Transcripts For CSPAN3 Remembering Justice Thurgood Marshall 20240713

Next to be here to do it, i will introduce the panel for this evening. In this look back of Justice Thurgood marshall. To my immediate left if you have not guessed it is justice alayna kagan. 87. 87, seems like yesterday. All of our panelists this evening clerk for one judge or another in the d. C. Circuit. It is a good court. It was a great court. It was in the White House Counsels Office and the Clinton Administration and then in the policy council as deputy director. She settled at harvard not long after that became the dean of harvard law school. She became associate justice of the Supreme Court. Judge Paul Engle Meyer at the far end. You came on the court in 2011 in the southern district. He went to harvard and to harvard for law school as well. He was in private practice before going on the bench. Professor randall kennedy. He was a road scholar, a graduate of yale law school. He clerked for judge scully right on the d. C. Circuit. He joined in 1984 and has been a very productive and prolific author of books. Remarkably, while other colleagues write articles, he is writing books. Is the most grandiose member of the American Academy of arts and sciences and the American Association of philosophical. We have four marshall clarks including myself. All of us like virtually all of our other alumni of Justice Marshalls chambers, i think we are very much affected in our careers and in our lives by the experience of having been in his chambers and in close contact with him for a year. We are going to reminisce a little bit if that is ok. I am not sure if there is more to it. I hope that that is of some interest. I will start with you alayna unless you would like to pass. Why dont you start with how the clerkship affected your career. I think clerking on this court affects everybodys career who doesnt. It is more than is justified. It is something that you put on your is a may and all of a sudden doors open. I think what is much more important to me is just how the experience of clerking for Justice Marshall affected who i was and what i thought was important in the world. You could not survive a year in his chambers without realizing that there were things that you do knew nothing about. It was an eyeopening experience in many respects other than just learning about the law. It gave you an appreciation for people who had fought for justice all of their lives and the importance of their work. Especially, his work. It made you think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Not that one could never hope to have a career that was so much justice seeking as his was but i think, his voice in my head never went away in terms of trying to figure out what i was doing and why. So you still hear him call you knucklehead . Justice kagan knucklehead was on a bad day. Shorty was on a good day. Shorty was maybe just yours. Paul, do you have something about the ark of your career . Everything she said i agree with. From my perspective, if you came to the clerkship thinking about doing public service, it could only e reinforce that impulse. Midway through the clerkship, i applied to become an assistant u. S. Attorney. I was delighted that he was enthusiastic. In fact, it turned out that he was quite a big fan of the department of justice. As it happened, three out of the four of us became assistant u. S. Attorneys. In addition to what alayna said, hearing his stories about trial courts lit a fire under me to be a trial lawyer and to engage with the craft of being in a courtroom. It reminded me of how important it was to know the facts and the records. One of the lessons that you learn from Justice Marshall was that facts are much more important than the law. Listening to the way he recounted the cases in his career and how decisive evidence and witnesses really taught you that the craft involved in getting one with the evidence as a judge, i think about him almost every day. I think about him in this context. I think about the defendants in my courtroom, i think about the families. I think out this may be the only day for these people to be in a courtroom. You want to make sure that there is a decency, honor, and dignity in which, the judge presents himself in court. You want them to leave with them feeling that they had been respected. I have his picture up in my chambers. It is a picture of him on the steps of the Supreme Court on may 17, 1974. I walk in there every day and it reminds me that we are in the justice business. I have a lithograph of him in my office. I acquired it not long after leaving chambers. Randy . I turned out to be a legal academic and one of the subjects that i write about is Race Relations law. What could have been better preparation then working for Justice Marshall. Over the course of the year, one of the great benefits of working for him was he seemed to know everyone. He had many stories and he was very generous with his time. He was very generous with his recollections. I would just ask him lots of questions and it turns out that much of what he shared with me became of use in my professional life as an academic. It is still very much of use. We have been joined by mrs. Marshall. Welcome. Alayna we will come back to you. Both of the year that i worked for judge Justice Marshall. We never called him justice marshal. Heres