Transcripts For CSPAN Justice Clarence Thomas 20180215

I am going to get my glasses f i can find them. Good afternoon. Justice thomas, who is in the room downstairs, distinguished guests and colleagues. Thank you for joining the law library of congress and the United States Supreme Court today for the 2018 Supreme Court Fellows Program annual lecture. My name is jane sanchez, and i have the honor of serving as the 25th law librarian of congress. A little bit about the library the law library serves as the nations custodian of a legal and legislative collection of nearly three million items from all countries and Legal Systems of the world. Our foreign Law Specialists are a Diverse Group of foreigntrained attorneys who provide information and analysis on over 270 jurisdictions in the world. Our skilled law excuse me our skilled law library staff, both americantrained attorneys and law librarians, also provide Research Assistance and Reference Services on u. S. Federal and state legal issues. While our collections and our expertise reach across all points of the globe for todays event weve partnered with our next door neighbor who happens to be the highest court in the country. By the way, they are our pretty good neighbors. Theyre quiet and they keep to themselves pretty much. [laughter] ms. Sanchez this afternoon we are pleased to be able to collaborate with the Supreme Court as they celebrate their 45th year of the Fellows Program. Please note that todays program is being live streamed on the library of Congress Youtube channel so all sounds, images and remarks will be captured on video. Please take a moment to silence your cell phones and refrain from taking photos on any devices throughout the event. For that we would thank you. At this time i would like to invite to the stage jeffrey p. Minear, executive director of the Supreme Court Fellows Program and counselor to the chief justice of the United States. Thank you. [applause] mr. Minear thank you, jane, for the warm introduction, and thanks to you and the law library of congress for your partnership with the Supreme Court Fellows Program and sponsoring this everyones event. Since its creation in 1832 when the great John Marshall was still serving as chief justice, the law library has been an important resource and steady friend of the court. We could not ask for a better neighbor than the largest law library in the world, and theyre pretty quiet too. [laughter] mr. Minear let me say just a word about the Supreme Court Fellows Program and my capacity as its executive director. Each year the Supreme Court fellows commission made up of judges and other Legal Leaders appointed by the chief justice selects four talented professionals to spend a year within the federal judiciary participating in Court Administration while engaging in research and other enrichment opportunities. This everyones event is the public component of two days of activities in which we celebrate our current Supreme Court fellows and putting together 45 years of Fellows Program alumni. Over the course of today and tomorrow, we will select next years fellows from the superb finalist who is are with us this afternoon. I understand we have many law students with us in the audience today as well as law clerks from several courts from the federal and state systems. If you have an interest in how federal courts work, i hope you will take the time to learn more about the Fellowship Program and apply in the coming years. Invite you to go to fellows. Supremecourt. Gov. Application will be due in november. But before you set to work on your applications, we have a great feature this afternoon. We have as our distinguished guest the 105th justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the honorable clarence thomas, who has served on the court since 1991. 10 years ago Justice Thomas published his best selling autobiography, my grandfathers son. That book shared, in the justices own words, his remarkable own story. We have the book available for purchase both here and at the Supreme Court gift shop. We are fortunate to have with us also the honorable Gregory Maggs to moderate todays conversation. When we planned this program, grerg was a professor at george greg was a professor at George Washington law school but in the past month hes received his Judicial Commission as judge of the United States court of appeals for the armed services. Judge maggs was a law clerk to Justice Thomas in 1991 and before that to Justice Anthony kennedy. Please join me in welcoming Justice Thomas and judge maggs. [applause] judge maggs do you feel comfortable, justice . Justice thomas no. This is not the most suitable position for introverts. We like to be in the shadows someplace. Judge maggs we were having a great time back then. Justice thomas it was fine back there. Dont yall have anything to do . [laughter] oh, my goodness. Sorry yall are dragging yourselves out on this day. Judge maggs justice, mr. Minear says its the 10th anniversary of the publication of your book my grandfathers son. Justice thomas i forgot about that. Judge maggs i want to ask Justice Thomas so youre judge maggs now . Judge maggs about a week. Justice thomas i think thats great. [laughter] [applause] Justice Thomas just changing the subject. [laughter] judge maggs justice, you start out the book when you are 9 years old. Why is that the place to start our autobiography . Justice thomas well, i