Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Christopher Scalia Scalia Speaks 20180101

Christopher scalia son of the Late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia chairs had his father speeches on law, faith and vur chew and interviewed by Los Angeles Times Supreme Court correspondent david savage. Christopher scalia your father justice angt anyone scalia one of the most powerful writer of the Supreme Court opinions, he wrote a lot of decent with the real zingers, great for people like me quoting them but this is not a book about Court Opinion but a book about speeches so why speechsome as you said his Court Opinions are memorable and im a often told by law students and reporters that they liked they went to his opinions first for that reason. They were so crisply written and powerful, and his speeches are are have some of the same really all of the same great qualities that his opinions do. But i think the advantage of the speech is that he could let more of his personality shine through or for one thing. He was a great. Performer a little bit of a ham he played in the High School Production of that play. And he was i think the president of georgetown heater club so that theatrical side shines through in speeches in a way that it doesnt in the opinion and Court Opinions are necessarily they have to follow certain conventions that are apt to turn off the average person who is not really a court follower or a law student but we wanted a collection be of interest to laymen really that would be interesting to the average american and not just the legal and also Something Like well adjusted medical people who dont read Court Opinion. Normal people arent gipping to read full opinions but theyll read a write up of an opinion but probably not the whole thing. One of the advantage one of the advantages of these speeches especially the ones about the law is that my dad could explain his approach to interpreting the constitution and the law u uninterrupted without having to focus on a specific case but bring in multiple cases and coed tore d and i were really sure to pack once that really would be understandable to anybody not just the law student. And then, of course, theres just range are of subject matter. Plenty of speeches devoted to law and about defense os to his approach tots law in jurisprudence but readers are kind of interested in some of the very are different and surprising subjects he touches on in the speeches. So my reaction i knew about his view on the law and i have heard law speeches but this book has so many wonderful speeches about high school graduation, or talking about catholic faith to catholic audiences, talking about foreign just talking about so many subjects. One the real appeals of the book. There were a can can that many really surprised me. He spoke a couple of times at National Wild Turkey Federation are convention not really a place you would expect to see a Supreme Court justice. But we included a speech of from one of those Convention Many which my father just explains how he became interested in hunting why he loves it as much as he does. Im not a hunt hadder myself but i really enjoyed that speech because it showed a side of my father that i knew a little bit about. But learned more about through that speech. So you mention you did this with ed a law clerk for Justice Scalia in early 90s a terrific writer himself, and somebody who i think greatly admired to Justice Scalia so how did you do to like a foul cabinet full of typed speeches or did it you go out did you do any transcribing of audio recordings of speechesesome we didnt do any audio transcription but theres one exception but these are all speecheses that he had sharpened revised pretty pretty carefully himself. Only a couple published before but the way we set about this was basically we got a couple of binders of these speeches from his secretary angela, and two binders each spanning going back to the early 0u through the present in addition to binders easy to navigate we also have a big box of loose speeches a couple of which were just different version of or redun dangt version what have we had in binders but most sorted through loose speeches and then oughts box of plopy disks which some of your viewers may not even remember. But [laughter] form of storing information i had to secialg through speeches and a couple of them were one withs we already had had but a lot of new speeches will too so it did involve a lot of sort and sifting. But we were surprised by hum great speeches head and we knew he spoke a lot but not about the law but he spoke it at my high school graduation, so i was aware of that. But be again the Turkey Hunting speech i had no idea about. But range of the speech was surprising and consistent quality of them was surprising so as editors i think the hardest thing ed and i i had to do was decide whatnot to include theres really no filler in here but a lot of good material that we couldnt include going become to thinking of the general reader that was really the can theoff and if we thought what something would be a little bit too in the weeds for a general audience we would exclude it. Dges would there multiple versions of the same speech because i recall hearing Justice Scalia talk a different places different years. And my impression was he had sort of a stump speech he had sort of knew what he wanted to say as you said hes a wonderful performer. And good speech you know part of it is substance but part of it is points to emphasize but is it the correct sense that he had sort of a speech about original sm in the law and hexed go to a lot of places and take that and sort of deliver it and add material and so just talk. He delivered i think i think i know stump speech a delivered speech about to living constitution approach to jurisprudence i heard him deliver that speech too in madison, wisconsin, in 2001. And