Transcripts For CSPAN2 Lynne Cheney The Virginia Dynasty 20240711

I would like to start from reading from doctor cheneys opening paragraph. Put the spike of a drawing compass into the map of virginia a dairy farm, George Washington home, extend the leg of the compass what reaches out 60 miles and draw a circle, within and it not only washington but thomas jefferson, james mattis and james rural were born leading to manhood and made their home. It is the story that evokes what the historian called the spirit of hope and perseverance that runs straight through the american experience. Doctor cheney is a longtime member of a site faculty and i want to take moment to acknowledge how much we all appreciate her scholarship and her intellectual contributions to ai, not to mention a service she is done for our country. This is the latest in a series of several works by doctor cheney that examine our countrys history, its consideration and rigor. Her last book, James Madison, became a New York Times best seller in 2014 and shed new light on the life of one of our most underappreciated founders. I also want to thank doctor cheneys interviewer today, Vice President cheney for his service to our country and great friendship at aei. I am so pleased that both of you here with us for this conversation today and we will be taking questions after their conversations so if you want to ask questions email her Research Assistants at catherine quigley, with a k ai. Org or on twitter using virginia dynasty aia. Before i hand things over and want to say one last thing. A well treasured piece of ai history concerns the time Vice President cheney conducted an interview with the current Vice President of the United States, mike pence. During the interview Vice President cheney was polite but relentless and asked to have questions that challenge Vice President pence. It was a great dialogue but there were some, not me of course, who worried that our questioner had pushed the envelope a little bit. I am sure you will agree by president cheney that your adversary today is far more formidable than the one he faced that day. I want you to know in our view, have added. Give it your best shot. We are not concerned. With that i want to turn it over to doctor cheney to speak about her new book the virginia dynasty. Thank you. Thank you, roberts. I thank you did lay out the context by reading the part of the preface and its where i started. It is a markable that on this isolated part about what was in a not very important continent and certainly not an important colony while virginia was an important colony but it was in the periphery of everything that in that spot these four men would grow to greatness. I think the preface is you read it so well really does set the context. I agree. Take it away Vice President or will you go to the questioning now . Well, if she has normally she has more to say. [laughter] but i was struck to that lynne just mentioned when you take the enormous consequences of what these men did and how they were able to achieve it and what they were part of in building the United States of america and all it entails with our political systems and so forth and at the time it was a real backwater as far as the world goes and circled around what is now washington dc but at the time it was, you cant help but think about it and outoftheway spot and do some remarkable accompaniments for a handful of men who were involved in the effort. Is there a question . No. [laughter] i have to forgive dick for that because as far as he knew for a very long time like five, six years i disappeared. You know, i was writing away on my book in the far corners of the house and i think he must have wondered what i was doing. Thats been true many times in our 56 year marriage. I will turn it over to both of you but i do want to say your presence was always felt here and we knew where you were and it was a great joy to have your work going on inside our building and with the Research Assistants you worked with in your example you set for everyone who works here so you may have missed your Vice President but we didnt. It is a mystery to people who dont write books how anyone can spend, you know, five, six, seven years writing a book but i just love it. I love the momentum that you build up as you learn more and more of it and i love the research now in the writing im not so sure about but the research particularly when no not when you have terrific Research Assistants like i have at aei is one fascinating question after the other. This is what takes me so long is that i go down every rabbits whole even when, you know, im pretty convinced at the outset that i will never put any part of what im doing in the book. You have to love, as i do, research and i like writing a lot but in order to spend this amount of time on a project and you have to love yourself and your subject to. One of the questions that comes to mind is not only were these men architects of our terminus political system from freedom and liberty and all it has detailed in that the most of them also owned slaves. That was clearly a significant element as we go forward in our history in the 19th century but reconcile on the one hand the architects of historic political system and the fact that most of the men in the architects, were, in fact slaves. Data has become a very big question nowadays as you see statues of washington being tossed into the river and i am not opposed to paying down the confederate soldiers and confederate leaders. They were traders to the union and i think that to take those statues down is fine but i mean, im appalled actually when statues of washington fall or when the dc government had a commission that suggested that if we dont start explaining the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial better than maybe they should be moved to some other place and they cant do this because those statues and those monuments are on private lands but im appalled at this and the hook for it is usually they were slaveholders. They knew slaveholding was wrong. Jefferson