had the manuscript to that and terry o is my final editor, just phenomenal human being and editor and musician and he understood. He dug deep within the manuscript and he said, you know you have a great title. I had picked out the title to my grandfathers son but he said, you have to explain the title within the first page or two. And he said, i found the explanation buried in your manuscript. And the line is, i was 9 years old when i met my father, and he said that most people wouldnt think of that because ultimately my grandfather is my father. Im my grandfathers son, not my fathers son. So that was my First Encounter that i remember with my father, and so thats why i started it out there to explain why i was my grandfathers son. Judge maggs life didnt start out too easy. You mentioned in the book you grew up in pin point. Your home didnt have water, didnt have electricity. When the house burned down you moved to savannah. He winter of 1955 Justice Thomas 1955. I was doing fine in 1995. [laughter] judge maggs 1955, you were hungry without knowing when would you eat and cold without knowing when you would be warm. Justice thomas thats a horrible feeling. You know, today we kind of i just get worn down. I was with a young woman who happened to be black in kansas recently and she said something really interesting. She said, im really tired of having to play the role of being black. I just want to go to school. And i think we theres at some point we are going to be fatigued with everybody being a victim. When i was a kid, there were tons of people who were in really bad circumstances. My grandfather would not let us wallow in that, and as you could tell throughout this book, hes my hero. He is the single greatest human being i ever met. With nine months of education but he never saw himself as a victim. He used to say that he was a motherless child. He never knew his father. His mother died when he was 7 or 8 years old. Of course they didnt have birth certificates then so he never knew quite how old he was. And then he was raised by his grandmother who was a freed slave. Then, she dies, and then he lives with an uncle who has 12 or 13 kids and who was a hard man. And yet he never complained. And he always said he would have this saying when youd want to whine or something. You know, you have to play the hand youre dealt. Days ays said, in those blacks played he said, you have to play the hand youre dealt. If you are dealt a bad hand you still have to play it. If you look in my office, my wonderful wife made me something when i went on the court, his saying was old man cant help dead but bury him. That is what i dont know if you saw the movie the help. That was my family. We were the help. My mom paid 10 a week, 5 if you had car fare. Ms. Mariah was a maid. My mother was a maid. My grandmother had been a maid. Cousin bea was a maid. Cousin dosha was a maid. You see what im saying . All of them were maids. And they were the help. And yet they never, ever complained. And life was hard. The things we consider hard today i have some College Students ask me a few years back, how would i explain, you know, talk to them now that the economy had taken a downturn . And i said [laughter] Justice Thomas and im looking at them and i said, how many of you dont have cell phones . Of course, they all had cell phones. How many of you dont have a computer . They all had computers. How many of you dont have a car . I think all but one had a car. I said, youre so far above the poverty line. When i was in school, you were at the poverty line. Youre making 90 cents an hour. You had no money. You had no shoes. He had like boots and things like that. You didnt worry about it because virtually everybody was there. And so when the economy took a downturn, when you are on the floor, there isnt a whole lot further you can go. And for them theyre losing from up here to maybe midway down. I really had no connection with them. But my further point [laughter] Justice Thomas i didnt have a radio. I didnt have a telephone. And theyre complaining and i certainly didnt have a car. It wasnt a problem. Because you had your dreams. You had your energy. You had more than the people you grew up around. I grew up around a world of total illiteracy. Thats the beauty. I am in the library of congress. Total illiteracy but the thing they had was hope that the next generation would learn how to read. They knew how important it was for me. So my grandfather wouldnt let me take i was a really good athlete too. I dont like to say that because people would want you to show you are a great athlete. Its too late in the day now. [laughter] Justice Thomas but he would not give us time off to play sports. We worked on the oil truck or on the farm. But if it had to do with the library you could do it. So at night he would let me go to the Carnegie Library where id started going in the summer of 1955 for the noble reason that summer 1955 i was 7 years old and we had just moved into this little tenement on the east side and on saturday they gave you cookies and juice. [laughter] Justice Thomas so i went for the very highminded reason of getting cookie and juice. And when you live in these neighborhoods, cookies and juice are a real treat. Along the way they introduce ou to dr. Seuss and if i hear, see spot run, one more time it was wonderful. You got cookies and juice. But it gave me this image of the library as this place to