Transcripts For CSPAN Neil Gorsuch A Republic If You Can Keep It 20240713

Establishing a new government for the United States of america. We have celebrated Constitution Day since 1950 6, 4 years after installing the original parchment document in its place of honor in the rotunda. We have celebrated the constitution in many ways. Tomorrow, we host one of my favorite events, a naturalization ceremony for new citizens of the United States. It is always a moving experience to witness this experience with people from all parts of the world, who stand in front of the constitution and swear to support and defend it. Invitelp guest speakers to help us reflect upon the constitution and its meaning in the present day. We are especially honored to have with us this evening the sitting justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, associate Justice Neil Gorsuch has recently brought together his reflections on the constitution and its separation of powers into one volume, a republic, if you can keep it. We are pleased to welcome him here to the home of the original United States constitution. Neil gorsuch was born in denver, fromado, received a ba lumbee university, jd from from columbia university, jd from Harvard Law School and a doctorate from oxford university. He served as a clerk to judge David Sentelle of the United States court of appeals and the district of columbia, and as a law clerk to Justice Byron white and Justice Anthony m. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. From 1995 to 2005, he was in private practice, and from the 2005 to 2006 he was the Principal Deputy associate general attorney general at the department of justice. He was appointed to the United States court of appeals for the tenth circuit in 2006. He served on the Standing Committee on rules and practice and procedure of the u. S. Judicial conference in the chamber and Advisory Committee on rules of the appellate procedure. He taught at the university of Colorado Law School and President Donald Trump nominated him as the associate justice of the Supreme Court, and took his seat on april 10, 2017. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the honorable neil magill gorsuch, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. [applause] Justice Gorsuch david, thank you. David its wonderful to have you back. We are here just after you were seated in may of 2017 to swear in the 150 National Counterintelligence and Security Center staff in the rotunda. Nice to have you back with us. Justice gorsuch its always nice to be here. It is a wonderful place and i am always encouraging all young people to come visit it. Its across the mall from the air and space museum. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and if you are really lucky i know kids get to spend the night camping out with the constitution. How cool is that . Ive had a lot of friends with kids who have done that. It has really touched them. So thank you for doing that. Justice gorsuch david so take us back to september, 2016 in colorado as you did in the beginning. What happened . Justice gorsuch well, my life, more or less, changed in every conceivable way overnight. I was living a quiet and very happy life in a little town outside of boulder, colorado. Where i had been a judge for a decade on the 10th circuit. All of a sudden everything changed. And if you ask me to give you one story that is kind of emblematic of that, if would be this. We had to sneak out of our home in boulder and sneak into the white house. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch the president was very committed to it being a surprise and we wanted to honor his wishes. And how do you get into the white house unnoticed . It turns out its pretty tricky and youve got to go in through the kitchen. We win through the kitchen of 10 we went in through the kitchen of the white house. It turned out to be really neat because i am a history buff like you, and down there, you can still see there are still scar marks from the fires of the war of 1812. There are still bullet indentations from the bullets down there as well. We stuck in through the kitchen and the president then very graciously allowed me to use the lincoln bedroom as an office for the day. Thats where i wrote my remarks for the evening in the announcement at the table, a desk on which there is a copy of the gettysburg address with him written in lincolns hand. Wow. The president knew that my wife, louise, is british originally. A proud american now. And he gave her the usage of the queens bedroom for the day, right across the hall. Where churchill stayed, the queen stays. Before the announcement, they asked us not to make any phone calls. He did not want folks to know. But they had no problem with louise calling her parents back in england. They figured five hours ahead, its the middle of the night. They will never tell anybody anyway. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch so louise calls her father and says dad, you are never going to believe it. Its going to be neil. And my fatherinlaw stayed up to watch the news and he said darling, im watching your American News and there is another fellow and hes driving and hes at a gas station. Hes driving on his way to washington, and im pretty sure its going to be him. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch inlaws. [laughter] the otherrsuch fellow was a dear friend of mine too. Louise says dad, im pretty sure its neil. I am sitting in the lincoln bedroom. He quickly replied yes, but president trump, the other guy might be down the hall. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and everything changed. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch everything. David even your milk delivery. Justice gorsuch yes, that is a story in the book. So, the marshals who were guarding our home and family, i only huge debt to them i owe a huge debt to them. They are wonderful people who gave their lives serving their country, and the courts very bravely. One night, a truck apparently came up, sped up to the house startedman jumped out, running toward the house, carrying containers with a white substance inside it. Louise got a call the next morning and it was the company that delivers our milk. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and they informed us that our usual milkman, who had been serving us for years, would no longer be coming to the house. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch somebody else would be doing the job. Asked, did something happen . She went out to the marshals to ask did something happen, to which they replied, there was an incident, maam. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch it took some cross examination before it came out what had happened. The final answer was yes maam, he ended in the prone position. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch louise being louise took over one of those chocolate towers with an apology. I am not sure if he ever totally got over it. [laughter] david so just in the main of station identification, let me remind you about the role the National Archives played in the confirmation process. We were asked by the Senate Judiciary committee to deliver everything we could that we have about you, which turned out to be 13,285 electronic assets that were responsive to the request. Of these, 2700 related specifically to your nomination for the 10th circuit court. Contained 19,438 pages, 522 microsoft excel spreadsheets and eight microsoft access databases. 164 attachments in eight formats. David Justice Gorsuch my apologies. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and my apologies to all of my friends and family and coworkers coworkers i think that i have assigned or filed. My teacher got assaulted by the press corps coming out of school on and on it went. Some of you are here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. My friends and family just emerged from the woodwork. David you talk about your loss of anonymity. Justice gorsuch yeah. Yeah. Well,it was something. One day im living quietly and then everybody in america knows who i i think i was photographed am. More in one minute than i had been in my whole life. And that is a little disconcerting at first. You are slurping your noodles at a restaurant and somebody at the other end of the restaurant is videoing you. That takes some getting used to. But then i realized when god takes something away, he usually gives you something in return if you just look for it hard enough. And what i got in return, david, was an opportunity to see firsthand how much the American People love this country. How much they love our constitution, how good and kind they are, the deep reservoir of goodness of the American People. I got letters of support from all across the country, and even a package of socks. [laughter] from someonech who had seen me on television and thought my socks had fallen down too often. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch people come up to me in a coffee shop and early in the morning and i am blearyeyed and they say, i think you need a joke. They just tell me a joke. People come up and say im a huge supporter of the president or i dont support this president , but i wish you well and i am praying for your family. During that crazy process, i was on a flight between denver and washington, and it was one of those moments i was feeling a little frazzled from it all and i was seated next to a little girl who was probably six. And the plane started to encounter some turbulence along the way, and she leaned over to me she said, would you mind if i me and she said, would you mind if i held your hand . So we held hands for about 20 minutes through the turbulence and at the end of it, she said now would you like to draw . [laughter] Justice Gorsuch we spend spent the next two and a half hours with her coloring book and was a wonderful moment for me of just being normal. Of course, at the end of the flight, her mother, who was seated behind us, recognized me. Two weeks later i got my favorite thank you note ever. It was a drawing that the little girl had done with an airplane with to stick figures standing in front saying thank you for holding my hand, and the two stick figures were holding hands. That is the American People to me. That is what i got to see and what i get to see day in and day out, and it is a humbling privilege. David tell us about the inspiration for the book. Justice gorsuch well, it came during the confirmation process. My predecessor, antonin scalia, smoked a pipe at his confirmation hearing. I dont think we are likely to see that again. My old boss, byron white, his confirmation hearing lasted 15 minutes. So did mine for the tenth circuit. [laughter] david things were a little different the next time around. Justice gorsuch and during the confirmation process, i was truly surprised, david, at how many people thought a judge is just a politician who wears a robe. And should promise to do certain things, and rules certain ways in cases they have not heard. Everybody has told me, you must abide president , follow precedent, and tell me their favorite precedent. Then they tell me something they dont like. I meet with one it is one thing, i meet with the other and it is the exact opposite, of course. And its one thing to think that judges occasionally, mistakenly, and follow their personal preferences over the honest views of the laws de demand, and its another thing isirely to think that it the way it should be. And then i got to learn it and think about the subject more. Where are we on this edition of owers, the constitution . I was truly shocked. Only a third of americans can name the three branches of our government. Another third can only name one branch of government, and 10 of americans believe that judicial ieland judy sh serves on the Supreme Court. That is judge judy. I happen to like judge judy, but she is not one of my colleagues. So the archives does wonderful work, the constitution i wanted there are all sorts of wonderful organizations that are working in this area, but i thought i owed Something Back to that i thought i owed Something Back to and wanted to put down a few thoughts on paper about these subjects. David so lets get into the meat of the book. Wodescribed this as nkiness, for this is so well written and written for a general public, so lets talk about the separation of powers. Where are we . Justice gorsuch separation of powers it can sound pretty dry, cant . Everyone understands that the First Amendment contributes to your liberty. We get that. The First Amendment, we understand that. But i dont think we understand or appreciate every day as much as we might how the separation of powers contributes to liberty and the genius of it. Madison wrote the constitution, didnt want to write a bill of rights. He said, if we got the structure right, we wouldnt need a bill of rights. He thought a bill of rights at the end of the day was a list of promises. Promises are only as good as the enforcement mechanism behind them. Now, here is how to test madison in the real world. Which oneights is your favorite . The United States bill of rights is pretty good. But my favorite is north koreas. Yes, i said north korea. It promises everything our bill of rights promises, david, and more. Free education, free health care, and my favorite, the right to relaxation. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch sounds pretty good, doesnt it . Now, i am not sure how that fares with the Political Prisoners over there, but there you are. The truth is though, that bill of rights is not worth the paper it is written on because all power is concentrated in the hands of one person. A tyrant. That was madisons genius, he recognized that. So what am i . I am 1 9 of 1 3 of our federal government, which is one half of our federal system. Divided power. That was the wisdom of madison. Now, that all sounds pretty academic and maybe a little wonkish, and i confess, when i learned all of that in civics which, yes, i am old enough that i had to take, it sounded pretty dry. But as a judge, i came to realize and see in the real world of the impact muddling up the separation of powers has on your liberty. And let me give you a few examples. What happens when judges act as legislators and instead of following the law, fatefully, faithfully, begin to make things up . Well, maybe the first real departure by the United States Supreme Court from the constitution as it was originally written was dred scott, and in dred scott, the Supreme Court of the United States held that white persons have the right to own black persons in the territories of the United States. And they said that right could be found in the fifth amendments due process clause, which guarantees you due process before your life, liberty or property can be taken. Now, scour the fifth amendment as long as you want. It is not there. Dred scott made it up. Now, the judges who did that thought they were doing so for a good reason, something more important. They thought they were helping avert the civil war and that making it up was worthwhile. They acted as legislators. Judges make rotten politicians. They guest wrong, and instead of wrong, andssed instead of averting the civil war, they helped contribute to it. That is one benefit of separation of powers. What happens when the legislature gives up its power to make the laws and assigned it instead to the executive branch . Madison knew that legislation, lawmaking would be the greatest potential threat to liberty, so he wanted it to be hard, slow, careful,e, and involve all of the people. Two houses of congress. Arduous process. The president must sign or there must be a veto override demanding public involvement of the peoples representatives, elected by two different constituencies at different times. It is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to involve everybody. And a lot of political scientists established it puts minorities at the fulcrum of power because their votes are often essential in that process to get legislation enacted. We have effectively a supermajority requirement thanks to our legislative structure. That is what madison thought would protect your rights when you are a minority and unpopular. Well, what happens when you take that process and stick it in the executive branch . The president s elected once, maybe twice, does not have to be very public. It is going to be a lot faster, isnt it . You will get a lot more of it, arent you . You have less say in process and minorities are going to play a very small role, the president just needs to win the majority. So you have elected yourself a king for four years. Or maybe even worse. Some of the agencies dont even much respond to the president. So you are having law made by a bureaucracy. Now, lest you think i am exaggerating, let me give you a case. This is the sort of thing that persuaded me rather than academic theory real facts with real people. A Company Called Caring Hearts located in my home state of colorado. I saw this at the 10th circuit judge. All this stuff is in the book, right . Caring hearts versus burlap. They provided home nursing care for medicare. And they were accused of Medicare Fraud by the government and fined 800,000. As you know, being accused of fraud by the government is a pretty serious thing. It can be a businessending proposition. Lifeending proposition really for people their livelihoods. People and their livelihoods. Years of litigation go by and what do we find out . Caring hearts had abided all of the rules, all of them that the executive Branch Agency had made for them to abide, at the time they had rendered their services. And the government accused them of violating rules that they had not even created at the time. It was making up rules so fast that even the government became confused. Second branch. What happens when the executive branch plays judge . Well, i see cases in which veterans and immigrants have a winning legal argument. Veterans seeking benefits for ptsd. Immigrants seeking lawful admission into this country. And i, as an independent judge, think they should win. They have a winning argument under the law. But we have doctrines now that say independent judges do not get to interpret the law. A bureaucrat does. And i, a Supreme Court justice, whatever that is, have to defer to a bureaucrats interpretation of the law. You have a right supposed to have a right to an independent judge to determine your rights under the law. That is lost. So separation of powers, i think it is vital to your freedoms. Those are three examples. And like the rest of our constitution, though, separation of powers is only as good as the people, and the people have to want it, and the people have to protect it. I think reagan used to say the are only one generation away from tyranny. David would you say that the three branches are equal, or are hey in in imbalanced . Justice gorsuch i would like to say, yes. They are supposed to be. Some of the examples i gave you make me wonder whether we are transferring a lot of legislative and judicial power, whether it is running to the executive. I worry about that. I do. David i am familiar with that data point about the number of people who cannot identify the three branches of government, but to add to that, 3 4 of americans can name all three stooges. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch is that right . David that is the truth. It is from the annenberg study. You talk very cogently about originalism and textualism in the book, so lets talk about originalism. And cases where originalism interpretation worked or didnt work. Justice gorsuch sure. Maybe we ought to start with what the heck is originalism. A boring term. The idea that judges should interpret written laws according to their original public meaning. That those terms on the page should be respected as written. And is really an idea that is ancient. If you look at the Supreme Courts jurisprudence, you will see 100 cases if you see one that say when it comes to a statute or contract, we interpret that document according to its original public meaning. And so the question original is imposes islism why would it be any different when it comes to a written constitution . Our founders rejected the idea of an unwritten constitution. They knew it well, and they came from an english system, no written constitution. Our framers decided instead to put certain things down, not many. There are not many things in the constitution, it is a short document, but they put down what they thought was vitally important and then left the rest for us, we the people, to decide. And they also allowed for us, we the people, to amend the constitution. Originalism tries to honor the originalness of the constitution. It says judges should not be in the business of making things up. Adding to or taking away fr om the constitution. That is what originalism is. I had not heard the phrase in law school from a professor when i was there. Isnt that shocking . The first time i heard originalism was when Justice Scalia came to visit my law school, when he was a young justice, about my tenure now, and he gave a speech that opened my mind. Of course, the harvard law review did not publish the speech. It had to be published by another schools law review. That is where we were 30 years ago on originalism. We have come some way. A long way. Why is originalism matter . Truth is, it was one of those theories that, like separation of powers, sounded pretty dry and academic to me at the time. But as a judge, i have come to see how it affects your rights. Let me give you some examples. What happens when we depart from the original public meaning . The alternative is something people like to call a living constitution. That actually sounds pretty good, who wants a dead constitution . How about an enduring constitution . I like that. A lasting constitution. Your constitution, not mine. Living, who does living . The judges do the living. And here is what happens when judges do the living, they evolve your rights. And some go away and some new ones appear. Now, if you doubt me, here are the examples. Take the 6th amendment, it says you have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers when you are accused of a crime. It says you have a right to confront the witnesses against you in that proceeding. Yet, the Supreme Court in the living constitution decisions has said, sometimes you do not have a right to a jury. Sometimes, other things are more important, we think, so we will give you a judge. Your rights are balanced. Balanced away. How about that right to confrontation . You usually get it, the living buttitutionalism says, sometimes we have more pressing business and we need to move on. So the piece of paper written by a Police Officer outofcourt, you cannot cross examine, might be sufficient evidence to send you away for 20 years or more. Your rights, taken away. One of the most infamous decisions in the United States Supreme Court, japaneseamerican citizens rounded up and detained. How do you square that with the original meaning of due process . Thats due process, before your life, liberty, property will be taken, you get to go before a judge. Some process of some kind, somewhere for somebody. None of that was provided. They thought Something Else more important. The war effort. Equal protection clause guaranteeing . We will ignore that too in this case. To help the war effort. Something else we think is more important. Some of your rights getting taken away. Wait, there is more. They add stuff that is not there. Dred scott is my example for you there. Which we have talked about. Where do you find the right to own persons in the due process clause . It is not there. So, when it comes to originalism, it is not political, it is not conservative. Are any of those results conservative . Liberal . Think they are constitutional. And as an originalist, it is all about preserving the constitution that you have written. And if you want to change it, you can and we have, and i am hardly here to tell you that the constitution cannot stand improvement, all right . Weve had some terribly important improvements through the amendment process. We do not need judges to make it up, you can fix it. And you have. You have given women the right to vote. You enacted the 13th and the 14th and the 15th amendments to the constitution, ending slavery. Judges did not do it. So why ask somebody else to do what you can do for yourself . And the constitution starts with three words, and they are not we, the judges. They are we, the people. Madison did not intend and you should not want nine older i can say that, i just had a birthday. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch people sitting in washington, d. C. Trying to rule a continental country of 330 million people. David so scalias lecture was the rule of law as a lot of as a law of rules. What is your assessment of the rule of law in this country . Justice gorsuch i am, if you cant tell, an optimist. And i want to share a few facts on this one, a few figures. Bear with me. People say to me i meet pessimistic people all the time, and they say, oh, the courts this, the Supreme Court that. I say, yes, we can quibble about this or that case, but shouldnt we step back just a minute and look at the forest . Lets not focus just on the tree, i will get to the tree and treat i will get to the tree in a minute, i promise. But lets look at the tree the forest in this country, first. Every year, there are 50 million lawsuits filed. I am not counting your parking tickets. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and i am not counting your traffic,speeding tickets. That is another 50 million, ok . 50 million lawsuits every year. I am going to move to the federal court system because i know that system better, but the numbers in the state court system are probably even more impressive. Of all those cases that wind up in the federal court system, 95 are resolved by a trial court, a judge and a jury. Done. That is the end of the case. Now, i represented many losing parties and anybody who is a lawyer for a while who tells you he hasnt is trying to sell you something, all right . They were not happy always with the decision of the court. They were upset by it. But they accepted it 95 of the time. Because they were heard. They were heard. And they knew that it was reasonable. They could accept it. 95 of the time. That is pretty powerful. I think, powerful evidence about the rule of law in this country. Lets talk about what goes out on appeal. I served on the 10th circuit, which oversees 20 of the continental United States, two time zones, and i served with judges who were appointed by president obama back to president Lyndon Baines johnson. One of my colleagues was appointed the year after i was born. The 10th circuit is as diverse a group of judges as you will ever encounter on whatever metric you wish to assess diversity. Its a wonderfully collegiate court, a model of collegiality knowndiciary and is across the country for that. We sit in panels of three so we have to convince our colleagues of the outcomes. We hear 5 of those cases. Right . We managed to reach unanimous agreement 95 of time on cases. Ok. Fine. Now we are moving from the forest to a little cove, so lets talk about the tree. The United States Supreme Court. It hears 70 cases a year. 70. I have colleagues out west who hear 70 cases in the morning. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and another 70 after lunch. And that is an easy day for them. Now, these are the hardest cases in the country, the 70 the Supreme Court of the United States hears. They are tough. We only take cases when there has been disagreement between the circuits or the state Supreme Court. Much of what we do is trying to ensure that the law is the same across the country. The same statute should not be interpreted and the same provision of the constitution should not be interpreted to provide different rights and responsibilities. That is what we do. 70 cases there are only 70 of those every year . Think about that. That is incredible. That is incredible. Only 70. Fine, you say. All right. What about those 70 . Now we are down to the branch and we are getting to the needles. 70 cases a year. There are nine of us. Not three anymore, nine. Not from 20 of the country, from all of the country. Appointed by five different president s over the course of 25 years. Now, i have to admit, new york city may be heavily represented amongst us. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch but that is a whole other discussion. I ask people, how do you think we are doing . 40 of the time in those 70 cases, we reach unanimous agreement. On the cases are lower Court Colleagues have disagreed on vehemently. That does not happen by magic. That is hard work. That is collegiality, and that is mutual respect. Try to get nine people to agree on where to go to lunch. All right, now we will get to the needle you all want me to talk about. The 54 decisions. Ok. They represent only about 25 to 33 of our docket. That is it. That is it. You will say oh, but there are more now than they are used no, no. 40 and thetages, 54 percentage, those have 1945,ed the same since more or less. Back then, you history buffs will remember, Franklin Delano roosevelt had appointed eight of the nine justices of the Supreme Court. If we are doing as well as they did, eight of them appointed by the same president , i think we are doing ok. And the truth is, the only thing that has changed is that nothing has changed, david. And in those 54 decisions this last year, they do not tell you this either, there were 10 different combinations of justices forming those 54 judgments. Law in this country is one of the wonders of the world. It is the envy of much of the world. I am not here to tell you it is perfect. But i am here to tell you, we have a wonderful inheritance. A blessing. We should appreciate that. David hear, hear. So etched over the Supreme Court are the words equal justice under law. And you say in your book, few americans could afford a lawyer, i could not afford my own services when i was in private practice. Justice gorsuch and i really cant now. [laughter] david the comment on access to justice. Justice gorsuch i am not pollyannaish about america. I think we have a lot of good reason to be optimistic about america and i do have a discussion in the book about access to justice issues, because i think we should look with clear eyes at areas where we can improve. I worry where nobody can afford a lawyer. It takes way too long to get to trial. If you are lucky enough to get into court. When you get there, you do not get a jury, and look at how many things are now criminalized. I asked my law clerks, how any how many federal criminal laws are there . They came back and told me there 4500 federal0 criminal laws. How many of those criminal laws are there. They came back and they scratch their head, and they went to the library. I had to ask them for a few times for an answer. I finally got this, boss, they stopped counting. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch they stopped counting. They stopped counting i think in the 1990s. Even academics cannot keep up. At that time, it was over 300,000 federal criminal laws created by agencies. Now, some of them are vitally important. But some of them i give a couple of examples in the book. The bostwick consistometer, if up your ketchup flows through it too quickly and you do not label it as substandard, that is a problem. If you sell mattresses and you tear off that tag, oh you are a federal criminal. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch i have law professor friends who say, literally, they think, probably everybody over the age of 18 has probably committed a federal crime. I worry about access to justice. I worry about over criminalization. I worry when the prosecutor can pick his victim rather than the crime. What do we do about it . Ah, that is a long discussion. But let me rattle through just a couple of some ideas. And i dont have all the answers, but these are things that i think we all need to think about. Do you need a lawyer to do every little thing . Write a will, help you with an uncontested divorce . Lawyers get to regulate themselves. Lawyers are the only profession that gets to regulate themselves. I think as lawyers, we have to ask ourselves, do some of our regulations really helped our liens, or do some of them only help us . Does it really take three years of law school to become competent to provide any legal advice . In england, you can get a law degree in three years as an undergraduate. Or one year and a conversion course as a grad student. Do we really need three years on top of four years of undergraduate education . A lot of young people i know come out with debt so high, they cannot afford to be main street lawyers. They have to go work for big firms even if they do not want to. Us judges, we should look to ourselves, too. Our rules. We have something called discovery, civil discovery, which is supposed to help people figure out what the case is about before trial. It turns out civil discovery often yields very little discovery and is sometimes anything but civil. And it takes a long time and it costs an awful lot. I know people who call themselves trial lawyers who have not tried a case in 20 years, but they can write something called an interrogatory in civil this ry scribble civil discovery. They can write an interrogatory in iambic pentameter. They are really good at it. Why cant you get to a trial of your peers without every six months . Those are some of the things i think about in the book. David it sounds like it is a very serious environment that i know better, having read the book you guys have a lot of fun up there. Justice gorsuch i think people have i know we live in a world where everybody wants to create enemies and divides and we are all subject to look great. We . O clickbait, arent but the truth is, that the Supreme Court, like most courts in america, is a very collegial, warm and wonderful place to come to work. It is a tiny little place, only a couple hundred people work there. Maybe a few hundred, i dont know. You get to know people. Your kids trickortreat in the office. We flip hamburgers at the cookout. Right . We even let the law clerks make fun of us in a skit at the end of the year. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch and boy, do they. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch that is a whole other story. Do we disagree . Yes. You have given us the 70 hardest cases in america. Of course we are going to disagree sometimes. But we do it civilly when we do. We do it collegially. And we have fun doing it. Sing happy birthday to one we sing happy birthday to one another, chorally and enthusiastically. We sing together at the holidays. We eat lunch together. An awful lot. Every day we have conference or argument, lunch is available. Unchroom. Ces l and then it is bring your own. We work for the government. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch justice breyer, we dont talk shop. We dont talk shop at lunch. s grandchildren seem to be an endless reservoir of knock knock jokes. There are practical jokes. I dont think someone would mind me telling this one. One day, we are all lined up in our robes as we go out to the courtroom. We shake hands every time we gather. 36 handshakes, no matter how tense and what is going on, 36 handshakes. That has been going on 150 years. Ish. One day we are lining up after handshakes and Justice Sotomayor comes in and she is not wearing her usual beautiful robe, but this one has pinstripes on it and the new york yankees emblem across her chest. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch i guess the yankees have done well recently, she was pretty excited. But i think a few of my colleagues were a little nervous about this, and we are lining to go up into the courtroom and one soniam says , are you really going to wear that on the bench . And she says, no, i was just waiting for someone to ask. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch when a new justice arrives, the most junior justice, everything is done by seniority in the courts. The most junior justice has to throw a party for the new justice. And justice kagan, when louise and i arrived, through the most wonderful evening in which she made sure we had indian food because she knew that louise loves indian food and she got a chef she knew and washington to new in knew in washington to come and cook for us, and it was magnificent. Kavanaughice arrived, i knew he was a meat and potatoes guy. Dinner was going to be kind of boring and i had to come up with something to liven up the evening. I said after dinner, everybody follow me. And we went down to the great hall of the Supreme Court of the United States, the big marble hall. I handed the chief justice a checkered flag. Naugh is ajustice kava huge baseball fan and loves the nationals. Their mascots are the president s. They have giant foam heads and they run around, and my assistant of many years and a dear friend came up with the idea. She found out, you can rent them. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch so she went online and we rented two of the president s and we had a race in the hall of the Supreme Court of the United States. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch that is one where i thought it would be better to ask for forgiveness than permission, but i think it went over pretty well. [laughter] david we had them here in the rotunda running around. Justice gorsuch you did not . David yeah, we did. I have a wonderful photograph of Abraham Lincoln looking at his autopsy report. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch so, we are all just people. Hear. Hear, for me, the most important part of the book personally and professionally is your section on citizenship and civility. So talk to us about citizenship. Justice gorsuch so, civility and citizenship. I dont know when civility became a bad word. Or manners became a word that we dont even use anymore. Now, is our republic supposed to be a little rock this a little raucous . You betcha. You betcha. An elbow thrown here or there is part of the game. After all, the whole point of a republic, everybody can feel free to speak his or her mind. And know confidently that you can. Right . That doesnt happen everywhere in the world. In the whole point there is, there is a marketplace of ideas and we hope in the republic, that the best ideas will emerge. So yes, it should be a little raucous. But we should not forget that everybody involved in the process is a human being, too. What is civility other than the recognition of the person i am talking with . I do worry when i read and meet young people, the statistics are they are there, too. 60 to 70 of young kids say they dont want to get involved in Public Service because of the nature of our civic discourse today. Social media, i think it is really hard for you young people, much harder than when i was coming up. I read that 25 of parents move children from schools because of cyberbullying. I do think we have to talk about this and we have to worry about this. America, and this goes with citizenship, too [inaudible] what you know about it, you choose to become americans. And whats special about america is we are bound together by ideas. Most other countries in the world, there is a common culture, a shared history, sometimes quite ancient, here we have ideas to bind us together, about the equality of all persons, about the unalienable rights of individuals, where the government is to serve us and we are not there to serve the government. Those sorts of ideas, a limited government. And i just think we need to think about those things. George washington, when he was a young person, was given 110 rules of civility and decent behavior in company written by the jesuits in 1595. And he had to copy them out. Now, we used to teach civics and we used to teach civility. David number 110, labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial conscience. Thats george washington. Justice gorsuch thats a good one. They are not all quite that good. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch another one, i dont know the number. Its Something Like, do not speak so vehemently or approach your opponent in debate so closely, that you do the other mans face with your spittle. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch my teenagers would put it, say it, dont spray it. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch i dont know if we need those rules. Those are a little oldfashioned, i get it. But the rule that works for me is one louises grandmother taught us after a long and eventful life. She said, you are going to have many regrets in life. I guarantee it. No avoiding it. Sorry. I hate to break it to you. There are going to be things that you say or do that you regret. There are going to be things that you left unsaid that you did not do, and you will really, really regret. But the one thing in life that you will never regret is being kind. David so you have a wonderful chapter on the art of judging in which you pay homage to your mentors. So talk a little bit about what it was like to clerk for and then be a peer of one of your mentors. Justice Gorsuch Justice kennedy. Yeah. Young people, we have a bunch of them in the audience, pick your mentors carefully. I used to teach ethics and one fact that struck me is that you will pattern your professionalism, your ethics on your first bosses. So pick them carefully. You have to find a job, i know. They choose you, but you choose them, too. Be careful who you choose. I was very blessed to have Justice Kennedy as one of my first mentors. Kid couldnt be luckier. Heres who Justice Kennedy is to me. Its the first time a justice and his law clerk had wound up sitting together. I got that for a year. That was really neat. And when i wrote my very first opinion for the Supreme Court in the United States in a nonvery tonot very important case, be honest, the new guy doesnt usually get anything but a 90. I circulated it probably late in the day, 5 00, 6 00, and the justice had gone home. He works from home late, but he likes to work from home. And he found out that i had circulated my opinion and he knew because of the nature of the opinion, it was likely to be joined up pretty quickly by our colleagues. But he wanted to be the first. So he said to his law clerk, please would you fax over, yes, fax over Justice Gorsuchs opinion. And i remember that fax machine. When i was a law clerk, i think it was the same one because it was not working that day. So he was in a conundrum, the fax machine was not working and he wanted to join quickly, so he had the law clerks drive it out to his house. He read it and sent back a hand signed joinder memo. That evening. Thats anthony kennedy. Thats who he is. He is a model of civility and decency and respect for each person. David and byron white . Justice gorsuch byron white was my other boss. On the Supreme Court. He was the first justice from colorado. Ill always be the second. Byron white was for me my absolute childhood hero. He grew up on a sugar beet farm, poor, wellington, colorado. Small town, a few hundred people, worked hard as a kid. Went to the university of colorado and graduated first in his class. He also led the ncaa in rushing and took the buffalos, yes, the buffaloes, and yes, they have a live buffalo as a mascot to this day. Its pretty awesome. And only occasionally gets loose. He took the buffaloes to a bowl game. After that, he served in the second world war, bronze star, south pacific, Rhodes Scholar to oxford, graduated top of his class from yale law school, and was the leading rusher in the nfl and its highest paid to that and its highestpaid player. Jack kennedys friend and helped Bobby Kennedy desegregate the south all before serving 31 years on the United States Supreme Court. Wow you can see why he was my hero. So, one day doing our clerkship, we are walking along the hallways of the Supreme Court, down on the first floor but what really feels like the basement, and that is where the portraits of justices are hung. Justice white leans over to me says, oh, Justice Gorsuch who used to like to have a little fun with his law clerks and called us Justice Gorsuch. Little did he know. [laughter] Justice Gorsuch he said Justice Gorsuch, how many of these old dogs can you name . And in honesty i had to tell him about half. , and he said to me something that really shocked me and depressed me a little bit at the time, and said, me too. He said, and thats pretty much how it should be and i will be forgotten soon enough. 