Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics Public Policy Today 20240622

Until june 25th of this year when we had these two companion decisions that came down. King is precisely exactly like webber. The majority opinion said look you cant look at forward in isolation and give it a broader meaning because the broader purpose was to give subsidies to poor people. The precise facts in king were as follows the statute dealing with subsidies, said they are available for purchases made off an exchange established by the state under statute 131211 of the statute and the question was what if you made an exchange off of an exchange of the federal government under 1321 and does that qualify and in other words does state mean state. Which is not a question for the nonjudicial mind but was one that bee fuddled six members of the Supreme Court. And they analyzed it in precisely the way they had done in webber. Listen the broader purpose was to provide substance and were not going to be Fuddy Duddies and worry about language or exactly what congress has done. I wont walk you through the myriad of ways in which the majority of opinion violated the rule of law, just read Justice Scalias dissent and that what they are doing could be possibly interpretation. Ill make three points in addition to what Justice Scalia pointed out. The majority did agree this was not a case of chevron deference and the reason is because they hadnt delegated this issue to the irs. Congress itself had spoken to the question itself precisely. It made a conscious decision on whether subsidies should be available on federal exchanges. So the premise of the statute the premise of the opinion is that congress made this decision. And congress made a conscious decision to say will you have subsidies onyx changes established by the federal government by writing the words you will have subsidies onyx changes established by the state. In other Words Congress made a conscious decision and said precisely the opposite of what it meant. And you can review the majority opinion to get some sense of some explanation of why people intent on having subsidies on federal exchanges would have said the opposite. The media explanation was this was a big mistake and nobody knew it and we certainly didnt intend this. But nobody can explain what did you intend when you wrote this language and if you didnt intend to limit subsidies to exchanges established by the state, why in the world would you use that formulation . The majority of the opinion is notably silent on that question. The next point was there is ambiguity about the words exchange established by the state. 36 b of the irs, they didnt preent tent there was an anomaly or interpretation in that provision but they went roaming through the Affordable Care act and they found some inartful language in this seamless web of legislative draftsmanship in an entirely different provision of the qualified individuals profission they said there is an anomaly here and were going to transport this back to the issue in this case. The notion of having anomalies on the in the words of Justice Scalia is pure apple sauce. But the question is why would you transport it over to the subsidy provision which was attishure. And that doesnt make sense. And you dont have to take my opinion for that because a majority dropped a foot note doesnt mean it doesnt mean in this provision doesnt mean it wont effect the other provisions because the other provisions dont tell you that much. So you cant look at other pro provisions to look at 36 b says, the net result of this is if you can find an anomaly anywhere in the Affordable Care act, you can rewrite the specific provision at issue. Well finding anomalies in the fact is not a terribly daunting burden. So theyve taken this legislative masterpiece and made it so the judiciary has free rein to do whatever it wants. And this is not taking words in isolation, take them out of the statutory context or not understand the purpose of the statute. We couldnt emphasis more that we absolutely want you to look at the words in the context of the statute because context makes it clear it means what it says and context makes it clear that the only provisions that dealt with subsidies for exchanges were the two provisions at issue which belies the majority of the opinions of the notion this was a strange place to put this limitation in. Context makes clear, section 1311 said in strongest possible terms that Congress Wants tate to run this exchange. To 36 b tells you what they did and 1311 tells you why they did it, because they needed to incentivize states to undertake the responsibility that they could not force upon them. I could go on. The rest of the statute shows you that they didnt mean state to be sin on em for federal because when they were talking about territories they had an explicit provision as saying you will treat this as a state exchange and which is not found in this provision. So this is not a debate about context or purpose this is a debate about a judicially debated policy can trump what you find in the statute and that is clearly what the majority opinion did. Again, read the majority opinion and find out they said the broader purpose was subsidies, well have subsidies where ever we want, that was a key decision that congress made and they wanted them on federal exchanges. Please read the opinion and see if you see anything in the statute that reflects this purchase, anything in the Committee Reports or anything in the legislative history where somebody said yes we want subsidy on federal exchanges. You wont find it. And they cite to amicus briefs and Public Policy but you wont see anything reflecting a congressional purpose. The other thing you wont see is any explanation how this doesnt defeat the testurally stated purchase that the states will run the exchange. And the majority opinion doesnt try to prevend that their view that subsidies will be available on all exchanges wont undermine congress having the states run the exchange because there is no incentive for states to undertake this thankless task. So again weve returned full circle. And as Justice Renquist said this is orwellian because it is using descriptions of congressional purpose at a high level of generalality that they dont reflect anything other than the policy choice which is going to trump the statute. And the key point in both cases is there is no such thing as a congressional purpose that is contrary to the text of the statute. That is a oxymoron. The text is beyond if you look beyond the text, you are looking at the judges views of what they think is good policy. We think it is good policy to help minorities. Congress wanted to help minorities but they decided to do it in a way where you didnt discriminate against nonminorities. So youve changed the congressional purpose. Congress did want subsidies for exchanges but it also wanted Something Else it wanted states to run exchanges which is why it conditioned it. And the majority said this would destroy the statute. Well they conditioned medicaid on the states doing something in the a. C. A. Nobody disputes they wanted medicaid to go to poor people, much more poor people than ones receiving the subsidies but they conditioned it because they wanted to induce the states to take additional action. Precisely the same analysis applies here and the same judicial override of the compromise is reflecting in king. So weve gotten to a stage where they are literally i mean we had a revelation about no taxation about representation which meant we wont subject ourselves to taxes or budgetary issues unless it is done by people who the populous controls through elections and can have some accountability for and nonetheless they have an imposed taxpayer and employer mandate regime and imposed tax credits which were never enacted by the representative government. I know ive been going on long. Ill