Of john paul stevens. This is hosted at Georgetown Law Center in washington, d. C. Georgetown law center in washington, d. C. It is just under one hour. [applause] welcome, Justice Kagan. It is great to be here. Thank you to all the members of the Washington Council of lawyers for all of the great work that they do, promoting pro bono and Public Interest and public service. Its an enormously Important Role in the Legal Profession so i thank you for everything you do and im glad to be here. Mr. Treanor were delighted that youre here, so pleased to be partnering with the Washington Council of lawyers, and david, were so proud of you. And all that you have achieved. One thing as a former new yorker, you graduated from hutter high school. Pinston, oxford, harvard, dean of harvard law school, Supreme Court, all fine. But its really hard to get into hutter high school. So i think Everything Else was predictable from that moment. Justice kagan back then it was easier to get into. It was a public high school, one of these test high schools which is what youre referring to when you say its hard to get in. It was also all girls until several years after i arrived there. When i was in ninth grade, they started taking boys in the seventh grade which was not really in keeping with what all the ninth graders thought should happen. So there were only half as many applicants, you know. Mr. Treanor clearly, the admissions people knew what they were doing. Its a delight to have you here. I think as we start this, everybody very much front of mind is Justice Stevens passing. I know this is a week of mourning at the court. Justice stevens is quoted as having said, when he spoke in 2016 at the university of miami, thanks to elena, i have never regretted my decision to retire. Justice kagan thats lovely. Mr. Treanor id like to start by talking a little bit about Justice Stevens. Justice kagan its a week of mourning. But if its ever appropriate to Say Something like, its also a celebration of a life, i think it would be that too. My gosh, what a life. 99 years old. Sharp as a tack. Until the day he died. Went very peacefully. So we should all have a life like that. He was an extraordinary man, an extraordinary justice. To take the extraordinary man part of it first, i dont think that theres a person who has ever met him, you know, every clerk ive ever spoken to, all his colleagues, lawyers who appeared before the court, i mean, everybody uses the same words to describe him, which is kind and humble and respectful of everybody, treated everybody with extraordinary dignity. Had so much personal class. And so much kindness. Every clerk he had i think would tell you he was the best boss they ever had. And then a truly extraordinary justice. Of course he served a very long time on the court. 35 years. You know, retired when he was 90 years old. And again still just totally actively contributing to meeting. He was a brilliant lawyer in the kind of technical and draft aspect of the job. Him him absolutely brilliant. And at the same time, he had a real passion for justice. A real, you know, an insistence that the legal system operate fairly. For those going through it. And i think the marriage of those two things, the sort of brilliant lawyerly capacity and the insistence that our legal institutions be fair, is what really marked him as a justice. He was fiercely independent. And in different parts of his career, which stretched every a lot of years, he played different roles on the court. Some being more the kind of solo concurrence and some being more the leader of a particular set of justices. Him but throughout, i think, he was marked by this really strong sense of, im going to do what i think is right, kind of integrity in his own Decision Making and independence in his own Decision Making. At the same time, he was, you knee, the model of collegiality. You know, the model of collegiality. And i think he cared about the court as an institution. So at one and the same time he was like, i have to do what i think is right. But i also understand that the court has to operate as an institution and im a part of it. And i think he married those things in a pretty unique way. And you know, he produced this, just, incredibly important body of work. Majorities and dissent. 35 years, you can write a lot of both. You know, its a body of work that i think, you know, is not surpassed, certainly, in modern times. Mr. Treanor its interesting. I recently went back and looked at his no, maam nation and the his nomination and the press accounts. One of the big concerns at the time was his health. [laughter] Justice Kagan they didnt have to worry. Mr. Treanor he had just had a heart attack. Justice kagan whats so striking, actually, i think he seemed to all of us eternal. He was 95 years old, swimming in the ocean every day, you know. Mr. Treanor its amazing. The other i think the other longest term or oldest justice was holmes and justice holmes, his opinions really declined toward the end in terms of quality. Stevens really seemed remarkable throughout. Justice kagan yeah. Mr. Treanor what do you think his greatest legacy is there an area he shaped . A philosophy that others have followed . Justice kagan i think it stretched across such a wide range of subject matter areas. I guess i would have a hard time picking just one. Am i missing something obvious . Mr. Treanor i dont