Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Jim Newton Justice For All 20240712

L. A. Times covering the trials for the officers and the beating o. J. Dney king and then the simpson case. He always wrote with amazing speed and great pelicans. I got to know him in another capacity in the late 1990s when he was covering the charter reform process in los angeles as part of covering city government. I was chairing an elected commission in los angeles to revise the city charter. I saw not only was he amazingly talented but a reporter of incredible integrity. He believed the Los Angeles Times was not devoting enough to reform and quit his position in protest of this. He put his very job on the line because he believed in the importance of stories. Atthen as now was a star the times, and as a result, they gave tremendous attention to charter reform. I will always believe charter reform succeeded because of what jim newton did. A few years ago, he mentioned to me he was planning on taking time off to do a biography of earl warren. I thought it was a great idea, and that i had a chance to read the book and without a doubt, it was the best traditional biography i had ever read, so im thrilled he was able to join us today, and i ask for your help in welcoming him. [applause] you all. N i think especially you. Thank you for coming today, for sharing your burrito with me. I thank you for welcoming not just me, but my family, my friends. My son is here today, and my wife. To whom the book is dedicated. My friends christopher, elizabeth, and sarah are here, and i thank you for welcoming them as well. Im here to discuss a great lawyer, who made a better country, a good man and good father who presided over a lovely family, a man who toerstood his obligations provide and fulfilled them to the best of his ability. Im speaking of course about erwin. [applause] as he mentioned, [laughter] as he mentioned, ive known him more than 15 years and turned to him for wisdom on more subjects. Han i can count i know of no person who is more fluent on more subjects, more generous, and more graceful with his time and knowledge. In los angeles, we consider it a great act of beneficence to share him with you and we thank you for sharing him with the nation. Abouthat, let me talk another great man. Earl warren. Earl warren is in many respects, i think, misunderstood. Sometimes by those who do not know better, and sometimes by those who do or at least should. Day, few people know earl warrens father was murdered in 1958 and the assailant never found. He was accused of sympathy toward communism, but he was a fierce patriot, a veteran of world war i who prosecuted communists during his days as a district attorney. He was accused of sanctioning lesson justice when in fact he was a bit of a prude. Earl warren was a deeply practical man, showed by his experience far more than any ideology shaped by his experience. His life offered powerful evidence that a persons upbringing can shape a life and a life can in turn shape history. In his case, he was formed by early 20thcentury california and came to embody its values. He then exported those values to the nation and to a remarkable degree, those values helped shape our lives today. If you will bear with me a few minutes, i would like to talk about who warren really was an in the process, i hope to paint a more accurate picture of this very consequential man. Earl warren was born in 1891 in los angeles where i live today. In those days, it was a scrappy Little Mexican American Village in the very young state of california. Although his family left essentialist when he was still quite young, there are two memories of his youth that remained with him throughout his life and helped to form the man he would become. The first was his recollection of a young neighbor crying in pain as she died from a disease probably polio or meningitis. He rode in his memoir of her anguished cries and the sobbing of her family over her passing gave him a lasting impression he wrote in his memoir. Father worked for the southern pacific m struck with theunion and struck with union. One night, Union Members the station and hung a man in effigy, and warren watched, a little boy wideeyed in terror. The experience, he recalled, decades later, dave me a horror of mob action which has remained with me to this day. The young boy warren moves to bakersfield, his home for the rest of his days. It was not quite the ok corral, but not so different either. It was a distinctly western town of a california variety. It was a Railway Depot for the southern pacific where his father had been blacklisted from working with southern pacific after the strike, but they were so desperate for workers that they accepted him in bakersfield. Bakersfield was sharply divided by class and by race, though its fundamental Racial Division was not so much between its white and black residents as between its white residents and chinese population. It was a place where a shootout stilln street was occasionally occurring. His childhood for the most part was pleasant enough. The family was not rich, but he and his sister were well taken care of. There was food to eat. They got christmas presents at holidays, he earned extra pay, but there was also the palpable impact of life on the frontier. Warren as a teenager worked summers for the southern pacific , the company that employed his , and a dominant economic and Political Force in california at the time. s job was to round up trainman and deliver them to their trains when the call went out. That meant dragging them out of saloons and horror houses and casinos and the like, which also left an impression on him. He also bore witness to the indignities of labor in those days. He