Transcripts For CSPAN2 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg My Own Words 20240713

For the past year at the library of congress, you may sit down, because i have a few more namesv for the past year at the library of congress we have been celebrating changemakers and i can think of a few people who more than aptly fit that discretion then the United States up in Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [cheering and applause] okay, im going to hurry up. [laughter] she is a hero and an inspiration to so many of us. In fact, at 4 00 a. M. This morning students from American University who are right over there champion camped out in front of this facility and they are here. She says and i [inaudible] i will talk about your graduation from Columbia Law School and taught at rutgers and spent most of your career advocating on womens rights and all these things and you have been called recently the beyonce of jurisprudence. [laughter] and the justice, could i say dhat and she said i would rather you say that j lo. [laughter] [cheering and applause] without further ado, she is joined by her coauthors of her bestselling memoir, my own words, coauthors mary hartne hartnett, adjunct professor at georgetown law, Wendy Williams, Professor Emeritus at georgetown law and her interviewer today and interviewer of the person you know very well from npr ms. Nina totenberg. [cheering and applause] the notorious rpg. [cheering and applause] please be seated. I have to tell you before i leave the stage i want to shake her hand. [cheering and applause] i want to give her a hug but that would be very unprofessional. This is quite an Amazing Group and i am very admiring of all the people who have been online for so many hours and waiting to see the justice. There is a lot to see even though she is a pretty little person. [laughter] how about j lo . How did that happen . I was called about a month or so ago by Jennifer Lopez and she said she would like to meet me and introduce her fiance, alex rodriguez. So, they came to chambers and we had a very nice visit and she mostly wanted to ask if i had any secret about a happy marriage. But now arod is traveling with her and they go to concerts all over the world. So, what was your secret to a happy marriage . Did you pass on your motherinlaws secret . On the day i was married my motherinlaw and i was married in her home and she took me aside and said she wanted to tell me what was the secret of a happy marriage. I said id be glad to hear it. What is it . And she responded and helps sometimes to be a little death. [laughter] that is good advice i have followed in every workplace. [laughter] including the good job i now have. So when an unkind word or thoughtless word is said, you tune it out. [applause] i would personally advise that instead of chairman mao you listen to justice ruth. [laughter] ms. Ginsburg, we all know youve had Health Challenges in the last year, the last month and you had radiation for most of august so let me ask you the question that everyone here wants to ask which is how are you feeling . Why are you here instead of resting up for the term . And are you planning on staying inte your current job . How am f i feeling . First, this audience can see that i am alive. [cheering and applause] and im on my way to being very well. [applause] why are you here instead of resting up for the term . [laughter] in the term we haveor more tn a month yet to go so i will be prepared when the time comes. [cheering and applause] how do you just keep trucking . For one thing, i love my job. Its the best and the hottest jobs i ever had and it is what has kept me going through four cancer battles instead of concentrating on my aches and pains i just know that i have tt read this set of briefs, go over the draft opinion and so i have to somehow surmount whatever is going on in my body and concentrate on the courts work. So, your book, in my own words, is the first essentially of two by Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams and you, and the first one because it has a lot of your own words from the time you were in Grammar School and writing for the school paper and an opinion piece to your sipping Court Opinions and then there will be a later authorized by rafiki in these two ladies have been working on it for some time. Mary hartnett, let me turn to you and ask you about the upcoming book. I hesitate to ask this but i will do it because at least i have 4000 witnesses. When . Can i just say preliminary that my own words will be second in my official biographer is mary and wendy may have been at work, how many years . Fifteen years. 2004. The idea was my biography would come out and it would be followed by lectures and speeches and opinions are written but the years well, they go on and on and then it came to me that mary and wendy expected i would be on the court for some time into the future so they, to make the book complete they wanted to wait and i said, okay, lets lifted the order and have my selected writings first and then the biography. It was a marvelous idea. [laughter] so, you still have not said when. [laughter] that is my job, as you note. This justice just keeps doing things and we are very happy about that and so [cheering and applause] it will be the idea, originally it was that it would break the story of Justice Ginsburg before she was notorious but now it will be the complete full story and so we want to wait until we have that and hopefully it will not come out [inaudible] [laughter] well done, mary. I talk to you about the upcoming book andnd he wont tel me much but i do know that its