think. So i mean, i think, one thing that is kind of the standard story about Justice Stevens is his role on the court changed over time. When he started the court he was really, you know, a loner. Kind of writing his own opinions. Justice kagan when i clerked at the court, in the 1987 term, thats still what he was doing. He would write a lot of solo defense, solo concurrence. Some of which you thought, hes got it. Notwithstanding that maybe the case wasnt argue that argued that way and that wasnt what all the other justices were thinking about, they werent thinking in that frame. But you would sometimes read it and you would say its really too bad that theyre not. Thats really the way to welcome at this case even though to look at this case, even the everybody else is kind of over here doing something else. Occasionally, youd say, well, that seems a little quirky. But there was always kind of, just the way i looked at the case. And that did i think that he was always somewhat like that. Like, you know, im just was always somewhat like that. Like, you know, im just thats my job, is to tell you how i see a case. Regardless of whether everybody else sees it the same way. But he did become, in his later years, and really in his last, i dont know how long was it . 10 or 15 years, the last 25 of his tenure, he became sort of the senior justice often in defense. And that meant he wrote a lot of those defense, or assigned them, but wrote a lot of them. It meant some of the positions that he staked out in those last years really were ones where, the court has gotten this long, years really were ones where, the court has gotten this long, heres the way you should think about it for the future. Mr. Treanor let me talk a little bit about two things. That i reflect on with Justice Stevens. One is, the role of dissent. Which i would like to talk about. Before we get to that, you know, kind of the normal arc for Justice Stevens is people talk about him as a very individualistic, brilliant, but writing his own opinions at the start and then in the last decade, becoming the liberal leader of the court. The other is that hes somebody who was he changed his mind and was candid about that. That he with affirmative action or the death penalty. He shifted his position over time. Which brings us to the question of stare decisis. Justice kagan i was Justice Stevens successor and he was endless will i kind to me in terms of offering advice, always in a kind of grateful way, not imposing advice but being there if i ever had a questioning he shifted his position over time. Which brings us to the question of stare decisis. Justice kagan i was Justice Stevens successor and he was endless will i kind to me in terms of offering advice, always in a kind of grateful way, not had a question, offering whatever wisdom he could. One of the thing he is said that really stuck with me, and this was again, you know, hearing this from a man who had just served 35 years on the court, was he said he tried to think every term about, like, all the things he could learn the next term. And he most people, theyve been doing a job 35 years, they kind of think they got it down, you know. Or at least the time for apprenticeship and learning is over. I do think he was not like that. It was one of the the one real aspect of his greatness which was that he was constantly thinking and rethinking and thinking about what he didnt know yet. And thinking about what opportunities there were for continued learning. And you know, its a great lesson for everybody. In all aspects of life. But i think its especially so, maybe, for judges. Because everybody treats you as though youre a very special and important person. Everybody tells you that everything you do is just, you know, there are not all that many people who come up to you and tell you what youve gotten wrong. And its easy to kind of convince yourself that you have reached a point where you know everything, i think. He was the absolute antithesis of that. Mr. Treanor when i was at fordham, as the dean, there was a symposium of Justice Stephen former clerks in academia, the former clerks in academia, the talk the justice gave was called learning on the job. Justice kagan i didnt know that but yeah. Mr. Treanor what he did was talked about, the focus was really substantive due process. And he had a certain case on it that was an oxymoron. When he became a justice. How he changed his mind over time. And that thats what justices should do. They should learn on the job. So it really resonates with your experience with him. Justice kagan and with your original question, about chaining your mind. Mr. Treanor do you change your mind . Justice kagan i havent been there 35 years yet but ive had and i wouldnt tell you right now, actually. [laughter] Justice Kagan there were these opinions i wrote in my first two mind . Justice kagan i havent been there 35 years yet but ive had or three years that really they were just wrong. [laughter] Justice Kagan i dont think id tell you. I dont think id tell the world of litigants out there right now. But i do think often about that piece of advice and about trying to make sure that you keep an open mind and that you dont think that youve settled everything. Mr. Treanor moving from that to stare decisis, the court changed its mind. You wrote about the importance of stare decisis. We were speaking before before, i think