saw men squander their ,alaries in the Company Store saw them injured in trains, which meant they had to be operated on, which meant putting them on a saw bench and amputating a limb. A an warren carried aversion to disorder. Strains visible as a teenager in his young life would remain part of warren throughout his career. Berkeleyn moved to where he attended college and the law school. He was, i am sad to report, not much of a student, but he was a brilliant joiner of fraternities and maker of friends. It was there at berkeley as he came of age just as california bulldozed its way into a new kind of politics. The Political Movement warren witnessed was importantly, from his perspective, led by a trial lawyer. Even as a shy young boy, warren had dreamed up rack to sing law in a courtroom, and as a college student, he had the opportunity to watch one of the most arresting trial lawyers of his generation. Hiram johnson, of whom im speaking, was a young lawyer called on to take over a Corruption Case against the city mayor and some coconspirators in a bribery scandal. He waser the case second chair at the outset but took over as first chair when the lead attorney was shot in by head in the courtroom age. Law students, take note. Johnson made his name in the case and went on to serve as governor of california and spearhead a Political Movement, which was the rise of california progressives. The progressives were by todays definition, a bit of a hybrid. They were importantly, not populist. It was not a populist movement, per se. They were largely middleclass men. Many ran small businesses. Target of their Reform Efforts was the southern pacific, whose political influence they deplored, and which shut them out of business. They were quite bourgeois and moderate in their ideological politics. They managed to sort of simultaneously deployed two kind of icons of social and political culture in california at the time the smokefilled room and the saloon. The smokefilled room for them very much symbolized corporate domination of the state while the saloon stood for the sort of sweaty waste of the working class. In those respects, warren perfectly invited progressivism. He was in some respects the most successful progressive in california history, arguably national history, and when he was elected governor, he hung just one portrait in his office, that of hiram johnson. Progressivism was responsible for many good things in california. It ought corruption and champion a better working conditions. It brought the state the and the recall, which had the effect of pulling power out of business and delivering it to voters. Progressivism also had its quite notable drawbacks. One was that its founders were conspicuously unsympathetic to the problems of racial minorities. Class washe working suspicious of immigrant labor, which it saw as a threat, particularly Asian Railroad workers and farmers. When progressives help form their Political Alliance with labor by adopting some of labors antipathy for those asians. In his case, warren, too, accepted without much thought they antipathy the antipathy toward minorities. Warren enthusiastically champion the interment of californias japanese and japanese americans. Incarceration was the nations shame and warrens as well. With his blessing and approval, the federal government incarcerated 110,000 people who were charged with no crime. Warren, im also sad to report, never in his lifetime found words to apologize for that act. As governor on the other hand, he compiled a far better record. He champion universal health insurance, which is timely today in light of the government in light of the fact governor shorts and egger put forth a bill like one warren tried to get through. He raised gas taxes to pay for road construction. , it isout his tenure sometimes set california roughly from the dustbowl until just after the end of the Second World War was on the receiving end of the largest peaceful migration in American History. Theres no way to know how many people arrived for sure during that period, but warren liked to say it was his responsibility to provide for 10,000 new people every monday morning. Among those who returned after the Second World War were californias japanese. Warren, who had encouraged their banishment, also welcomed their return and saw that they were protected as they returned to their lives. He signed the brown act, and in a little noticed act, he signed the bill that ended legal segregation in california schools. I will return to that in a minute. For all of that, he was it a gigantic lead dominant figure in california politics. Llyhe was a gigantica dominant figure. Hes the only person elected three times to govern california. Incumbente beat an democrat, despite fdrs popularity nationally and throughout the state, despite the fact the state and country were at war. Beats last election, he fdrs son and did so by more than one million votes. Achieved the remarkable by todays standards and sort of unimaginable feet but when of winning the republican nomination in the democratic nomination as well. Give that a moments thought. He is the only person ever nominated by both parties to govern california. It was in 1953 that as im sure many of you know, Dwight Eisenhower tapped warren to become chief justice of the United States. In another hard to imagine turn of events, warren accepted that as a recessed appointment and served until march of 1954 without senate confirmation. He left california on a saturday and was sworn in as chief justice of the United States on monday morning. Hopeew chief justice, as i i have demonstrated a bit, was a progressive republican. He liked it Electoral College it and was good at it. He was angered by corruption