its one with he delivered often it was a stump speech and i was looking forward to finding written version of what because i loved that speech i thought it was great that included a wonderful with passage where he compared the living constitution approach to a Television Commercial from the 1980s where prego commercial heating it up and husband says to his wife what youre using this store bought sauce youre not doing it home made . What about the oregano and wife says it is in will. What about the pepper its had many many in there garlic it is this there and my dad would say we have that kind of a constitution now. You want, you want a right to abortion, its in there. Yowpght a right to die, its in there. And anything that is goods and true and beautiful its in there. No matter what the text says. And i thought that was being a pop culture junkie myself and having watched that comerl with my father i thought i loved that passage so looking forward to finding it it but he never actually apparently wrote that speech down. So we have a version of it a very a very definite version of it in the collection within he deliveredded in australia i think in the early 90s. But that particular verse instead he worked from a very different clip series of notes that he called outline. And outline was really just a really just a set of props that he would riff off of and if you didnt know speech you would look at this outline and think, what could this possibly mean. There are only about 50 words on it some of them are misspelled and then he would photocopy jot line and write motes on it for any given occasion. So people he should thank at the speech or new ideas that popped into his head unfortunately theres no reference to the prego Television Commercial on the outline. But so we were surprise thats how he did it but he knew what he wanted to say so clearly it was easy for him to just riff off that basic outline. You said you were a student at the university of wisconsin during that time but one of the thing hads i remember talking to him about it was that he would go out to a lot of universities and there would be he would almost surely have a lot of protesters maybe it has gotten worse thousand than it was then but even 20 years ago or whatever, i would always admire fact that he would go to law school and universities where he knew there was boing to be some people who tngt like him and he did it may he was not shy about about what he thought a brave guy and didnt mind being criticized but unfortunate the way politics have gone these days people tengd to go to places where theyll be welcomed and not into the other, you know, liberals go one place conservatives go to another so u remember him going to qi to get some protest or some. It was in 2001 shortly after the bush gore decision so he wasnt terribly popular in madison, wisconsin, with and a there were protesters outside, it wasnt a violent demonstration or anything but really just a hand ful outside holding pictures of Hitler Mussolini and my dad, so you know a pretty subdued stuff nothing too terrible. And like you assuming it would be more intense right now. That was outside. Inside the lecture hall, the audience a was respectful. There were there were pretty intense question withses afterwards you know that there were plenty and let them know what and there was combative back and forth and it wasnt all that polite. But you know my father delivered speeches many what you might call hostile territory because he is he believed he could persuade people and he believed that people in general were persuadable and were open to reason. Even peel who disagreed with him not the very least he wanted them to hear his ideas unfacilityrd i think thats why he delivered speech as often as he did and as many speeches as he did it. He really believed that it he could persuade poem and i think that even if he didnt persuade people to agree with him, he was at least able to show that he was unt the caricature that a lot of people had going into this speech or the event. St thats always reaction i heard from those speeches either talking to people or read aring about them. Is that a fair number of students, quoted saying what did you think . Say well you know i didnt agree with Justice Scalia but he made a really good argument for this came away thinking you know, that actually they learn something that caused them to think twice about what they thought, and that he really could sort of win over o foam to say, you know this is a really smart guy with a really good point and i didnt understand the argument he was making he also had a sort of nobody else in the court that law he loved to argue and that this sort of combat of ideas, i remember l asking him once about he had written some opinions that were sort of critical of Justice Oconnor and people said well you know, it sound like youre going hard on Justice Oconnor they said were friend we disagree on some things but you come to ring and tap gloves and cool out swinging i said he didnt e see this job exactly that way. But his view was that you argue about law that was the way to do it because thats the way that you know, to grapple with like whats the right answer people disagree you should talk it out o. J well he often said quoted as saying i dont attack people but ideas and a lot of good people have some very bad ideas an thats how he saw it. His opinions didnt do that in his speeches either, and he expected people to give it back to him and he didnt expect you know, going become to the boxing analogy he expected people to take their own punches at him too. Justice ginsberg writes forward to this collection and one of the things she mentions is that they poem may know they were good friends. They also were good colleagues because they helped each other writing their opinions. By pushing back at each other in the draftings kind of explaining how they could