don't come away thinking robert jackson had a happy end of his life. felix frankfurter, he really wanted to be the next brandeis and also you can see he is a great justice it is fair to say he never became the justice he wanted to be and the listen particular kind of end of 90 playing getting credit. probably to the extent to any of this judicious -- jurisprudence for shaped after so i want to probe they love it is this an accident of history too much ego and ambition that having all four men on the court ended up diminishing all of them? it seems like a deeply sad maybe i am just projecting what it seems that they all ended up not a feeling they have achieved a the greatness? am i over breeding? >> ilec it purely as a tragedy because brown vs. board of education they had one chance the justices who hated each other and disagreed all the time to actually agree on something and they did agree and that was the abolition of segregation and that was and is probably always will be the greatest moment in the history of the supreme court to not come easily th

you don't come away that robert jackson had a happy and if his life.elix frankfurter i can tell you had a thought for him because he wanted to be oliver wendell holmes, he wanted to be the next brandeis and even though i think you can see he's a great justice i think it's fair to say he never became the justice he wanted to be and douglas i think particularly kind if ends up not even getting credit for when you laid out. probably to the extent any one of these four ships liberal jurisprudence that came after. but brenda marshall got the credit. so i guess i want to probe a little bit was this an accident of history there was too much ego, too much ambition that having all four of these men on the court in the of diminishing all of them? it seems like a deeply sad, maybe i'm just projecting, but it seems they all ended up not feeling that they had achieved the greatness they hoped for. am i over reading? >> guest: i guess i don't see it as sending as a tragedy because of brown v board of education. dÉtente won a chance, these four justices who hated eac

this book in sadly you don't come away thinking robert jackson had a have the and if his life.ix frankfurter i can tell you have a soft spot for him because he really wanted to be oliver wendell holmes, he wanted to be the next brandeis, and if you can see he's a great justice i think it's probably fair to say he never became the justice he wanted to be planned douglas i think particularly kind of in-depth not even getting credit for what you just laid out and he's probably to the extent any one of the four shapes liberal jurisprudence that came after. marshall got the credit. i guess i want to probe a little that was this an accident of history that there was too much ego, too much ambition that having all four of these men on the court in to the diminishing all of them? i mean it's just seems like a deeply sad, and maybe i am just projecting but it seems like there the in the feeling they didn't achieve the great christmas. am i over reading? >> guest: i guess i don't see it as ending purely as a tragedy because of brown v board of education. so, does have one chance before t

tavis: robert jackson. >> upstate new york lawyer, tiny town. our last supreme court justice did not graduate from law school. he went to law school for a single year and figured the way to get on to the legal professor was to apprentice. his first law cases involved horses and cows and came to washington to be the general counsel of the i.r.s. and got himself nationally known by going after andrew mellon for tax fraud. mellon was the third richest man in america and was secretary to the treasury. he was robert rubin and warren buffett rolled up in one and he had the best art collection in the world and when he wanted a tax wright off, he would donate the art to a foundation he controlled and the art would not move. it would stay on his walls. so he got up on the first day of the trial, he's charged with tax fraud and came up with a clever response. his lawyer, frank hogan, famously said, my famous client is a rich man thoroughly scared. so mellon announced, i'm giving all my art to the people of the united states of america and i'll throw in a

robert jackson and william douglas. mr. feldman talks about his book scorpions, the battles and triumphs of fdr's supreme court justices with the senior editor and supreme court reporter for slate. that is all tonight, prime time on booktv. ..

roberts. >> reporter: jackson has lost count of the total number of i.e.d.s discovered. >> 100-plus. >> that'shuge number. >> for two and a half months it's pretty up there. >> reporter: we first met jackson in july. he lives and breathes explosives even has their molecular structures tattooed on his left arm. >> nitroglycerin. >> reporter: in two months in safar, i.e.d.s killed two of his friends, corporal dan greer and gunnery sergeant floyd holley. several more were wounded, including sergeant johnny jones, who lost both his legs. despite their losses, jackson's team learned many valuable lessons-- how to probe for i.e.d.s with no metal that can't be picked up by the detectors. how to use robots. how to find the wires leading to the bombs. and how to share information on new types of i.e.d.s with bomb teams across afghanistan. >> we collect it and transmit the information very quick now. it's within days. >> reporter: jackson knows that leaving this adrenaline-fueled life to return to his family will not be easy. >> you miss it? >> yeah. >> reporter: your brain here works a million miles an

one justice that comes to mind on that score is robert jackson. there are other justices who are great because of their opinions and because there are so -- they are so a quick and moving and persuasive when they write about the law. -- so persuasive and moving when they write about the law. there are a lot of qualities that people have. many justices have been great in their own way. whether i can meet any of those standards is something to be seen and something that other people will have to say. >> you are the first justice to be nominated not having served as a lower court judge. does that matter? >> that is something for other people to decide. i am sure i come to the job with less experiences. possibly, there are some other experiences that some of my colleagues have not had. i hope the court as a whole will be enriched by my presence. maybe you do not need nine former judges. maybe you can have some people on the court who have different kinds of experiences and who come to this job with a little bit of a different purse that -- a bit of a

robert c. byrd, which happen to be true. and i was -- i think, nick, you were at the dinner. we had a jefferson-jacksonnd robert c. byrd did something never happened before in all the dinners i've spoken that. he stood up and he said, "we're honored to have senator joe biden from delaware here tonight, and, joe, i'd like to introduce you to west virginia." then he spent, as nec will remember, the next probably 10 minutes talking about everyone in the audience by name -- where there were from, what they had there were from, what they had done, how they had fought through difficulty. and he said, kind of like johnny carson, "here's joe." well, i thought it was pretty impressive, literally. robert c. byrd asked me to speak, but he knew the privilege was mine, not the people to whom i was speaking. he was devoted to all of you like few senators in the 37 years i was there, 36-plus years i was there, that i have ever, ever known. he was fiercely devoted, as you've all heard, to his principles. principles. even once he became power , he always spoke truth to power, standing up for the people he proudly was p

william jackson kept it so carelessly and i've come to think of them as robert scoundrel, of madison's notes which are magnificent. and then collated them, with notes taken much more partial to by other members of the convention, often for their own preference. they didn't i think of the same mission of preserving these days for prosperity, but they put them together, collated them so for any one day you can prepare the accounts that went on. now, editing is not just copying manuscripts and printing them. take what fran have to do with's notes. madison apparently changed his manuscript notes circa 1921 after the official journal have been published. he assumes a journalist authoritative. it was not. so in some ways he thought he was thrown, he'd fix it. and often where the wind was from accuracy to error. what do you do with this? he had to look at the manuscript and figure out where madison made changes in 1921 broccoli. fortunately as he tells us, it wasn't so hard to do because the inca medicine used in 1921 faded in a different way than that and she accused in the 1780s. so he coul