and infuriated by vice. He understood crime as a prosecutor and as a victim. He, sadly, was often familiar with racism and had indeed succumbed to it, though he had taken some steps to make amends. Warren, as he took over the Supreme Court of the United States, was singularly a product of his upbringing, a man very much forged by his experience. Sometimes im asked if warren had some sort of aboutface ideologically after becoming chief justice, and i think im quite confident the answer to that is no. I think the right way to think of warm and growing through this ofiod is as a period steadily expanding horizons. He had started as a prosecutor in Alameda County with a limited geographic focus and a professional focus solely on law enforcement. He then became attorney general of california, broadening his geographic focus, but remaining devoted to law enforcement. As governor, of course, he had to tackle a full measure of social measures, and as chief justice, he had his full opportunity to express his ideology and upbringing on a national scale. Layeffect of the media apparent in what was his first opinion, brown v. Board of education. Had been brought before the court before his arrival and held over from the previous term. It is impossible to know any fair estimation has to admit it is impossible to know precisely how the court have ruled under warrens predecessor, but it is suggested a best record would have struck School Segregation by a vote of 63 with vincent dissenting or at worst, gone so far as to uphold segregation. The letter would have been a catastrophe. Heartened and emboldened segregationists to find support for their institutions in the Supreme Court. His first term, then, was nothing less than a defining test of american race relations. As warren took over brown, he was a westerner and as such somewhat less invested in the institutions that were being challenged and defended. Though this was little recognized and reported on at the time, warren had played an Important Role in schools in california. A group of parents in Orange County just outside los angeles filed suit against what were then referred to as californias mexican schools where the racial alignments were barely less odious than those of the deep south. In westminster, for instance, there were two schools that educated elementaryaged children. The Westminster School had 628 anglo students and just 14 latino heritage, while the Hoover School a few blocks away had 152 students, all of them latino. The suit was filed prebrown and thus in an era where the Supreme Court continue to sanction separate but equal schools. Nevertheless, a quite brave District Court judge in los School Struck down segregation on the struck down the mexican schools on the fight on the argument they did violate laws. That ended the matter, but the ninth circuits ruling did not force the state to address other aspects of discrimination in school. As a result, if it had settled there, the state Education Code would still have included language that permitted separate schools for chinese and other asians in. In that, in june of 1957, warren signed legislation that struck that language and ended all racial segregation in california schools. The warren who managed the warren court new racism in schools, and most importantly, i think in the context of brown, he understood politics. His management of the core through that period his management of the court to that period alone i think would earn him a position of greatness in american legal history. He made it clear in his first conference in december of 1953 on brown that he would vote with those prepared to abolish School Segregation. That it was clear the court now the majority had assembled behind the naacp position. He also said in that first conference that he believed the only alternative to upholding that position was for the court to make a finding that blacks were inferior to whites. That had the effect of very much raising the stakes of the conversation for those justices who were inclined for whatever reason not to support that position, they now stood in the likelihood of doing so on quite negatively racial terms. His tactical approach also was terribly important. He could have asked for a vote after each of the justices articulated their position. He asked that they not recorded vote at that conference. He was concerned that doing so would begin to solidify positions, and he was eager to talk about it. Instead, he brought the potential dissenters along slowly and gently. He declined to blame the south for the doctrine of jim crow and promised Justice Clark he would not push too hard in a decree. He argued to limit the ruling only two schools when he could have argued for a more sweeping common condemnation of segregation in public institutions. He quite painstakingly addressed the fears of the court to advocates of judicial restraint, and felixbert jackson frankfurter, by emphasizing the court could find support for its decision in a long precedent. He went to read and persuaded felix read he went to felix read and persuaded him there was no point and standing alone. As late as 1947, he had refused to attend Supreme Court Christmas Party if black pages were to be invited. He was a person very much reared in a tradition of segregation, but warren went to him as deliberations near to an end and told him he had to decide if it was the best thing for the country. He was faced with a choice between patriotism and his upbringing and he folded. Brown was the work of a man who had seen fit just 11 years earlier to intern people whose race had made them suspect but was also the work of a man who had welcomed them back into states. It was won by an experienced politician who knew how to