discuss briefly because frankly it only merits brief discussion. Again, this involved title eight, which was enacted in 1968, four years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and it says you cant, in housing, deny housing or discriminate because of race and the other prohibited criteria. And texas came in and the dissent said because of race means you need to treat people differently because of the race. That is the english language. The majority said well greeks griggs said differently. But that was done in 1971. And in 1968 they didnt know that griggs never discussed the words because of and the fact that they had distorted title seven to mean the opposite of what it says hardly provides distortion of title eight of the housing act to do precisely the same thing. So as i say, in light of the two things weve returned full circle to a mode of analysis that i thought was a vestage of the 1970s which is judges will cite some imaginist earal purpose and engage and Justin Renquist said in an orwellian enterprise to rewrite laws that went through the democratic process by people who were elected by the people and therefore accountable to the people if they make mistakes. And im spend a minute on this because when you talk about the rule of law you are just being a fuddy duddy and worried about statutory language and stuff. But this is really the essence of popular sovereignty right. If the judiciary undoes the compromises it has done it has usurped and made five unelected lawyers in washington, d. C. Establish National Policy in contravention to what the elected representatives have done and as madison said is the definition of tyranny. And it you surps the you surps the legislative and the judicial role. If you play by the rules and conform your behavior to the laws the state has no ability to come at you. But if the judiciary is just another policy making body that you have to reargue then you cant fight city hall and there is no way to get beyond the political system and be treated fairly and equally on the merits because the judiciary is just another stop along the legislative process and another group of people who will decide the case, not on the merits of whether youve violated something in the law or a nice guy or too powerful of a corporation and at the end of the day that of course converts the judicial into something where they dont do the protections they are entitled to do and become another branch of the legislative arm that perverts the judicial role it engenters complete disrespect for the court which is why when you hear debates about opinions or confirmation the argument is solely about the results this justice will produce whether or not it is consistent with the separation of powers and that is why june 25th, 2015, was a very sad orwellian day in the Supreme Court jurisprudence. Will it happen Going Forward . I think theyll ignore it when it is convenience and Pay Attention when they want to do it but the enshrined view is from now on the we are not a nation of law we are a nation of judges and you have to appeal to their policy preferences not to the legal materials that should form their judgment. So it was a gigantic step backwards in terms of the rule of law. Well i knew there was a risk if not a likelihood we would not get to all of the cases i wanted to discuss. But let lez get a couple more in and hopefully have time for a couple of questions. So john lets turn back to you. So the court decided in a number of criminal law cases, having to do with the Death Penalty and the Fourth Amendment and mens rya and can you talk about that. Anthony alone is was a 27yearold working at a Amusement Park in pennsylvania when his wife of 7 years dumped him and took the two kids. Being an american he thought if there is something worth saying, it is worth sharing with everyone on earth and so every thought he had on the subject he posted to facebook. Some of the things were styled as rap music, and they were said enough bad things about his wife that she got a protection from abuse letter which is sort of a tro and he kept it up. Personally i could see that there was a slightly more restrained tone. Not everyone shares that view. And eventually he started talking about he eventually covered every subject. He wrote a thing about shooting up a kindergarten which believe it or not, he got a like on that, which i took as an indication that people knew that he meant it nonliterally and he said bad things about the local police and eventually he said bad things about the fbi officer that came to arrest him and that is the one thing you must not so and so he was arrested and tried for that. He was prosecuted under the prevailing view. Nine of the circuits adopted a view as the court went on to recognize it as a negligent standard if you Say Something that a reasonable person would view as a threat that is a felony and it doesnt matter whether you thought it was a threat or not and the prosecutor said in the closing statement, it doesnt matter what he thinks. Which i made of point of about saying that about 50 times in the brief and the chief justice to wrote the opinion voting finding for my client on an 81 basis and he quoted back to us and i found that gratifying and now im going to repeat everything 50 times in briefs. But the court it was understanding. It was litigated on a constitutional basis in the District Court saying that rather that the constitution required it be a standard higher than negligence and you have to have an in tent to do it. An intent is under the premodel people code is a very messy thing and it can mean a purpose of threatening someone and it can also mean you say major league that you know the person will take as a threat and even if you dont mean it you know you go ahead and say it any way. And it was a constitutional issue whether it is a tense or negligence standard. Because that was the only issue that had been raised below. That was the center we petitioned on. As it happens the jail clinic had petitions on constitutional and statutory argument which is not all that preserved in our case. And we didnt want to raise it because even though we desperately wanted to have the statutory argument, because we figured it wasnt preserved and use that as a reason to ding our petition but low and behold the court added the statutory argument to the questions presented so we presented an constitutional argument and they added a statutory argument and we went to the oral argument. All of the time was spent on the constitutional issue not a lot of time spent on the statutory argument and of course the court decided it on a statutory basis. But all of these cases had always been a choice between the existing negligent standard and some form of in tent. And we got a couple of questions at argument from Justice Kagan and maybe a follow up yes about a recklessness standard which havent been involved much in the law. So low and behold all the court wound up doing is saying not negligence. The negligence standard isnt enough for purposes of the statute. You have to have some sort of in tent. And they didnt say exactly what it was and they wouldnt cross recklessness off the list. This case took the third longest to decide. It was out and pending the longest the third longest. And when it is an 81 decision with kind of a longish concurrence from Justice Alito and a dissent from Justice Thomas, you figure that Something Else happened there. And i presume there was a danger of it being 441 on recklessness grounds. So among the thicks i things i would like to figure out long enough when the papers of this court are released i will not live long enough to see the justice suitos papers and chief felt he couldnt get five votes for something. But there was eight votes for not negligence. And now it goes back down to the Third Circuit for additional additional basically harmless error indianapolis. And Justice Alito