10 years, nobody will know who i am, Something Like that. And that shocked me down to my socks. I thought nobody would ever forget byron white. I wonder how many of you remember him . And i know that visitors to the often look pretty quizzically at his portrait now hung in that hallway. And what i realize now and i didnt realize then is the boss is trying to tell me something really important and quite joyful, not at all depressing, the happiness in life has nothing to do with being remembered. That we will all be soon forgotten, and what really matters is this great country and our constitution. Those things indoor. The joy in life comes from serving something greater than yourself. That is what he was trying to teach me. David which is why in your ethics course, you had a very interesting assignment that you gave your students to write their own obituaries . Justice gorsuch yes. Yeah. Before ice white, leave him, he was try to tell me what webster said. Miracles dont come in clusters and that what happened here for the first time in 6,000 years of human civilized history, the written constitution, by the people, of the people, for the people isnt something we can take for granted will happen very often. The obituary. Of theoward the end semester in my professionalism in ethics class, i would ask students to spend five minutes writing their obituary and they usually start off snickering. What a corny exercise. And maybe it was a little bit. But after about five minutes, things got pretty quiet in that room, always. They got pretty serious about it. And then i would ask a few brave souls if they would not mind reading out what they had written. I tell you, not once did they ever write about how much money they made, what car they drove, how many clients they brought in or that they were a rainmaker in their law firm. What their hourly rate was as a lawyer. They always wrote about being kind to their family, their friends, and maybe leaving the place a little better or at least no worse off than they found it. And i tell them of the end of the semester, do me a favor. Do me one favor. Keep that document. Stick it in your desk drawer, and every so often when you are wondering what its all about or feeling a little blue, take that out and assess how you are doing on the metrics that really matter. I do something similar. Obituary, and after taft an epitaph from a lawyer that i found in law school in a burial ground. Us . D would you read it to [laughter] Justice Gorsuch what at least it isnt big enough print that i can. Thank you. He was forgotten. Be and should be, as a judge. That was another thing he was trying to tell me. President s should be remembered. Maybe even the occasional senator, congressman. Judges, our job is to make sure the rule of law is passed down from one generation to the next. Hand you your constitution. Carry the baton for the day. As a lawyer, he was faithful and able. As a judge, patient and impartial and decisive. As a chief magistrate, accessible, frank and decisive. In private life, he was affectionate and mild. In public life, he was dignified and firm. Party feuds were laid by the correctness of his conduct. Calumny was silenced by the weight of his virtues and rankor softened by the amenity of his manners. David thank you very much for being on our stage this evening. [applause] announcer university of washington history professor Margaret Omara discusses her book. You have the biggest of Big Government programs, the space race. You have what i now memorably label, the militaryindustrial complex. That becomes the foundation for this entrepreneurial flywheel. Incredible creation and innovation and wealth, private wealth creation. In fact, it is an industry that kind of considers itself an industry that built itself on its own. That government has become almost invisible to many of the people who are in silicon valley, who are the creators of these companies, these technologies. That is part of the magic, that it is by government out of sight. Announcer sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. Hi, everyone. My name is adam cook. I am the 2018 cspan studentcam winner. I am pure to encourage you to continue to wrap up this competition as the headline is getting pretty close. But dont worry, you still have time. This is actually about the time i started filming my documentary the first year i entered in. I am in the d. C. Offices and i just want to tell you, this is kim studentcam was an Incredible Opportunity for me to express my thoughts about the Political Climate in the current day, while connect with some local and state leaders in political office. I am extremely excited that you all are interested in are pursuing this, because it is a onceinalifetime opportunity. Announcer there is still time for you to enter the cspan studentcam video competition. You have until january 22 create documentary, that explores an issue you want the president ial candidates to address during campaign 2020. We are giving away a total of 100,000 of prizes with a grand prize of 5,000. For more information, go to our website, studentcam. Org. Supreme Court Justice elena kagan spoke about the inner workings of the court and how it has fared in todays Political Climate. The remarks were part of the annual John Paul Stevens lecture at the university of Colorado Law School in boulder. [applause] the John Paul Stevens lecture is named for another prominent u. S. Supreme Court Justice. Justice stevens regrettably passed away just a few months ago. This lecture series is attributed his exemplary and Courageous Service on the bench and stature as one of the gems of american jurisprudence. The stevens lecture brings to year, distinguished jurors who contribute to the life of our community. We are fortunate to have welcomed in previous years, several outstanding judges including a number of u. S. Supreme Court Justices who have enriched our community with thoughtprovoking insight into the role of our judiciary and is highest court in the nations legal and political and social or