improve an element of their argument by taking into account this point or changing this phrasing here and there. Even though they disagreed they were trying to help each other out by pushing back and you know my father my father thought what again going back to the concept of persuasion it is possible to persuade people and it is possible to help one another kind of arrive at the truth of the matter but not by just saying what you want without any without any feedback there had to be some give and take there and conversation basically. Relationship was one of the wonderful things in washington that you dont see much of any anymore. That they were sort of on opposite ideological sides and friends in 1980s and up to the end they got together regularly. Justice scalia always spoke well of justice imins burg and might not join one of her opinions. But he would never deride her. I think he respected her. She respected him. They were preandz unfortunate that you dont it see a lot of that anymore. People who have fundamentally different political or o ideological but monals Work Together to be friends. It does seem like ideology has taken hold of everything and it is with with great friendship and in their case they focused on what they had in common and it was awful lot they were born in well my dad born in trenton but they have that in common i think that was element to their apprenticeship and they both loved opera they had cameo appearance and opera together and spouses were great friends too. My mother a great cook. Justice ginsberg husband marty was a basically gourmet chef. And Justice Ginsberg and my dad both liked to eat apparently so that was another element of their friendship that i think had just by focus pooing on those things they have in common. Was how the friendship thrived. I think somebody asked my father once basically you know how could you like Justice Ginsberg when you disagreeing everything and he said well whats there not to like just a welfare person. Wonderful person. Except view on law. Except. I saw them together at gw a couple of years on stage and this could also joke with each other Justice Scalia saying we took that trip to to o india togethers theres a big problem for ruth because weerp on this elephant and i was up in the front, and friends didnt like she was sitting behind me i was told it was a matter of redistribution of weight [laughter] which you have to a real kick out of it. So they could sort of joke with each other and have fun. Tell me about your favorites are i think, obviously, legal speeches are probably the ones that we hope will kind of secure is his legacy but theres so much more there was so much more to him and life and i think thals great thing about this collection is you see so much of that. So a couple of my favorites, one, one of my favorites is one that for the sake of this collection we just called the arts. This is one of my favorites because the context is fascinating. I didnt know he delivered this speech so i was fascinated when i discover ised it. He delivered it at the Juilliard School in new york city. School of the, you know, very well known school of the arts. And it was on the occasion of the schoolings 100th anniversary symposium about arts in American Society and schools president joseph knew that my my father was interested in the opera. And knew he was a conservative justice who would offer opinions that wouldnt be heard very often in new york city. And so he thought on one happened my father would fit and other hand eat my challenge to audience a little bit. So to his credit he reached to my dads and tells me that my dad was skeptical at first but was convinced and decided to participate. Im glad he did he was part of a pass mating panel. Other o speakers on this panel were david a Pulitzer Prize winning historianable opera singer renee, and broadway composer steven so fantastic group of people and distant group and not sure they realizedded this but steven cowrote west side stir and my father was a big fan of officer krupyk cowrote and he work withed what lyric from officer into a decent, i think. I think it was decent but definitely some Court Opinion, and i dont think my father realizedded that at the time but i wish they had a chance to talk about that during their encounter apparently my father got along with him very well and before the speech, and then the speech itself mr. Tells me it went over great. It was faculty, students artist and law students from around the city and my father tbins speech by kind of recognizing how out of place he is. How he is and presence there is, let me find the beginning that is pretty great. I remember that one. He said im happy to be here and somewhat truly surprised to be here this afternoon this this program reads like an i. Q. Test which of the following is out of place . Diva, author, composure, author, lawyer he begins with a humor and he does that a lot in his speech. Exactly. But then he kind of explains why lawyers are, in fact, important to it artists. They kind of create the conditions in which the art with thrive for example through contract law things like that. So eventually he wins audience over and he refers to we loves of the arts to get them on his side a little bit, and brilliant rhetoric i think. But that second half of the speech he challenges them by saying by discussing the First Amendment. [laughter] and he says you know, we lovers the art like to believe that all matter of the arts would be protected by the First Amendment by the freedom of speech. In fact, thats not the case. And my father goes on to explain why some of the arts even many that room would like dance for example, would not actually be protected by federal of speech. And his argument was that through an originalist interpretation of the freedom of speech that phrase meant something very is particular to founders that denied include some things