called it a stain on virginia and others of them spoke of it as a moral sin and jefferson called it a sin against god. They were fully aware of the dilemma in which they lived in the contradiction in which they existed but they found themselves unable and circumstances were not such that they could achieve the full emancipation that justice demanded. That didnt stop them once they understood what a unique place they were in and what a unique time they were in and they were all educated in the enlightenment, in the scottish light and meant. The ideas of freedom, liberty, justice and equality were central to that scottish enlightenment they were all or washington educated himself but the other three went to find schools and learned it. They were perfectly ready to start a new nation based on the very highest principles and that is what they did and, you know, it is a contradiction but i sure am glad they did. I second that. How long does it take you to write the book . Im not sure hello . We disconnected. There you go. Robert, we have no sound. The producers would like me to back aside, take a backseat so that the two of you can just dialogue. We are all hanging on every word, i assure you. We can hear every word and the audience can hear every word but i think im getting the cut sign from me so we can leave it to you so i didnt want to follow that because im enjoying it so much in there with you but i sometimes, you know, you got to listen to the staff. Im backing out so the two of you can engage in a dialogue and we are all enjoying it so keep at it. Everyone okay with that . Sure. He was just going to ask me a tough question. [laughter] why did you write the book . You had written a biography before on madison, i know, and we are proud of that and legitimately so on the New York Times list but this sort of rolled on out of that experience in the time we spent on madison. It was certainly the case that i saw when i was working on madison how important the relationship were between him and jefferson in particular. They were committed to one another for life but madison was also his life was entwined with monroes and everybodys life was entwined with washington and i really did quite a lot of research on the synergy of groups and what happens when you have people of fine intellect, welltrained in one place and it turns out that what happens is that they inspire one another. Their conversations lead them to thoughts they might not have had otherwise. Their disagreements are important and out of the disagreement and it was a huge disagreement that washington had with madison and jefferson and monroe, to some extent, out of that quarrel came Political Parties washington thought the government ought to be run in one way and that was you elect your politicians and you leave them alone. The voters should go home and leave the politicians alone. That wasnt how jefferson and madison, in particular, or thinking about it. They really believed that politicians were as subject that is when the original divide between washington, on the one hand, and the other three, the three younger man again. Which one did you most admire . I like to think of it this way. Which one would i like to have lunch with . The answer has got to be jefferson. I would have assumed madison. Well, thats different. What kind of inexperience it mustve been to have jefferson talk about his experiment or to have jefferson talk about his theories of government or to have jefferson talk about anything. He was such a appalling man and according to one woman who talked to him earlier in his presidency he was modest which really surprised me. She had no idea he was the president elect. He would be pleasant to have lunch with. I think i do admire madison more and he is study, stable and not subject to the whim, very profound thinker. The most studious of them all. Plus, hed wonderful wife, dolly. She was really an unusual person in her time and she didnt think twice about asserting herself and she was three, 4 inches taller than madison and when they went out to formal occasions neither of them seemed to care that she wore blooms in her turbine that made her a foot taller than madison. He loved her extravagance and i thought people generally loved the incredible way she dressed. She had one outfit that was pink velvet and decorated with many chains. I think it was [inaudible] but everyone noticed there was some women and they noted how exciting the dress was and there were some women that were distressed that she sewed so much of her bosom. It was the style at the time but one woman wrote to another why doesnt she use a handkerchief and what she meant was why doesnt she talk a handkerchief in her neckline . If you look at the portrait of Dolly Madison and white house it certainly the most revealing and that was dolly, she was out there. Interesting. In their current environment and i cant help it but talk about something but the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg obviously is set up a situation for a fairly, apparently a fairly bitter fight in terms of picking her replacement and trumps role and so forth. But there were times when in the book there were conflicts between members and i think most of those of us who read history of the era have a tendency to work hard and not spent much time or even be aware of the extent to which there were conflicts among them. I wonder how that crew would look at this whole question of appointing a Supreme Court justice before the election and, one of the first women to serve on the court being replaced if that doesnt create so im curious how that would have been dealt with by your full president s . Good i just say a word about Ruth Bader Ginsburg . Sure. I think it is been deemed politically incorrect perhaps because i havent heard a Single Person mentioned what a sense of style she had. She was not only a great justice but a great lawyer, great intellect and she also had a sense of style. She was always wearing something a little exotic and there was a picture of the Supreme Court numbers walking down