Justices have set on the court. So i have sat on the court. So i have been there awhile. Brian what brought you there . Tony i went to law school for a brilliant four week career and then i went into journalism and i was transferred to washington and my editor said if i could handle the new jersey Supreme Court, i could handle the u. S. Supreme court. I have covered it ever since and it is the best beat in town. Brian why . Tony because there is such for friday that we have to cover. We have a Death Penalty case one day, samesex marriage, you know, some of the biggest issues facing the country. It is never boring. The other thing is, unlike the white house beat and the congressional beat, we are not really dealing with politicians in the same sense that they are politicians. The justices are not elected. They actually have very little interest, generally, in talking with the press. But they are trying to solve these problems and these disputes and it is just an interesting, fascinating process. And i like that better with having to interview someone from congress or covering the white house where there are 200 people writing the same story. So it has been the same so it has been challenging in that way. Brian so the court has been out since june or july . Tony midjune. Brian are you going to be back in the court . Tony i will. Brian what is the first thing that you are going to look for . The since we have not seen justices together in a long time, since the end of june, i will look for a health check, as you might call it, which sounds ghoulish, that it just checks on how they seem and if there are any bad feelings that you can see between them. The justices always say that they are cordial and friendly, even though some of the language gets very strong. So i will be looking out to see if there are any, you know, cold shoulders or tensions that you can see in the interactions between the justices. Brian any of them doing something this summer that caught your attention . Tony some of them travel overseas, that is not unusual. Some of them went to gave , you know, a range of audiences, law schools, local civic events. I cant say there is anything really striking. ,ustice ginsburg, i should say operaded and opera an that has her as one of the characters. She didnt anticipate in it, but it is the Scalia Ginsberg opera, that is actually the title of it. It is an opera that looks at the odd friendship between scalia and ginsburg. They are opposites ideologically but they are very good friends. Brian last week, the pope was in town and spoke to the congress. We has a video that shows the nine justices that shows out of the nine justices of the Supreme Court, four came. Where were the other five . [laughter] several, we tracked them down, but several had outoftown engagements that they could not break. Scalia and thomas were pretty much unaccounted for and you can only speculate. , butare both catholics they are conservatives, and they might not have really enjoyed message or some of his message about immigration and other things. So maybe thats why they didnt come. Dontf the justices particularly enjoy those joint sessions of congress, especially when a state of the Union Address comes, because they feel like they are supposed to be neutral parties, so they might feel awkward copping for whoever is speaking. Alito said that you feel like a when youant up there are sitting while everybody else is standing and clapping. The justices sit and they keep their hands quiet. So it is not their favorite venue, i would say. Particular, this popes messages might have been something that some of the justices did want to talk about. Things,o talk about two there are things i want to talk about. One of the things is age, the justices and how old they are right now. You can see on the screen that withart at the top ginsburg, and we go down, alito is 65, so to me or is 61, john roberts 60, and elena kagan is 55. What does that say to you in the history of covering the court . Tony well, the median age is younger than some of the justices of the courts that i have covered before. 2010, justicel stevens was on the court and he was 92. Brian and he is still alive . Tony he is still alive and i think he regrets having retired because he is still very, very active mentally and keeps pining about what the Current Court is doing even though he has left the court. ,ut it does also tell me that and this is something i have been writing ever since i started covering the Supreme Court, that the Supreme Court really should be a big issue in the president ial campaign. Justices in four their upper 70s or 80s going into the next term of president. For actuarial reasons, it seems possible, likely, perhaps, that at least one or two cu justices tices will depart in one way or another. The public really should be thinking about that one when they decide who to vote for. About 16 months or so until the next Congress Comes in and after we go through a president ial election and all that. If somebody were to leave the court today, what is your guests guess . Would congress approve a supreme appointment . Al tony i suppose president obama would be able to get someone through. It might not be his first choice because i think it would have to be someone very moderate or a middle of the road justice in order to get the votes you would need from the senate to confirm that person. Later it gets, the more likely the Senate Republicans would just sit on the nomination and just ignore it until the next president comes in. But i think if it was now, it is still such a long time before ,he next president takes office i think that the public wouldnt much like to have an eight Justice Court for more than one year. Brian the other category we talked about is religion, and you talked about