who i view as being he is the conservative Justice Ginsburg and most of them are happy to answer the question in front of them and ignore the case from then on and Justice Ginsburg likes to say congress ought to overrule this and justice brief likes to write the brief on remand on how this issue wasnt preserved and it wasnt harmless error and all of that stuff. So it is interesting to see what happens on remand. Thank you. I do think that the alone is case and mcfadden was the drug analog case that the court was sending an a signal that intent really does matter and congratulations on that win. Andy you argued a very important First Amendment case involving judicial elections. That was the williams lee case. Can you talk a little bit about that . Sure. Many cases and florida is one, that elect their judges have a rule that says that candidates whether they are in couple bents or not incumbents cant personally solicit Campaign Contributions they have to find a committee of people who are the solicitors and they can solicit. However, in florida the judge can be the treasurer of his or her committee and know who gives and can write thank you notes to contributors but you cant ask. And florida and other states construe this no solicitation rules not to just ban personal, one to one or similar solicitations but in this particular case my client was sanctioned for sending a mass mailing that asked for contributions in addition to explaining why she was running for Judicial Office and for posting that letter on her campaign website. Both of those were personal solicitation according to the florida bar. There was a conflict among the lower courts based on the Supreme Court Campaign Finance Juris Prudence about whether that ban on speech was constitutional. And the Court Granted the case. And in a tough, i would say, 54 opinion, tough for my client and also sharply split the court, the chief justice wrote an opinion saying well yes, this is lynxitiation on speech and it is a content based limitation on speech because the ban relates to the content, whether you are asking for money, but this is a rare limit on speech that satisfies strict scrutiny. And i think most impartial observers, of which im not one, who have read the opinion, concluded this was a varat of strict scrutiny havent seen before, call not very strict scrutiny. And i think what was clear is the four justices who have dissented in almost all of the Campaign Finance decisions and happy to join the chief justice, joined him in saying essentially judges are different and we have to worry about the integrity of the judiciary and it would be demeaning and bad for judges to have to actually ask for contributions from supporters and the other system is much better it is an important state interest and the fact that judges will know about the contributions and can thank people doesnt matter. And i said this in the oral argument, that in addition to the technical First Amendment reasons there were two Important Reasons why the state interests didnt stand up. One is it is sort of a sham. The state is saying were going to think people into tricking that the judges arent involved in the contribution solicitation system but they know all about it but were going to make it appear that they dont because that is a good thing. And the second thing which Justice Scalia mentioned in his dissent was that this is a rule that favored establishment candidates. If you are a member of the establishment in your town it wont be hard to find some prominent lawyers who will be on your committee and be willing and can effectively go out and get contributions for you. But if you are an upstart and you dont you are not that well connected, you may need the personal touch to get people to understand why you are running and why your campaign is important and so this is a rule which by the way was propagated by the American Bar Association that is really a rule about the judicial establishment as much as figure else. I think what this case shows and the two other First Amendment cases that which were 54 is that context increasingly matters in the courts First Amendment Juris Prudence. What were the other two cases. One was the confederate license plate. Walker which the side lost also 54. And i think many people believe that the argument was on the license plate is it a government speech or is that the speech of the person whose car it is and which box you put it in was dispositive and i think many people believe well this is probably a hybrid but the court put it in the government speech box because that gave the government power over what messages they could be and what not. And the third case, the town of reed gilbert or reed the town of reed case was about municipal science, the case the First Amendment side won 54 and again content based speech. The court did apply strict scrutiny and struck down a sign that had all kinds of durational and size views depending on whether it was a ideological or purposeful or directional sign and they say strict scrutiny applies and it prevails. And it was a church, it was clear, was being persecuted by the town. As soon as the church would find ways to get the signs up, it would change the ordinance would change and the signs would become illicit. The judicial and legal establishment, worrying about government power to regulate signs, regulate license plate programs and sort of sign ordinance where there is discrimination, you can see that the context mattered and the sort of analysis came later. I think that. And what did you want to say. And i wanted to say i agree. And i would prefer to say that they would have just said judges are district. We call this under inclusiveness inclusiveness. But the idea is if you are not going to ban something indistinguishable from something you have banned that is irrational and cant support a judicial decision. Whereas the majority of the opinion sort of said no, under inclusive inclusive, we dont care and i think the d. C. Circuit two days ago used that analysis to uphold other Campaign Finance bans and now we have they purported to imply scrutiny and less district scrutiny is under commercial speech but you banned x but you didnt ban y and how could you accomplish this. I assume that will get sorted out somewhere. I wish the court had been more candid about it is not strict scrutiny because lower federal courts might apply it in that same way. Although the d. C. Circuit court is sharply limited to the contributions and the campaign and Party Committees and doesnt address what the First Amendment rules would be, this is a case of banning contributions by Government Contractors which was upheld but the court takes great pains so say we have nothing before us about contributions to independent expenditures which would have a different out come because the d. C. Standard was not strict scrutiny it was watered down scrutiny applied. I risken occurring the wrath of the audience and so ill risk asking a question. So who has a question. Third year law student at the university of chicago. Im curious about the texas license plate case and the implications of that. Yesterday a District Court held that the trademark registration process was also government speech. And what kinds of expansions of things that we think should be pain content neutral that become government speech. That was the case about the redskins trademark being striped away because it is offensive to some people and im curious on your thoughts about that . I think there is a key distinction between government speaking and giving its imper monter or editing. The public billboard context, if you have things on public transportation, i thought the law was clear before, but by recent decision, look if the government is not speaking, it is editing private voices and it can engage in view point discrimination. There is no realistic way to think they were renting out space on the