learn. And it became a haven. So i walked in here. Look where i am. I come from this world of illiteracy, place where me treasured learning and i get to be in the place of learning with all the books and all the people who are literate. That is a long way of saying i was very fortunate to grow up around people who saw beyond their circumstances and who refused to be limited by those circumstances or to wallo in the sort of wallow in the sort of victim status of their circumstances. Judge maggs tell me more about your grandfather. He was a very strict man. Was he unfair . Justice thomas oh, god no. People say they ask ometimes about my grandfather. Those days you had corporal punishment. They said, well, did you get like beatings . I said, yeah, but not as many as i deserved. And my grandfather, whenever he gave you one that he found out was unfair, that you didnt deserve it at that time he said, well, thats for the one you got away with. What do you say because you knew you got away with stuff . And every one of us knew, boy, glad you didnt get me on that one. But the no, my grandfather was a hard man but not a harsh man. Life was hard. I mean, anybody in this room who grew up in that environment that is a hard life. Where you have to figure out how you going to put a meal on the table, where you are theres a very fine line between the you not being able to eat today and being able to eat. And the gratitude. We always said grace before and after meal. Were catholic. And he would always be grateful. And this was almost this is the old porcelain top table. My grandfather sat here. I always sat facing him. I dont know why i got that position where he would just stare at you. Oh, my god, help me. And then my grandmother sat here and my brother sat there at this small table and he would always say, we are grateful that we have food on our table, clothes on our back and the roof over our head. And it doesnt get much better than that. So the he was never unfair. He was very generous. What he would do is lets say he would make us work to produce something. Then, he would say, we are able to provide for others because we work. So we are able to give them syrup beans or peas or or sugar canes or fruit because we worked. We were able to give them meat because we raised the hogs. So what he taught us was we had an obligation to do well so that we could do good, particularly for others. So i could not call that fair. I think my grandfather was probably one of the most compassionate people ive ever known because he always told us the truth. He always told us the truth about life and he was so i asked my brother. My brother unfortunately died 18 years ago jogging. A year and four months younger and he and i grew up with my grandparents. And i asked him when we were in our 40s, we were very close, and i said, do you think my grandfather when we went to live with him in 1955 said, i will never tell you to do as i say. I will always tell you to do as i do. Watch me. And so i asked my brother years later after my grandfather was long gone, was he ever a hypocrite . And my brother said, absolutely not. That he lived up to that. Think about that. Would you set yourself up as the model and the example to your own children . All you do is say, do what i do. Watch me every day. And once and we watched it because he would never let us out of his sight. [laughter] Justice Thomas and when he did let you out of his sight it was with the nuns. Or i could get away from him to the library. I loved the library. You know, the we take it for granted now because we have all these computers and all that stuff but just think of yourself coming from a house with no books and you get to walk into this world and had encyclopedia americana, encyclopedia britanica. It had webster. It had funk and wagnall. It had all sorts of fiction. It had magazines, look, life, time, all the newspapers. It was a smorg us boring when you went in. And you had a reference. They introduce you to National Geographic so you were all over the world. And this is all in savannah, georgia. And remember, this is a world of segregation. It gave you this window to everything else. It gave you a window beyond georgia. And the nuns encouraged it. The librarians encouraged it. So i had an opportunity some years ago to go back and write and thank all the librarians. And most recently i ran into a lady in savannah, an elderly white lady because i was among the early kids who went to the savannah public libraries, desegregated and i was kind of a nuisance there because i kept showing up. Was like i was wheres waldo . , its wheres clarence. Its time to get away from my grandfather and it was this amazing world. And i ran into this elderly white lady and she he started crying. And she said, i helped you at the savannah public library. And i said, oh, my gosh. It was really kind of emotional because i remember how scared i was. You have to cross in those days a lot of lines, but going to the library was worth doing that. Anyway, thats the library. Judge maggs tell me more about your Catholic Education and your decision to go to seminary. Justice thomas i used to ask Justice Scalia about that. He always thought it was interesting that we were so similar. He would say, clarence, he said, my parents, my father was a romance literature professor. My mother was a teacher so i know how i got here. How did you get here . And why are we at the same