferred to females." well, sally took that case on her own dime through three levels of the idaho courts -- she was from boise, idaho -- and then someone on the aclu board spotted the idaho supreme court, turned out and said, this is the case that will turn the supreme court in a new direction, and it did. the supreme court took sally

reed's case, and in a very low-key opinion, held that a statute saying males must be preferred to females is a violation of the equal protection law. >> rose: and who wrote the brief for sally reed? >> i did. her lawyer from boise, idaho, also did, but i wrote sally reed's brief. >brief. her lawyer from boise, idaho argued it. >> rose: what do you -- i feel uncomfortable with that comparison. >> rose: because? we cop idea thurgood marshall's method. he proceeded step by step up to

brown against board. he didn't tell the court in the first case you have to declare a separate but equal in any and all circumstances unconstitutional. he had building blocks, so we cop idea that. but there was an enormous difference. during the '70s, when i was litigating these gender discrimination cases -- >> rose: most successfully. -- but my life was never in danger. thurgood marshall would go to a small town in the south. when he got up in the morning, he didn't know whether he would be alive that night. my life was not in cairng as his was. >> rose: so a different kind of courage for him? >> e-forms courage -- enormous courage. another thing, the naacp which he headed the legal defense fund, it was the only show in town. african-americans, if they wanted to be represented well,

it was the naacp. when the women's movement was underway, it was more dispersed. there were cases coming to sometimes to private lawyers, sometimes to groups other than the u clu. >> rose: yeah, but i'm telling you when they talk about the the women's movement and the legal argument and the architecture that helped prevail in the courts, they put you at the front of that parade, and you know that. >> well, i was fortunate to have that position. and when i was a teacher at rutgers and deciding where i should affiliate, with what group should i affiliate, i picked the aclu because it's not women's rights, it's people's rights. it's men's rights as well as women. i called it the struggle for

equal citizenship stature for men and women. and a number of the cases we brought were on behalf of men who were disadvantaged simply because they were men. the laws reflected this pattern. they were men, they were the bread winners, they represented the family outside the home, and then there were women who took care of the home and the children. the common law rule and the civil law rule were identical in this respect -- the man was head of the household, he could choose any mode of living and she was obliged to conform. in the civil law, the states in the united states that have their inheritance in spanish and french law, it was called the head and master rule. the man was head and master of

the family. >> rose: for more about the program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

this is "nightly busine wit. the putin rally. oil gushes to multimonth highs as russia's president supports supply limits, and energy shares take stocks along for the ride. samsung struggles as retailer in the u.s. stop selling even the replacement note 7 phones. those were the ones that were not supposed to catch fire. but are. what's next for korea's biggest brand? >> your money, your vote. ow the investment markets interpret the presidential race those stories and more tonight on "nightly bu for monday, october 10th. good evening, everyone. welcome. politics top of mind for just about every