she jumped -- justice rehnquist and justice scalia, congratulations to both of you.ith these two outstanding men taking their new positions, i consider this a time of renewal in the great system that our forefathers gave us. [end video clip] >> that was the swearing-in, which was three months after he was nominated by president reagan. talk about those three months and what it was like. you referenced earlier, two at the same time, and the real lightning was rehnquist. how did the administration prepare? >> the book publishers for the first time a lot of the documents that were generated at the reagan white house and the department of justice to support this twin nomination, and it shows that the white house devised an elaborate campaign on behalf of scalia, probably more elaborate than any supreme court nominee ever received to that point, to cultivate various voting -- voting blocks in the senate, and to capitalize on the fact that he would become the first italian-american on the port -- court. scalia was eager to go and those who work with him who work is guided

chief justice rehnquist's concurrence in bush vs.ore was focused on that issue, and that's separate issue. der our primary theory, we take state law however it's inrpted by the state supreme court as given. so there i't a matter of having to -- i just want to be clear wereot talking about statutes, point one. pointw under our theory because this power has been vested in the state legislature, that nondelegation principles apply. they can delegate this authority to local and state officials, and all 50 state done that, but thd to accompany it by an intelligible principle. justico: well, if your theory doesn't apply to statutes, what would happen if all the provisions of the north carolina constitution ch the state supreme court relied were statutory, so there's a statute that says elections in north carolina shall be free, and thnoh carolina supreme court said, well, what that means is that there can't be any partisan gerrymandering, redistricting has tone under one of these methods that we set out. that would be okay? mr. thompson: n

chief justice rehnquist wrote separately with scalia and thomas. he said we are worried about these circumstances where the state court goes too far. he said impermissibly distorted the legislatures scheme or transcends the appropriate limitations of statutory review which some of the justices even and dissenting opinions seemed to embrace. i think justice kavanaugh who was a lawyer involved in the bush versus gore litigation on behalf of republican clients is suggesting this is a good distillation of these principles. the majority by chief justice roberts did not want to commit to anyone thought. they said we will not articulate that but if you arrogate yourself the power, you might go too far. that looks like we will not necessarily get there. justice kavanaugh would have said it looks something more like bush versus gore. i don't know if there are five votes for that. if the litigation continues, i don't know whether there would be agreement or consensus about that that's what he said just is that we look to that opinion in 2000 as a roadmap goi

we interviewed chief justice rehnquist or excuse me, -- cheney, all the people who had served on that process committee. and as it turned out, the right wing of the president's party did not want harriet miers that o'connor seat, because you might remember it was called the swing seat. she a moderate conservative and sometimes voted with liberals, particularly on abortion and affirmative action and sometimes she voted with conservatives and. the right wing of the party had been just waiting, waiting, waiting for her to leave so they could put certain conservative in that role. and they didn't have that faith in harriet miers. they thought she might be more like o'connor, and she realized was hurting the president. she also said she wasn't an expert in law and she admitted that. but it would be like a language for the first time and in two or three weeks having to go up to the hill and meet with senators and 1 to 1 meetings and, not be able to speak the language. so she saw she was hurting president and she stepped aside and she says and i quote this in the book, she says, i wanted to

at one point, the senator from massachusetts came to rehnquist's aid and basically said that is is a smear him. you know, you should you know, it was seen such an epithet, so so, you know, the birchers as a society were fairly well contained for a lot of reasons. but you know, i think the ideas lived on other kind of picked up the ideas kind of kept the, you know, presidential candidates like pat buchanan of ron paul for father of rand paul. you know, they adopted a number of ideas that, were very familiar to the birch society. and that's partly why, you know, someone like ron paul actually had you know, he said a lot of nice things about birch society and and even just as a random aside, when one of his constituents died, bequeathed property to the birch society and ron paul and kind of split it so they were part of the coalition also getting at those tensions i thought was a really interesting to sort of think about the conservative coalition. yeah. so give us a little sense of the the the organizations born in 58 it kind of really pretty much ends in the middle 7074. so what's it