wouldnt include an opera frebs, it might might include sorry but not the opera music. It might not even include if it were just ugly. And poorly written that is technically note protected it im remembering my fathers argument correctly. So he challenges the audience by saying we may want all of these things to be protected under First Amendment but they arents necessarily. That appropriate approach to constitution isnt defending and protecting a lot of things you line but a lot of things you dont like and leave things you dont unprotected so a brilliant speech because of the different ways he approaches the audience. And the context so pass mating. I thought the same thing a speech where people were there for if the arts and many about 15 nines they learned a lot of copyright law and First Amendment laws. He speaks very concisely and then sort of tells you a way to understand a whole lot of body of law many a very short time. He, you know, he says in a speech it ask people for advice and one it is advices he always got was keep it to 15 minutes i dont know whether he did that but i did think a lot of his speeches are concise they say a lot in a relatively few or fewer pages. Yeah especially High School Commencement he knew that he was real story will but it was student so he wanted to move through it pretty quickly. I heard him speak at a few chensment addresses i thought we include a couple of them in here and theyre always entertaining easy for audience to understand as you mention but sill not just not just physical of platitude or o again challenging. He taught and he challenged reach are every time he spoke. Theres a classic on that one i think called platitude and wisdom and it says he gave his speech at your brother pauls imrdges at Langley High School and might have given a more than once but its i thought it was amusing he said giving address is not as safe enterprise as it used to be that sometimes that students that are arent arranged and make up jokes few weeks ago Washington Post published a bingo card containing most frequently used graduation platitude ranging from this is not an end it is a beginning to you are the future leaders of america. Then he says idea to tech a card to Graduation Ceremony and if the speaker is platitude enough you can check off a string of chestnuts wroa row up and cross and they would yell bingo and then he says your principal dr. Manning is probably angry that at me for giving next year class this idea and then he says ive heard speeches where i wanted to jump up to yell bingo even without benefit of a bingo card as you know that speech is about the things that speakers say like this is an unprecedented crisis and he says no it isnt. So i just thought it was a wonderful graduates for a high school graduation. But at the end that have speech by the way, he comes back to that bingo card after the serious points he said he says good luck, and lets see i had one last platitude around here somewhere. Oh, yes, the future is many your hands. Bingo msh [laughter] i always got a heard him deliver of a version of the speech a couple of times and got a kick out of him ending it by yelling bingo. Theres something classic about Justice Scalia that so Many High School graduation speeches are are full of those platitudes. So he goes to get graduation speech that makes fun of platitude and says why yeses theyre really not correct. [laughter] and you mentioned one point about, you know, dont think one of the points is do not think youre facing unprecedented challenge it is usually matter of degree not many kind so environmental threat it shall those are around for a long time we may be face ing a different one now. And he says there that the reason its dangerous to think youre pacing unprecedented challenge is that it will demoralize you a little bit. And also it will prevent you from looking back and learning from history. And trying to get listenses from the past so even while he is having fun with platitude hes drawing really, really important lessons. Line about never compromise your principal and he says you better think twice your principles youre principle are same as hitler or lennon you ought to think twice more important to be sure your principle are correct instead of in a sense blinkedly following principles that lead you the wrong bay. Read what message he say im here to tell you that it is much less important how committed you are than what you are committed to. If i have to choose, i will undoubtedly take less die maamic even lazy person who knows what is right than zealot in cause of error he may move slower but headed in the right direction. Moment is not necessarily progress more important than obligation to follow your conscience or at least prior to is your obligation to form your conscience correctly. Nobody remember this, nobody ever proposed evil as such. Neither hitler nor lennon nor any other you know came forward with proposal that read lets create a oppress ievil society, and so again poking fun at this platitude in the humorous way but the end that segment driving home a serious point clearly. I couldnt agree more. Thats a way of actually delivering a High School Commencement that says something memorable and guys that sort of making fun of or knocking down a platitude. So this speech includes another he considers platitude the United States is the greatest country in the world and he says i dont mean to contradict this platitude but i think we need to consider for a mommy why we believe this. He says i believe this. But i want to make sure we believe it for the right reason which is kind of classic my father even many his opinion. You know, so he impose ton explain why question should think United States is greatest country and he says we are the greatest because of the good qualities of our people and because of governmental system that gives room for those qualitieses to develop. Lawyer