public license plates to invoke your own messages and Justice Scalia made clear and if an editor elects speech, he is editing and so i think it could have ramifications in the other context. But the law in the other context were a bit all over the place to begin with and it will be used by those who dont like the notion that people can explain about view point discrimination invoking their principals, theyll use this case to uphold those kind of restrictions. There was a recent case out of new york that essentially did the same thing. The tricky part about view point discrimination that gets people upset is obviously if the view point discrimination is vote for republicans and then you say you cant vote for democrats, that not a problem. Where people get wrapped around the arcle if we say, gee, dont do drugs, it is okay to ban the use of drugs outside of colorado that would probably not be viewed as strong Public Policy and people get worried about the implications from that perspective. I think the trademark context, it is hard to tell, but at least the license plate is a physical government thing that the government produces. I think it will be awfully hard to transfer that trins pell over to the trademark context which is true gives you Legal Protection for something but it is not embodied in any government anything. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] i think were ready to start the second panel. We have some incredible journalists here today that have covered the court extensively and offer great insights to complement the things weve heard today. I would like to introduce the moderator for the panelist this is morning, Elizabeth Slattery is a legal fellow here is the Heritage Foundation at the mooes legal center. She writes about cases before the Judicial Court and nominations and the proper role of course. And she managed the Appellate Advocacy Program which includes doing mute Court Sessions in preparing litigators for oral argument before the Supreme Court. She is a graduate of george mason and xavier university. Thank you rachel. Weve just heard from an impressive panel of lawyers who argued the cases this tomorrow. Now well hear from the top Court Reporters in the nation. Theirs is not an easy task. Trying to explain to the American People what the Supreme Courts complex and rather confusing opinions means. This needs a profound known. And ill keep introductions brief and get right into the discussion. Just bravin is the united statesed correspondent and editor of the wall street journal california weekly. Author of the book terror courts from guantanamo bay. Prior to joining the journal he wrote for the wash post, harpers business oar and spy magazine and evaluated skipts for hollywood talent agencies and taught at the california Washington Center and held the 2015 senior memorial electionship in law at the university of miami. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the university of berkeley law school. Adam liptak joined the New York Times as a copy boy after graduating from yale at university. He returned to yale to receive his law degree and practice the at one of the premier First Amendment law firms. In 1992 he returns to the times Legal Department and spend a decade there. He taught media law at columbia and ucla and yale law school. His work has appeared in the new yorker vanity fair, Rolling Stone and a number of leading law reviews. Mark sherman has covered the sosh aated press since 2006 and landmark decisions on gay marriage, health care and gun rights and Campaign Finance. Hes previously written about the justice department, health care and National Politics and mar than 25 years as a reporter based in washington and atlanta. Before joining the a. P. , mark worked for the atlanta jurm constitution and a graduate of princeton university. So first i want to start with you adam. Picking up on the discussion at the end of the last panel about the First Amendment, looking at the Confederate Flag case and the sign regulation case out of arizona, why was the judgment unanimous in one and split in the other and what Juris Prudence do you see following these decisions . Weve covered this stuff in the Previous Panel but let me see if i can add a couple of points to link the three cases together. You see a couple of things in a broad level of generalality. One is free speeches is a con turfive value. And the other is that the liberals on the court and these and other cases tend to vote as a block and when they can pick off one of the members of the conservative side they achieve a victory. About the Confederate Flag case, i guess you can say this. It came out the morning after the charleston shootings. And it would have put the court in an awkward position it had come out the other way. But it also is a very blunt instrument to 300 different texas license plates that say things like id rather be golfing or advertise burger joints as government speech. And it has it has an ip saw dixa caught. I dont know how person. The consequences are but as a matter of First Amendment doctrine, it is troubling. The other two cases simultaneously expand the realm of strict scrutiny and as andy was saying, cheap ebb the band by making cheap scrutiny something other than trikt. In gilbert it was unanimous as a result, as elizabeth said, but three of the justices, led by kagan, who has written a lot about discrimination including a law article objected to what she ser peeved perceived to be a sweeping statement from Justice Thomas saying all content regulation immediately triggers strict scrutiny. She was of the view of this was an easy case. If you are going to treat church signs different from regular public signs urk need the laugh test. If it doesnt pass the laugh test then you dont have to make the pronouncement. But you can see this from the citation that the proposition that everything gets strict scrutiny. And the thomas project to expand political to commercial speech and indeed his citation for the proposition was the surreal pharmaceutical marketing case. So on the one hand we have a decision which very aggressively expands the realm of strict scrutiny and then you see it in action as andy was saying in Williams Healy where under no conceivable rational system can this be this particular regulation, whatever compelling interest or not can this be said to be narrowly tailored to advance that interest. It is the opposite of narrowly tailored. And then you have the four liberals picking up the vote and the pen of the chief justice who writes this opinion, there has only been one other majority opinion under First Amendment strict scrutiny was struck down and that was holder against humanitarian law project where the interest was at least national security. And yet you have the chief justice saying this quite surprising in light of both on comments and argument and that he wrote a vigorous dissent in a Campaign Regulation case broadly speaking, caperton. So there are some rattic thoughts on the First Amendment cases. Following up on that do you think there is a connection between the license plate case and the cross burning case from several years ago and do you think any justices treat the Confederate Flag and the burning cross not just speech but threats that dont deserve protection . Well im the Junior Member of the this panel and i welcome the thoughts of the other guys. It does seem to be of a piece when Justice Thomas still spoke from the bench some comments he made about cross burning from the bench that he might in this particular case join the four liberals which is not a configuration you see very often. Yeah, i wasnt here when they had the cross burning case either but i do think it would have been helpful if Justice Thomas had written a concurrence and given us insight as to why he saw this being different from the other free speech cases that hes taken positions on. Jess, turning to the