place . Why do we have the same set of beliefs . And i think the beauty of having gone to parochial schools was they taught us how to there was a right way to think about things, that we had to be honest with ourselves, honest about math, honest about physics, honest about chemistry, that you couldnt cheat when you did your latin translation or german or french because i had all those in high school. And i was talking recently with someone. He said, it was your formation, that there was always a right way to do things. There was an honest way to do things. And the progression is i became catholic when i went to he second grade in 1955. Sister mary rosa and wonderful person. At any rate, i became an altar boy and the progression is you become an altar boy and if you progress as an altar boy you consider whether or not you have a vocation and in those days you went to a minor seminary. So in 1964 i decided i thought i had a vocation so i was 15 and the following year when i was 16 i went to the seminary. The difficulty was, again, things hadnt been desegregated yet so you were, again, crossing these racial barriers so you had that challenge but to be honest with you, even that was not nearly as difficult as going to school in new england. No one there were a few jerks, we all have those, but beyond that, the school was excellent, the people were fair to me. It was very, very challenging academically. I would like to say i finished school op 10 of my high class, because there were only nine of them. Thats the last time i would be able to say that. Judge maggs what about your decision to leaf the see himary. That was 1968. The wheels were coming off the wagons in a lot of ways. And little catholic kid from the insular world of savannah was reading and it was a long hot dr. King was assassinated. We became race conscious, which is the problem matic side. And i think a lot of us went from being the nice catholic kid to the angry black kid. And that was 1968. Then i returned home and was greeted with my grandfather who told me that if im going to do that, then i need to find another place to live. He kicked me out of the house and i was on my own in 1969. Judge maggs you went to holy cross . Justice thomas people love to come up with narratives and myths. Chemistry my teacher asked a High School Classmate of mine to send me an application. I had ranked very high in my class and first year of college and i filled it out and i was accepted almost immediately and transferred to holy cross in 1968. I wasnt going to go because i was tired of being the only black kid or only one, two or three. I was going to go to savannah state. When my grandfather disinvited me living in his house, i didnt think it would be a good idea to hang around. I hadnt thought about any other schools. I had been accepted holy cross and got on the train. You can see all the planning i did. Thats why i say to people, my whole life was providence because i certainly didnt know what was going on. Judge maggs in your book, you talk about being a radical at holy cross, being angry, were ou being treated unfairly . Justice thomas i was mad at the world. I was angry. I really didnt need a logical reason to be angry, i was angry about things that happened in the past. I was angry about things in the future. If you said to good morning to me, i was angry and if you didnt say good morning, i was angry. And people exploited that. I remember going to Harvard Square april 15, 1970 and we were pretty upset. And i couldnt explain to myself why i just did that. All night we were rioting and i got back to holy cross and thats when i made a promise to god that he took anger out of my heart, i would never do that again. I would never let anger control my life. That was the morning of april 16, 1970, and i have attempted to live up to that. Judge maggs what made you choose law . Justice thomas it is a forest gump effect. I was going to be a priest and when you have a vocation, you think the belief is god is calling you and thats the only dream i ever had was to be a priest. I dont think that ever quite leaves you. And when i went off to holy cross, i was in a bit of a tailspin. What am i called to do. I decided god would call me to go to savannah and help out and one way to do that was to be in law. And so i went to law school to return to savannah. I never really worked in a law firm. I worked in a small firm in savannah, georgia between the second and third year of law school because i wanted to return to savannah. For reasons i dont want to get into, that job didnt live up to. Today is my sons 45th birthday, so he was a little kid. And i had a wife and child and Student Loans and now i need a job because im not going back to this situation that i dont think is right in savannah and i couldnt get a job in savannah, georgia. I couldnt get a job in atlanta or washington, d. C. Or in new york or l. A. I struck out every place i could until i wound up in jefferson city, missouri. And because they didnt give me a job in atlanta is the reason i wound up on the court, so its their fault. Otherwise i would be a tax lawyer or something. Judge maggs tell me about your years at yale. Justice thomas what about it . Judge maggs do you remember it . [laughter] Justice Thomas that was ages. Judge maggs no. No. [laughter] judge maggs that was a slight on yale . Justice thomas i have enjoyed my law clerks. We have been teaching together for