joan: william rehnquist was an associate justice.rian: i wanted to read, roberts said that clerks gave rehnquist a lone ranger dog because he staked out so many conservative positions by himself. what impact did working for rehnquist have on chief justice roberts? i think he learned from the soon-to-be chief, william rehnquist became chief in 1986 and liam roberts left in 1981 when he worked for ronald reagan. he worked with a smart man. william rehnquist was highly intelligent. he also knew how to plant the seeds for future rulings. and john roberts is constantly looking at how one ruling can lead to another, can lead to another, can lead to another. william wayne crist -- william innquist was excellent putting in legal theories that he could pick up on later, or maybe would entice a different court as a got more conservative. when john roberts took over the helm of the supreme court he had just a majority. that five justice majority has been further cemented on the right wing. was the last time a democrat was chief justice of the s

. >> of course, she graduated from stanford along with chief justice rehnquist who is a couple yearswe had known that she had sort of dated, right, while in law school? >> my wife and i were going through her letters. and lo and behold there are 14 love letters from bill rehnquist who just finished being a law student in 1952, at stanford. and sandra day. and love letter number six, he said, sandy, will you marry me? they had never even told their families about this. this is totally new. i think they didn't want to be embarrassed about it. it's a sweet story. bill rehnquist ended up somebody he trulyd, ahe married somebody she truly loved but they were an item. >> what lessons did she learn from her mother, you point out in the book? >> her father was a real cowboy, but he could be harsh. her mom who was an elegant ladye a dress, learned how not to be bullied by her father, but how not to take the bait. when he came too strong to her, she had a way of rolling with it. this is so important with justice o'connor. >> as one of the first women how to deal with men, so many great things

explain that relationship. >> amazingly justice rehnquist when he was just out of law school add sanday to marry him back in 1952. they never told anybody. they didn't tell their families. >> why? >> my wife and i, who researched this book with me, we found love letters in justice o'connor's box of correspondent, 14 love letters to bill rehnquist to justice od o'day. harry blackman leaned over to rehnquist and say, "now no fooling around." >> we're not talking a hundred years ago. the collegiality or lack thereof it they didn't go to lunch together? >> they can't by memo. they're not hanging around talking to each other. even their top secret conference when they're all together, they just give their vote and their reasoning. there's no debate. they debate by memo. they're stuck there together. they're there for life. some of them get along really well. sandra day had great relationships with powell and later with drier. they're stuck with each other but that doesn't mean they have to like each other. >> what's your bottom lien in ter -- line in term of her legacy? >> she kept aborti

there was one who recused himself, which was william rehnquist, who had served in the nixon justice department. so if donald trump has been advised that this can go up through the courts and it will go to a supreme court to which he has appointed kavanaugh and gorsuch, his appointments might defend him in the end, i think he better look back at nixon and realize that history rhymes. >> in terms of the white house rolling this out explicitly, that's the other part of this that strikes me here. we are not at a point where there is a specific document that a lot of people believe may be a smoking gun. >> right. >> that they're trying to pry out of the white house and the white house knows how damning it's going to be. this isn't exactly the same kind of standoff, the specific standoff they had over those white house tapes. we had testimony as to what was on the tapes. >> and we all wanted to hear the tapes. >> everybody. this is the white house in advance broadly asserting that they are going to do this, and telling reporters about it. putting out white house officials on the condition of anonymi

maybe for, you know, job roberts and bill rehnquist, but not for me or you.naling out and saying this is the case we do same day audio. maybe the other cases -- making the other cases feel bad, you know? i think we'll get there. i do think we'll get there. look, there's two circuit courts that do live audio and every single other circuit court releases audio within 24 hours. so, you know, this is something i tried to get the justices to talk about yesterday but they wanted to talk about cameras. you know, they were asked three or four times by the panel of the financial service and general government subcommittee yesterday about cameras. i'm looking at them in the back like ask about audio. it didn't happen. honestly if you asked each justice individually and i've only asked one of them when i ran into them in chicago. john paul stevens loves same day audio. for whatever reason the camera question is like the first thing that people think of. you know, and i think -- but i think we'll get there eventually. hopefully it's some day soon. i think that, you know,

we sought chief justice rehnquist, when he had cancer in 2004 and 2005, he missed about half of a supremeourt term. he eventually died after the term. there are no rules for forcing the supreme court justice off the court. on the subject of the odd number of supreme court justices can that is what we have usually had. we have not always. we have at six, 10. and when justice scalia died, we had only eight. some people thought the court function better because they were forced to work together to come up with a majority decision . you did not have a prospect of a 5-4 decision. because of the dynamics on the court, that meant you had to reach across to the other side of the ideological divide. we tended to have narrower decisions. host: this network just celebrated its 40th anniversary. we would like to see cameras in the court. chief justice roberts has opened the door a little bit by releasing audio we can play. do you get any indication that the justices would go along with cameras inside the court for oral argument? guest: i do not. justice kagan and justice alito testified in front of t