in the last two terms there have been six cases, or roughly six, in which parties have sought to have a precedent overturned. And in four cases the court overturned it. Justice kagan six cases where the question presented as, overturn this case. Mr. Treanor and four in which the court overturned precedent. In all six you were not on the overturn precedent. Justice kagan yeah. Mr. Treanor in the case most recently at the end of the term, you talked about the importance of stare decisis. Justice kagan ive said this before. One of the cases, im not sure if it was on your list of six, maybe it was a few years earlier, was a case in which i wound up writing a majority opinion, not a particularly hot button case, it was a patent doctrine which some people thought was a sort of silly patent doctrine that should never have come out the way it did, but had been around for 60 years, Something Like that. And the question was, on that one i wrote the majority. It was a majority the majority that Justice Scalia assigned to me. He was the senior justice in the majority at that time. And ill ill give away not much of a secret. He said, i think you should take this case, elena, because it will force you to think about what you think this doctrine is really all about. This doctrine of stare decisis. It was a great opportunity he gave me to think about and write about why we have this doctrine, what it was for, when we should use it, when we should depart from it. And of course sometimes you do depart from it. Its not its not an inexorable rule. Even though im 06 apparently in the last two years and i think if you go back further than that, youll find that my track record is not all that much different, you know its not like i wouldnt overturn a case, because sometimes, there are real reasons for it. But i do believe that the heavy presumption is that we shouldnt and there have to be reasons beyond just ordinary wrongness. Longer in line with anything longer in line with anything that the society thinks about how a legal system should operate or indeed, how other institutions should operate. More often, its things like, well, the the particular case has become a real outlier. That the legal rules and doctrines have changed around it. Leaving it a kind of weirdness in the law. Sometimes, its that nonlegal things change. So that the precedent operates in ways that nobody would have expected and that nobody really thought about. Thought about. You have to have sort of some something beyond just, oh, it was wrong. Its more like no, we learned something since then about that makes it incongruous, or that makes it morally repugnant. That for me is a pretty high bar. And in many cases, i think theyre not met. The considerate has thought about it in recent years. And why should it be a high bar . You know, for a few reasons, i think. People rely on stable legal rules. Think. People rely on stable legal rules. On predictable legal rules. And even when people dont structure their Decision Making to accord with those rules, i think in a broader sense, society relies on the idea that laws law is stable and law is laws law is stable and law is predictable and the law wont change just because particular members of the court are different or change. I think maybe the worst thing do it. So again, its not that you should never be able to do that, sometimes of course you should, but it should be a high bar. Mr. Treanor part of it is, if im just paraphrasing what i think im hearing, part of the rule of law and part of court being understood as apolitical. Justice kagan much more succinctly than i put it. Mr. Treanor when you dissent, so somebody wrote, i was just delighted that people were paying attention to a case like this. You wrote a terrific dissent. Part of it was just incredibly rigorous analysis of, you know, very difficult doctrine. And then part of it was a discussion of stare decisis and its significance. And you during the course of your decade on the court, youve written a series of extraordinarily powerful dissents. Justice kagan thank you. Mr. Treanor a round of applause for the justice. [applause] mr. Treanor when you write in dissent, whats your audience . Who are you writing for . Justice kagan it varies. You write different kinds of dissents. Sometimes you write a dissent because you think the court has gotten it wrong and the party deserves to know that the case is not really a 90 case, its a lot closer than that. In fact there are people who were persuaded by the other side. And you know, this is the way you saw the case differently and you know, theres it might not be the most important case in the world but its important enough to say, look, i saw the case differently. Heres why i saw the case differently. But at the same time you know that once you say that, its over. Its done with. You know, youre not going to be pounding the table the next case that comes along and saying, oh, you know, im sticking with my dissent. I just refuse to accept the particular majority opinion. I mean, you know, you have a different view, you said the view, now its like, youre back on the team again. A lot of dissents are just like that. Right . Its not the first in a continuing line of dissents. Or its not, you know, a bat that will you keep on repeating over and over. Its just, yeah, i saw the case differently, heres the way i saw it. Ok. Theres other cases that are