does and what the work is and i thought any relatively concise speech he talked about a sort of compulsive precision. A major case comes up and turns on what the meaning of a particular word. They try to be precise about the words. This is the speech where it compares lawyers to poets. Poets love ambiguity. The job of a lawyer is to remove the language of all ambiguity and be as clear as possible. If you got interested in being a poet, get out now because they are at odds and he makes fun of poets a couple of times. He has a great line when there is another platitude on the legal canards pick the graduation speech we were talking about where he analyzes some common legal sayings he cant stand, and one of them is the hobgoblin of little minds and obviously not a legal expression but one that he encountered in greece i guess and says of emerson in a generally sound policy leave them alone if they leave you alone. Here i have to analyze it but again it comes back to the different kind of writing and thinking necessary for the lawyer of other professions including in this case poets. In Elementary School when he was on in 1980. Guest it helps to remember the most remarkable thing about my family on a daytoday basis is that there were so many of us. I have eight siblings and we were not living in the house at the same time that ther but thea lot of us in the house, so that was the most remarkable thing. We were always kind of a weird family growing up. He was a federal judge already and i knew that was kind of a big deal but there wasnt a lot of Media Attention for that. The day that he was nominated i remembered seeing my dad on tv and remember the next day hanging out with some members at the pool and noticing we are just sensing that people are kind of talking about me. Maybe that is paranoia, but i think it is probably accurate. It became more public but i didnt really get the sense of how were the jobs significance until going to middle school and high school i understood what my dad was up to, what his job was and how he is a justice were getting attention. Even with the eminence of his position, my dad made a point of being home every night for dinner saying grace before meals every night. I took that for granted growing up and sometimes i didnt like it because it meant we had to wait longer for dinner but now i dont have nearly as many kids as he did. I appreciate the efforts he took and especially growing up in the dc area its hard for a lot of parents to be home with their kids and im grateful that my father did that so in some ways it was different from my friends Friends Family but in other ways it was pretty similar. Host that is impressive because one of those things that washington you can encounter a lot of travel and trips and all that. Guest he went on trips and i mentioned in the introduction every summer he and my mom would go away to europe or something for a teaching and this speaking incursion and i would have a few friends over. After dinner he would get back to work so i still knew he was busy but that time host did he do a lot of the work in the evenings and on weekends . Guest he did. He would go back to his study in the house, bookshelves, find your place, it always impressed me that he wouldve read the briefs and type away on the opinions. Host he did a lot of writing at home . Guest i would walk by when the door was open and he would be leaning over the keyboard looking at the screen or he had another reading chair he would go through the briefs and highlight them. Host but they dont go in at the serpentine an a certain e data . Guest i think it was kind of the giving. Sometimes we forgot that his study was right by the foyer so we would hang around sometimes and it would be too loud and he would have to remind us that usually we would be upstairs doing our homework anyway or downstairs watching tv preferably. Host did you ever go to the court and watch arguments or see him in action at different places . Guest i did hear him get a few speeches but i only saw one oral argument. I really regret not. My wife has a law degree and up until shortly before my dad died, when we were married we didnt get a chance to see them together but i wish that my wife got to see the oral arguments that i only saw one. I wish i would have taken better advantage of the opportunity but i went to court occasionally and visited his chambers or went to events if such an impressive building. Host i started covering the court here this summer in 1986 and everybody said he changed the court and there were no oral arguments when Justice Scalia was there because even if there were, he would ask the question that started you want us to say blue really means black. He did as would ask a question t of put the lawyers on notice. Anyway, he had a wonderful thing of comic timing and is a very smart guy and as a lawyer would make an argument that didnt make sense to there were a lot of reasons why they said they dont want the oral arguments on television but its one of my regrets that the students and the general public couldnt watch them. They are interesting to begin with but he always sort of pushed both sides and made it more interesting. When i started, there were more justices who would sit there for the hour and listen but Justice Scalia thought that this was a sort of opportunity to go in the basque the questions on his mind that somebody ought to answer so he really enlivened and continued on after. There wouldnt be anybody like Justice Scalia but the arguments are much likelier thanks to him. Host that is my understanding and i think that he brought that background as a law professor for some time he brought that demeanor and approach so now if you dont speak every time, people think something is wrong with your approach but yes back then it was much more subdued and he brought a liveliness to it that most people participating. Host it