six or or seven years and we have had a total blast. Its a good thing they really dont pay us for it. Youre not going to get paid now ecause you are going to be adjunct. Yale was the Perfect School for me. I have had my complaints for reasons after yale, but yale howed me where i needed to be. If i went back to yale, i would go differently today. I wouldnt go all with these burdens of anger and bitterness and selfrestriction and constraint. Would spend a lot of time at sterling library. I would spend a lot of time doing the things i liked. I would be like that young kid at k. U. , i just want to go to school. I just want to be a kid. I like chamber music. I like the base, recitals. M reading right now, kagen with went to yale. I should have gone to those history, ether its debates. Ars, i loved i loved just the philosophy, and it was all there. I didnt go to anything because i was mad at the world. So i was selfrestricted in a place that offered all opportunities. The law school was good for me because it showed me how much work i needed to do, to do what i wanted to do, how much i needed to learn and whether the question i asked myself when i left, are you willing to do the work and dedicate yourself to learning all you need. So i would have to say in retrospect, it was small enough. T was academically challenging and the professors were fair to me. It wasnt the best choice as far as being able to distinguish yourself because of the gading system, but i cant look back and offer any complaints. I know in the past i have not said pleasant things, but that had to do with some other reactions. Judge maggs lets go forward to the confirmation process. A third of the book has to deal with the confirmation process and that is 27 years or so. What is your view of being confirmed and the politics involved . Have you changed a bit . Justice thomas it is sort of like surgery, the only minor surgery is on the other guy. [laughter] Justice Thomas i dont think the process is what it ought to be. I think these are serious jobs and i think they should be serious. I dont think they should be a spectacle. This isnt the roman col is see umh and we will lose best people who dont want to have to fight the lion in order to be a judge or be in government. And its our own fault for allowing this to happen. I was confirmed five times in 10 years and got increasingly worse. Going tonk that we are at some point have the leadership we deserve. Because we allowed the Selection Process to get out of our control and to have very little to do with selecting the kind of people we need. You went through confirmation and yours wasnt particularly controversial, but it was an rdeal and what if it was embittered. I think a lot of people have second thoughts. I cant tell you how many people i know said in the middle of it, what was i thinking. That is unfortunate. The country is going to lose something because of that. I dont have bitter feelings or anything like that. I dont have strong reactions, but i think im sober in my judgment of it. And i think a lot of the difficulties are irrelevant to the jobs. Think about this. How many people, for example, who have done the job of judging, who actually talk about judging . Usually the people doing the most talking havent judged a single case. I find it absolutely fascinating that a lot of the commentary has nothing to do with the job itself. When i got to the d. C. Circuit, i found that job absolutely fabulous. The people there were fabulous and to the Supreme Court after going through all those difficulties, the members of the court were just wonderful people to a person. It was a fabulous place to work. You were there. It was a lot of work and very difficult, but in retrospect, it was an exciting time. Just the ideas and learning and everybody who have made it as decent a place as it possibly could be. The court is quite different than the ordeal its almost the opposite of the ordeal it took to get there. Judge maggs what are the worse nd best things about being a Supreme Court justice. Justice thomas interacting with my kids, the clerks, watching you all. Thats the best part. I would have to say to my wife is now a former law clerk. She is emeritus. We gave her an honorary law clerk degree. My wife is 34 years old when i got to the court. Watching her enjoy the clerks and the kids, it is such a joy. I remember when nicholas was born. And what is he doing . Judge maggs graduate school. Justice thomas watching all of that. And then when janices got married. He worst part is loss of anone hit. Public think like the part. Those of you who are introverts, you know what im talking about. We prefer its like i said to ofclerks who were introverts the world unite. But then they said, do we have to go to meetings . [laughter] quiet which is the best book, for those of thats re introverts, the hard part, the public part. You know what . I could add to that, but its not a complaint. All of this is a part of the deal. I have no complaints. Dont like the myth making around the court and who we are. There is a real decided difference between what is said about what goes on in judging and the court and what actually happens. Does the real world and then there is the myth of that world. We dont have the time, the energy or the ink or the bits or the bithes, whatever they call engage in that narrative battle. We have work to do. We have to write opinions. I have been around