one that will not be so surprising. This is one that really brought on the knucklehead appellation. It was a case called cotter moss. It was a case about a white 12yearold girl in rural kansas. She lived some miles away from the nearest school. There was a bus service but they made you pay. They would not give a waiver, not even for indigent students. The school did not get to school. The idea of a state charging fees for the school bus was a constitutional challenge brought under the equal protection clause. We walked into his office and i laid out the arguments and i said to him, judge i think it is going to be hard for her to win. He looked at me and asked why . I told him indigency is not a suspect class and education is not a fundamental right. That means rational basis applies and the state has a rational basis here. He looked at me as if i must have lost my mind. His basic idea of what he was there to do was to ensure that people like her must get to school every morning. As long as he was going to be on this court, he was going to vote to make that happen. We descended in that case. The justice dissented. It was a seventwo opinion. Most of the court decided the case just as i laid it out to him and Justice Marshall wrote a dissent. The reason i say i was called a knuckle head a lot in this case is because all the cases i was on, it was the one he was most passionate about. What moved him more than anything was to trying to get rid of these entrenched inequalities in american life. This one did not involve race but it was all the same to him. I would bring in a draft of a dissent and he would say stronger. I would bring in another and he would say stronger. It went on like that for quite a while until he felt like i got the right level of passion and disgust. Obviously, he communicated some of his own. He took out his blue pencil and marked it up quite a lot. That is the one that i think will not surprise you but one that may surprise you was a case called torres. It was a group of hispanic employees who had brought an employment discrimination suit. They had lost and filed an appeal. The secretary to the lawyer handling the appeal left out one of their names on a notice of appeals that went up to the court. The question was whether leaving out that name was going to mean that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the appeal of this one employee of the group. All the clerks that thought this was an easy case and the answer should be, it is just a secretarial mishap and you are going to deprive this man of his claim was crazy. Justice marshall ended up writing the opinion for the court in that case saying yes, in fact, leaving out the name made all the difference and the court did not have jurisdiction to take the appeal. He spent a whole life litigating cases and you cannot expect anybody to bend the rules for you. The only thing you can expect is that they apply the rule straight. Indeed, people who litigated like i litigated, their salvation was in the rules. If he had a chance for success, it was because of the rules. It was because people decided to take those rules seriously. The rule of law and playing by the rules was to him, when of the most important principles in the justice system. Sometimes it worked against you and they put in the wrong name but in the end, especially for people who were disliked and were disadvantaged, they needed the rules. You better make sure you have created a system where the rules are there. I do not think he convinced a single one of us honestly but it was a powerful lesson for me actually as much as normal or so listening to talking about serena and the bus and the importance of education and eradicating inequality. This was a powerful lesson about the importance of rules and of law in our society. Even when sometimes it does not cut your way. Anybody want to comment . There was one decision he was most passionate about our term was richmond versus crooks. This involved municipal contracting in virginia. He was very distressed by the outcome there. One of the things that was interesting to me was not just his fundamental point that affirmative action is different from official racism but his focus again on the facts. He said to me, i want to make sure in the very first part of this paragraph that we make the point that this is the capital of the confederacy. I want to make a point that there is something ironic here about historically, confederacies bending over to do something progressive about race. Judge engelmayer he was deeply knowledgeable as a historian and wanted to make sure that anything that came out of his chamber was rich in social context. That is one of the most distinct memories that i have. My favorite case, my favorite opinion from the justice is a concurring opinion. It was a concurring opinion in a case in batson versus kentucky, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed an earlier opinion, swing versus alabama. The court said, the challenges was immune from question in the case that Defense Attorneys had wanted to challenge the prosecutors use saying that they had been based on race. The court said, challenges are just immune from question. If a prosecutor is using a challenge for trial related reasons, it is ok. Well, two things about benson versus kentucky. First of all, benson versus kentucky was triggered by