some of the justices were catholic. This is an unusual looking court from a purpose a perspective in the fact that three on the screen are jewish and there are six catholics. What does that say . Tony it really is remarkable. It is so different. They used to be protestants and protestants and protestants. So generally speaking, there would be one jewish justice out of the nine, but that is just completely transformed. There are no protestants on the court anymore. There are three jewish justices now. Know, i think the justices only say that they wont let their religious views interfere with their decisionmaking, and i think that is generally true. Justice scalia once said that if felt the Death Penalty that if his religion would allow legal, hepenalty would, he would resign from the court. Now the pope, in fact, did speak out against the Death Penalty when he spoke to the congress and said that the Death Penalty should end, but that doesnt mean that Justice Scalia would believe that the pope is correct. So we just own know how he feels just dont know how he feels. But in general, i think the justices set their religious views aside in terms of constitutional right and wrong. Brian as you know, we started a series here start a series here called landmark cases tomorrow night. You have to tell a story about how they commissioned you to basically write about this stuff. Weve got a book that folks can get that is on the screen right there called landmark cases by tony mauro. How did this come about . Tony i got a call if you months ago and i was told you were about to do a series of shows on landmark cases, and they have been using the book that i wrote years ago as the foundation or the informational source of a lot of this material that you are going through now. I was told that they would pull out some chapters from my book and turn it into a new book, this book. So thats how it came about. We had to get rights from the and then iblisher, updated each of the 12 cases that i have written about. The original book was called illustrated redecisions of the Supreme Court. Brian how long was that . Tony i wrote about 85 cases throughout history and the most recent edition was in 2005, so that would include things like, t includea wouldn things like, you know, a samesex marriage case. So it was a little dated. Picked itcks it with the constitutional law center. Brian let me show you a poll that we took. Was, the percentage of the mass of American Adults who are familiar with Supreme Court cases. Six he 7 of people were 67 iliar with roe v wade of people were familiar with roe versus wade, aranda versus arizona, 27 , read scott versus it gets 12 , and then into king versus burwell, 6 , and the samesex marriage case, which was 5 , lautner versus new 4 , and baker versus car, 3 know what that is. I will just start with the bottom one. Who was baker versus carr . Tony it is a little bit abstract but it basically has to do with districting and how the andes carve their counties areas for the purposes of election districts so that, you know, you would have cu have 100,000ricts with voters lacking a state representative and the next district with roughly the same you would have to guarantee the same voting power, in essence, and what happened in the middle of the last century is there was a lot of migration. Rural areas toom urban areas and that created a great disparity in populations between the districts. There was one los angeles district where one Million People lived and they were electing one state senator and there was a rural district in california that had about 20,000 people in it and they were also electing one state senator. And that has consequences because it meant that urban interests were not addressed, particularly in state legislatures, and rural interests prevailed a lot. Out a sort of simmering problem in the political system and this case dealt with that. This was a case out of tennessee were a lot of this disparity was occurring and the Supreme Court decided that, in fact, there should be a one person, one vote concept. They didnt use that phrase, it, but peopleed would have roughly the same of voting power no matter where they lived. And earl warren, the chief justice then, said it was the most important decision he presided over. That is saying something since he was also the one who wrote brown versus board of education. Brian there are 12 Different Cases and the book and 12 Different Cases every week and of course it will be available in our archives. Which justice since 1979 have you known the best . Just by being there and being in the hallways and being at different events . Tony well, that is a tough one because, like i said, the justices dont really have much use they dont really want you to get close to the justices. Some reporters have relationships with justices, but i like to think that i shouldnt be making friends with the people i cover. It is a little harder to be skeptical if you, you know, have dined with the justices or their friends. But every reporter does it differently. Say that the would ones ive known the best are heef Justice Roberts because argued before the Supreme Court for years, long before he became a chief justice, so we all knew him as john. He was a very accessible, friendly person. A brilliant advocate, probably the best oral advocate i have seen in my time. But then as soon as he became chief justice, we couldnt call him john anymore, we would call him chief. Break bread with him once in a while. He has lunch with the Supreme Court press corps every year in june. We always benefit from that even though it is off the record. Brian has he changed, though . Tony i think he has. For one thing, he is much less accessible to the press. He has become much more of a private individual and very