criminal law docket, have the justices been more leeway, or rodriguez which had to do with traffic stops and drug sniffing dogs. I do think in the criminal law doct were seeing at the Supreme Court a reflection of the same thing were seeing across the street at the capital which is a much broader skepticism which is the tough on crime approach that the states and the Congress Took in the 1980s whose ramifications particularly with very long sentences and three strikes youre out lifetime sentences are being felt now. I mean, on capitol hill we see bipartisan efforts to reexamine some of the policies. And the court, were seeing and particularly when they have to judge for instance which source of offenses trig as sentence enhancement and which sort of offenses trigger automatic deportation and the court has been siding with the individual against the government and against prosecutors. And they dont they dont say obviously in thur opinions that they are going out of their way to raise this critique. But as you say, for instance, in those two cases, they are not exactly related. I mean the dog sniff case falls into i think a general pattern of a mild resurrect of the Fourth Amendment weve seen in a number of cases where the court is willing to establish somewhat greater standards after essentially paying very little regard to its requirement, in particular in vehicular police encounters. Not always as we saw with the brake light case earlier in the year where there was a mistake of law issue, that is one from north carolina, about whether a car needed one or two working brake lights to call and the courts said agreeing with the police that the law was sufficiently ambiguous and that the policemans mistake that one broken brake light was enough to justify a stop and that mistake of law was not fatal to the traffic stop. It is not always ruling for the defendant but it does seem we are seeing it. In the patel case, the hotel registry case, it is interesting this never came up before given that a lot of the ordinances date back many decades. In los angeles, they have a ordinance that in condition of having an innkeeper of los angeles, the old inns of los angeles where you might ride your house to see if they have a room for the night, the innkeepers license requires maintaining a hotel recommendationster in which register in which the guest has to identify themself and put in information and that register is available at any time for inspection by a Police Officer for any and no reason. And the police tended to use that to go for what they called parking meter hotels, hotels that might be renting rooms by the hour for short periods in South Central l. A. And they said they were using this power to deter crime and fight Human Trafficking and other things that might that shady people might to use these low rent hotels for. Hotel owners family owned type, Small Businesses complained, the police were harassing them and maybe they had good crime control reasons but these were not big places with big staff and showing up at 2 00 a. M. To wake up the owner to look at the hotel registry without any suspicion was too much. Any way, the court agreed that in order to get access to the registers, the please need something. They dont necessarily need a full search warrant but an administrative subpoena, something other than a whim something that allows the innkeeper to fight the request if he wants to and get a neutral hearing. So the court again pushing back a little bit. I dont know if that is directly a look at directly a critique of the general criminal justice system, but it does reflect a renewed interest in Fourth Amendment i think protections. Thank you. That is funny the cases though, where a couple of terms ago, we had the maryland v king case which was a Fourth Amendment case about whether police could take a dna sample from people they arrested not just people that havent been convicted, they were just arrested and the court there said that was okay. Interestingly, in that case, Justice Breyer was in the majority and scalia was in the dissent. And this seemingly less intrusive issue had Justice Breyer in the majority and scalia dissenting. As jess was saying, they havent quite come out to critique overcriminalization and in yates, the great fish case, is a destruction of the fish a violation of the darkly act and Justice Kagan said listen that is what the majority is upset about it. Im upset about it too. I dont think i can re write the statute. But there is a sense there. And on two different occasions in argument this is term the chief justice asked a question along these lines. A 20 year sentence for what . The power that gives a prosecutor to force a plea bargain is unacceptable and the language doesnt turn up in the opinion but you can see it is on their minds. And i would say that is a remarkable turn around for the chief justice pefrmly because in 1993 after he lost his job as Principal Deputy solicitor general he wrote an op ed for my my newspaper warning or discussing the very aggressive position the First Bush Administration took in helping states fight off criminal defendants who have inedible incredible high power aclu attorneys and the Incoming Administration may not try to defend criminal convictions and keep the aclu onslaught from completely overwhelming the criminal justice system. So it seems his opinion was sort of may have changed or maybe the world has changed around him. I dont know. But it did strike me, the comments he made in term this particular going more far beyond what weve seen him express regarding criminal defendants rights. Mark, it was a good term for religious liberty and one that didnt produce deeply provided opinions like hobby lobby or the prayer case last term. What explains the decisions in holt versus hobbs and apper crom by. Both cases were easy cases for the court to decide and in both of those, holt v hobbs was a case of a muslim prisoner in arkansas who wanted to grow a short beard and was told he couldnt. He wanted it grow it for religious reasons and told he couldnt. And the euc case is a woman who went to a Job Interview wearing her head scarf and wasnt hired and that case was it wasnt it wasnt clear that she was wearing her head scarf for religious reasons and she never said that is why she said it but the person interviewing her had a pretty good idea she was wearing it for religious reasons and she wasnt hired by abercrombie and fitch because at the time the company had a no caps policy that that these caps or head scarves or any kind of head covering werent part of the company look. Both cases were easily decided by the core. And if you look at the briefing in the case with the exception of business groups in the eeoc case, the briefing was really onesided. It is not cases as holt v hobbs produced, where im sorry as the eoc case produced where the becht those were sort of those were cases where in the arkansas case, about the prisoner. 