the justices use of denial of social rights. The justice issued dissent after dissent after dissent. Basically, to alert the bar that at least there were a couple of justices interested in the issue. Secondly, to educate and persuade his colleagues. Over the course of the year, he succeeded. He succeeded in persuading other justices to come along with him and he triggered a reassessment. Then, the court agreed with his position. Agreed to reverse the decision. Then, the justice was not satisfied. He wrote a concurring opinion in which he said, i agree with what the court is doing but it is not going far enough. It should get rid of challenges altogether. It was that pushing of the envelope that brings a smile to my face and makes me think that that is the Justice Thurgood marshall that i revere. Since you mentioned to sorts of opinions i will mention another weird it is not just one opinion but a series. Justice marshall came to the conclusion that Capital Punishment is in all circumstances in violation of constitutional standards. He descended in all Capital Punishment cases in which somebody was sentence to death. That stand too, is a stand that makes me salute him. Let me ask you to elaborate. Justice marshall and brennan reiterated that. As opposed to, a tentative view that once something is settled that that is it. Do you think this was because of Justice Marshall or the philosophical difference . I think it was largely because it was Capital Punishment. Justice marshall was such an unusual person. He had such a broad, long, varied career. He had represented people who faced Capital Punishment and indeed, represented people who were executed though they not ought to be executed. He is a person who represented people who were put to death. I think that had something to do with the passion with which he saw this particular issue. There were several issues about which she was deeply impassioned but none more so than the question of the government taking someones life. I think it also reflects a deeper view that he had. I think he would say to us, this is a living constitution and when it matters, we ought to not feel impeded from reassessing it. Judge engelmayer if you look at the speech he made on the bus and tenniel, he says exactly that. The glory of the constitution and is its amend ability. It took too long of a time but the court eventually got it right. Absolutely, the Capital Punishment based on his own personal experience was something that he cared deeply about but there was also a philosophic view not to be locked into a wrong decision. Im not sure if everyone is fully aware that the justice spent much of his career trying criminal cases. Defending rape and murder charges time and time again. I remember he said once, when a journey brings back a sentence of life imprisonment, that is when i absolutely knew that the guy was innocent. [laughter] he told a lot of stories from that period and others. When i was there, he would come back from lunch and come into the clerks room, sit down in a easy chair and just Start Talking for maybe 30 or 45 minutes virtually every day and telling stories. There were some repetition over the course of the year by he had a huge repertoire. Those stories were unforgettable. Was he doing that when youre there . Justice kagan he did not so much come into the Clerks Office but we would go into his office when we would talk about cases and the way it typically worked is we would talk about whatever was on the court schedule, many more cases than are now on the court schedule. About 140. Then, we would talk about the cases and at some point, he would be finished and he would segue to what was storytime in Justice Marshalls chambers. It was quite the most unforgettable experience and my one regret of the year is that not one of us was smart enough to write them all down. I am sure i have forgotten 95 of them. I will tell you, i do not think he ever repeated one. It was remarkable. It was remarkable how many stories he had. It is remarkable how he remembered what he had been served. Through. I cannot begin to capture a lot of it. He was really did the greatest storyteller i have ever, across. It would really make you laugh and weep. A lot of the stories he told were pretty rough. They were stories about his boyhood, about what it had been like to crisscross the jim crow south as a trial lawyer. Often, fearing physical danger from wants, the police mobs, the police. They were terrible stories, a lot of them paired a lot of them. At the same time, he was so darn funny in his facial expressions and his intonations. Sometimes, you are laughing at a horrible story but it was an unforgettable experience that experience. Both the content and just listening to a master storyteller. Of all the stories you told, the stuff that sticks in my mind today is the physical courage of being a criminal defense attorney in mississippi, western florida, and the physical risk he took. He told a story about almost getting lynched. He told stories about clients getting lynched. He told stories about being tucked into the backseat of a car to be driven to the supporters home. Site unseen. Sometimes moving in the middle the night to be unseen. He said to us, what is an easy way to tell if a confession has been coursed . Coerced . He said, ask how big was the cop . He would also always joke about