lobby and how to tally votes. It was the first evidence of warrens life informing his judicial philosophy but certainly not his last. Momentskip ahead for a and say that when warren prepared to leave the court in 1969, he was asked which of his rulings he considered most important. Naturally, i think people ,ssumed he would pick brown which was considered by many certainly the most important case of the century. He instead cited the courts work in voting rights. Those cases where, as you all know, im sure, monumentally significant, but his decision to put them in the first position was curious, certainly to the reporters asked the question. I believe the reason they resonated so strongly with him, as with so many other issues, dates back to his own experience in elected political life. As governor, warren had seen little reason to quibble with californias voting system, which in those years elected legislators to the assembly and senate by two systems that were common at the time. A similar members were selected by population and Senate Members chosen by county. Warren presided over the system and prospered by it. He understood there were inequities entailed but accepted them as he said later as a matter of political expedience. But then warren became chief justice, and from that vantage point, i think he saw that it enhanced the voting strength of whites at the expense of minorities, particularly urban blacks. The experience of having been californias governor and the authority of now being a nations chief justice, he struck peebles down. Baker was written by william brennan, warrens closest and an ally on the court. It established the principle the court could intervene to consider state and legislative districts. Two years later, reynolds completed the work of baker but overturning alabamas electoral system. So important to warren was the courts opinion in reynolds that he took it upon himself to write it. That was an intensely grueling and upsetting assignment for warren. He had accepted with great reluctance. In fact, he had initially turned it down. As a result, though, that year 1964 was the most difficult of warrens life. They would preside over hearings until 10 00, walked on the street, put on the ropes, preside over the Supreme Court until the end of the court day, and return to the Warren Commission in the evening, preside over its proceedings until nighttime, and then take his legal readings home with him. He was 72 years old at the time, and it was grueling double duty. Those close to him say no period in his life took a greater toll on him either physically or emotionally. Still, he kept command of his court and won majority. His belief in voters came through loud and clear in baker and reynolds, and also a number of other cases during the period. The warren court ended poll taxes and literacy tests for voters, for instance. Put in place to restrict voting as much as possible to whites. In one sense, it is charming to analyze. It is not hard to understand why a person who was elected seven times with think voters were unusually perceptive, but i think the cases demonstrate more than just his personality. Remember, it was the california progressives who really saw things like the referendum and recall as the antidote to government domination and corporate domination of government and government secrecy. That was warrens tradition in the first half of the 20th century, and by the time he was done with his landmark work on the court, it was the nations tradition as well. There are two more fields i would like to mention more briefly in which warrens life in california profoundly affected the positions he would take as chief justice. In one area, he carried the court to all of her great benefit, and in another, he failed to do so. Warren spent much of his life as a prosecutor in a particular time and place. Withgan his life along bootleggers along with corrupt county sheriffs. Broke upn his life, he a corruption ring in the oaklandalameda area that was giving away paving contract in return for kickbacks. The political tradition he upheld was one of clean government. His insistence on the 1920s in the 1920s and again the 1930s was on professionalism and fairness. Those ideas express themselves in a historic line of cases during his tenure as chief justice. In 1961, the court will illegally seized evidence cannot be introduced in state trials. In 1963, the court ruled defendants were entitled to a lawyer in state trials. The gideon case, as you all know. Clarence gideon got a new trial. The warren court ruled in that arrestees must be informed of their rights. Maranda also got a second trial. In purely historical and personal terms, this cases yielded somewhat mixed results. Gideon was acquitted and let a good life after his acquittal. Ernesto miranda. He was retried and convicted again, this time based on a confession he made to his girlfriend. Confessing to of anyone around. He was freed in 1972 and two months later stabbed to death in a bar fight. His assailants were informed of their miranda rights. They declined to speak and were released as suspects in the case and never reapprehended. All his cases were very controversial in their day, none more so than miranda, but while there were shocking notions they were shocking notions, to warren, they were a natural outgrowth of prosecutorial professionalism. In one area, his upbringing did not serve him well. His aversion to vice, which was so much part of his youth and young adulthood, carried over into pornography. He liked to say that his courts recall him saying that if any man showed this to one of my daughters, i would punch him in the mouth. He had a really visceral pornography, noble instance as a person and father, but