different. Im not going to say which one this falls into. I wrote a dissent which is very different this year. I wrote a dissent in the gerrymandering case. Which is, you know, i didnt really pull my punches about the importance that i thought that that decision had to our political system and to the way we govern ourselves. And theres no part of me thats ever going to become accepting or of the decision made essentially that the courts shouldnt get involved in gerrymandering no matter how bad it is and no matter how disruptive of our political system it is. Which is the decision that the court reached. And so there you really are, you know, youre not just youre not writing the dissent because you saw the thing differently and you think everybody should know that there were two sides to this issue. Youre writing the dissent because you want to convince the future. And you want i guess you want to convince the present too. You know, for all those people out there who in some way can can carry on the efforts against because youre right. And for the future, you know, maybe the court will change its mind on this one. Maybe things will happen that will convince it to change its mind. Maybe the world will look different enough in however many years that this will be an appropriate opportunity. Maybe it wont. Im not we can all look into crystal balls and maybe the majority will be right about the effects of this going forward. You know. I dont think so. And if im right, therell be an opportunity to say, well, whats happened in these intervening years . Does that make a difference . But look, you know, that one was, their defense is like, i saw the case differently. Now we start all over again. And there are dissents that are, this is amis abysmally wrong. I mean, there were difficult i mean, there were difficult issues in the case. You can understand why the majority reached the decision it did. Im 100 certain in every bone of my body that the majority was acting in complete good faith as to why it reached the decision that it did. But i do think they got it wrong and that was one which was a kind of, you know, i want everybody to be thinking about this. Going forward. Mr. Treanor there was a very, very powerful dissent. In writing Something Like that, there were so many memorable points. Within a case like that, do you do the now im shifting from the theory to the legal writing question. Do you kind of outline the points that you want to make and then turn it over to your clerks . How does it get constructed . Justice kagan i guess i write all my opinions the same way, whether theyre majorities or dissents and whether they are more important or less important. I seem to be incapable of not following a single procedure. What i do is, i ask my clerks to give me a first draft. I use that first draft as mostly a spring board for my own thoughts. I see how one person wanted to do it. But then i open up a new document on my computer. I sort of put the new draft into different screen and i sometimes drag over quotes or citations or things like that. But i start all over again. You know, the draft is helpful for me because it helps me sort of get my own ideas in order. But i find that the only way i can know that what im, you know, the only way i can figure out a case whether im writing it from the majority or the dissent, is really to write my way through it. And so ill just write my way through it. You know, in the dissent, youre obviously using as a foil the majority opinion. The majority is in some sense harder because you dont have that. Dissent sometimes is easier just to deconstruct something than when its the majority, its like you have the responsibility to sort of solve every problem. Sometimes you dont really have that responsibility, to say why theyre wrong. In a good sense, you give some sense of the alternative vision of the universe but you dont have to quite fill in all the details as much as you do in the majority. So theres something that is a little bit easier and sort of a little bit more fun about a dissent because, except for the fact that youre really distressed that you lost, but it is kind of fun to sort of take shots at [laughter] Justice Kagan at what you think is maybe not optimal reasoning. And so anyway, then i got to the end. Then i use my clerks as editors. And we do a few rounds. I give to it one clerk, then to the other clerk, then i give it to two other clerks. So we do a few rounds of editing and then i release it to the world. Mr. Treanor do you have a favorite dissent . Justice kagan i dont know. Favorite in what way . Because it is, its like some of them, i hated that dissent because i really hated so much to lose that case. As opposed to some dissents where its like, eh, well, i lost, who cares. Mr. Treanor so on your writing style, for example, going back to the nic case. One thing i think is distinctive about your voice is that you both have incredibly careful, rigorous analysis. So again, in nic you respond very carefully. Justice kagan this is why i accept these invitations. What i said about people dont often tell you, i have rarely had a conversation with a person sitting in your chair said, you know, i just read that dissent you wrote and i think you missed the following five important points. Wasnt very good. It was badly written. Nobody has ever done that. Mr. Treanor if they did that, would you accept