who would sleep next to the window a case a bomb gets thrown in. If you have not read his book, is boldly the single opportunity to capture what it was like for him to have these kill a mockingbird moments as a defense attorney in the south in the 40s and 50s. Randall the story i remember most is a story about his experience in tennessee after world war ii. There was black veterans defending themselves resorting to arms. They were charged with various crimes. He went and defended them and got most of them off. The local police got really angry with him. He is leaving the courthouse. He is with another lawyer. Justice marshall is driving and the police, the local police will him over and hustle him into their car. The police tell the other lawyer to stop following the police. According to Justice Marshall, he thought he was a goner for sure. He got the police were going to turn him over to the clan ku klux klan. So, they go back to town and they charge Justice Marshall with driving under the influence. They go to a local magistrate and the local magistrate says, why are you bringing this man . The police say, this man was driving under the influence. The magistrate says, i can tell right away. He tells Justice Marshall, breathe into my face. The axis out and says ask this out this man has not touched a drop of whiskey. Justice marshall drives off and gets where he is going and calls the empty and calls the naacp and says i have not touched any whiskey before but now im about to get drunk. Again, it is a horrible story but it is a true story. There is a book about this particular event. He always would punctuate it with his own brand of humor. I will contribute a couple. The stories he say were quite harsh. Not in the language or even in the events. One was a rape trial in florida. The jury went to the liberate and the prosecutor came over to Justice Marshall and said, see the bailiff over there, what about them . I will bet you five dollars that the jury comes in within two minutes and say that is a guy. What does that have to do with anything . Those journeymen have been sitting there all day jurymen have been sitting there all day. They probably want a cigar. The other is in one of the books. He came out of the courthouse in texas, about an hours drive from dallas. He was being driven there in the morning and was picked up by highway patrol. He was escorted all the way to the courthouse and when he came out at the end of the day, there was a police car there that followed him to someplace halfway back to dallas and dropped off. When this happened the second day, he went back to talk to the driver of the police car. He asked what was going on. The sheriffs deputy said, sheriff said you are not to get [laughter] judge ginsburg what was your First Impression when you met the justice . Jus. Kagan my first conversation with the justice actually came before i met him. It was at that time he was he picked clerks without interviewing them. He had some form of clerks that did his election. I had been through their process, and he decided to make me a job offer. And he called me. It was the summer after i graduated from law school. He called me and, i remember the call came into the longer view office, and they had to find me and get me and i came back and found a phone. And finally got him on the phone, and he said, so you want a job . And i said, i would love a job. And he said what, you already have a job . [laughter] jus. Kagan and i was like, oh my gosh, he didnt hear me. I said no, no i really, i just said i would love a job and i want this job and i dont have a job. I dont know if you already have a job [laughter] jus. Kagan this went on three or four times before he figured it out and he took pity on me or i am not sure which happened first. But the only other thing i remember about that conversation before he hung up the phone was he said, i hope you like writing dissents. [laughter] jus. Kagan and we did write our share of dissents that year. Judge ginsburg i was in the office when he played that on another replay. [laughter] judge ginsburg so what about your First Impression . Judge engelmayer similar phone call without the already you have a job, but you still want the job . He said you got it, then get ready to write dissents, then he got off the phone. I was a Summer Associate studying for the bar, and this all happened in maybe 35 seconds. There is this quality of, Somebody Just pulled a prank on me. I dont know if this happened. Instead the next hour trying to figure out where you go to confirm Thurgood Marshall has just made you a job offer . [laughter] prof. Kennedy i had a similar telephone call. I remember the first time i met Justice Marshall facetoface. I was very nervous about it, very nervous because the reason i was, it was a big deal anyway. A justice, someone you will work for. But it was even bigger than that for me because i had heard about Thurgood Marshall all my life. I third i heard about Thurgood Marshall all my life because my father in columbia, South Carolina went to see Justice Marshall argue a case, rice versus elmore. He was one of the last of the white primary cases. And throughout my childhood, i heard my father talk about the importance of that case for him. My dad didnt really, didnt know what the legal issue the state action issue, but he didnt Pay Attention to that. The thing