40 states allowed prisoners to grow beards. There had been no real instances of inmates hiding contraband in their beard. The sort of purported security interest was very hard to see. And the court, maybe along the same way, wasnt willing to defer to authorities in that case. In the Abercrombie Fitch case it was an 81 decision. And which Justice Scalia wrote, and he said that, look if a Company Thinks or has a reasonable idea that someone has a is going to need a religious accommodation, they should give the person the religious accommodation. In the argument in that case, there were a couple of justices who said maybe this leads to awkward conversations up front, but thats far better than the situation that resulted. So this is for following up on that for anyone who wants to comment. In his majority opinion in the abercrombie case, Justice Scalia said there were favorable treatments for religious practices. Will it affect the cases of bakers and others in the wedding industry that cite religious reasons for not being involved in samesex weddings . I dont think those are going to be as easily decided. I think those are cases where youll see the familiar split emerge, and theyll be much harder. I dont think that thats a phrase that the left side of the court will willingly adapt to the religious liberty. I dont know how much you need that, if you have religious freedom restoration provisions that you can rely on. I suppose the scalia stuff about job discrimination helps you a little bit, but you have a fairly significant defense in the all over the country. I think that will be a very messy situation, because despite the marriage ruling, you know, federal law doesnt protect Sexual Orientation as a class. Its really at the moment a statebystate issue. Half the states have some form of antidiscrimination protection based on Sexual Orientation. And also, about half have some kind of rfra type laws on the books. I think well see as is currently happening in this oregon sweet cakes case state courts and state judiciary applying their statutes and constitution in these instances. So we may see it play out considerably differently until and unless congress decides to set a clarifier to add some kind of Sexual Orientation protection. Because right now, there will only be a bare constitutional floor level of protection for samesex couples now under federal law. So i dont know what grounds they would it would be hard for them to, i think bring a case as easily as they might under state law in some states. I think the average person is a little surprised by this. You tell them that in much of the country samesex couples can get married in the afternoon and then fired that evening for being gay. Its a funny sequence of events. Surprising one really, that you establish a constitutional right in samesex marriage, where a majority of the nation theres no job discrimination, or housing discrimination protection for gay people. You know, to borrow a thought from Justice Scalia they can get married. They could if there were samesex couples prior to last month. Employers can still fire them for being hippies. They were not a protected class. They would fall into any other kind of married couple you dont like. Unless, you know theres a protection for married people you dont like. Theres nothing there. Back to adam. One more thing. Okay. One more point. Some antidiscrimination laws do make marital status a protected class. Im just wondering if marital status now means now includes the sex of the spouse. I mean, in fact, i wonder if the marital status protections will now also encompass samesex marriages specifically. If you have a bigot who wants to discriminate against somebody, so make sure its on the basis of them being gay, not being part of a samesex married couple. Its not that theyre married. Yes. Right. I could discriminate if you were single and married. Okay, moving on from samesex marriage. Adam its been a disappointing term for conservatives in many respects. You wrote that the justices on the left could steer the court by being disciplined in voting as one. Unlike the conservatives who didnt agree even when they voted together. Was this a shift to the left but a term outlier . I think the conservatives should feel pretty good. If you look at next terms docket and we can talk about it later on there are some cases where the conservative side is in pretty good shape. You know, theres all kinds of ways to try to assess how the court did. Political scientists by a standard surprisingly large percentage of cases came out in the liberal direction. Thats also true in voting alignment. Theres been a lot of pushback that this is an especially liberal court. There are people who say that it was a consequence of conservatives making claiming ambitious cases to the court and falling short. And the status quo staying constant. I think theres probably something to that argument. As far as the conservatives being divided, i think theres more authentic intellectual argument on the right side of the court. There are different differentials on the right side of the court. The left side of the court is very tightly concentrated ideologically, and its not always clear what the juris prudential theory is beyond the outcome in a particular case. Did you want to comment . I agree. I think the phenomenon of liberal unity and conservative diversity in views is something weve seen now for many years on this court. I mean, even when the conservatives win, they usually cant agree why they won. As we saw in the marriage case, when they lose they cant agree on why they lost. We have four different disseptsnts case. They couldnt agree on the reasons they objected to the majority. So this is something we saw. For instance, i think back several years ago, there was an opportunity for the court to overrule flask versus cohen, which was the established standing case from 1969. In there you had a 54 decision, but there were three opinions in the majority. And you actually found six justices on the court agree that the majority outcome made no sense. That either flask should cover executive expenditures in the way it covers legislative expenditures in creating an established clause type of cause of action, or neither should be covered. In other words flask made sense either only if it was extended or eliminated. That would be the intellectually consistent thing to do. You had two in the majority agreeing with that. But they came out in different directions. The same thing happened throughout this term. Now, its also true that weve seen really since the 90s when Justice Stephens was the senior liberal justice, i dont know if thats even a title now. Like its all in capitals at this point. Justice stephens made a big point in trying to draw them all together. Justice ginsburg said she tries to do the same thing, and is cautious and careful in assigning dissenting opinions when necessary. They seem to exert a kind of discipline, and cohesion that you know stereo typically maybe we would expect more of the conservatives. When you saw in the marriage case. Justice kennedys opinion that no one would mistake for having been written by anyone else all four of the liberal justices who joined him they saw exactly the same way. Because none of them wrote a concurring opinion. None of them thought a single punctuation mark being out of line without of view that Justice Kennedy put forward. They do have that unity. The conservatives seem to have, as adam said, sometimes significantly, sometimes minorly different ways to want to get often to the same place. I think one of the things going on is that there is a generational divide that sometimes shows between the chief justice and Justice Scalia and i think its borne mostly of the fact that Justice Scalia sees the five votes to do something, and he wants to get it done now. And the chief justice doesnt necessarily see that sense of urgency. And one good example from a few years ago, the wisconsin right to life case where the Campaign Finance case where Justice Scalia raged in a concurrence that the chief justice wouldnt go far enough. And go all the way. And the same thing happened in the bond case last year, where, again, what someone here termed angry concurrence. Justice scalia said the court wasnt willing to do what it should have done. You saw Justice Scalia sort of making this very point about the unity on the left in a footnote where he says, and theres some force to this, because the four liberals who signed on to Justice Kennedys opinion, had they had the assignment, they would have written it very differently. And there would have been more doctrine in it. You might be able to get the constitutional provision involved. The level of scrutiny where equal protection fits in. But they like to speak with one voice. And Justice Scalia said that even if he were inclined to vote in that