a whole chapter about Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ginsburg, great friend, sparring partner and entertainer in some ways soo tell me why there is a whole chapter about him and about your interview . Sure, theres also a whole chapter about him in my own wnwords, including Justice Ginsburg about Justice Scalia and everyone i think note about the unlikely friendship between the two and interviewing Justice Scalia was a real treat for the book and we interviewed him for the biography but parts of that interview are in my own words and as justice glia and Justice Ginsburg are so different in so many ways going into his chambers is different. Justice ginsburg chambers are white, airy, modern art and hundreds of pictures of friends, family and colleagues and going into Justice Scalias chamber is dark, leather and theres a big dead animal looking down at you and so as i sat there interviewing Justice Scalia i watched how he went from the kind of tough jurist we all know and his face softened and lined up as he talked about his good friend and he told me several stories and one was when they travel to india together and t went to visit the taj mahal and Justice Scalia described how he watched Justice Ginsburg listened to the tour guide to describe the love story behind the building of the taj mahal and saw tears start to stream from her eyes and as he told me that 90 sure that i thought a tear not related to an opinion, out of his eyes. The other story that he likes to talk about was parasailing and Justice Ginsburg when she was a young 70 yearold was in niece for a Legal Exchange and was standing in the hotel looking at the water and saw all these peoples parasailing and turned to her husband marty and said marty, that looks like fun and we should do that. Marty was horrified and said are you crazy and if you do that i will remember you to our grandchildren. The dean who[l was the host saii will go parasailing with you and the dean and his wife were equally horrified and she said if there is an accident and they can only say to one of you it better not be you. So they went parasailing and had to adjust her weight because the dean was a normalsized human being and Justice Ginsburg and off they went and they went up and down and to the water and wendy and i asked Justice Ginsburg about this experience a few years ago when we were interviewing her and said what was it like and would you like it and Justice Ginsburg said it was marvelous, glorious and then she related it to a greek myth and said it was like icarus but we didnt get too close to the sun. [laughter] the weight was also a problem in [inaudible] when we took a ride out of a very elegant elephant and there was a photograph of it by my famousri friends why are you sitting in the backs. [laughter] and i explained it had to do with the [inaudible] Justice Ginsburg, youve always been a rather determined person and when you were in law school and your husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer and doctors told you his chances of survival were extremely slim but the two of you just carried on and as we all know he survived but i thought people here might be interested in what your days and nights were like in that year and how, in some ways, s it set up your sleep patterns for life. It was my second year in large school and there were massive surgeries followed by massive radiation and it was no chemotherapy in those days and we just took each day as it came in my routine was i would attend my classes and i had no takers in all of martys classes and i would then go to mass general and hospital where was in the afternoon and then when he was released from the hospitalel and was having daily radiation he was first very sick and then he was asleep until about midnight when whatever food he ingested that day he would have might not very good cooking. At 2 00 oclock in the morning and also he was dictating his senior paper to me. Human back to fed about two in the morning and that is when i hit the books. None in between there was a two nap yearold daughter and for many weeks we maybe got two hours a night and that is how i became a night person. I appreciated it that in those Early Morning hours the telephone did not ring and there were no emails in those days and it was a quiet time and i can concentrate on the book. H i hope you are getting more than two hours these days. I do know that if you want to call the ginsburg residence you do not on a day like a weekend date you do not call before noon. Spirit thats not true. Not true on court days at a all. [laughter]so so today women, to some extent, take for granted their equality in the workplace and that is not the case when you were a young lawyer and you cannot get a job in a law firm and you had not one but two strikes against you and you werw and there were many long firms in new york there were not up to welcoming jews. The next, i was a woman. That was a higher barrier. 