Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Supreme Court. Its great to see so many people here for the Supreme Court historical societys second lecture of the 2014 leon silverman lecture series. The society was formed in 1974 by chief Justice Warren berger with the notion of promoting public understanding of the history of the court. And it does that in many ways, through lectures like these, through the publication three times a year of the journal of Supreme Court history, and through the acquisition of portraits of the justices for display in the Supreme Court building. Id also like to especially thank the society for its efforts to assist my predeces r predecessor, bill suter, and the Curators Office in obtaining the port raraits of all prior 1 clerks of the court, which have now been obtained for the court. And on behalf of all the officers of the court, id like to thank the society for all of the efforts they give to all of us. This evening were joined by three distinguished scho
About the 1968 campaign of Richard Nixon is that a beginning of a trilogy for you . I had intended by it. Files and into my brought back all the stories and memories, and thought the nixon comeback in his earliest years was a book in and of itself, a book in which i was very close to Richard Nixon, his staff is very small, and it was an extraordinary story, an extraordinary time. Time of assassinations and riots and campus anarchy and revolution, the tet offensive, americans coming home in caskets the convention at chicago it is an extraordinary story. I will go through the chronological part of this book and talk about some of the things i have never seen before in to begin with asking you about the first moment you met Richard Nixon. The first moment was at the Burning Tree Country Club in 1954. Pete cook and i were looking for a summer job. We were the only two white guys out there. After the black caddies have gone after their afternoon bags, the Vice President was put out on the b
On friday we took the cases from tuesday tuesday. Wednesdays we discussed the monday cases. But the deliberation is orderly at the conference. The justices speak in turn going around the table. And usually the discussion is over after everyone has spoken but sometimes on the more difficult cases there would be back and fort later on. But by the time the conference is over most of the cases have been decided and will not be will come out the way the way theyre designed to conference. But there are some cases that are difficult and these deliberations that occur at later times on spontaneous occasions you cant really say. And when you were the senior justice and the majority and youre thinking about who do we sign the opinion to what are you thinking about in that part of the process . Well, it varies. Youre concerned about distributing assignments fairly and equally is one thing. Mainly the primary thing when i was assigned responsibility was to try to pick the justice who would do the
I dissented from my two colleagues who thought the recount actually increased the risk anner own youse count of ballots which i thought was quite wrong. That case was reversed by the was on the court of appeals. If the recount had continued to probably wouldnt have altered the election. There have been some studies that indicate thats the case but the thing that may have roduced the result was the ballots they had in Palm Beach County if i remember correctly some of the details that Patrick Buchanan was on the seed a large number of ballots in an area that probably would have voted democratic. There is a belief gore lost more votes to Patrick Buchanan than to his opponent. That conceivably could have made a different. But it was just a very strange ballot form they had. It was hard for the voter to use. Time for one more question. I wanted to ask about your thoughts on the equal rights amendment. I know it wasnt addressed in your book and i was wondering if you could talk a little bit
Tom had a whole lot of credibility even before the blog started as a Supreme Court advocate. I first started writing about tom when he was a clerk, when he was interning for nina tote 10 berg at n 3 r. As on npr. As an up start, somebody who did not fit the mold as pete said and who was cold calling, the losers of cases in lower courts to see if they wanted to appeal to the Supreme Court, was a model that really hadnt been used before. I remember interviewing another top advocate of the, before the Supreme Court and asked him about tommy and he said, well, you know you wouldnt want your heart surgery done by the, by the heart surgeon who called you up and asked if he could do it. Who was that . That was a fellow by the name of john roberts who became a chief justice. I think he is sort of eating his words on that. So i think, tom had the reputation of a real innovator within this stuffy world of the Supreme Court and he was a good media source. So that when the blog came along i think