a return invitation . So its a combination of both kind of the response, very careful, but the also, very powerful quotes. That have kind of almost a colloquial style. Its striking to me. I dont think theres anybody who has got a voice like yours on the court. Is there anybody, when you Justice Kagan i mean in some ways, each of us has his or her own distinctive voice. If you gave me 10 opinions and said pick the author, i suspect id be awfully good at picking the author of all 10. I think we each have our own individual voice. But what i try to do, you know, obviously, i try to be as analytically good as i can be. I think good lawyering is super important. I think good rhetoric does not good rhetoric without good analysis is doesnt make up for it. So you know, first helps to be on the right side. You know, i pay a lot of attention to what are the best legal arguments here . How can we sharpen those arguments . How can you know, sort of all the lawyerly kind of things that i started by saying that Justice Stevens was such a wizard at. So i try. But i do i also want people to understand it. I spend a lot of time sometimes law is complicated and law can be arcane. And some of these correct arguments can be hard to understand. And so you have to spend just as much time trying to figure out how do you communicate these points to people so that theyll understand them and not just lawyers. And not just specialized lawyers. But ordinary people. For sure in a case like the gerrymandering case, i dont want just lawyers to understand what im talking about. I want others to understand what im talking about. How do you communicate these points in a way that people will understand and in a way that it will sort of stick with people. Its not just like, i understand it. I get why she thinks this is so i get why she thinks this is so important and its going to stick with me. And the way i think about that, honestly. I think youll appreciate this is, i think about it in the way i used to think about how to teach a class. You would come into your office before class and say its realy complicated material and im going to be talking about it to and with a bunch of people who are smart and are engaged and want to understand what youre talking about but they dont know much. And how are we going how am i going to convey this really complicated stuff to them . I think about, when i sit dun down and write these opinions, whether theyre majorities or dissents, i try to ask myself just that question. The dissents can be much more personal. I try to maintain a certain level of formality in my writing when i write for the court as a whole. Still, less formal than some of i think probably the thing thats more people on the court seem to agree on in terms of Supreme Court history than anything else is that Justice Jackson was a great writer. You ask everybody on the court who their favorite old justices were, pretty much everybody puts Justice Jackson on their list. Somebody said to me recently that Justice Jackson served on the court for barely longer than i have by now. And it made me feel so deflated. Like really . He wrote all of that in just as long as ive been on the court . He was an extraordinary writer. Justice scalia was an extraordinary writer, i think. Again, i dont think i write like him. Like him. Just as i dont write like Justice Jackson. And there are things, you know, times when i thought that Justice Scalia went too far, just as there are times when other people think i go too far. But he was a writer who i constantly learned from. Who are your favorite writers . Mr. Treanor jackson. Justice kagan its not even yeah. Mr. Treanor holmes. Holmes is not a great justice in terms of law. [laughter] but in terms of aphorisms, nobody better. Justice Kagan Justice brandeis was a wonderful writer and wonderful justice as well. Mr. Treanor Justice Marshall, phrases for the ages. Those are the ones id think about it. Justice kagan you couldnt try to imitate any of these people. They were too long ago, write in ways that are not very 2019, you know. Mr. Treanor thats true. You have to come up with your own voice. And times change. But i think you couldnt write like Justice Jackson. One couldnt write today like Justice Jackson. I think it would be inauthentic. If you said that. Justice kagan people would be like, what is she doing . [laughter] who talks like that anymore, you know . Mr. Treanor one other topic, and then well open it up for questions in a couple of minutes. Talking about leadership. There was a wonderful course on women in leadership. Youve been both a leader of a law school and a leader on the court. What is your model of leadership . Is it different being the dean of a law school and being on the court . Justice kagan yes. Because i dont really lead anything anymore. When youre a dean of a law school, you know, i know, you are the leader of a law school. Its not like you can do anything you want but youre the leader of the law school. The chief justice is very clear that the associate justices are not leaders of the Supreme Court. And you know, we are nine sort of equal participants and to the extent that were unequal, the chief justice is the unequal one. So i dont think the same kinds of things i thought about all the time, with one exception, but i thought all the time, youre a team of a law school, your whole job is to figure out how to