my father talked about over and over and over again was that the judges in the courtroom called Thurgood Marshall mr. Marshall. And the reason why that was so significant is that because of jim crow etiquette, black men were not referred to as mr. If you were a black physician, you might be called dr. Soandso. If you were a black minister, you might be reverend soandso, but typically black men did not get the honor of mr. , and it was a sign of how distinguished Thurgood Marshall was that the judges and the other lawyers called him mr. Marshall. When i heard about that all the time growing up. So with that backdrop of course, it was a tremendous honor. Jus. Kagan was it part of why you became a lawyer . Prof. Kennedy in part, sure. Again, i am sure it influenced my brother. I have an older brother who is older by a year. But we heard about, we heard about that argument. 100 times. Judge ginsburg i dont know whether it is one of the books, but there is a story that when the justice was practicing in his early 50s and he needed to see the chief justice. The chief justice was not to be found. But he knocked on a door in the hotel, a hotel in connecticut with big conventions, and anyway, big hotel there. Knocks on the door. Jus. Kagan mayflower. Judge ginsburg somebody had given him a tip, and there was the chief justice. He was playing poker. He was playing poker with president truman and two other men. I dont know who they were 30 went over to the chief justice and opened up this paper and must have had an affidavit on it because the chief justice looked up and said, mr. Marshall, is all of this true . He said yes. Signed the paper, left. Never noticed that it was the president in the room. [laughter] judge ginsburg never said anything to him or if he doubted did notice, didnt say anything. [laughter] jus. Kagan a little bit more informal back then. Judge engelmayer i remember him telling that story, saying if you have the guts to open that door, i have the guts to sign it. Judge ginsburg much better. Thank you. [laughter] judge ginsburg and a First Impression when you finally met him . Prof. Kennedy he was, you know, he was a large man, and very imposing. I think nowadays sometimes you know the views you get of an avuncular, you know, completely welcoming he was a top boss. Welcoming. He was a tough boss and intimidating. And he definitely laid down how he wanted things done. And you knew how he wanted things done, and you paid attention. So i made from the very beginning, from the getgo with me for any event, i was very attentive to him. And over time i suppose the intimidation went away, but i always found him imposing. Judge ginsburg i think it was a combination of his physical stature, manner, and just knowing him as a historical figure essentially. I think it was that that was intimidating, or at least overwhelming at first. Jus. Kagan go ahead. Judge engelmayer he as intimidating as he was, i think back also on how accessible he was in the sense that he really understood what he was you really understood as his clerk what he was thinking about, cases, historical events he was recounting. In the left roughest language and most exquisite language would tell you that heroes, the villains, what he thought about the advocacy. We had just seen he would share views about colleagues. He read us allow the letter. He was about to read into the chief justice on the occasion of the annual Holiday Party which my cohorts and i have a copy of this, essentially the following, dear chief, as usual i will not attend the annual christmas party. I still believe in the separation of church and state. So he was letting us into the tent. As imposing as it was, i appreciate as well that he gave us access to his take on just about everything. Jus. Kagan you know, he cared a lot about what we thought about things. He listened to us and asked us questions. There was a real dialogue between the clerks and the justice, but gosh did he know who was boss. Sometimes you would get this treatment of, he would point was an omission, and he would say now what is over there . Can you take a look . Whose name is on that commission . [laughter] jus. Kagan and then he had this other sometimes people would say, well you have to do any of these things. You have to, in that case i told you before, you have to vote for mr. Torres. He was a there are only two things that i have to do, stay black and died. [laughter] jus. Kagan he didnt repeat stories, but that expression you repeated a lot. Prof. Kennedy he had another one that went along with that. I remember once arguing with him about a case, and he said thank you very much and sort of put his hand up. Let me try again. It is a couple times, then finally i said, thurgood, let me say, two years ago you said this. And if you go the way that you want to go, that you are proposing to go, you will be completely contradicting what you said two years ago. Then he looks at me, and he says, do i have to be a fool all my life . [laughter] judge ginsburg before i forget, i want to talk about as many as there were, i never heard one in which he was the hero. It was just what happened. Jus. Kagan you have to look it up afterwards to find out. Judge ginsburg he was not selfaggrandizing in any way. But i think he very much wanted to pass on to us and ultimately well beyond us a real sense of what it was like