guarded in the statements he makes and the appearances he makes off the bench. Feelinghe has a real thats he is the leader of this theitution that he is leader of this institution and he must not be seen as a public persional personal or celebrity kind of way. Brian let me show you a list of the justices who have been on the court. It starts with scalia who has been there 29 years and kennedy who has been there 20 and Clarence Thomas, 23, stephen breyer, 21, john roberts, 10, alito, nine, sonja so Sonia Sotomayor, five, etc. You have covered all of these folks and which one on the list do you know the least from a personal standpoint . Tony from a personal standpoint, i would probably say Clarence Thomas because he never gives interviews to the press. At least as far as i know. Literally, i could write a story saying he robbed a bank yesterday and i would ask for his comment and he would probably not comment. Injust has no interest responding or participating in news stories. So i really dont have any personal connection to him. Great as a public speaker when he does get out and talk to the law school audience or Something Like that. He really speaks from the heart and he bears his soul quite a bit. So we have learned a lot about him from those kinds of appearances, but nothing, nothing brian what about media coverage, you write, who reads your stuff . Tony i write for the national for aurnal and also subversion newsletter called Supreme Court brief that goes out to people who subscribe. So it goes out to an audience of lawyers, people who are lawyers seem to be really interested in the Supreme Court for obvious reasons. Brian ewing lawyers who dont even practice in front of the lawyers who mean dont even practice in front of the court . Tony people are fascinated with the court and they want to know about the opinions that they write. They are very interesting people said, a lot of them just want to be above the fray and to want to be seen as public figures, but certainly that isnt the case with some of them. Justice sotomayor your is very alsoar sotomayor is very popular on the circuit and Justice Ginsburg has turned into a sort of celebrity herself, you know, the notorious rbg. Feisty and still at it and not about to quit by any means. Brian the program on the series landmark cases talks about marbury versus madison. I want to show you a video where they are talking about a letter from Thomas Jefferson. I want to get your quick tell as quickly about marbury versus madison. A family tragedy brought together Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams in june of 1804. Abigail wrote to express her grief on the death of jeffersons daughter. She wanted to remind jefferson thats that he had a good friendship with medicine. Madison. He also spoken for the first time about the midnight appointments that had divided the pair. There was only one half of my life that gave me displeasure, and the Appointments Office were personally unkind and they were amongst my most ardent political enemies and they laid me under the embarrassment of men whose views were to defeat mine. Brian first of all, what was the importance of that in history . Tony well, those judicial appointees that he was talking about were made by president adams just the day before president jefferson was going to come into office, and the commissions never got delivered properly. Justice marshall, who was also the secretary of state at the time, oddly enough, somehow there was some mixup and they didnt get their. But anyway get there. One of the justices who didnt get the position sued and it was called marbury versus madison. Marbury was one of those judges. And the court said basically deserved somely remedy, but the remedy of congress has provided for this goes beyond the power of congress, the authority of that the Supreme Court was going to strike down that long. That law. This was something the court had never done before. You know, declaring an act of congress unconstitutional. Chief Justice Marshall said very the exclusiveat province of the jesus are very of the judiciary to state what the law is, and that is basically the foundation of how the Supreme Court operates today and why it is so important and it is still in some ways very cover seal. Ial. Ery controvers former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has said, why should the Supreme Court have the final word on things like samesex marriage . Where is that britain . That written . Brian if you go to the Supreme Court website, they are only going to meet in open fashion for 39 days starting tomorrow. 39 out of 365. Theyre only going to hear three or four, not very many cases. Why so few days . Tony as they would tell you, the oral arguments and what goes on when they sit in open session is really a very small part of what they do. They spend a lot of their time, even in the summertime reading briefs and once the arguments occur, behind the scenes, someone will be assigned to write the opinion and they will be back and forth. There will be to sense, there will be concurrences, and that is really the substance of what they do. They dont need to be on the bench to do that. Now as you and i have gone back along ways on this on the issue of cameras in the court, i think we would agree that even though the oral argument is a small part of what they do, it would how the courtto operates, how the justices are thinking about these issues, and it would just be a tremendous educational benefit. You know, also something that i the justices shouldnt be able to deny, they should be able to say no cameras. Brian interesting, that was on the Stephen Colbert show. I want to be careful because i dont have the exact quote but he was saying oral arguments are really only 5 in what goes on with the final deci