direction, he would sooner hide his head in a paper bag than provide the fifth vote for that particular opinion. Thats right. Its funny, the following monday you saw all four justices wearing paper bags when they took the bench. Mark in the lethal injection case Justice Breyer said in his dissent that the court should review the constitutionality of the Death Penalty. There are sentencing issues next term. Do you think the court is likely to take up the constitutional issue in an appropriate case . Im skeptical thats going to happen anytime soon. In the gloss ek case, Justice Breyer said its unlikely the Death Penalty is unconstitutional. He said this is a product of his 20 years of reviewing these cases on the bench. For a variety of reasons. Including how long it takes to carry out sentences, how many exonerations there have been, and other factors as well. Whats curious to me is that, hes not the first justice to come rather late in his career to this conclusion. Justice blackman did at the very end of his time on the court. Justice stephens did near the end of his time on the court. Its curious to me that it would take in reality Justice Breyer 20 years to come to a conclusion that was sitting there in 1994 hen he joined the court. After all, he had just seen Justice Blackman say those very words that he would no longer tinker with with death. And its existed for some time. So but the reason i dont think this is necessarily going to get a full airing before the court anytime soon is that, it seems unlikely that the even if the other two liberal justices were inclined to take this on that they would do it without knowing where Justice Kennedy would come out. After all, i dont think they would want to take on a case that would end in the court justifying the Death Penalty. I dont see any justification in kennedys writings on the Death Penalty that hes willing to take that final step. He has talked in the paul case, which is the case about intellectual disability. He talked about the importance of the dignity the 8th amendment, the dignity that affects the nation the nation that we are and aspire to be. And some people have seen that sort of rhetorical fight as an indication he could be open in the future to that kind of challenge. But i havent seen any indication since. Justice kennedy did invite a different kind of challenge, which if i were a litigator and so inclined i would promptly bring absolutely nothing in a case involving jury selection. He invited a challenge to the constitutionity of indefinite solitary confinement. Justice kennedy said, bring me a case. The people in that business should get on the ball. On the larger point of why brier and ginsburg now have an opposition to the Death Penalty, is speculating that, its actually got to be one of the least fun aspects of being a Supreme Court justice is being interrupted at night and on vacation, with a steady parade of lastminute applications for do you think its a lifestyle thing . Well, i think brier might say that it gives him an insight into what may look to him as a system without any rhyme or reason. We only execute like 35 people a year these days. And why those 35 as opposed to all the other murderers probably has him scratching his head. The only thing is that was truer years ago when there were more executions and there were more interruptions. Its just its something that i guess it cant be said in the process of being nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court people, if they come to the bench with doubts about the Death Penalty, i think they keep them quiet. And theres a certain i guess, freedom that comes with the approach of retirement allowing them to say this now. I sort of imagine if they do reach the constitutional issue, that the chief justices dissent, complaining looking at all the states that have recently repealed the Death Penalty, why would the Community Wait for this process to play out just as the wind was at their back. You read about president obamas comments looking at what past president s had to say about the Supreme Court. Do you think his comments had any impact on the outcome . I think that speaks for itself. Do you think should we expect this to be the new normal Going Forward that president s are going to be commenting about pending cases before the justices . This was interesting. Obama has gotten attention not all flattering for his comments on court cases, particularly before theyre decided. And as well as after, where i think its a bit more typical for president s to speak after decisions are made. But it did seem interesting that, i mean he actually went as far to criticize even the stage where he said in midjune that the court shouldnt even have taken this case. So the it was interesting, and by coincidence i happened to have sitting in my inbox a study of president ial comments on pending Supreme Court cases since 1954. So looking at this study, and seeing how really rare it was, although not completely unheard of for president s to comment when they had cases of which they took some interest before the Supreme Court, i dont think it is going to be a very typical thing. I think this as the study itself observed, president s most likely commenting on Supreme Court cases tend to be lawyers who think they know about the law and are in a position to discuss it. And so president clinton actually commented on a pending case where he sort of predicted that the court would side with him in the census statistical sampling case. It has happened before. I dont think it is going to be very common. I think this president believes he knows a lot about the law, and is in a good position to explain it. Not so much to the justices i dont think he has any illusions about that. I think hes more trying to explain, or lay out his legal position to the public, and to either assure them that his legal position is wise, and sustainable, or sort of lay the groundwork for a response should he lose. So i dont think its going to be that common. I dont think that obama has actually planned most of these remarks, when he has made them. I think as they did in that case, it came up at a press conference where he was directly asked a question, and he immediately responded because i think it was on his mind. My guess is it wont be something we see very typically although he has had more, i think, significant pieces of legislation, or, you know, before the court, than the typical president does. Any comments . This is for any of the panelists. As we enter the president ial election cycle how prominent do you think the Supreme Court will be in the campaign . For example senator ted cruz is proposing a president ial are suggestion well, every four years, we have this conversation. And it always ends up being the answer ends up being no, except the only time, or in recent times when the court was at all an issue is when Richard Nixon ran in 1968. And it only was an issue running against the warren court because it fit into the law and Order Campaign that he ran more generally. But i think to think that the court, you know i cant remember what the statistics are, but more people can identify the three stooges than the members of the Supreme Court, the idea that its going to be a salient issue in the Supreme Court the holder becomes less well known the longer he or she serves than any other office. Theyre known when theyre on tv for their confirmation. Then they disappear. We found chief Justice Roberts is known by fewer americans today than he was ten years ago. So in a recent poll that we had. I think the courts importance right now is going to be important for donors. This sort of invisible part of the election, there are hardcore people on both the left and right who are super concerned about the direction of the court. Probably theres a disproportionate number of those watching today. And they will be making their preferences known not so much at