Transcripts For CSPAN Justice 20240704

See our complete National Book festival schedule online at booktv. Org. The library of congress National Book festival live saturday, august 12 beginning at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. Coming up, Supreme Court associate Justice Elena kagan talks about a senate bill created to establish a code of ethics for the high court. The democratic measure comes response to recent reports of potential ethics violations involving justices and samuel alito and sonia sotomayor. She spoke at a conference in portland, oregon. [applause] thank you, judge simon. Thank you, everyone. Welcome, thank you for being here, Justice Kagan. Its an honor to have you here. Were really excited and we appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with us. Its great to be here this whole conference and thank you to everybody and especially to the chief judge for making me feel so at home and forgiving me so much work to do during this. The lineup in that case were somewhat unusual given the recent divide on the court. Im wondering from your perception what lessons can we learn from that case and from the lineup . Well, truth be told, i do think that the lineups were less unusual than they just were lop sided. You know, the unusual lineup is usually like the 54, but everybodys all scrambled. But this was just a lop sided result. It was a 72 case, sometimes we have those. We have 72 cases. We have 81 cases. And in this case the outsiders, if you will, were me and the chief justice. And what can i say, there were seven people who really thought that their view was right and there were two people who really thought that the majoritys view was wrong. It was an important case. It was an incredibly fun case for me to write the dissent. The chief justice assigned me the dissent and we both knew he was giving a gift when he signed me thatdy sent the case, as you say, if i could just talk about it for a few minutes, and ill try to be as fair as i can. [laughter] probably not all that fair. Glad Justice Sotomayor is not sitting here policing me. As i describe this case. But so the case is theres a photographer who takes a photograph of prints and sometime later andy warhol uses that photograph and makes a silk screen out of it. Its one of these, its like if there were a screen here and i put it on the wall, you would say immediately, of course thats an andy warhol. 99 people out of 100 would say that. And the 100th is just because theyre culturally illiterate. [laughter] but shes an excellent photographer who did an excellent photograph but warhol converted it into a warhol. Making it entirely different. Making it entirely it was very colorful. Its eyepopping. He puts all these different kinds of colors in it. He tilts the face, the makes it entirely visually different. I just think that thats true. Im sorry. And he makes it very different in terms of meaning as well. He has this whole genre of celebrity silk screens which talked about celebrity culture and what it meant to be a celebrity in america. And unlike the photographer who was really intent on showing princes individual human teurbgs he was intent on showing the way we dehumanize celebrities. So it was almost in terms of message and content, the mirror image of the photograph. Something opposite rather than Something Like. And in copyright law, you know, you copyright a monopoly, youre not allowed to trespass on the creators work. Except when you are. And when you are is when youre making a fair use of it and one way you can make a fair use of a copyrighted work is by transforming it. Thats always what the precedent has said. And the chief justice and i thought we had the precedent sort of wildly on our side. Because the precedent makes the test, is it transformative . And it talks about new meaning message or expression. If this was not, i guess i dont know what is. Like if andy warhol isnt transformative, whats transformative . He was sort of the avatar of transforming other images and other products. Whether it was a Campbell Soup can or this photograph. But the majority said, and this was, you know, i dont think im giving away any secrets, this wasnt like a hardfought 72 majority. Like, where were those three people going to land . I mean, this is just seven people thought we had it all wrong and the opposite. The majority thought that just because both the photographer and warhol had used their images in a similar commercial fashion, that they had essentially licensed the images to magazines and received payment for those images, that that trumped everything that ive been saying about the transformation. So that was the essential conflict in the case. Now, i think what struck people about it, i think the reason why its fair for you to have said, well, it was an unusual lineup, what was really unusual was the fact that justice, in peoples minds, what was really unusual and what i saw a lot of press about was the fact that Justice Sotomayor and i went at aoefrp and that they were each other and that we were the two authors of the two principal opinions, that was also a concurrence. And that we kind of went at each other hammer and tongues. We had some choice words for each other. In the way [laughter] in the way that sometimes are dispensed when theyre important, when we care about them. Sometimes do go at the other opinion. And, you know, i guess to the extent that people think, oh, my gosh, thats so unusual because Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan are fighting, well, they shouldnt think that. Justice kagan i mean, if you think that Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan are identical judges with identical methodologies, reaching identical outcomes on the basis of identical approaches to law, i have to say you havent been paying careful attention. [laughter] i mean, judges are different. I am a partner and a collaborator with Justice Sotomayor on some occasions and some occasions i care deeply about. And i think Justice Sotomayor gets stuff wrong on other occasions and this was one of them. [laughter] ok, fair enough. Judges are different. We get it. So in your dissent in the andy warhol case, you warned the majoritys opinion hampers creative progress and undermines creative freedom. Will you share some of your personal experiences that have contributed to your strong appreciation for creative freedom in the arts . Justice kagan personal experiences, i dont want to say, you know, that i was on this side and Justice Sotomayor was on the other side because i have, you know, greater love of the arts than she does. I dont want to say that at all. And im not sure that personal experiences are whats key here. The question in the case, the question in all of copyright law is how to foster creativity. Thats why we give out copyrights in the first place. They are monopolies, we dont usually love monopolies. We give out monopolies in order to encourage people to create art and music and literature and everything else. But we also recognize that there ought to be limits on that and partly in order to promote creativity. That if we allow these copyright holders to lock up what they do and dont allow other people to make use of those works, even for fundamentally different transformative objects of their own, then weve done something that stifles creativity and thats what we should thats what copyright law aims to prevent is the stifling of creativity. And what was fun about this dissent and the reason why it was such a gift to me is the dissent has plenty of stuff about interpreting the statutes and what the statutes language is and why it is, when you think about the purpose in character and the language of a statute of a new work, you should be thinking about whether the new work is transformative. So theres plenty of stuff about statutory interpretation and theres plenty of stuff about precedent. About all the things that the Supreme Court has said in the past about when new works are transformative in this way that should allow them to exist. Notwithstanding the existence of a copyright. But theres also plenty of stuff thats really not about law so much as it is about music and art and literature and other forms of creative expression and how they develop. Because really the point of our dissent, the chiefs and mine, was, you know, new works dont appear just out of a vacuum. They dont appear out of nothing. All original works come from something. Shakespeare took all his stories from other people and yet hes the greatest author of all time. And what the back half of the dissent tries to show is how this is true in literature and in art and in music, i understand that lisa blatt was here making fun of my reclining news. [laughter] you know, lisa, she represented the photographer. So she may have a distinctive view on this case. [laughter] but the news, which im sure the first time reclining news has appeared in Supreme Court opinion, but theyre posed to supposed to show how these same motifs are used and you can see the one in the other and yet understand that the second artist and the third artist is doing something entirely different and something that you want in the world. And so thats what the dissent is all about and, you know, do i care about art and music and literature . Yes. Im sure every justice on the Supreme Court does. The question was only, you know, how is it that we allow those forms of creativity and really all new knowledge to flourish . And i think that the opinions did reflect a difference in how much leeway to give to new creators to use old things on the view that newness is not complete newness. Everything that we think of as original in fact has its roots in something else. And what was really fascinating about this case, and ill stop here, is people said a lot to me, like, how did you find all those examples . Because there are a ton of examples in this and for extra credit you can tell me afterwards, you can figure out which one the chief asked me to use. Ok . [laughter] so thats extra credit. But all those examples, now ive lost my place, those examples are everywhere is what i want to say. Its like, once you started looking for them, i left a thousand on the cutting room floor just because it was late enough already, weve made the point. [laughter] speaking of dissents, can you tell us how do you decide when youre going to dissent or when you decide to just go with the flow . Justice kagan go with the flow. Something that we dont do all that often on our court. [laughter] none of us. You know, mostly if i end up disagreeing with something, i dissent. There are other legal traditions, other Legal Systems in which people always swallow their dissents. You know, and the court presents it self as a united front. And that hasnt been the case in the United States for a long time. Although initially it was. The John Marshall years. But it hasnt been that hasnt been true in the United States for a long time. We sort of show our disagreements and allow the world to judge who has the better of the argument. And for the most part i think that thats the better system. That we dont pretend that theres only one answer in tough cases and that we give the parties and everybody else sort of a chance to see the