rehnquist proved once again that bankers are more powerful than lawyers.and he was so grateful that when ronald reagan promised to put a woman on the court, justice rehnquist secretly lobbied for her with the justice department to say i know a really good woman in arizona. and ken starr in another part of his life. >> she is here today. >> yes. once upon a time the top assistant to the attorney general and one of the jobs was to sweep the search for the woman justice and he told us the most effective advocate for her was william rehnquist. >> which is a little unusual for somebody already on the supreme court. >> i don't know the rules but is not something he did publicly. >> and we know supreme court pics are political by party but that is within the party. because they are interested in another candidate. >> the true believers thought reagan was not serious about his promise. down by ten points in illinois and a political advisor said promised to put a woman on the court. so the true believers thought he was in serious. getting ready to put bob bork on t

turned to justice rehnquist and said, no fooling around. basically nobody knew. and the sweet thing about this is they ended up having a great friendship. yes, sandra turned them down. she strung him along for a little while but she did turn him down in a gentlemen. way. they both married the loves of their lives. they had a very quiet but real friendship at the court. justice rehnquist quietly lobbied the reagan administration or at least the attorney general to put her on the court. >> i feel i need to give jay an opportunity to respond if he wants to respond. how was it to find out that your mom had a love letter from justice rehnquist? >> i'm sure my dad knew more about the relationship. that wasn't something she would have hidden from my dad, but she never disclosed it to her three sons. evan, called up and said, i found some interesting letters. so, we were definitely surprised. she had handled that very quietly. >> and jay, i think i want to stay with you. >> the thing that was interesting to us is what we had seen with, uh, chief ju

how was it to find out that your mom had a love letter from chief justice rehnquist? >> it was a surprise. i'm sure my dad knew more about the relationship. that isn't something she would have hidden from my dad. but she never disclosed it to her three sons. and so evan called up and said, you know, boy i found some interesting letters. listen to this. and so we were definitely surprised. she was -- had handled that very quietly. >> and, jay, i think i want to stay with you -- >> i want to say. the thing that is interesting to us is what we had seen with chief -- her relationship with rehnquist family and with the chief justice rehnquist is they were devoted friends for such a long time. and throughout their -- even before the tenure on the court, after what evan talked about happened, his family traveled with my mom's family on some trips and so they had the basis for a longstanding friendship that endured throughout their time on the court and later on they spent a lot of time together with one another's families in d.c. and socialized together. and so it was a real

chief justice rehnquist would just blow it off for shoulders and say whatever.hey liked him, that was one thing they realized, he was a tough chief to follow. not in terms of the law but in the terms of personality, he was quite beloved by ruth bader ginsburg. she really liked him and she still would refer to as my chief. the current chief would be like stop that. [laughter] >> let's switch gears and talk about the justice and the judge, if you had to pick three decisions that he has written or if it's not a majority opinion or dissent and three that define him and his tenure this far, which three would you pick. >> in order of importance but not the order i want to discuss because i want to end up with a healthcare. the affordable care act case in 2012 will devote a little more time to the shelby county versus holder in 2013 which cut back pretty dramatically in 1965. and then the opinion he wrote in the parents involved school integration case where he interpreted the board of education in a way that we encounter to the advocates behind him enter most into the

instead, chief justice rehnquist assigned to me a miserable arisa case. arisa is probably the most dense statute ever passed. in any case, it was not unanimous. it was 6-3. justice o'connor was one of the three. i complained to her. i said, sandra, he wasn't supposed to do that to me. she said, ruth, you just do it. just do it. and get your opinion in circulation before he makes the next set of assignments. otherwise you will risk getting another unpleasant case. but that was her attitude about everything. just do it. >> well, now, about her, we've heard a lot about she was both a consensus builder and a trailblazer. and i suppose that in some sense being one is the opposite of the other. if you're out there writing a singular, strong dissent, and chief justice rehnquist as an associate justice was singular dissent a lot that must be somewhat intentioned with being a consensus builder. do you think about that, justice sotomayor? >> i do. i'm not the consensus builder. i think there is a tension. however, i don't think that sandra, and i must admit i didn'