they did not help him and determining how much expression the First Amendment take it. He tried to fashion a rule that the court should somehow protect the speech but punish those who peddled it, but it always raised the question of how a man or woman i suppose, could be put in jail for distribute in something the constitution protects. Warren never solved that question, and as a result, the warren court drifted somewhat in pornography cases. That is the exception that highlights the rule. In one field after another, earl warren road loss wrote loss int drew upon his life california and made the nation a fair replace. I have skipped over some big cases, but let me say in passing that the warren court also established a rule of libel that happens to be a personal favorite of mine. As you know, it establishes that Public Officials may not recover damages from news organizations even when stories are false unless they can show they were published with malice or forethought. Adopted theourt bill of rights as implicitly protecting privacy. It speech, assimilate, religious practice from government intrusion. Protects from quartering soldiers. The warren court in this case, led by justice douglas, concluded that those first 10 amendments established a zone of privacy, if your number, as douglas famously put it, around every person. Whole, those rulings and the rest of the warren court the rest of the work at the warren Court Created a liberal libertarian. Warren and his colleagues protected the dispossessed and empower the government to address in equity while at the same time refusing to allow it to intrude on personal liberty. That is a hybrid worthy of any western progressive. There are those today who would have you believe that what warren created was a sort of creaky architecture of liberalism, a wispy leftist fantasy, reckless in its activism and barely connected to the constitution that rooted it. That is as a personal analysis of warrant and i believe a legal analysis of the warren court, simply wrong. Warren was, for one thing, no lefty. He was the father of six, a good father, a member of the bohemian club, grand master of the california masons. He was, as i mentioned, a veteran who had served his country in world war i, a republican, and deeply and movingly, a patriot. He was an activist to be sure, but under his leadership, here is what that activism created segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional. Parks andaches and other facilities. States that gave white voters more powers than blacks were ordered to stop. Police were reminded the constitution requires a warrant before they ransack a home. People who were arrested were reminded they had the right to a lawyer. Public officials who sought to squelch dissent were warned that this is a country founded on the appreciation of perspicacious news. Bureaucrats who sue who assumed they could write prayers and order children to recite them in schools were snapped back to attention with the admonition that prayer in this country is the right improvidence of religious officials, not religious leaders, and police who took it upon himself to arrest married couples who dared purchase contraceptives were ordered to back off. I would like to conclude by asking this which of those proposals would anyone here, liberal or conservative, disavow . Do any of us believe this would be a better country if Public Schools discriminated by race . Is anyone prepared to defend the proposition trials would be fairer if or people had to represent themselves . Had tooor people represent themselves . Would any of you want your colleagues or children to recite a prayer every morning written by george bush for or andrew cuomo or pat robinson . Least agree that it is not a liberal position to maintain that the government should respect an individuals freedom . Together, the landmark cases of marked acourt government that sets decency but recognizes its limits, that acknowledges the difference between a Public School and private home. That is the great legacy of moderation, one befitting a man who do like defined the Political Center in california and went on to redefine it in california. It is a center we have lost and one that we should reclaim. When were liberty and rectitude exist sidebyside, one where patriotism is synonymous with, not challenged by vigorous dissent, one of decency and Free Expression in equal measure. It is, i submit, one of justice for all. Thank you. [applause] that would be delighted to take questions i would be delighted to take questions if anyone has them. Yes, sir. [indiscernible] i wondered how you think that sets him apart from many of the current judges on the court. Nguyen one of the things im often struck by is that when warren came to the court, he was far from the only person on the court to have come from a political background. In fact, five of the justices of the initial warren court had not been judges in any significant way prior to their service on the Supreme Court. William douglas came from the sec. Robert jackson has served as attorney general. Happen to believe that breadth of experience was quite good for the court. Theink it enlarged personalities of the court and enriched his debate its debate. Thedifficulties of confirmation process have tended to push president s in recent years to appoint judges who are quite capable, but i think it creates a narrower, less and vicious, less freethinking court than the one warren inherited. I think the court benefited really by the breadth of just warrens. Did you discover other cases in which warren worked as effectively as he did in brown to marshall votes . Mr. Nguyen brown is the one that had the greatest consequence in a sense where it had the