at one point, the senator from massachusetts came to rehnquist's aid and basically said that is is a smear him. you know, you should you know, it was seen such an epithet, so so, you know, the birchers as a society were fairly well contained for a lot of reasons. but you know, i think the ideas lived on other kind of picked up the ideas kind of kept the, you know, presidential candidates like pat buchanan of ron paul for father of rand paul. you know, they adopted a number of ideas that, were very familiar to the birch society. and that's partly why, you know, someone like ron paul actually had you know, he said a lot of nice things about birch society and and even just as a random aside, when one of his constituents died, bequeathed property to the birch society and ron paul and kind of split it so they were part of the coalition also getting at those tensions i thought was a really interesting to sort of think about the conservative coalition. yeah. so give us a little sense of the the the organizations born in 58 it kind of really pretty much ends in the middle 7074. so what's it

chief justice rehnquist wrote separately with scalia and thomas.e are worried about these circumstances where the state court goes too far. he said impermissibly distorted the legislatures scheme or transcends the appropriate limitations of statutory review which some of the justices even and dissenting opinions seemed to embrace. i think justice kavanaugh who was a lawyer involved in the bush versus gore litigation on behalf of republican clients is suggesting this is a good distillation of these principles. the majority by chief justice roberts did not want to commit to anyone thought. they said we will not articulate that but if you arrogate yourself the power, you might go too far. that looks like we will not necessarily get there. justice kavanaugh would have said it looks something more like bush versus gore. i don't know if there are five votes for that. if the litigation continues, i don't know whether there would be agreement or consensus about that that's what he said just is that we look to that opinion in 2000 as a roadmap going forward

justice o'connor, justice rehnquist, justice scalia and justice thomas joins the principal dissent. but then he writes his own dissent and he points out a number of things first, justice thomas is the one justice that goes back to the original meaning. why is he the only one in not justice scalia well, the institute for justice who litigated case did not believe they could get five votes to go back to the original, meaning. they argued that a corporate purpose meaning pfizer's was not a public purpose. they lost that argument because the majority, they should defer to the legislators, others as to how what is a public purpose at justice scalia asked a really question that i think justice thomas dissent really captures. he asked, if you take from the poor and give to the rich because they pay higher taxes, would that be a public purpose? and the city's lawyer said. yes. justice scalia, you can tell, was puzzled. so we asked the question again, you mean you can take from a give to be if b pays higher? again, the city's lawyer down and said yes. justice thomas then is in his dissent ru

robert bork and william rehnquist. those were his advisers on opposing the civil rights bill, which is a pivotal moment for the republican party. turning it from the party of lincoln into the party of strom thurmond and so it entered it opened a battle in congress that that went for a long, long time. but a lot of people don't know that all during the filibuster in the senate. senator russell, my senator from georgia, who i met several times, was the leader of the southern democrats, and he a big easel in the back of the senate explaining. his bill, the racial relocation act, which said that the civil rights bill unfairly targeted the south because most black people live there. and his racial relocation act would export the proper number of black people from the southern states to the northern states to equalize the black population. so for each state, it had plus or minus, how many black people are. we're going to have to we're going to be, as a result of his bill. now, of course, it was a fantastic bill, but he said,

even chief justice rehnquist in his dissent said this is n -- a fixed deadline. justice kavanaugh: well, justice referred to it as a holding.ion justice kennedy referred to it as a pronouncement. so, anyway, just to make sure the full picture is presented there. mr. park: yeah, so, justice kavanaugh, i think that every itution in every state will di i mean, we have states coming to the court and saying we have reached our diversit educational benefits of diversity goal we don't need to engage in any race-conscious admissions process at our state flagships, and -- ande at the point where i think the expert evidene pretty definitively shows that we are to meet what we feel is an inclusive diverse nment through minimal consideration of race, and -- and i think that we will get there based on this qualitative process, but there is no strict numerical benchmark. jukavanaugh: one of the things the other side has emphasized is that in the period since grutter, in the two decades since grutter, that we have more expe with states that don't allow race-based admissions, ca