competing perspectives and to know that some cases do produce different thoughts about which outcome is correct. I mean, do i believe very strenuously, very strongly, in working strenuously to achieve consensus. So i do think its better when the court can achieve more consensus among more actors and i hope and think that i try hard to participate in that process on our court in a constructive way. You know, i would rather have an opinion in which we decide less and achieve greater consensus in most cases than an in which we decide more and everybody splits because the opinion is overly ambitious. So i would rather decide less, have greater consensus, than decide more with division. And i like to think that i participate hard in that process. Id like to search for what might be thought of as principled compromises. Some compromises you cant make but some compromises you can. And id like to think that i participate very vigorously in that effort. But, you know, when all of that has been done and you look at something and you really dont agree with it, i mean, there are occasional times when one or another of us, the term we use is swallowing our dissent. And there are occasional times when ive done that and some of my colleagues have done that, but mostly if at the end of the day i disagree, i dissent. Now, there are dissents and there are dissents. Not all dissents are alike. I think of them as your standard, run of the mill dissents. Which you saw and you mean and you hope people understand this case is not as easy as the majority might make it appear, might want to suggest that it is. But then you put it in the file drawer and you dont really think about it again. And there are other dissents and maybe these are the dissents that you read from the bench, you know, thats very rare on our court, so maybe theres a spectrum, i dont mean to say that its like all irrelevant and a few but at the other end of the spectrum, those are the dissents that you read from the bench that you hope have a future in the way people think about the law. In which you want to register a profound objection, not only off the view that the majority is wrong but that that error is a fundamental one and that you hope the dissent will provide a different way of looking at the law, a particular issue in the law, or a particular question of methodology which will have a shelf life. And which people will come back to in the years to come. So you dont want to make every dissent sound like every other dissent in its level of rhetoric or in its level of just, like, how much how hard youre punching. So with all of your years on the court, is there a favorite opinion that youve written that youd like to talk to us about . Justice kagan its like choosing among your children or Something Like that. [laughter] i have three, so. And two are here. So theyre both my favorite. [laughter] Justice Kagan i try not to think of it that way. I try to give every opinion a lot of time and effort and try to make it as good as i can. But i guess i would separate first dissents from majorities. Dissents are very different to write. Warhol was the unusual dissent. On the one hand, i thought it was extremely important. On the other hand, it was just a ton of fun. You know, most dissents are not fun in that way. Most dissents youre feeling kind of sad about the outcome. And the important ones, extremely sad about the outcome. I guess the dissent that has meant the most to me have been the ones ive written and i sort of count this as a group, about democracy issues. So those are dissents about the Voting Rights act and about partisan gerrymandering and about aspects of the Campaign Finance system. And i guess the reason that those strike me as the ones i feel most deeply about is because i think that these questions about political rights, about, you know, making sure that people can vote and that their vote is worth each persons vote is worth as much as every other persons vote, that sets up the system so that then the system can operate and produce whatever results the system produces. But you have to have a fair system in place from the getgo in order to be able to say, well, the policy outcomes it produces are the outcomes it produces. So that seems to me the most fundamental responsibility, of course, is to ensure that the constitutional provisions and the statutory provisions that operate to ensure a fair democracy are satisfied and then whatever that democracy produces is none of your business. So i would say those are the ones i care about most. On the majority side, just as the chief justice gave me a gift in giving me the warhol dissent, i was given a gift earlier in my career by Justice Scalia who was the assigning justice on a case called kimball. It was a case that a little bit combined fun and meaning. It was fun because it was about a spiderman toy. It was a patent case but the patent was on this glove that you put on your hand and then would you go like this and web thread would come out. [laughter] and if i tell you that like all spring my clerks were having [laughter] and the fact that it was about this, you know, comic book object enabled me to make lots of puns and the end line of the opinion is Something Like, with great power comes great responsibility. [laughter] but it was also very meaningful and the reason i say Justice Scalia gave me a gift. He called me and said, would you take this opinion . It was a divided vote. He was the assigning justice. And he said, i think that this is like a good one for you because i think in it you can Say Something about not just any particular issue, i mean, the legal rule in