necessity to deliver an opinion that addressed not just a legal issue but sort of the underlying moral question of regation, but there are there are many instances where. Arren had to flog his team in the initial stages of the warren court, some of you will dividedw, the court into two relatively antagonistic camps. Jackson in frankfurt represented. Position of restraint interesting that it was not. Deologically split in an era where the phrase liberal judicial activism flows days,o freely, in those activism was separated from an ideological debate. Warren fell in soon with the black douglas camp, but from his initial arrival at the court until frankfurter left and died in the early 1960s, it was a significant struggle within the it helpedfierce that contribute to whitakers nervous breakdown and departure from the court. Gone,rankfurter is Justice Hartman stayed and represented a voice of conservative skepticism about which of the warren courts work, but the intensity of the debate much lesson, and that period from roughly 1962 to 1968 could be considered the most harmonious period of the court and also the one where majorities were easiest for him to come by. Warren was a republican, i wonder if you could comment on how his relationship with eisenhower changed after his appointment and also his decision to resign and give johnson the opportunity to be his successor. Mr. Nguyen eisenhower was quite disappointed by warren. He is reported to have said, the biggest mistake of my presidency is sitting on the Supreme Court theres various versions of the quote, but it is indicated eisenhower was disappointed both in warren and and brennan. Theres a famous episode in which warren reported where he went to a dinner party at the white house hosted by eisenhower, blacktie, stag, and john davis, a lawyer from south carolina, was invited and sat within earshot of arne. Brown was still pending. Thurgood marshall was not invited to this party. At the conclusion of dinner while they were getting up to go for cigars and drink, eisenhower took warren by the arm and gesturing to the southerners at see, these are, not such bad people, they just do not want their little girls sitting next to some big negro. Warren was mortified. Memoirs. Ed that in his their relationship never recovered from that. At the end of his career, nearing the end of his career, warren did not try to get cute with his resignation. After bob kennedy was killed, i clearly withsaw the political i he did have that nixon was the likely nominee and likely to be the next president. There was no person in his professional life he detested more, and seeing that that could or was about to happen, he submitted his resignation and made it contingent he said he would leave the court upon the confirmation of his successor. Today, by the way, that is not so unorthodox. Sandra day oconnor did the same thing in her resignation, but at the time, johnson was not seeking reelection. The vietnam war was upon the country. It was too much of a stretch. Johnson then appointed someone who had been his personal lawyer and to whom he had been very close, and it became a test of johnsons ability to pull on the senate, and the fact is, he had lost that ability at that point. The tragedy, from warrens perspective, is that ultimately, forrest is forced to withdraw his nomination. Suspect could not figure out a way to stay longer. The awkward thing was that the stated reason for his leaving was that he had gotten too old and was not getting any younger, so he did end up in the awkward situation of first having to swear in Richard Nixon and then having to give him his vacancy. As a result, im sure you will know, nixon quickly got to replace both warren and fortis in the first year of his presidency. [indiscernible] are sad to sayou he never found the words to apologize for them. You also mentioned that later he welcomed back the japaneseamericans. Did he find any other actions that may have expressed regret . Mr. Nguyen yes is the answer. His memoirs include a passage in which he says i have since deeply come to regret my advocacy of the internment. His memoirs did not come out in his lifetime. They remained unfinished at the time of his death and were later put together and released. I later found a copy of the manuscript that was sufficiently finished for him to send to colleagues to proofread. And that, he says he has since come to regret and his editor at of the word deeply after he died. He found it very difficult. He was a terribly stubborn man, and i think he had a politicians aversion to saying the words open im sorry. Its really unfortunate, though, in a number of respects. There was a group of japaneseamericans who made a really concerted effort to get him to apologize in his hadtime, and their pleas additional poignancy because you see he is a person devoted to Civil Liberties and for him to be unable to apologize to them was particularly hurtful, i think. There are a few other ways in which he attempted to telegraph his regret. There was a piece of legislation after his retirement from the corporate prior to his death that would have made it easier to carry out another internment, warren publicly told publicly referred to the excesses of world war ii in that regard. Those asking for his apology chose that chose to accept that as an apology and moved on, but he never did quite get the words out just right. Thank you for coming. This has been wonderful. Im thinking about the dinner party incident. The argument that was made was that we all have the freedom to associate. Think about the argument out there, his statement that to come at it any other way would be to say that blacks are inferior, that seems really radically different than his approach