4but the absolute killer is whn i had a four yearold daughter and when i graduated from law school. You are a i mother. They would take a chance on a mother was more than they were willing to risk. So, you had top grade ated harvard and in your last year of law school when he moved to new york with your husband you are tied for first place at Columbia Law School and you are applying for clerkship. Tell us how you finally got a clerkship because by large many would not interview you. Yes, employers were upfront about saying that women are not welcome in this place and we had a lady lady lawyer once and she was dreadful but how many men did you have [laughter] but i had a wonderful professor who later moved to stanford, jerry guenther, he was in charge of getting clerkships for columbia students and called every federal judge in the Second Circuit and i in the southern districts of new york and he was not meeting with success. He called a columbia graduate called [inaudible] who was a columbia undergraduate, Columbia Law School graduate and always took his clerks from columbia. He would say i strongly recommend that you engage Ruth Bader Ginsburg and his response was ive had women law clerks and i know they are okay but shes a mother and sometimes we have to work on weekends and even on a sunday. The professor said give her a tchance and if she doesnt work out, a young man in her class was going to a Downtown Firm and he will jump in and take over. That was the carriage. It was also a stick and the stick was if you dont give her a chance i will never recommend another columbia graduate as a clerk again. [applause] that is the way it was in not so ancient days for women. The big hurdle was to get that first job. Once a woman got the job she did it at least as well as the man so the second job was not the same obstacle. There is a wonderful book and let me mention it is called first and it is about a biography of the Sandra Day Oconnor. She was very highan in her class at Stanford Law School but no law firm would hire her food she was asked do you type and maybe there would be a place as a legal secretary. So, what did she do . She went to a county attorney and said i will work for you without pay for four months and then if you think i am worth it you can put me on the payroll. That is how Sandra Day Oconnor got her first job. Even after your courtship you cannot get a job in a law firm and you ended up being a law professor. I could have gotten a job. In fact, i was going to a firm when a professor, another presser from columbia [inaudible] said how would you like to write a book about the swedish judicial system. Well mac this is a part of her life you will not hear generally discussed so you are in on the question that normally does not come up. [laughter] how is your swedish by the way . Anyway, this was an irresistible offer because here i was in my 20s before i turned 30 i would have a book between hardcovers and marty and i married the same month i graduated from cornell so i neverm lived on my own. I went from the College Dormitory to be married and i had what might be called an eight year itch. [laughter] see if i can manage on my own and the deal was i would go to sweden and my daughter jane would be taken care of by her father for about six weeks and when she finished school she joined me in sweden and i got that out of my system and never again yearned to live on my own. And it was the opportunity to learn about a culture and to learn a language that i knew nothing at all about. Did you go back to did you go to sweden with her . Mary she went back to sweden this year. It was a 50th anniversary of my Honorary Degree h from the university of [inaudible]. And you saw there what did you see on the street . Your picture. Yes. [laughter] there were posters up and down the street and one of the many, many for the justice and she was very over programs and in three, for even today but we kept trying to see the posters in the car was zooming through the streets and was like that scene in the movie french kiss where they never t see the eiffl tower but you have to located and finally driving to the airport, remember, we turn and there it was. Wendy, you been working on this book for 15 years with mary. Did you interview allll the justices she served with . How often did you interview her . What do you do when you have 15 pluse years and what is your agenda . Wendy, before you answer let me tell you [inaudible] wendy and mary came to see me and they said inevitably people are going to write about your life so why dont you make as your official biographer people you really trust and i certainly trusted i this was in the ir70s and one for the first time in history it became possible for courts to accept as the equal protection clause meant that women were people equal in stature to men. [applause] i knew wendys strategy and mind were pretty much the same and i knew that she understood what they were trying to accomplish so i said yes to that invitati invitation. In fact, when we came to her to talk about it she sat us down at a little table and on the table there was a stack of documents and opinions and other things about this high and she said oh, heres a Little Something you might want to look at. That is how we knew we were in, so to speak. Did you, in fact, interview all the justices she served with . I did not interview any of the justices she served with but mary did. Between the two of you my you interviewed them all. We did. Actually, not all but some refused to be interviewed. And some were newer additions but we still plan to interview them but most of them. How often did you sit down with her for an extended interview . Im assuming its a lot. Well, it is a lot. We started out in that little moment in time after she was done with her summer and just before she had to knuckle down and prepare for the coming term and every year in august most often in the last few weeks we sit down with her for three days in a row in the Late Afternoon so we have our own big stack from that. This year it was a little different. We went up to new york where she was getting her radiation treatment and it was amazing, anyway, we sat with her twice up there and she remembered everything and she was perfectly normal except she was very tired which she