a lot of judges, whether you agree with them or not, they actually put the work in. Its a Wonderful World to work in. Where you actually have to write out your opinions and think things through and have arguments and go through all the statutes and the constitutional provisions and the rules of statutory interpretation or construction. All the interprettive canons. So it is fascinating. I like that world. But the world that they talk about it, oh, you hate old people, what . You want to execute people. I havent met a judge who wants to execute anybody. I havent met that judge yet. In fact, every judge i have met, going through these cases look what it does to your hair. [laughter] Justice Thomas your hair is black and then all of a sudden you are hair impaired and what is left, your hair turns gray. Everyone says did i get it right . Did i make a mistake. And you have the people who create the myth about it who think that you are callously doing these things. Those are people who never stayed up in the middle of the night and voted for these things. I like being around judges. I like the work, i like the world im a part of. I think the world, those who talk about it are not doing the world justice for the rest of our fellow cyst tense justice in talking about an important part of our government. Judge maggs talking about the work and the Supreme Court statistics, the last two years you have written about twice as many opinions as Justice Thomas i dont talk, so i get to write a lot. Judge maggs why so many opinions . Justice thomas who knows. Justice scalia said i have no idea what it means, but i like the ring of it. That means i like my own opinions. Then he said once, clearance, you dont care for other peoples opinions, do you . He said i said, i do care, but i prefer my own. [laughter] Justice Thomas i think it is really important that when you vote for these things that you explain why and that if it doesnt make sense my granddaddy im not going to use the exact words he used, he said boy, if it dont make no sense, it dont make no sense. He would spice it up a little bit. And i think it makes sense to me. When you come from the lower levels in society, when you think things have to make sense. Either you fed the hogs or you didnt fed the hogs. You either planted the corn or didnt plant the corn. It was binary and it was clear. When we do these cases we owe it to our fellow citizens to explain in plain language what we are doing. And sometimes when you see me writing, its because what the court is doing, the premise i disagree with and its wrong. If you go back and look at the court of appeals judges, i think it is a little bit glib im not going to say disrespectful for us, when there are differences of opinions in the courts of appeal and the district courts, for us not to explain why we hold a different opinion from them or not to fully explore the opinions below and just glibly disagree, i think we owe them that respect. So i work through everything. And i probably put a lot of pressure on my law clerks. I wouldnt clerk for me. That is way too much work. And i tell them you sure you want to do this . Why are you doing this . Oh, boy, you know there is the 13th amendment. [laughter] judge maggs what has changed in your judging over the 27 years . Justice thomas that is really a ood question, judge. Its sort of like if you climb a mountain when you are at 1,000 feet, you still look at the same scene erie but have a different view when you are at 10,000 feet or 5,000 feet. You see more. I have been doing this so long that you see more. You understand more. The reason i was reading this book was because of English Common law, which started out people do a lot of talking about stare decisis to understand it in depth. You have to understand what is common law. To understand English Common law and understand where england came from, the norman quon quest, the vikings and the romans and then to understand that, you have to trace those histories. I have done that, now im fascinated and what they have done in developing england, what were they doing. Why did the king pull this all together. You have to pull all the history together. Look how many years it takes. Thats what i learned at yale. This wasnt a sprint but it was a marathon and it was a lifelong endeavor. You and i do when we teach constitutional law together. Look at the cases weve read and in depth. How many people care about Property Values . You and i care about it. They cite cases but dont read them. You and i do, we have to. Why . Because we are messing with other peoples constitution. You and i have to do it and you know why. We have to go back and read the briefs because we are tinkering with other peoples constitution. We dont have an up unlimited license to do that or reckless with it. Over the years, you have gone higher or another you are peeling the onion and you see more not because you are smarter or because people love to set themselves up as philosopher kings or something, no. Because its you have been doing it longer. This is what i do. I dont have hobbies, well, except for rooting against alabama. [laughter] Justice Thomas you knew it was coming, didnt you . Oh my gosh, they stole another national championship. [laughter] Justice Thomas this is what i do. I do law. Nd anybody it consumes you. And in virtually i do is in preparation of doing this job. I think i owe this. Remember, its about your