in any other regard as you describe because that is something that seems, to me, require them to recoil. This does not seem like a way of reaching out. it is offered, i think, in conjunction with a very gentle approach of how to move the court forward. It is a very firm and, youre right, statement that could invite a certain amount of backlash, but its accompanied by a determination to move quite slowly forward. If you look at his calendars through those weeks, he launches every day there was a real sense he was going to work the room. I suppose youre right, it could have had the effect of backing a corner. [indiscernible] mr. Newton its after the initial conference, but i want to say it was february or march of 1954. It is an extremely deliberate process. The other thing to remember about his desire to move slowly and technical issues is that he was still a recessed appointee had thehis period, and court issued a ruling in brown, still point where warren had courtonfirmation, it undoubtedly would have complicated his confirmation considerably, so he had personal political reasons to want to move slowly. I dont think those were the dominant reasons, but that is the background throughout this period. Im wondering if you want to comment at all on the controversy brewing about what papers from living, sitting Supreme Court justices are to be made available to the public. Sort of what is their game in trying to get at delegation about how the court deliberates versus protecting the confidentiality of the deliberation process. I wondered, when you saw this in researching this book, i wonder if evidence for anything when you were writing this book you could not have, or if you had gotten evidence that someone who wants to ride the biography write the biography of john roberts in 40 or 50 years will not have. Is newton the short answer i think maximum availability of this material is the way to go. I say that understanding the confidences between a judge or and his or her clerks foster a certain freeness. In answer to the other part of your question, there is no material i coveted for this book that i was not in some way able to get, but it was not always easy. By statute, the Judiciary Committee records of Supreme Court nominations are sealed for 50 years. Surely by coincidence i would love to say this is not planned on my part, but 50 years from 1954 happened to fall in 2004 in the middle of my research, so i was there for the opening of those records. Justice brennan has a body of a preset or incredibly important and illustrative of warren as ray fisher, who is a judge on. He ninth circuit warren was a sort of stern figure, who did not gossip readily with his clerks, but he did talk with ren and all the time, and brennan gossiped with his clerks, so the brennan papers are a real trove of material on the court and warren personally he did talk with brendan all the time. They are essentially divided into two parts, one part of which are controlled by some restricted access arrangement. Bring lightch help to the last part of the book. Shame thatt it is a brennan put certain restrictions on the papers on when certain batches could be released because they do offer such vivid insights that the burning clerks compose an end of term memo that whichized every case in brennan road, and they go through the deliberations of the aret, the deals, and they rich material, unlike anything else im aware of. Other little bodies of papers, the fbi file on warren, which is 2600 pages on warren, i think, which took a long time to get, and im lucky my wife happens to be a first amended lawyer and help that along considerably. I did not feel at the end of this that there was anything i could not get that i needed, but some of the Court Material is a bit hard to get to. My own view is the easier it is to get to, the better off we are. If that means there are some confidences that are revealed after the fact, i think on balance, you can see the country benefits by weighing in on behalf of disclosure. One more . No, well, i thank you all very much. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] caller caller [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] history bookshelf features the countrys bestknown history riders of the past decade talking about their books history writers of the past decade talking about their books. You can watch here on American History tv on cspan3. From publicdent affairs, available now in paperback and ebook. Everyts biographies of president , organized by their ranking by noted historians, from best to worst, and features perspectives into the lives of s chief executives and their leadership style. To learn more about each president and historians features, visit online and order your copy today wherever books and ebooks are sold. American history tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. David reynolds is coeditor of the kremlin letters, stalins wartime correspondence with churchill and roosevelt. He talks about the messages sent between these allied leaders and explains how they use communication to build relationships with one another and advance wartime goals without extensive bureaucratic interference. The National World War Ii Museum hosted this event in january 2020. Tonight, it is my privilege to introduce the speaker of dr. David reynolds, one of the united kingdoms most distinguished scholars and writers, but that is probably selling him short. He is a man of noble stature. A professor of International History and a low of Christ College cambridge, he studied at cambridge and Harvard University and has been a regular visitor to these shores since first coming here is a graduate student in 1973. David, as you already heard, is the author of 12