has never let stop her and was not letting it stop her then. And that was a new experience for us and came back down for one day, day before yesterday, and did our third day. Every year we do that. Then we do a lot of things in between to keep track of her. Let me just say this to you two here in front of god and everybody, justice [inaudible] had famously hadnt authorized biographer who got right is back after he died and im getting old, is that what you are saying . [laughter] we all want to see that everybody here, some of whom are a great deal younger, want to read the products of your labor. We do to. [laughter] i am taking for granted that this is a very educated and curious audience and i am taking for granted that everyone in this room has seen rvd at least once and [cheering and applause] and on the basis of sex so im not going to go through all the pieces andnd strategy of Justice Ginsburg but there are other places where you have seen this but there are also a lot of young people in this audience, men and women, and i wanted to ask Justice Ginsburg, in light of that. Story of the elevator piece . [laughter] the elevator thief was my lively son. It was when he was in the sixth grade. I called him riley, his teachers called him hyperactive. [laughter] lively. And i would get calls about once every month to come down to the school to talk about my sons late escapades. One day i was sitting in my office at Columbia Law School. The phone rang. It was the headmaster. We need to see you immediately. Ive been particularly weary that day because i had stayed up all night writing a brief. So i said this child has two parents. Please alternate calls [laughter] [applause] so they called the head of the Tax Department at a large law firm. He came down and was told your son stole the elevator. [laughter] martys Immediate Response was he stole the elevator . How far could he take it . [laughter] so i dont know the sense of humor. It was one of those Old Fashioned hand held elevators. The operator went out for a smoke. One of jamess classmates challenged to take the kindergarten class up to the top floor. [laughter] which he did. [laughter] so after that episode, the calls came barely once a semester. There was no quick change in my sons behavior, but the school was much more reluctant to take a father away from his work, than a mother, so the suggestion to alternate calls did the trick. [applause] [laughter] so i want to let me just say that my son is today a fine human [laughter] hes not in prison anywhere. And hes a great parent. Because she wont do it, i will. He runs a thing that has wonderful classical recordings. Lets talk about your time on the Supreme Court. Youre appointed by president clinton. Within three years of getting to the Supreme Court, youre still a very junior justice. You are assigned to write the Virginia Military Institute Case striking down their policy of exclusion of women. And you would not have gotten that assignment but for your female colleague, Justice Oconnor; right . Yes, the seniority is very big in workplace. So Justice Oconnor would have been way ahead of me as the chosen opinion writer. But sandra said ruth should write this opinion, so its thanks to Justice Oconnor that i got to write the decision in the Virginia Military Institute Case. So you wrote in that case that most most women, indeed most men, would probably not want to meet the demands, the rigorous demands of the mi, but those extraordinary individuals that can meet those demands and want to meet those demands should be permitted to. You were invited to vmi a little over a year ago, i think, to give a speech. How did that go . They had invited me to come to vmi at the 20th anniversary of the decision. My calendar was too crowded, so it turned out to be the 21st anniversary. And you were with me, for that. Yes. The change in that school has been enormous. The Commanding Officer was so proud of his women. They live in the same spartan quarters as the men live in, but they were so enthusiastic. Many of them were in the engineering program. One wanted to be an atomic scientist. By many women, they were able to upgrade their applicant [laughter] [applause] what did she leave out . Well, she left out a Ginsburg Scalia moment, to begin with, because Justice Scalia found her opinion fairly outrageous, and he was very upset about the whole thing, and his last sentence of his opinion said Something Like this is going to destroy vmi. He used the word destroy. And i asked Justice Ginsburg about that later, and she said to me, with this was not so long after the opinion, i think, she said to me with the utmost confidence vmi will be a better place if there are women, and it wont be destroyed, and the wonderful thing about that was when we were there, for the 21st anniversary, people there were so proud and excited to have you come there after you had transfigured the place. There was an audience almost as big as this, and back there there were what do you call them . Bleachers bleachers, and all the cadets were there in their uniforms, and for ruth ginsburg, they all stood up and applauded. It was just remarkable. [applause] as it turned out, Justice Scalia was the sole dissenter in the vmi case. The then chief, chief Justice Rehnquist didnt join my opinion but he did join Justice Thomas was recused because his son attended vmi. He couldnt participate. So that left scalia all alone. [laughter] Justice Scalia knew i felt deeply about the case, as he did the other way. And he came to my chambers one day, threw down a sheathe of papers and said ruth, this is the penultimate draft of my dissent in the vmi case. Im not yet ready to circulate to the court, but the clock was ticking, and he wanted to give me as much time as he could to answer his rather strident dissent. [laughter] you were going to a meeting that week. I was going to the judicial conference in georgia. I was on the plane, opened up his dissent. It absolutely ruined my week. [laughter] but i was certainly glad to have the extra time to respond. So talking about vmi reminds me that when you get to the court, Justice Oconnor of course was the first woman justice. Shes there. Shes been there for quite a while. 