the steps of the building and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had on a longish skirt and it is so appropriate for that moment that she just had that. My politically incorrect compliment. They would have thought [inaudible] i suspect our senators in the country as a whole are going to find and one more thing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg though, during the Merrick Garland emanation someone and this has been the New York Times asked her if she thought that the president should wait and not appoint in his last year before the election or if she thought that the senators should hold off voting and her answer was look, the president is still the president in the last year. And the job of the senators is to vote. I think it shows the kind of changes that people in public life sometimes undergo an madison changed all the time. He was the father of the constitution and he was the man who got the bill of rights through but after he had struggled to make the Constitutional Convention work he wasnt sure this constitution was any good but within three, four weeks he was promoting it and he promoted it on the basis that you know, we really needed a more powerful government. In the end he changed his mind about that too. He became worried about a very powerful Central Government and there is a british politician and i wish i could remember his name who said once, he said sir, speaking to someone i dont know who it was, sir when the situation changes i change my mind what do you do, sir . You know, i think that part of the backandforth about who supported what and when is a natural part of politics. Certainly, washington, madison, jefferson had a very fraught relationship with john marshall. Who, by the way, had gone to school with monroe. The world of the late 18, early 19th century is so little. You keep coming across connections. I think bernard balin once said it was like a Little Country of cousin ray. Everyone was related to everyone else in a way. So, i think they would have fought it out hard. I was intrigued by some of the debate discussions on the court and it was talking about Justice Ginsburgs contributions and so forth, personal friend of mine, of course was judge scalia and we use to hunt and fish together and i was always struck by the relationship between nino and Ruth Bader Ginsburg because they were such opposites in terms of their positions they represented antonin being a conservative and gives berg being the lead liberal but they were closed personally in terms of families and times spent together. I can remember Justice Scalia talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and glowing terms how much he enjoyed the relationship. It always appeared to me and honestly you are much closer to it than i that it was based mostly on opera. They had love for Classical Music and Justice Ginsburg said, at one point, when i go and listen to the opera the voices inside my head stop. Im just relieved of the feeling of conflict and uplifted by it. I have never heard talk about why he loved opera so much but i suspect it was probably the thing they did. One of the things that you touched on was the extent to which there was conflict between these men in some respects all involved in the founding of the nation. My feelings and obviously i wasnt there then but there is a feeling in the country today that the relationships politically are have evolved in a way that is not what you would expect or the feelings between the congress and president and so forth in the relationships are pretty severely strained and the battles are pretty significant and my own sense of it is is the fears of when we first came to washington that evolved and the significant extent that there were periods of time when there better, friendlier, more collegial and then they are today. Just because i know you that you have some experience that working across the aisle and no one ever really condemns you for doing it but talk about talk about, while he was a soviet ally from pennsylvania. When i arrived here in 1966 to go to work on the hill for the first time over the years good relationships did grow out and i look back on time for heres i spent as secretary of defense as a republican my strongest ally in the house and the man i did the most work with was a marine in the first vietnam vet ever elected to congress and he was my closest ally and chaired the defense appropriations subcommittee and the house while i was secretary of defense so there were relationships like that and [inaudible] ive always anticipated to some degree of Cooperation Among the founders but your book shows that sometimes it was down and dirty there just like it was like it is now. I think this deadliest and probably the most rewarding relationship for both men was jefferson and madison. They didnt always agree, jefferson, jefferson tried to undermine the constitutional ratification. He sent letters out to friends who then showed them on the floor of the Virginia Assembly where they were undertaking a crucial ratification criticizing the constitution and suggested they not ratify it so that there could be more discussion and may be some changes that should be made. Madison, as i state the study is the ball, did not get mad or at least not so that he showed it but jefferson was embarrassed at this time so it took madison a long time to send jefferson a copy of the federalist papers. Well i just love it as an example that jefferson we need it. The constitutional ratification was criticized and madison just hold it fast and not lose it his temper. I think that jefferson mustve been a very difficult friend. Yes, definite. Now, it is 11 30 so why dont you ask me a couple more questions and then we will go to the questionnaire on the or in the chat room. Well when we married you are a phd in english literature. This is true. And obviously, you drifted quite a ways away from that when you got involved in history spent time on American History and on political history. I was told i should have more clinical history than clinical