chief justice rehnquist didn't join my opinion but he did join justice thomas who was refused becauseis son attended so that segovia all alone -- scalia all alone. he knew i felt deeply about the case and it came to my chambers one day this is the ultimate draft of my dissent in the case. i am not ready yet to circulate to the court. the clock was ticking, and he wanted to give me as much time as he could. in late georgia on the plane he opened up his dissent and i was certainly glad to have the extra time to respond. >> when you get to the court, justice o'connor was of course the first woman justice. she's been there for quite a while and as he would later learn you've got to be the only one for a while, to back. she was a reagan appointee and a girl of the west. you were a clinton appointee, you were from new york city. and i wondered, you very quickly established a special bond. >> she was as close as i came to having a big sister. when i came on board she gave me some advice, not too much. she didn't want to douse me with excessive information, just what i needed to know to navig

have been 68, 70 it ends about that time in 1970 and since then, basically i wrote a book about the rehnquist court. they've been pulling back on so many of the achievements and the hope of people like me in the law in the 60s and 70s thinking that the court was today and in the future. you don't need is to show you that it's been rolled up the last 30 years. you can have social change and that is a whole different discussion of where the state come from and the question of reliance on the court are not enough and you get into the whole question of the democrats saying here's the deal the last 30 years. to hillary clinton's court were irrelevant. >> i am afraid we have to draw the conversation to a close. it feels we could go on for a long time. we have a lot of great stories to touch upon. i really want to thank martin. [applause] and his new book north of hava havana. i am a fellow at the brennan center for justice. please keep up with work by signing up for the newsletter at brennan center.org or following us on facebook or twitter. are you on twitter? >> i would be delighted to follow you

the then chief, chief justice rehnquist didn't join my opinion but he did join -- justice thomas wasecused because his son attended vmi. >> he couldn't participate. >> so that left scalia all alone. [laughter] >> justice scalia knew i felt deeply about the case, as he did the other way. and he came to my chambers one day, threw down a sheathe of papers and said ruth, this is the penultimate draft of my dissent in the vmi case. i'm not yet ready to circulate to the court, but the clock was ticking, and he wanted to give me as much time as he could to answer his rather strident dissent. [laughter] >> you were going to a meeting that week. >> i was going to the judicial conference in georgia. i was on the plane, opened up his dissent. it absolutely ruined my week. [laughter] >> but i was certainly glad to have the extra time to respond. >> so talking about vmi reminds me that when you get to the court, justice o'connor of course was the first woman justice. she's there. she's been there for quite a while. >> 12 years. >> by herself. and as you would later learn, that's no fun because yo

of that era and the conservatives on the court of that era, i am talking about people like just rehnquist were in favor of federalism state rights. i thought when the florida supreme court, based on the florida constitution awarded the state of florida too gore, that based on its own principles i thought the supreme court would allow that to stand. state we will not interfere. that is not what they did. they created their own theory that did not make sense to me. >> what impact did that have on his presidency? >> less than people think. most people thought that not having won a majority of the popular vote,, winning such a narrow victory, he would start out carefully. most of what he did would be directed. in fact he started the presidency boldly. he asked for a tax cut in his first year. he succeeded with getting enough democratic support to get a pass. it was a radical move where people thought he was going to run from the center. by most accounts he had been a centrist, moderate governor. he ran as a strong conservative with bold initiatives. focused mostly on tax cuts. 9/11. how many

era and the conservatives on the court of that era, and i'm talking of people like justice william rehnquist, were in favor of what they would have called federalism or states'rights. >> and i thought that when the florida supreme court based on the florida constitution awarded the state of florida to gore that based on its own principles, i thought that the supreme court would simply allow that to stand and say we're not going to interfere. that's not what the court did. they developed their own theory; it never made any sense to me. >> what impact did that have on his presidency? >> less than people would think in this sense, that most people thought that having not won a majority of the popular vote, winning such a narrow victory in the electoral college, that he would start out very carefully, that he wouldn't take any bold initiatives and that most of what he did would be directed at winning over democratic support. >> in fact, bush started his presidency very boldly, asked for a tax cut in his first year, succeeded in winning just enough democratic support to get it passed. but it was