12 years. By herself. And as you would later learn, thats no fun because you had to be the only one for a while too. And, you know, she was a reagan appointee. She was a girl of the west. You were a clinton appointee. You were from new york city. And i wondered you very quickly, though, established a very special bond. She was as close as i came to having a big sister. When i came on board, she gave me some advice, not too much. She didnt want to douse me with excessive information, just what i needed to know, to navigate those first few weeks. And then she was an enormous help in my first cancer bout. Justice oconnor had a mastectomy and was on the bench nine days after her surgery. So she was going to tell me how to manage this. She said you schedule chemotherapy friday. That way you can get over it, during the weekend and be back in court on monday. And she also said youre going to get in those days there were not yet emails, but you are going to get calls. You are going to get letters from all over. Dont even try to respond. Just concentrate on getting the courts work done. Im not telling any secrets here when i say that in many of the courts biggest cases of late, you are not all, but you are in the minority, on the dissenting side, but, you know, in the last five years or more, you have pulled out some unexpected victories. And im thinking, for instance, of the courts 25th decision upholding arizonas redistricting commissions. These were created by state referendum by the voters to limit partisanship in the drawing of the legislative districts in the state. Will you tell the audience what your opinion said . What the opinion said . The opinion said, you upheld them. Why . Because something needed to be done about the partisan gerrymander [applause] i think california was in the lead. Then arizona, the good voters of arizona were tired of drawing district lines when there was very little incentive to vote because your districts had been rigged. It was going to be a republican seat or a democratic seat, so your vote didnt count. Thats not the way a democracy should run. [applause] so arizona and california had the idea and this is not done by the state legislatures. State legislatures would not willingly give up the monopoly they had on redistricting, so the good people of the state said this should be done. The redistricting should be done by an independent commission r, not by partisan members of the legislature. It presented a constitutional question because the constitution says redistricting will be done by the legislature. So some of my colleagues said legislature means legislature, and it doesnt mean the people. To me it seemed quite clear that the state had made the people the legislature for this purp e purpose. They give the deciding voice to the people, to we the people. And not the partisan members of the legislature. I think that after that case, other states were encouraged other states that had referendum. The dissent in that case was written by chief justice roberts, and he argued very vigorously that the legislature means only the legislature. Now fast forward to this year, a 5 to 4 conservative majority ruled essentially that the voters have no ability to challenge extreme partisan gerrymanders in court, but at the same time, the opinion written this time majority opinion written by the chief justice seemed to suggest that other remedies, like independent redistricting commissions provide alternative ways to address the problem of partisanship in redistricting. So could you please explain whats going on here . [laughter] have the courts conservatives changed their minds about redistricting . Is this just window dressing, or what . As one lives, one learns, so i think the chief learned that he was wrong in the [laughter] [applause] so i want you to look at this crowd. They tell me this is 4,000 people, not quite sure. Next week you and i are going another interview in little rock, arkansas, in a venue that holds 18,000 people. And not only are all the tickets gone, theres a waiting list of 16,000 people. [applause] so my dear notorious rbg [laughter] how does it feel to be a cultural and pop icon in your 80s . [laughter] [cheers] [applause] its amazing. At the advanced age of 86, Everyone Wants to take a picture with me. [laughter] the notorious rbg was started by a second year student at a law school. She was dismayed about the decision the court had recently rendered in the Shelby County case, that held the key provision of the Voting Rights act of 1965 unconstitutional. Then she thought to herself, im angry about that, but anger will not get me any place, so im going to do something positive. The positive thing that she did was she put on the internet, tumblr, the announcement i made from the bench on my dissenting opinion, in the Shelby County case. And she called it the notorious rbg because she had in mind a well known rapper, the notorious big. [laughter] and people asked me what in the world do you have in common with the notorious big . [laughter] i said its