science and it wouldve been more valuable and useful for me but how did you account for that transition you made from literature to politics in the Founding Fathers et cetera . I couldnt get a job in literature. Yes, i began writing and there were some very nice people along the way who allowed me to do historical writing for different magazines and outlets and i wrote history. I just drifted toward it. There is a sense in which i dont understand anything major in history. I dont know why but i missed the idea that you could possibly get a phd in history but i did and when i got a chance to start writing it was really quite wonderful and theres one job i had allowed me every month to go take one aspect of washington dc and describe it and explain it and really get to the underlying basis of it subjects from Arlington Cemetery to the column and they were all over washington, co l um acts and may be both faultless and might but i dont think so but anyway, the columns around washington and why we had all these columns. It was the kind of assignment that simply whet my appetite and thats just the direction in which i had it. Would you like to turn it over to the folks . I would trade im sure they got them questions. I like yours. Robert. Im coming back just to say thank you. That was lovely. We hung on every word and to turn it to jr historian resident at aei to continue the questioning and monitor the questioning from the audience. I just cannot resist coming back on and saying thank you to both. It was a wonderful conversation. Jay, take it from here. Thank you, robert. My name is jaycox, Gerald R Ford visiting scholar at aei and its a real pleasure to be with both of you today, doctor cheney and Vice President cheney. Its a really good interesting questions. I guess the first one that i want to ask you about is that quality of statesmanship among these men and im really struck that it points in all their professional lives they all wanted to go home or stay home. Washington did not want a second term and jefferson tarried in virginia rather than take the secretary of ship and madison was montpelier with a wife and young stepson and wanted to go home from europe but they all sacrifice for the sake of what the good of the country. Can you tell us your thoughts on what qualities of statesmanship or leadership that set these four men apart . Is certainly a sense of the importance of the task that they were about. It was enormous and it was such an opportunity to build a country based on freedom and it was an irresistible calling to them and you are right its also punishing and madison went home, madison whenever he could but it was six years that washington was gone from home during the revolution and at one point madison spent far more time at a boardinghouse in philadelphia that he did at home. I think that reflects the feeling that they each had that they were about a great task. The feeling as though youre part of something bigger than yourself that that was a very attractive to them. While they nearly all went broke in the end and no doubt that was part of the fact that they had been absentee landowners for so long and there were many, many reasons but i dont think and if youd asked at the choice of whether you have had a life that would died, you know, well off then have a life or you could create a great nation and im pretty sure they wouldve chosen the latter. Another leader points out that the network of men that you discuss in your book are these four titans of the virginia dynasty and there were other networks as well. The bostonian adams and quincy and hancox and you can also look in new york and philadelphia with hamilton, robert morris, philip siler and how would you describe the relationship of these different networks, especially in the fact that the Eastern Networks were more focused on commerce while the Virginia Network was obviously much more agricultural in its economic background. Well, they do not see a rural quite the same way. There was a wonderful quotation, gosh, i cant remember who wrote it and maybe you can help me j in which person a set of john adams he is wonderful and entertaining, smart but half m mad. Washington was appalled when he became commander of the Continental Army and went to boston at money grubby. Now, in virginia you do not money grubby partly because you had slaves who, you know, didnt, in the end, slavery just didnt work but in the end it did not allow a profitable enterprise but they were much more polite than adams was paid he was just out there kicking up dust and stirring up trouble. Well put. That is one example but i think the northerners and southerners from the beginning word different and the reason that the civil war happened is that they never really reconciled those differences and certainly the north did not violate the middle of the 19th century reconcile itself to slavery. Yes, what about, could you speak about monroe because the first three, the big three, all of these titles author of the declaration of independence, father of the constitution and munro is often under looked but your book, by choosing to focus on somebody like choosing marshall over monroe what do you think he added and what are we may be as a 200 years later what have we as this sort of society, what have we missed about him . We miss a lot for a long time because they were not comprehensive addition of these papers. There is now and i expect in the early years ahead about the munro scholarship. He was such a curious man and angered perhaps more than any other of the dynasty. Washington had a formidable [inaudible] but monroe and one of the people he was angry about most of the time was washington. Munro would sit down and write these scathing letters, memos to washington telling him what a worthless person he was and how he was leaving the country into monarchy and this was fascinating. I dont think weve been able to pay enough attention to it before but to see this aspect of his character and in realize that despite what seems like a green just lost this ability to anger so quickly