for him. Many years later he did sit down with juan and talk about a lot of things. He had not talked about them for publication before. I thought the only thing, the only jarring note in that whole book was the subtitle of the book. It was Thurgood Marshall, american revolutionary. Revolutionaries dont follow the rules. Revolutionaries were out in the streets, and he had no affection for people out in the street. None. Jus. Kagan i am sure randy has some thoughts on this with his relationship with the Civil Rights Movement generally. Prof. Kennedy well, it was a complex one. On the one hand he was mr. Civil rights, and over a long time, through just extraordinary work, amazing diligence, amazing persistence along with extraordinary skills, created the groundwork for the civil rights revolution. At the same time, he was, he viewed the world very much through a lawyers lens. His way of doing things was to attack through the courts what you didnt like, have those things invalidated, and after they were invalidated, that he was not a fan of direct action. And there was tension i think. It is documented. There was real tension between him and the students who were the people who engaged in sitins. There was tension between him and Martin Luther king jr. There was tension. He respected them, and they respected him, and to move the world in a way that the champions of the Civil Rights Movement moved the world, you needed all sorts of people. You needed a division of labor. You needed people who saw things in different ways and pushed in different ways. But yeah, it was a complex relationship with some of the other members of champions of racial justice. Judge ginsburg division of labor reminds me, there was one among the clerks in my years did you have anything like that . A division of labor among the clerks . Jus. Kagan what was it . Judge ginsburg bill bryson took all the criminal and criminal procedure cases. Jus. Kagan served him well. Judge ginsburg karen took all the civil rights and related, anything related cases, and i got what was left. Jus. Kagan [laughter] judge ginsburg so that was International Case on securities and labor and, there was, there was never a moment in which never a matter in which we had any disagreement or had to work out exactly what he wanted to say because we were completely on the same wavelength. He was in that respect he was a conservative person. He wasnt trying to upset the securities laws [laughter] or make waves just to make waves. Judge engelmayer the way he did it with us, he made it clear early on that we were to be looking over one anothers shoulders. He tells us early on if i am mad with you, i am met with all of you. So we would look over one anothers work. We were particularly conscious of his and he was completely intolerant of lateness. You could not be late about anything. One minute was too late. So you know, he sort of had a collective punishment. One other thing i remember about the year, and it had to do also with Capital Punishment. On the night of an execution, there would always be one clerk who had to stick around for anything latebreaking. And some of the time, when everything had been done, the person who had to stick around had to call up the justice at a specific moment. I did a bunch i did it a bunch because me and my fellow clerks they were married. I was unmarried. I volunteered to stick around. Nobody was looking for me. But on those evenings when i would call, i would pray that mrs. Marshall [laughter] prof. Kennedy i would be praying that mrs. Marshall would be home because it made a big difference. The difference it made was this. If mrs. Marshall answered the phone, the justice would come on, and he would be very civil. He would be very nice, very light, very civil. Jus. Kagan [laughter] prof. Kennedy if she did not answer the phone, and it got to him first, it could be a very tough conversation. [laughter] judge engelmayer i remember about the capital cases that charged to us not merely to execute the, the formal dissent based on his categorical view. He said to us, i want you to comb each of these cases to see if there is ground to get this reversed. This was not an abstract point. He wanted to save a life. Those phone calls also came with a question. Have you dug into this . Is there something specific we can say . Jus. Kagan this is one of my most vivid memories. For many reasons, the Capital Punishment played an even more significant role in the court than it does today. First up, there were more executions, so you know, a week, there would usually be several executions of week at that time. A week at that time. There were fewer procedural bars, so a lot of what we do now is people on death row, and there is no way to cure their merits death row, up, and there is no way to hear their merits. There are rules now that many, many more claims are procedurally barred than they were then, and the third thing was the Death Penalty law was much less relative. Much less well developed. You didnt have there were a lot more open spaces in terms of what was allowed and not allowed. They were really quite numerous, these executions. It was a serious issue that remained open, and you could get to it. Randy talked about dissent and denial in one area of the law, but i remember it wasnt just the typical like saying that he and Justice Brennan used to talk