question was a pretty obscure patent rule. Not just about any particular issue but about how you think about doing law. And in particular how you think about the doctrine of star desighs and how important precedent is to a functioning rule of law system. And he was totally right about that. It was you know, stair desigh sis is a little bit of a counterin stare decisis is a counterintuitive idea. Even when we think the rule of law is wrong, were still going uphold it. Because weve been upholding it for a lot of years. And some people say, like, why . And this opinion was all about why. About why even when i mean, i think most economists and a lot of lawyers thought in this rule of patent law was wrong and the opinion very forthrightly admitted that and then talked about the virtues of a stare desigh sis system, about the importance of reliability and the importance of prohibitability and predictability and the importance of people of kwourt courts looking like theyre doing law rather than kind of imposing their own preferences as the composition of the court changes. All of that is talked about in this opinion and its really become something that i go back to a lot in the way i think about law. And the way i write opinions. Thank you for sharing those insights, Justice Kagan. Id like to turn to a different topic now. Theres been a lot of expression of concern in the public about waning Public Confidence in the Supreme Court. You talked a little bit about that last year. But what are the courts Biggest Challenges in this area and what can be done about it . Justice kagan i have talked about this, so some of what im going say is probably going to be repetitive. I think its important that the public have confidence in our legal system and in the Supreme Court in particular. Its important that the public have confidence in all our governmental institutions and theres a real cost when the public does not have confidence in those institutions. So how does a court create confidence or when does a court lose confidence conversely . I mean, it is just not the case that a court should be looking to Public Opinion and to try to reflect Public Opinion. Thats quite obviously something, you know, it would be wrong for a court to do that in many, many, most instances. So how do you create confidence understanding that the court is meant to be often a countermajoritarian institution, and i think you create confidence by acting like a court. And by doing something that looks recognizably lawlike. Rather than doing something that looks more political. Or that looks more as though judges are imposing personal preferences. As i said before. Now, you can have very good debates over what it means for a court to act like a court. And i dont mean to say that theres, like, a checklist and, well, its those five things and nothing else and everybody has to agree on that. So you can have goodfaith debates about this. But for me what it means is a certain kind of restraint and moderation. It means being very careful not to trespass on other institutions areas of responsibility. So it means that the court ought not to become a policymaker. You know, it has a responsibility to police certain boundaries on policy makers activities, but the courts should be extremely wary of doing things that essentially make it the policymaker on important issues. I talked about that like last year. The case where i talked about that most was in a case about the clean power plan, which is, like, wow the court is making Climate Change policy. And this year the case i talked about that most was in cases involving Water Pollution rules and loan forgiveness policy. And in all of those cases, i said that the court had overstepped its bounds and trespassed onto areas that were appropriately resolved by the legislative and executive branches and that that that was wrong and that that was wrong. It means acting like a court, acting like a court means not doing more than it has to. It means not deciding cases that arent real cases. The importance of the case in controversy requirement and various rules that we have. It means, you know, what is the phrase that the chief justice often uses is like, if you if its not necessary to decide, its necessary not to decide. Something like that. It means only deciding the issues that you have to. It means going back to that discussion about kimball. It means respecting precedent in all but highly unusual circumstances. It means applying your own methodologies consistently and i dont actually think it means having one methodology and only one. I think different judges have different methodologies and thats appropriate. But it means applying those methodologies consistently. So a person who is a textualist one day doesnt just abandon those principles when it suits. So it means all of those things. But mostly it means acting with a certain kind of restraint and acting with a sense that you are not the king of the world and that you do not get to make policy judgments for the american people. You have an Important Role in policing the way policymakers go about their business. And separating the one from the other is the hard part of law and a part in which there is often, you know, good faith and good faith disagreement and where questions are hard. But to have that sort of feeling of courts have an important but appropriately limited role in our system of governance, i think is the way that you produce Public Confidence in law. And ensure that people look at you as like, oh, i might not agree with what that court is doing, but i know i dont have a right to agree with everything the court is doing. But