he was a good president and he didnt preside over great events like the Louisiana Purchase so of course, he was there at the libyan Louisiana Purchase doing some part of the negotiating but his achievements were great, nonetheless. It was jefferson, im sorry, it was munro with John Quincy Adams help that made the United States a continental nation in the era of good feelings that people make fun of this description of monroe term in office of these two terms, was, in some sense, real. There was a column in the country and aid, and the presidency. He had the most stable cabinet of any of the president s and that is a kind of security and continuity that people felt. Thank you. We want to talk about the revolutionary war and how it shaped their character because all four of them participated in some sense, right, washington and monroe and a military sense jefferson, governor of virginia and, you know, fled from the capital much to the delight of Patrick Henry and James Madison of course being short and slight like he was was not because of military cough but was in philadelphia struggling through the problems of Public Finance especially so can you talk about the ways in which the war shaped their character, shape their understanding of the union so how did that affect them . In madisons case he cannot become a warrior because he had epilepsy. This is a theory i think i pretty much substantiated in my madison book. He was simply have a complex partial seizure every once in a while and as he described it the intellectual functions would be suspended. It seems as though he has such an event when he was practicing to be a soldier. He was out on the field and the story is not told entirely but it sure seems as though that is what happened and he did not feel like he could serve in the military and the military probably didnt want him at that point. That was madison story. I think a feeling of being a little left out but then turning to what he knew best he began studying governments and constitutions and he was interested even at a very young man and there was a study that became more and more important to him and lets see, jefferson spent his whole life trying to prove he wasnt a coward for having first led richmond and then fled charlottesville and the charlottesville exit was very humorous in a way for us looking back so far. Basically he tried to act like he didnt or wasnt worried. When he went to charlottesville it was at his home i believe and invited legislators to stay the night and ply them with food and drink and a young man came to warm him that the british were coming and he offered him madeira. Finally, people began leaving and jefferson was certainly one of the last to leave any tried to do it very casually but in the end he took his fastest horse and galloped away. Right, right, very good. I forget washington. Well, monroe the argument with washington and with washington in particular is that washington didnt appreciate what he had done and monroe was nearly killed at the crossing of the delaware and taken out of action and not given the commission he thought he deserved and i think all of those things aid him feel as though washington was turning his back on him. The war did that to monroe and to washington of course and it was an opportunity for glory but it was also a tough loss. One of the things i admired about him was that no matter how tough he conveyed an aura of competence. Not at the beginning. It was interesting that at the beginning his troops were worried about his indecisiveness and as the war went on and people came to maybe understanding him better it was that rockhard confidence or the ability to appear confident and that was very important. Right. It speaks to the eye dia of projecting confidence more broadly among all four of them had a very distinct even those and i dont know what the right word is but there a public appearance and washington obviously having to lead men and what was a very difficult situation but even madison one of our viewers points out the medicine participated in College Debate societies. He was in a league in princeton and had prepared them in ways for public life and how they comport themselves in public and in this age where i personally am so chagrined by seen politicians just pop off on twitter all the time with just a lack of decorum is there a way we can recapture that particularly preparing young people for engagement in the public sphere and expectation of what it means to participate in those because the virginians certainly had very distinct sense of public dignity and it seems to be lost today. Well, i do think the atmosphere in virginia encourage people and encouraged men from a very young age to participate in Public Service. When they were 24, 25, 26, when they were very young they became members of the house of burgesses and took part in actual legislation and saw older men who impressed them greatly so i think that helps them probably we shouldnt overestimate the amount of composure and politeness that you dont know where im going but as they later demonstrated with their society which often involved with the very raucous lyrics that you would not want repeated in front of children so they have a lively time at princeton as well as learning a great deal from the great man named john witherspoon. A question for you, mr. Vice president. Thomas jefferson was, you know, among his very many compliments served as four years as Vice President so how would you assess his tenure as Vice President . Well,. He didnt do a thing. I dont think he did much. [laughter] he did get squared away, set up so to speak to be president. No mean achievement though. No mean achievement and i think in this is just speculating but that is a hope for outcome for a lot of my predecessors, not many of them made it. There is a sense now that taking on more significance that the jobs there is a legitimate job for your earning your pay, so to speak. I think that is true and the last, back in probably at least 11 thats an interesting question. I dont think of jefferson as Vice