chief rehnquist was here for many years. when we did the supreme court review session, it always amazed me the music and poetry that chief justice rehnquist new. he would begin each session with a quotation from sir thomas gray's elegy in a courtyard. many a gem the caverns bear. many a flower is born to waste its sweetness in the desert air. some of the flowers may be some of the cases that did not merit the headlines or public discussion like some of the marquee cases did. they were nevertheless very important in the lives of ordinary americans. i wonder if there were any blushing flowers in the desert from this last term that went unnoticed. >> there are always are. if you look at the cases we have come out of 77, there are maybe half a dozen people will be talking about at panel discussions and things like that. some of the little ones can be fascinating. my favorite from the past turned involved the question of the admiralty and jurisdiction of what counts as a vessel. the way cases develop in the law, you have things t

chief rehnquist was here for many years.when we did the supreme court review session, it always amazed thate music and poetry chief justice rehnquist new. he would begin each session with a quotation from sir thomas gray's elegy in a courtyard. em the caverns bear. waste flower is born to desert aness in the ir. may be someflowers of the cases did did not merit the headlines or public discussion like some of the marquee cases did. they were nevertheless. --ortant in the lives of they were nevertheless very important in the lives of ordinary americans. i wonder if there were any blushing flowers in the desert from this last term that went unnoticed. >> there are always are. if you look at the cases we have come out of 77, there are maybe half a dozen people will be talking about at panel discussions and things like that. some of the little ones can be fascinating. my favorite from the past question ofved the the admiralty and jurisdiction of what counts as a vessel. the way cases develop in the law, if you have things that do

-- during the very conservative berger court to a 50% win rate under the very conservative rehnquist70% win rate under the roberts court. follow this pro-business trend to its logical conclusion and sooner or later you will end up with a supreme court that functions as a whole subsidiary as the chamber of commerce. >> i'm sure elizabeth warren's finding, you've seen it as a democrat, she's on her own up there. i mean, corporate interests are obviously powerful on both sides of the aisle in the senate. elizabeth warren doesn't have a lot of allies in a battle against powerful wall street interests. >> probably not in the senate or the house but i think she speaks for a lot of people, right that live out in the country and wonder why government may seem to represent some or give -- put their thumb on the scale for some rather than for others. she's remarkable at gathering attention for things like this. >> right. >> and i think she'll continue to do that. >> jeremy peters, talk about elizabeth warren on the hill and what you see. is she a force up there? or is she, as they say, a lone

one on purely procedural issue standing is they came up with this conservative result, as justice rehnquistthe late chief justice would say, which is they left it to the state. so all the action now goes to the states, as you pointed out. we're going to have political fights and we'll have initiatives and we may have people bringing suit under state constitutions. but the federal government has effectively said look, on doma, whatever the state does, we'll respect. standing issues, states, you don't want to defend your law, we're not going to consider it. so it's really up to the states. it's almost exciting. >> arthel: yeah. but that's what i'm talking about. you're going to see speed bumps and road blocks in many cases. let's still stick with the supreme court. as you know, they struck down a key part of the voting rights act. landmark civil rights legislation, so 15 states no longer have to get advance approval from the justice department or a panel of federal judges for all changes to voting laws, procedures, and polling places. right. your reaction first and then how do you think this

minorities from the caprice of the majority, we have in the roberts court increasingly and in the rehnquistourt too a court whose real goal is to protect the powerful from everybody else. they will do it in their corporate rulings. what they're saying is they are going to stand at the vanguard and protect political leaders in these states in the south their right to perpetual power despite the demographic changes buffetting them. that they can protect themselves from those changes forever and maintain their power with the protection of this court. >> congratulations, chief justice. professor dyson, i wonder if the words that dr. martin luther king wrote from birmingham jail today resonate with you? 50 years ago, this is what he wrote. as in so many past experiences, our hopes eps had been blasted and the shadow of deep disan buttonment settled upon us. we had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. i'm afraid to say, do we not have to do that agai

basically the judges are hand-picked by chief justice roberts and rehnquist before him. the government can go to any unof the 11 judges, they went to a 73-year-old appointee in north florida, known for being one of the harshest sentencers. >> howard, i want to get your thoughts on this. we have talked a lot about this the balance between civil liberties and national security. this will spark a lot of debate as the deputy mayor of new york city, you're familiar with threats, you're familiar with the measures we need to take to combat the threats. i wonder what your assessment of today's news is. >> i think the american people may well support the patriot act. they want to be protected. they want to know that the executive branch is protecting them. i think that the average person, it's not just the aclu, the average person would see this as remarkably, enormously, tremendously shockingly overbroad. the idea that the government is actually, has access to every single phone call that every american makes, i think people waking up this morning reading that probably absolutel

well, the court began moving to the right rather significantly under chief justice rehnquist and chiefjustice roberts has a fairly solid conservative majority except justice kennedy. now, justice kennedy can move left or right in a very narrow band of cases. as we saw this term in equality cases, cases involving the dignity, the liberty of the individual. and so i think justice kennedy emerges this term as being most influential. >> warner: because he is the swing vote. he was in the majority more than anybody. is that in a particular direction? i mean, you said individual liberties. what else? can you often -- when youer that arguments and you analyze the case can you predict with some certainty at least in your own mind if not our our viewers which way kennedy will go? >> not always. there are certain areas where he's been consistent in how he has voted over the years. the first amendment, he's almost ababsolutist on first amendment free speech. and, again, even with doma it wasn't entirely surprising because he wrote two prior decisions on discrimination on the basis of sexual orien

william rehnquist, states rights.odern civil rights movement. he is going to make it his project to end affirmative action, to get rid of the voting rights act, we started to see it earlier in his tenure, but this is someone who really believes that any sort of racial preferences, any kind of consideration of race, is and should be unconstitutional and that's a big change and we'll see how the country reacts. >> you don't think that's an overstatement that his goal is to end the modern civil rights era? >> what he considers -- i mean, what his version of the modern civil rights movement which is any consideration of race. >> racial preference. >> he had a line in one of his earlier opinions the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. >> you've seen the numbers. obviously they've changed a great deal even in the past 20 years. americans are split more than ever on whether there should be racial preferences or not. if that is, in fact, his goal, the country seems t

rehnquist on the united states supreme court. having argued a total of nine cases before the united states supreme court, the senator from texas is a seasoned litigator in addition to being a scholar of the constitution. and so i would -- i would ask my colleague a couple of questions related to that. you know, it's occurred to me sometimes as a -- as a lawyer myself, that there are sometimes some similarities between being a senator and being a lawyer. they're -- they're not perfect but we are retained for a limited period of time, in six-year increments generally, to represent a group of people. and it's our job to do what we can to act in the absence of those people. in my case, there are 3 million people from my state, the state of utah, they can't all fit inside this chamber so i'm one of the people who's elected to represent them in their absence. so i would ask my colleague from texas, number one, how do the people of texas feel about the idea of raising the debt limit yet again? in particular, how do they feel about the i