lead an institution and to learn how to do that. Most of the skills that i picked up doing that, i think are pretty much irrelevant. When it comes to, you know, being one of nine people around a table voting and trying to persuade other people about how a case should come out. Notwithstanding how much deans say that they listen or that they confer with their faculty, in the end, its still sort of your job to run the thing. And thats not my job anymore. But i will say that one of the things you learn as a dean is, you know, effective leadership is awfully hard without good listening. Listening is not alone enough to make somebody into a great leader of a law school or any kind of organization. And that kind of listening ability is, i think, also critical to what i do now. Because as we sit there and talk about these cases an we try to persuade each other, i think effective persuasion only happens when you understand where another person is coming from and what might speak to his or her concerns. I guess if theres anything that is important in both sorts of roles and that i think, ok, to the extent that i learned something as a dean, it was to be a good listener. Thats really important on the court too. Mr. Treanor when you were clerking, were there leaders on the court you learned from . As a model . Justice marshall, justice brennan, did you learn anything from them in terms of, in your role now, in terms of building majorities . Justice kagan they were not building all that many majorities the year i was there. And i think, you know, Justice Marshall was never really in a position where he would play that role. Justice brennan for some number of years on the court was in that position. And of course many people think of justice brennan, the most important thing for a justice was to be able to count to five. And some people think he had a kind of miraculous ability to create those alliances of five. There are other people who think well, it helps when you have seven to start with. [laughter] you know. The years in which he was playing that role. Were years in which he had a kind of natural not coalition, if you will, but but you know, honestly, i think the way the institution works, at least now, whether it worked this way in justice brennans time i dont really know, but the way the institution works now is that these are nine exceptionally smart, diligent people, all of whom have their own ideas about how law should be done. All of them operating in complete good faith, but not necessarily on the same track. And its hard to convince people. And you can only do it on the merits. And you can only do it by listening hard to why they think Something Different from what you would like them to think. And you know, thats what i try to do. Thats what others try to do is to just listen and to be in a position to persuade. Mr. Treanor if people want to ask questions, we have two microphones, please stand by the microphone. Start there and there. Wow. People are stepping down. People are stepping down. Is it different for the court now since other than you theyre all former appellate judges . Does that make a difference . Justice kagan i dont know. I dont have anything to compare it to. I know there are some people who think that the court, you go back to some courts, the brown v. Board court, had no appellate judges, right . Mostly politicians. And some people think maybe some real world experience is is lacking on a court like ours where almost everybody has been an appellate judge and i come from a world that was not very different from that, the world of law schools, you know, but there arent any politicians, any anybody who just brings a completely different set of experiences to bear. I dont know, you know, i guess im not altogether a fan of that model. I think that most of what we do is pretty serious lawyers work. I think most people who havent done pretty serious lawyering in their lives would find most of it very interesting. Or i think i think, you know, so i guess i dont mind that i dont really see the alternative as a better one. Mr. Treanor all right. So we have time for a few questions. Why dont we start to the left and say your name and then ask a question. Thank you to Justice Kagan and dean treanor for coming. Im a student at university of texas. At some point you mentioned that Justice Scalia influenced your stautorial interpretation process, i may be mistaken in this, but if you could discuss that more, how does it man fe manifest in how you look at statute. Justice kagan i dont know if he influenced it on the court. I think, Justice Scalia had just become a justice when i went to law school. And for sure, his ideas about statutory interpretation were ideas that i as a law student and then as a clerk and a young lawyer, you had to sort of think about quite a lot. And you know, along with other ideas that were the exact opposite of them. I do put myself in a camp of, you know, that i am more textualist than some of my colleagues are. That doesnt mean im down the line with Justice Scalia and his views on statutory interpretation. We think Different Things about when to use legislative history. He thought never. [laughter] i think it is sometimes appropriate. But often not. So i think there are ways in which we vary as you can see. Because sometimes we disagreed on statutory interpretation cases. Sometimes using the same method, we