reminds me when he arrived in 1986, lewis powell just one year retired at the end of the year people said he thought he asked too many questions so i stopped to see the now retired justice in richmond. Did you think he asked too many questions and he said he was a law professor and i think it was a way of saying yes maybe but everybody caught up for a while and he changed the arguments for the good because it is a much more Lively Exchange because of that justice i justice is fullyn asking questions. Theres an awful lot of speeches about his catholic faith for example thats a big theme about the book. Tell me about those speeches in your thoughts on those. Guest he really valued work for a great emphasis on his speeches about religion probably second only to the speeches he delivered about the mall and he refined these and one in particular that he delivered very often lawyers as he called ait other times but to thomass and the speech he focuses on or discusses the differences between Thomas Jefferson the great founder and saint thomas more was one of my fathers heroes. The year after my parents got married they traveled around europe a little bit and saw a man for all seasons and impressed both of them and left a deep imprint throughout his life. What impressed him was his respect for the law and also his devotion to his faith that it was possible to have both of those things and he contracts that with Thomas Jefferson who had a version of the bible and he added that its basically the new testament to remove references to anything miraculous or unbelievable so that jefferson new testament concludes with the death of christ. Theres no resurrection as one example so my father uses those two important figures of contrast and delivers the speech often two groups of catholic lawyers telling them saint thomas more is a great model for you and i will just read the end of the speech. It is the hope of most to impart wisdom and its been my part the courage regarded as stupidity or are we thought to be fool fougho doubt but as st. Paul wrote we are fools for christs sake and darby thought to be read and childish or will it describe us as the sheep and said we shouldnt geshouldget to heavene like little children so it was the reminder to the specifically christian audience that they would be seen in the secular environments obviously. He always thought it was crucial to him and his set of speeches he delivered that often and theres another he delivered called faith and judging which i think is important because it clarifies the relationship between his faith and the law and i think it will dispel a lot of preconceptions people have that he was some sort of a theocrat and he makes very clear although he takes religion seriously, his job as a lawyer or a justice is not to impose his religious beliefs or policy preferences on the law and he gives the example of abortion so that may read a little bit here. First he says just as there is no way to cook a hamburger is also personal catholisoalso doeo interpret the text and analyze the tradition or discern the meaning and legitimacy of the prior decisions except of course to do those things honestly and perfectly and he goes on to say how this applies to his attitude towards the abortion law. I find myself somewhat embarrassed therefore if catholics were other come forward to thank me for my position concerning roe v. Wade. I must tell them that i deserved no thing but that position is not a virtuous affirmation o viy religious belief or policy choice simply the product of the analysis of constitutional text and tradition and that of legal analysts produced the opposite conclusion i would have had to come out the other way regardless of the views concerning abortion. My religious faith can give me a personal view on the right or the wrong of abortion but it cannot make a text say yes where is in fact says no were we permit when its said that we forbid. If my position were a reflection of the beliefs and policy preferences then i would say it not only permits the banning of abortion that requires it. Imagine if the judges derived dd results which were implausible from the provision of the constitution says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of the law intact however the constitution doesnt ban abortion any more than it confers the right and no amount of religious faith or zealous enthusiasm can change that. This is going back to the idea he was presenting the speech about the arts just because you liklike a policy or dislike it doesnt mean that it is rejected explicitly in the constitution. Host im glad you read that because its another good passage for people to understand his view on the law and something as controversial as abortion because i think his consistent view all along was it doesnt settle this but its up to each state in a country like this some states would allow abortion in some states would forbid that it wouldnt be decided by the constitution. That was my fathers general argument in the constitution approach to interpretation. He believes the living constitution approach that basically argues that the constitution eagles with the standards of the times so as opposed to real the java some what it meant when h it was ratified and textualism for the walls and the statutes what did it mean that they were voting for on the senate floor and he believed that its basically about justices to see is too much power from the voters and legislators by making them the arbiters of the morals and standards and values at any given time so he had kind of a more modest view for the judges in a lot of ways if it doesnt Say Something then do people have to fill in the gap its not the role of the justice. He does talk about original as im a lot. Its an important idea that he talks about in a lot of different audiences including the speech called interpreting the constitution. I am one of a small but