i have a right to expect that the court is acting like a court and thats the way you ensure that. Let me pivot to a new topic which may be related to that. Congress currently debating whether to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court. Last week one of your colleagues actually said that congress cannot do that. And im curious, what do you think . [laughter] Justice Kagan not giving me a pass in this interview. [laughter] you know, i like the way its a little bit stealthy to start off with andy warhol. [laughter] ok. I did read that interview. I found it a little bit hard honestly because of the way the interview was written to know what my colleague, i dont want to be like he who shall not be named, it was Justice Alito [laughter] what question he was answering exactly. Just because of the way the thing was written. Im not quite sure what question he was answering exactly. So i think ill just put him to the side. But but i will try to answer the question. Sort of. So, i mean, you know, can the court, can congress regulate aspects of what the Supreme Court does . I think two opposite not opposite, but, you know, there are two polls here that seem pretty clearcut to me. First is, of Course Congress can regulate various aspects of what the Supreme Court does. I mean, Congress Funds the Supreme Court. Congress historically has made changes to the courts structure and composition. Congress historically has made changes to the courts Appellate Jurisdiction. And indeed theres a provision in the constitution that says Something Like, the Supreme Court shall have Appellate Jurisdiction under regulations that congress provides. Or im mission the exact words, but missing the exact words, but it actually talks about congress having a role in our jurisdiction. Talks about congress regulating the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. And i think more generally, this is not surprising. Our whole system is one of checks and balances. And usually when the court talks about that, were talking about other actors and the way they check and balance each oregon or the way we each other or the way we check and balance them. But it cant be that the court is the only institution that somehow is not subject to any checks and balances from anybody else. I mean, were not imperial. And we too are a part of a checking and balancing system in various ways. So can congress do various things to regulate the Supreme Court . I think the answer is yes. Now, that doesnt say what things and i want to say on the other hand, can congress do anything it wants . Im going to say, well, no, it cant do anything it wants. You know, if congress did something that basically that effectively prevented the court from fulfilling its assigned responsibilities, i mean, that would raise some pretty serious constitutional issues in just the way it does if congress does something that effectively prevents the executive from fulfilling its assigned responsibilities. So there are limits here. No doubt. And so then theres this question which is, well, in this sphere of ethical obligations, is this just like, you know, yes, congress can do it, or is this something where congress has approached the limits of its power to affect what the court does . And i guess i would say as to that, not that ive, like, gone on and on, im going to tell you, oh, im not going to answer that question. But im not because, you know, congress is considering these right now. Congress is an independent constitutional actor. I think congress, when it decides whether to pass legislation, ought to and hopefully usually does consider the constitutionality of its own actions, and this its entitled to do, that i think, and i wouldnt want to jaw bone it while its doing that. So, you know i guess also i have in the back of my mind some feeling of like, who knows, something might come before us someday. But look, congress is doing this, congress should have the rights to consider for itself what it thinks constitutionally appropriate and otherwise appropriate and, you know, if it comes out with something, then well have a chance to Say Something about it. But i will say this. That regardless of what congress does, the court can do stuff. You know. I mean, one of the reasons weve never really confronted these, theres not a whole lot of law or precedent in this area of what congress can do with respect to imposing ethical rules on the court and the reason is that the court has acted voluntarily to subject itself to various rules. One of the things that the chief justice sent to congress this past spring was a statement that all nine of us signed that talked about all the rules that we do follow. That we have decided to follow. And, you know, essentially that we say well follow them just like other judges follow them. Even though the court is, unlike other judges, a distinct constitutionally created entity. But, you know, we have undertaken to file Financial Disclosure reports and to limit the gifts we receive and to limit our outside income and to do a variety of things. And weve also made clear that we are guided by the standard code of conduct that applies to all other federal judges. Now, when weve said that, we have noted that there are certain ways in which we are different from other federal judges. I think that the usual example is that recusal operates a little differently when recusal means you will not be replaced by anybody. And there may be other differences as well. But, you know, we could decide to adopt a code of conduct of our own that either follows or decides in certain instances not to follow the standard code of