era and the conservatives on the court of that era, and i'm talking of people like justice william rehnquistwere in favor of what they would have so, to take the most obvious example, the way that 325 million americans go through airports today started on september 12, that whenever the flights resumed and has never gone back to what it was on september 10. it affected american foreign policy, just for the start i think we can say that it had a profound effect on bush's foreign policy team that played a role certainly in the decision two years later to invade iraq. brian: here is a short piece of video after his book came out, "decision points," when asked about legacy. [video clip] bush: i don't really worry about my legacy because i'm still studying theodore roosevelt or harry truman, and there is not going to be an objective history done on this administration for a long time. james: yes. that's a little self-serving. it's true for any president that it takes many decades for historians to judge. and that may be true with parts of what bush did. but it's not too soon to judge on some aspe

state that it was vastly overrepresented, and that was arizona, because there was chief justice rehnquist and justice o'connor. population of arizona is not -- >> until justice scalia passed away, there were four of you from the five boroughs of new york city. >> so, we were diverse. the only thing we were missing was staten island. >> i'm sure the president, if he had an opportunity, whoever the president was, would have been looking for someone 50 years old from harvard and staten island. >> there's quite a few of them, by the way. >> should that matter? there was a time earlier in our history when there were certain geographic areas were presumed, it was a southern seat, or something like that. should that matter? >> diversity of experience includes the way you grow up. by the way, you left out one western. justice breyer grew up on the west coast of san francisco. >> and then he wound up at harvard. >> is that a special taint? >> well, you left. >> yes, and i have no harvard law school degree. >> i'm going to ask a question -- justice o'connor was a trailblazer. people knew who she wa

ginsburg says in her -- in my own words book, that justice o'connor's advice was, with chief justice rehnquist, just get the decision out as fast as you can so you don't get a really boring assignment the next time around. but i didn't realize they competed. so i have to ask the obvious follow-up. who won? >> well, my co-clerk is sitting in the audience, and i believe we won. >> i'm sure the competition continued year after year but that's a tough competition. any insight on the justice ginsburg and justice o'connor relationship? >> just to echo what my co-clerks have said, one interesting thing about the year i clerked is that was the year the current -- that court reached a milestone very quietly. and they had been together on the court longer without a personnel change than any other court in modern history. and we as law clerks only found out afterwards that they had actually convened a special dinner. and they had all gathered at the court. they had invited justice thurgood marshall's widow to attend and sort of quietly celebrated that milestone. i think from my perspective, it was a spec

i'll be up on the web so you can see how it was on september 11th 2001, i was with chief justice rehnquist, i heard about the attacks from him, i was asked to be a lawyer and have a nice career in the law which i really enjoyed. so that obviously changed the course of our history, and in 2003 i was in private practice and i got a call from a friend in 2003 former colleague of mine, who had just come out of an inter agency meeting. i don't know what it meant at the time. and they said they're looking for people to go to iraq to help with their political process, or constitutional process would you be willing to go? it was in the fall of 2003, for five months into the war, and i said yes immediately. i got to iraq, and in early january 2004, and as many people who went to iraq as during that period, it was pretty clear very early on, that we were into something we didn't fully understand we didn't fully anticipate, and i felt immediately that we didn't have enough resources to deal with this problem, from the airport from the drive from the airport to, the coalition headquarters, it was a ha

on september 11th, 2001, i was a law clerk for chief justice rehnquist. i learned about those attacks from him. i was on the path to be a lawyer and have a nice career in the law, which i really enjoyed. that, obviously, changed the course of our history. and in 2003, i was in private practice and i got a call from a friend in the fall of 2003, a former colleague of mine, who had just come out of an interagency meeting, which i didn't even know what that meant at the time and said they're looking for people to go to iraq to help with their political process, constitutional process. would you be willing to go? this was in the fall of 2003, four or five months into the war. and i said yes immediately i got to iraq early in january 2004, and as many people who went to iraq in that period, it was p t pretty clear very early on that we were into something we didn't fully understand, we didn't fully anticipate. i felt immediately that we didn't have enough resources to deal with this problem from the airport -- the drive from the airport to coalition headquarte