One thing that concerns me is that today's young women don't seem to care that we have a fundamental instrument of government that makes no express statement about the equal citizenship stature of men and women. They know there are no closed doors anymore, and they may take for granted the rights that they have.

I conceived of myself in large part as a teacher. There wasn't a great understanding of gender discrimination. People knew that race discrimination was an odious thing, but there were many who thought that all the gender-based differentials in the law operated benignly in women's favor. So my objective was to take the Court step by step to the realization, in Justice Brennan's words, that the pedestal on which some thought women were standing all too often turned out to be a cage.

My rule was I will not answer a question that attempts to project how I will rule in a case that might come before the court.

Prisons should be co-ed because separate quarters are discriminatory.

As De Tocqueville said, sooner or later in the United States, every controversy ends up in court. I think that's a great - says great things about our judicial system.

People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say we want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.

So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.