conduct. That would remove this question of what can congress do or at least, you know, it would put it in a different light in congress continued to act. And, look, its not a secret for me to say, and theres been that we have been discussing this issue. And it wont be a surprise to know that the nine of us have a variety of views about this, as about most things. You know, were nine freethinking individuals. And so so. You know, what the chief justice said most recently, and i want actually not to get out in front of the chief justice on this issue. But he said most recently, i was there, he was accepting a great award from the a. L. I. , a great, deserved award, the Henry Friendly award. And in his acceptance remarks he talked about this issue and he said that, you know, he was determined, as we all are determined, to comply with the highest ethical standards and that we were continuing to engage on the issue of what additional measures we could take to ensure that result. And so we are. And so we will. And, you know, its a hard thing to figure out exactly how were alike and how were different from other judges. Its a hard thing to get as much consensus as you can in the way that we like to do. But i hope that we will make some progress in this area of the kind that the chief justice talked about, and maybe put the question of what can congress do or what can congress not do, you know, maybe take that out of play. Thank you. Do you want to go with a recusal question . No. Were getting short on time. Ok. So oral arguments seem to have changed postcovid. And they seem to be a lot longer. Why is that . [laughter] and does oral argument really matter . Justice kagan why it is, because on this, too the court really failed to agree, you know, in the sense that on this too we had different views about what we like in oral argument and what we think is important. The old oral argument is half an hour each side and you got up to the bench and you were just subject to a barrage of questions and it was very everybody was coming in from all directions and it was unstructured. But very interactive. And then when covid happened and we left the courtroom, we couldnt use that system. So we just adopted a system of, like, we just went down the row and each person had four minutes to answer questions. And then when we came back to the courtroom, some people liked the first system and some people liked the Second System. And an additional virtue of the Second System was that Justice Thomas participated very actively and importantly in questioning, which he did not like to do under the first system because he found the whole thing sort of just interrupting and rude. But when it came to kind of, you know, one by one questioning, Justice Thomas was very active and excellent questioner, which was very valuable to the rest of us. So what we tried to do was sort of create a world in which the people who liked the interaction got what they wanted. Like i like the interaction because to me it allows you to build on other peoples questions and it allows you to really develop among a variety of justices one strand of argument and it doesnt it makes it harder on the lawyers, but you get more out of the lawyers. Because they just dont have the opportunity to sort of filibuster in the same way. But other people liked the more orderly system and liked the opportunity to ask two or three minutes of their own questions. And everybody liked that Justice Thomas participated in that way. And so we just kind of decided, well, well do both. And thats what we do. We start with the old system, we do start with the basic half hour, each side of interactive questioning. And then the chief justice sort of goes down the row by seniority order and asks each of us if we have any other questions. And some people, because they like that form of questioning better, sort of save their questions up. And other people, even though they havent saved their questions up, they have new questions from something thats just happened. Since the last time they spoke. And so what we end up having is the number one round, the interactive, and the number two round is the other round and we do sometimes sit there for quite some time. I wont say who did this, but one of my colleagues one day came up with a protein bar and put it down very assertively on the bench, you know. And was like, are you making a statement or do you intend to eat that . [laughter] because our argument start at 10 00. The old arguments would have been done at 12 00. The new arguments, i dont know, youre like 1 30 sometimes. You get hungry. [laughter] but i dont know. In the end its long, but i think we get a lot out of oral argument this way. As to the last, does it really matter, i would think that if it didnt matter, the length would be really annoying. But i get a lot out of oral arguments. It doesnt mean that i always or most of the time switch my vote, but i understand cases better after ive heard arguments than before i heard arguments. And sometimes it makes me rethink a case and i think that the true the same is true of a number of my colleagues. Were just about out of time. I was going to say, why dont we move to conclude our session here. What book are you reading right now that we should know about . Justice kagan what book am i reading right now . Ok. I just finished im a Jennifer Eagan fan. So i just finished the candy house which if you havent read it, do, but first read a visit from the goon squad. So i wont really try to explain it because theyre impossible to explain. I kind of i thought that these were just great fiction books. Im also a spy novel