just reached a different result. And sometimes our methodological differences may have contributed to that. But i do think i put text first and Pay Attention to text. I cannot really imagine except in highly unusual cases doing something that i think the text precludes. You know. You read a statute, it says what it says, thats where you stop. Would you consider a lawmakers intent . Justice kagan i dont think you get a followup. [laughter] hello. Thank you very much for being here. My name is evan. Im at g. W. Law. Justice kagan youre in the wrong building. I know. Im a georgetown undergrad alum. I didnt burst into flames when i walked in the door. Going back to the discussion of your writing style, it made me think of a case from a few years ago involving a spiderman toy. Justice kagan yeah. You made several references to spiderman comic books which as a nerd, i really appreciated. As a nerd, i really appreciated. So part of me wants to ask you who your favorite spiderman is, but more seriously i also want to ask you whether you see that as part of a way to kind of reach people and sort of meet them where they are . And obviously you need to judiciously support those kind of pop culture references but im curious what you think, how useful you think that is. Justice kagan you know, its funny. The case that you mentioned, the case that i mentioned because i was talking before about stare decisis, its a case about that and the one i told you i wrote the majority opinion on about this patent decision. It was the fact of the case, its not like i just started talking about spiderman. All right. So i mean, you know. I read spiderman as a kid. My brother was a big comic book aficionado, had to know a little bit about what he thought. The case was about a spiderman, it was like we had one in my office. It was like we had one in my office. You sort of put it over your hand and went like this. And webs came out, you know. Everywhere. Right. It was like who had a patent on this invention is what the case was about. When you come to writing an opinion like that, that is low hanging fruit. You cant get a spiderman reference into a case like that, youre not working hard enough. But it was fun. I had a fun time writing that. Not just because of the substance, which i think was substance, which i think was important, but because, you know, who cant have a good time writing about like spiderman gloves. And at the end, i think with the last paragraph of the opinion you talked about the last paragraph of my nic opinion but the last paragraph of the opinion where i was talking about, i dont even remember how it was related to the substance of the decision, but what was it, it was with great power it was related to the substance of the decision, but what was it, it was with great power comes great responsibility, is it seems appropriate. Mr. Treanor which was your favorite spiderman movie . I was coming back from london i thought it was pretty good. [laughter] mr. Treanor it is 5 00. What an extraordinary hour. So thank you very much to Justice Kagan. [applause] sen. Harris Justice Kagan thank you. [applause] thank you for a fascinating and thoughtprovoking conversation. Nk thed like to tha staff and council of lawyers in making todays events possible. If you are not a member, please do join us and we invite everyone to join us at the reception at the top of the stairs. So thank you very much. [applause] Justice Kagan that was fun. Thank you so much. That was great. [applause] Robert Mueller testified to congress on wednesday about possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by President Trump and russian interference in the 2016 president ial election. Her live coverage starts at 8 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan3, online at cspan. Org, or listen wherever you are with the cspan radio app. As into the complete mother report at Mueller Report at cspan. Org. The audio is courtesy of timberlane media. 50 years ago, on july 24, 1959, the apollo 11 moon or module splashed down and was recovered from a remote location in the pacific ocean. Neil armstrong, rep. Collins , and buzz aldrin were officially welcomed back to earth by richard nixon. Go to cspan. Org and type apollo 11 in the search bar for our anniversary coverage. Met in thet Trump White House for the first time with the pakistani Prime Minister. They spoke to reporters about peace talks and a variety of other issues. Last year, the president suspended Security Assistance to the country over what the administration size pakistans failure to control the taliban and other militant groups operating out of pakistan. Pres. Trump thank you very much. It is my great honor to have the very popular, and by the way, great athlete, one of the greatest, but very popular Prime Minister of pakistan. We have many things to discuss. Military and terrorism and trade. I think we will spend a lot of time talking about trade, because we do very little trade with pakistan compared to what we could be doing and should be doing when our countries get along perfectly. I think we are having that start. We are going to have that start. But this tremendous upside with respect to trade, one of the things we are going to be discussing, too, is hostages. We will talk about that, how your feeling is on that. We want to talk about polio, the possible polio vaccine. I think we have great meetings