evident [laughter] [applause] we were both born and bred in brooklyn, new [laughter] [applause] by the way, when you and Justice Oconnor were on the court, even at the end of her tenure, some very Seasoned Supreme Court advocates, not newbies, really seasoned people, kept confusing you. They would call you Justice Oconnor and her Justice Ginsburg, and excuse me, you dont look anything alike. She had at least 6 inches on you. [laughter] her hairstyle was different. Her accent was different everything was different. Why . For 12 years, Sandra Day Oconnor was the lone woman on the Supreme Court. And advocates were accustomed to there being a woman on the court. Her name was Sandra Day Oconnor, so they heard a womans voice, it had to be Justice Oconnor. [laughter] she would sometimes say im Justice Oconnor. Shes Justice Ginsburg. That happened not to just occasional lawyers who showed up, but even the solicitor general, he called me Justice Oconnor, realized the mistake that he had made. He said he wanted he wished there was a trap door under his feet. [laughter] but nowadays we are one third of the bench [cheers and applause] were all over the bench because of my seniority, i sit next to the chief with Justice Sotomayor on one side and Justice Kagan on the other. People who have attended arguments at the court know that my two sistersinlaw are not shrinking violets. They are very active in the colloquy that goes on. In fact there was a rivalry between Justice Scalia and Justice Sotomayor on who could ask the most questions. [laughter] and sometimes she won. It seems to me appropriate since we began this interview talking about Justice Scalia, we should end it in some ways there because the two of you were such pals for so many decades and such unlikely it was such an unlikely friendship to people from the outside. Why were you what did you love about him so much . He was very funny man. We had been buddies on the d. C. Circuit for some years before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, and that was a threejudge bench. Sometimes he would whisper something to me that was so funny, i had everything i could do to contain myself from bursting out into hysterical laughter. [laughter] the Supreme Court when we didnt sit next to each other, he would sometimes send me notes. [laughter] i cant repeat to this audience what some of them were. [laughter] and theres a comic opera called Scalia Ginsburg that characterizes the two of us, the different way we approach reading legal text, but our reverence for the court as an institution and for our constitution, so to leave you with a small sample of this very amusing opera. Scalias opening is a rage. It goes like this the justices are blind. How can they possibly say this . The constitution says absolutely nothing about this. And then i answer him dear Justice Scalia, youre searching for bright line solutions, the problems that dont have easy answers, but the great thing about our constitution is that like our society, it can evolve. [applause] so the plot is roughly based on the magic flute. Justice scalia is locked up in a dark room [laughter] he is being punished for excessive dissenting. [laughter] and i enter the dark room through a glass ceiling. [laughter] [applause] and say im there to help him pass the test he needs to pass to get out of the dark room. And a character says why would you want to help him . Hes your enemy. And i explain, hes not my enemy. Hes my dear friend. And then we sing a wonderful duet [laughter] that goes like this, we are different. We are one. Different in our approach to legal text, but one in our reverence for the institution we serve and for the United States constitution. [applause] so i know this seems like a very short time, but we have already exceeded it. And i thank the justice, her biographers, all the people here who waited so long to come. This has been a lovely morning. Thank you, Justice Ginsburg. [applause] [cheers and applause] thank you thank you very much [applause] thank you. You are watching a special edition of book tv, airing during the week while members of congress are in their districts, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight, the presidency, first u. S. News and World Reports Kenneth Walsh looks at how different president s. And jared cohen looks at the eight Vice President s who became president s due to the death of their predecessors. Enjoy book tv now and over the weekend on cspan 2. This weekend on book tv, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Its about consumers and the problems they face. Its about Consumer Finance and how its changed. Its about the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the role and the importance of the work that it engages in to protect people across america. Sunday at 12 30 p. M. Eastern, hr mcmaster, former Trump Administration National Security advisor. The United States and other free and open societies ought to do everything we can to protect ourselves against the efforts of the Chinese Communist poverty to subvert our free market economic systems and our democratic form of governance. And at 6 20 p. M. , author and city of University New York professor on mass incarceration in the u. S. The fact that most people leave prison do a little bit of analysis to see that we could be closing prisons already and jails already if we just caught by two weeks and three weeks and four weeks, much less years, the kinds of sentences people are serving. Watch book tv, this weekend, on cspan 2. [inaudible conversation] good evening, everyone. Welcome to the strand bookstore. So excited to have such a large