President the way i thought of myself as Vice President , you know, but the history is such that the job did not amount to much. I guess as a followup, of course, jefferson became Vice President having finished second in the Electoral College to john adams and if you could re envision American History in a way which the secondplace finisher and president ial elections becomes Vice President how would you react to that and in other words saying to think the 12th amendment was an improvement . Thats an excellent question because of i think most recently i think of truman wanted to run as president he made even though he was the haberdashery from missouri and his involvement when he took over and his lack of, roosevelt had not really included him in anything when he was Vice President and he came in and ended world war ii. One the cold war or started in a significant sense and truman, in my mind was a democratic but a strong president. It was his time as Vice President that set them up to perform that task. I have to interject a note here because it always makes me laugh that the vice presidency from the beginning was an afterthought. In order to establish voting and as you pointed out everybody just ran as a pack and the person who got the most votes as long it as it was a majority was president and the person who got the second number of votes was the Vice President. That was an afterthought. The question was well, what are we then going to do with him and weve got this president now and they could only think of one job and they gave him presidency of the senate. They did that larger because they wanted to keep him out of trouble. I like [inaudible] i was remember when i was president of the senate and had to sit up there in the chair in front of house chamber. Didnt you cast the tiebreaking vote at one point . Oh yeah, many times. Interesting. I was busy. [laughter] yes you were. Were just about out of time but one final question because we talked a lot about the history of these men and especially your questions like mr. Vice president talking about politics and everyone agrees this was an unsettled age and difficult times for country and this is one or two lessons that the virginia dynasty we today can take from guide our politics and moving forward. They were a raucous bunch. Fighting with each other and smart and that may be a very important element and jefferson was smart in a flighty way and monroe he looked at a practical thing and said madison and how do i highlight succeed in washington had an eight natural intellect and that was an attitude and interest for an intellectual issue helped make them successful. I have one more question a late arrival and so they asked what he think about the musical hamilton and the weight members of the dynasty are remembered therein . Well i love hamilton. We saw it a long time ago when it was still offbroadway and i had heard about how excellent it was and so i got a ticket and had the hardest time in the world persuading dick to go to a rap musical but that he did and he really admired it as well. Fantastic. Well, i thought washington was humorously done but madison was the one i found most disappointing. Now, i know you werent supposed to try to look like the fellows that you are impersonating but madison was a big old hunk of a man who walked and bent over and that, my attention i might have changed a little bit that. Wonderful, thank you so much this is been an Educational Opportunity for me to speak with you and based on the questions our viewers good luck with the Book Publicity and best wishes to you both. Thank you so much. Youre watching cspan2 your unfiltered view of government. Crated by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to today by your television provider. U. S. Senate is not in session today due to the veterans day holiday but senators will be eating tomorrow morning 11 eastern to continue judicial confirmations and they will be considering President Trumps District Court nominee for the Southern District of florida and the senate is confirmed to under 22 federal judges under President Trump so far and now many eileen cannon of florida will be the first woman to join the court during the trump administration. Watch live coverage of that debate here on cspan2. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan2. This year marks the 20th anniversary of book tvs monthly author programs in depth and tonights highlights from past shows, including our interviews with david mcauliffe, shelby foote, toni morrison, cornell last and many others and that begins at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Enjoy book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. Book tv on cspan2 has taught nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Saturday at 1 00 p. M. Eastern from the recent southern festival of books author marsh, burton and winkler reflect on life in appalachia. They discussed the jim crow era in the south. Then at 7 45 p. M. New yorkers staff writer discusses his book joe biden, the life, what matters now. On sunday at 1 00 p. M. Eastern from the southern festival of books journalist matthew van meter talks about his book deep Delta Justice about the civil rights case which helped to reaffirm the rights to a trial by jury in most criminal cases. Author Stephanie Gordon and chris offer their thoughts on Investigative Journalism and its role in the democracy. Then at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words law Professor John fabian talks about his book american contagion, epidemics and the law from smallpox two covid19. Hes interviewed by Georgetown University law professor lawrence dawson. Watch book tv this weekend on cspan2. Discussion of michelles new book last admission to tokyo which i encourage you all to read. Believe it or not, its a page turner whose lessons speak for family today. Our guests are the author a leading human rights leader in National Security scholar and litigated and want many highprofile cases including several of the landmark quintana mode cases and several others