mighty group of judges and academics in the United States who subscribe to the principle of constitutional interpretation known as original as im. Over journalists believe that the petitions have a fixed meaning which doesnt change the means today or what it meant when they were adopted nothing more and nothing less. I almost regret they are not asking questions like this because the hard part is whether you take the position to have a fixed narrow meaning or a fixed principle i know he dealt with this a few times, the board of education is a way to illustrate 1954 the Supreme Court strikes down School Segregation and violates the equal protection clause. It was added in 1868 and no state may deny any person the equal protection of the law. The same Congress Allowed the segregated schools in washington, d. C. In the 1890s the Supreme Court allowed separate Railroad Cars than 1954 they change1954the changed dired look at America Today having separate schools it is inherently unequal so i think the hard question is the equal protection clause forbids the Racial Discrimination but the very people who passed it didnt think it had at that meeting so if you said it only had that in the narrow sense then it would suggest it was a made up meani meaning. He doesnt address that in the book but i believe that he does in reading the law. Im not an original list myself. I dont know the details but i know he does address the argument in another book that i wish i could give you an answer. He gives the example of the womens suffrage and back then nobody understood that to mean that women could vote. They thought it meant you had to go out and fight for an amendment and when it that way but i dont know how it applies. I wish i could give you an answer to that. Its one of those things Justice League as leah is a firm advocat seems like you wish he was still here to say okay but what about this. He just thought that it was the best approach out there. They were approaching it as originalists and he gives also the example of the dc gun control case from 2008 so even in that case, the minority decision also took the majority and obviously took an originalists approach to the. Of the amendment says a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed and Justice Scalias opinion goes back to england and britain and basically says the right to have a gun was always seen as a sort of central right and Justice Stevens says look what the Second Amendment wasecond amende state militia so they go back and a lot of people thought it was one of those interesting situations where Justice Scalias method or approach had sort of one over the court but it didnt actually resolve because they had a different view about the original meaning of the provision. My fathers argument he discusses it here and i dont remember the precise page number but at the time it was referring to a specific event the fathers would have been familiar with and they would have been familiar with and wasnt the only defense but an aspect of many. One of the great things he did is this whole notion of text that you interpret and i thought people would always say what else would you do but it was the case when he came onto the court frequently the justices would say what is the purpose of the statute and so i remember a famous case in the 1970s and remember 1964 passed the law but said he may not discriminate in the mid1970s however there was the question of affirmative action where companies were saying every other new hire is going to be africanamerican to make up for the industry and so for the question is do you follow the text says dont discriminate against anybody or do you follow the purpose. That is a great example it made an enormous difference in focusing the Supreme Courts decision, but what does the statute actually say. They would get the lawyers to say what does it actually say. Its a very significant change in the law. They took the living constitutionalist approach and he wasnt introducing anything new, he was trying to revise the approaches and they hav had alws been that way until collectively recently. That puts a lot of responsibility on lawmakers to be precise with their language. It also meant that my father didnt like looking at whats called legislative history when focusing on the intent of the law, lawyers and judges would often look to congressional records, what do people say and conference meetings and what were they trying to hash out. One of my fathers argument on that as the people voting on the wall were not voting on the conference meetings. A few of them were in the conference meetings or knew about the internal discussion. They were voting on what the law actually said so thats what the people were voting on and thats what the justices should be interpreting and focusing on. They also pointed out the legislative history. Lawyers and judges were looking at the legislative history and they could basically doctor it to get the specific interpretation. Even if it had no actual appearance even in the text itself. Host that is one of the advantages he had for a number of years before he went on the court because he saw that and what was happening. They would have to take a report and file the report in the bill and say this is what this really meant. The danger was that it wasnt necessarily part of the agreement. Hes done great to listen to focus on the legislative history and its one of the delightful things in this that we have basically run out of time. I want to thank you for doing this and a lot of interesting people they do that in an engaging way and it talks about other aspects in his life growing up and it makes for a wonderful read. It is a pleasure talking with you about it. Thank you. You good evening and welcome to the eye and Bradley Graham the coowner of politics and prose along with my wife and on behalf of everybody here, thank you very much for coming