about. How did it again go again, the oneliner . [indiscernible] jus. Kagan yeah. But we spent, we drafted so many dissents from denial and Death Penalty cases, i would be surprised if we didnt do 25 of them, 30 of them in a year. Judge ginsburg i mustve been there. Either i was completely oblivious or i was there during the interim when there were no penalty cases, 74 and 75. Does that sound right . Jus. Kagan yeah. Judge ginsburg thank goodness. Chilton, where are you . How much time to we have . What do we have . [indiscernible] judge ginsburg that is fine, but why dont you just tell us your favorite recollection of the year, not just in chambers but the year that you spend here . Jus. Kagan somebody else start. Judge engelmayer this is an outside of chambers memory. Holiday time late one day, he told us that he was going to take us out to lunch the following day at a Seafood Restaurant. And we get into a car. We go to a Seafood Restaurant in anacostia. We walked in, he is leading the way. As Thurgood Marshall walked into the packed dining room, people realized, then slowly one by one everybody, they just got up and just stood for a minute. They stood for maybe 60 seconds, then he nodded and everyone sat down. But it was a moment that allowed you to see him the way the world saw him and reminded this was not your ordinary Supreme Court justice. This was a working living legend. And there were moments with elevator operators or tourists who bumped into him. That moment out in the world and suddenly you realize, put aside what we have been talking about and in the conference room, forget about storytime and the individual cases. This is the magnitude of the man. This is what he is meant to our country. And we saw it again after he passed away and they had the honor of the guard. We took an hour shift in the middle of the night as people streamed in. And people were overly, overly emotional, people bringing copies and leaving them. You could sense the gratitude and to him and just the enormous spacey had occupied enormous space he had occupied. I had that opportunity to look through anothers eyes. Prof. Kennedy i guess i would echo that and say probably the most enduring snapshot i have of that year was on the very last day. Because on that day i mentioned earlier my father, my father came to the court that day. And the justice was very nice to my dad. My dad talked about rice v. Elmore and seeing him. And they had a very nice talk. And these two people whom i revere, the memory of that is a deep memory with me. Jus. Kagan i also remember when my parents came to the court, and he was nicer to me that day than he was before or since. [laughter] jus. Kagan and that was the only day i knew that he liked me. [laughter] judge ginsburg well, thank you all for being here for this hour. I hope there will be many more in the future with others carrying these stories forward as long as we can. Thank you. Jus. Kagan it was a privilege. [applause] my name is jim ohara, and im a member of the board and of the executive committee of the Supreme Court historical society. The society is deeply honored to be the host of tonights National Heritage lecture. A few observations before the evening is over. First, justice kagan, judge ginsburg, judge angle meyer, professor kennedy, thank you for your insights and stories of your times with Justice Thurgood marshall. This has been a warm and wonderful evening, and i am honored to have been part of it. The National Heritage lecture is sponsored each year by the Supreme Court historical society. The White House Historical society, and the United States cap able historical capitol historical society. Since 1991 when Justice Anthony kennedy delivered a rousing talk on president roosevelts 1937 Court Packing plan, the three organizations have rotated hosting duties each year. This evenings National Heritage lecture is of course a celebration of Justice Thurgood marshalls 50 years after his ascension to the Supreme Court. The society and all of us here are deeply honored to be joined this evening by his wife, cecelia marshall, his sons Thurgood Marshall junior and john marshall, his daughterinlaw jean marshall, and his grandson Edward Patrick marshall. Thank you so much for being here and honoring us with your presence. [applause] james thank all of you for coming and please join us in the receptions in the east and west conference room, which are directly to your right as you leave the board room tonight. Tonight we will be serving two recipes from justice and mrs. Marshall that are featured in the societys most recent publication, table for two. We are serving Justice Marshalls maryland crab soup and mrs. Marshalls mango bread. Copies of tables for nine are available at the societys gift shop along with many other books and many other gifts. The gift shop is on the ground floor of the court and will remain open throughout the reception tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, the 2018 National Heritage lecture is now adjourned. [applause] the United States Public Health service originated with an active congress in 1798 for the relief of sick and disabled seamen. The role and responsibilities of what is now called the commissioned corps of the u. S. Public Health Service has changed and evolved over the years since then. Next on reel america, from the work of the public