calling. And if you are called to do it, you are called to do it a certain way. If you go back and look at Justice Scalia, look what he died doing. People forget. He thought it was our job to fly the flag, to go different places and to talk to people about what we do. He was more outgoing than i am, i will be honest about that. He said clearance, you have to fly the flag, you have to go out there. The other thing, when he did his work, everything mattered to him. Every sentence, every word, every idea, it all mattered. And it mattered. Thats one of the reasons we trusted each other, because we both knew it mattered, getting it right was important to both of us. Or i wouldnt do it otherwise . Why would we be doing this . How would you look your fellow citizens in the eye if i didnt get right . What if i said i watch cartoons and flip coins for your constitution or i kind of do whatever i want to do, i would never do that ever because its wrong. We took an oath to do it a certain way. I have to inform myself in order to make decisions about your constitution. And you feel the exact same way. And you just became a judge and you know you feel exactly the same way, that you have a special obligation or you wouldnt be 28 years as a reserveist in the military or best teacher at g. W. Law school or a quarter of a century. Judge maggs you taught at georgia and george mason and g. W. What is your goal in teaching . Justice thomas you know, i think the people make learning well, let me back up. Did you see the wizard of ozz who was the wizard. Judge maggs who was the wizard. That little guy. Justice thomas we make everything mysterious. Judge maggs dont look behind the curtain. Justice thomas thats what we do in our class. There was a young man in our constitutional law class at the end and said i will never look at law the same again. I dont care what his ideology is. We were trying to get him to demystify it. Its not that complicated. Why do we make it complicated. Have a buddy to is a quad dry pleegic and this was back in the days before you had these curb cuts. And when we got to the curb, it was like the great wall of china. And if we werent up there to lift him over it, it was inaccessible to him. To some extent thats what we do to law. Start talking about we throw a little latin and little this. Why dont we talk in english. That farmer in rural alabama has a right to know what his constitution says. And so what i do, one of the things i say and said even when you were clerking is that genius 10 cent ideag a a in a 20 sentence. 10is putting a 20 idea in a cent sentence. When i went back home, i came from a world of i will literacy or near i will literacy. And when you went back home, you could not talk down to people. They wouldnt use the word condescend. You are talking down to me. You are putting me down, but you have to explain things to them without treating them like they are lesser human beings. We used to say back in the 1960s, you have to break it down. In other words, you have to speak without losing meaning, without losing context and explain it in a language that they understood. And i think one of the things that we try to do in the opinions is to explain things to people. We owe it to people. In order to do that, we have to know it, as we do in the classes. Look at the eyes on the students when were done that they figure they know more about lochter simply because we read the articles and briefs and we know the story behind it. They can claim it, they understand it and it makes sense. And if you look what i wrote separately in the mcdonnell opinion, what i was trying to do after this talk of substantive due process, explain to people where does it come from . It is not in the constitution. You go back and say heres whats there. You dont have to agree but the clause is actually there. This is what they debated. You can disagree with that, but you can see the coherence. Dred o to dread scott. It said blacks cant be citizens. That is remedied in the 14th amendment. And you cant deny immunity because of citizenship. And thats what i tried to do in the opinions not to give you legal theory but the progress. And then to show you where its connected to some of the other concerns they had about blacks in the south being able to defend themselves. Judge maggs i wish we could stay all afternoon. Justice thomas theyre leaving, ut you and i can stay. Thank judge maggs thank you for your remarks. Justice thomas sorry to take so much of your time and maybe we didnt cover everything that you probably wanted us to but we will be talking about the dormant commerce clause. So thank you all very, very much. [applause] [captions Copyright National satellite corp. 2018] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org the senate has been debating immigration legislation and voted against all of the immigration proposals offered on the floor dealing with border security, dreamers and sanctuary cities. Watch our live coverage from the senate floor over on cspan 2. And earlier today on the other side of the capitol, the house of representatives approved a bill that would change the process for filing lawsuits under the americans with disabilities act. If a business is blocking access, it would require a written notice be submitted to a business before a lawsuit could be filed. The business would have 60 days to come up with a plan to address the issue and 120 days to fix the