enthusiast. So ive been reading my way through this series and im going to forget the authors name, but theyre called the slough house series. Theres also a tv show thats been made of some of them. And its about a group of spies in britton, like all the best spy novels come from britain, its about people who are in, like, i always forget which is mi5 and mi6 but one of them. Its a group of their rejects. People who have done something very wrong and so theyre shunted over to this place called slough house and theyre called the slow horsers and horses and its sort of like what they get up to as these sort of mi5 rejects and theyre very, theyre both funny and really good spy novels too. So thats good. But just to bring it back to law. I did spend im going say this would be a commitment if any of you decided to accept it. I did spend a fair bit of time this spring reading this new biography of Felix Frankfurter by a man named brad snide who are is a professor at snyder who is a professor at georgetown. As i worked my way through this, and i read more slowly, so it took me a while, we have lunch several times a week when we hear arguments. And so i would come up to lunch and one of the things that people would ask me every week was like, what new things are there from the frankfurter book . And i would say, well, youll never guess in 1947. And of course, you know, this is like a group of people who are obligated to find Supreme Court justices interesting. [laughter] and there was a ton of interesting stuff in this book. If you had asked me before, like, do you think Felix Frankfurter is a great justice, i think why have said, no, im not really a frankfurter fan. And the reason is i dont really much like the way he writes and i still kind of dont. I dont think he was a great writer. And, you know, he was sort of known for being pompous and then i had in the back of my mind some things that i just thought, that was like, a bad decision. Like the flag salute case, thats a good example. But this book, i mean, makes him just you know, i think i have like a very different view now. Its not like im a frankfurter, like hes my hero or anything like that. But i think i have a much more positive view of frankfurter, i guess for two reasons. The chief judge and i were in an event yesterday where we were talking about mentors. And this man was the greatest mentor of all time. I mean, this man in the way he mentored his clerks, in the way he mentored his law students, he created these networks upon networks upon networks of frankfurter proteges and but people who played extremely and the other thing he did, he encouraged them all to go into public service. If you look at the new deal, the new deal is basically entirely populated by frankfurter students and clerks. It turns out he may have been an extremely magnetic guy. People flocked to him. Then he really put out for them. And made sure that they advanced, and was very loyal to gazillions of people. That is one thing. But the other thing, and this goes back to what i talked about, courts acting like courts and restraint being a fundamental part of that. What he cared most about, he had grown up in this system in which lochner was the people and lochner type decisions were the people. He was supremely committed to ensuring that the court did not go down that road and that the court played the book was called democratic justice. The idea of the book is he believed in democracy, and he believed a part of democracy was letting the political branches do the work and having the court operate in a more minimalist fashion. Whenever you say that, the hard questions are yes. But windows the court come forward when does the court come forward . When does policing the boundary lines mean the court has to constrain the political branches . He definitely had some on the scale of not doing that. And letting the policymaking branches do policy. I found it a very interesting it is not like he got it right on every occasion. But i think he got it right as to the big picture, the court has to remember it is a court, and not anything else. Thank you very much for joining us. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] [ctioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is rponsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] in 1848, william and ellen craft embarked on a journey of self emancipation disguised as a wealthy white man with his servant, leaving georgia, all while trying to conceal their identities. The author of master slave husbandandwife recounts their harrowing journey north and the impact of the fugitive slave law passed two years later. Sunday night, 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. You all our podcast on our free cspan now app. This yearbook tv celebrates 25 years of celebrating nonfiction books and authors. For the 22nd year, book tv is live with the library of congress National Book festival. Since 2001, book tv in partnership with the library of congress has provided signature end up with uninterrupted coverage of the National Book festival featuring hundreds of nonfiction authors and guests. Saturday, august 12, and book tv brings you live all day coverage of the National Book festival. Guests and authors include a library of congress, a cnn Supreme Court analyst, and authors and rk russell, author of the yards between us. Here the full schedule online at book tv. Org. The library of congress National Book festival live saturday, august 12, beginning 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan two. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government funded by these televisco