the ballot box, but in which candidate they support and how they support them, and so on. I think its important to constituencies and individuals, small number but outside influence. Had the court ruled differently in some of these cases, such as the marriage case or the health care case, it might have been a bigger political issue. But i do think that in terms of becoming a very major popular issue, that would only happen if we end up for some reason with a vacancy close to election day where it crystallizes the stakes immediately for the typical voter. I completely agree in the scriptive matter that the court will not play much of a role in the campaign. But it really ought to. The next president will probably get to appoint you know, more than one, maybe three Supreme Court justices. And i dont know why people dont pay more attention to that. Maybe its our fault. If we just covered it better. Looking at the flip side of that question, do you think any of the justices are looking political, will shy away from taking up any particularly controversial issues in the next term because of the upcoming election . Weve seen no evidence of that. Okay. So this question is for all three of you. Based on something mark wrote. He wrote its virtually impossible to get anything done without roberts or kennedy on your side. Even though kennedy was in the majority of more 54 decisions this term, do you think roberts is increasingly going to become the typical vote . I think i wrote that just to point out the oddity of their one decision this term where both kennedy and roberts were in dissent, which almost never happens. It was the license plate case. I think its only happened one other time on the court. There was a forgettable case a few years ago where the five junior justices were the majority. So that said the chief justice is it seems like hes going to play that role where you know questions are present about the courts you know, the institutional integrity of the court, or the courts reputation. I think hes more likely to vote to perhaps you know when those cases are other ideologically split, where he worries that a decision that looks too much like a decision by five republican appointed justices would damage the courts reputation, that perhaps in those cases he finds a way to the other side. Unless im mistaken, there are exactly two decisions in which the chief joins the four liberals. Congratulations, guys. One final question, then well open it up for questions from the audience. Is there a particular con current dissent that you found particularly striking this term that you commend . I liked the brief Clarence Thomas dissent. There were many many long dissents about the vagaries of the state, which ill read this summer. But i like maybe against my better judgment that after Justice Kennedy called for a look at solitary confinement, Justice Thomas wrote back in a separate concurrence that he thought that the death row inmate in particular had much more spacious quarters than the ones occupied by his victims. Yeah, i would agree that those two concurrences are agreed. Theyre a great stat. I think just the one phrase after the other in the scalia end of term dissent. Its sort of like a great assist. Yeah. You really have to put yourself with that, well open it up to the audience. I have a few rules, wait for the microphone, please identify yourself, and ask a brief question. And with that hi. Paul cannon. You talked about the patel case in yates, would you care to comment on the aloneus state and how it might impact lower courts for specific intent . We had a good discussion of that from john. And as he pointed out, you know, the court said very little, other than not negligence. Not clear whether recklessness works or not. And i imagine people will be trying to make sense of that, across a whole spectrum of criminal laws. And where it fits in. Thank you. My name is arnold cyteland. Its likely its a possibility that the 2016 election will continue to divide the government that exists today, with the executive being a Different Party from the legislature. What impact would this have on the president s ability to fill vacancies under that kind of situation . Hard to know up front, except that obviously it suggests that the nominees would be more to the center rather than to the right or left, depending upon who wins the white house. But i think part of that will depend on the mandate the new president has, the if theres sort of a first nature to the next appointment, all sorts of questions like that. Any additional questions . Right here . Thank you very much. Ian williams. Adam, you said for the cases that will come, thoughts from the panel about some of the blockbusters that might be next. There are three of them. Its already a pretty good term. This last term will be hard to beat. I remember a couple of years ago we had the First Health Care case. We said thats the term of the century. Then the first go at marriage. We thought that was the term of the century. And health care and marriage, we certainly did have a term of the century. That will be hard to follow. We have a second look at the affirmative action case. That sure makes you think that there are at least four votes and an attempt to put kennedy on the spot. Kennedy, whos never voted to uphold an affirmative action program, whether the university of texas is an affirmative action program. Here again well have a look at what the court means by scrutiny. In the second case, just granted, brought by mike, represents a very serious challenge to the way public unions are run. Whether nonmembers of public unions can be forced nonetheless to pay for fees that the unions use for collective bargaining activities, that may be said to violate the First Amendment right of the union members. And thats both a very interesting and substantial question. And quite consequential case. Theres a really interesting case that you might have thought we know the answer to already which we dont, which is, what does one person one vote mean. Do you count every Single Person which is what the census does, or do you count the people who are eligible to vote . This matters a lot. In most places, they count every Single Person. But that means that in urban centers, you get a lot of children, you get people who are here legally from abroad but not entitled to vote you have undocumented people people whose right to vote has been stripped from them because they have felons, you have prisoners. So you have vastly different voting power in different districts, if by voting power you mean eligible voters. The courts agreed to decide now which way that goes. And here again you have great political consequences, because at the moment urban centers, which tend to be blue, get more voting power than rural places, which tend to be red. And the court at least conceivably will recast that map. Thats three pretty good cases. And that doesnt include the strong likelihood of a case on abortion, based on the texas clinic restrictions. It would be quite surprising with the texas case. There were going to have for the first time in a long time a real look at it. Any others . Those are the big ones that are here right now. I think the lesson we saw from this term is that just because the court is willing to look at these cases look at these very carefully, doesnt mean that the outcome is a fata comply. Thats from the texas versus the Inclusive Communities case, the disparate Impact Housing case. There we saw the court going out of its way to really look at that issue, twice granting sert on the issue twice having the chance to hear it. Snatched from their grasp by those litigants who dismissed, or settled their cases. And then finally getting a chance to look at it and saying it looks like all the appeals courts have considered this issue for the past four years were right, never mind. So, yeah were going to see those cases. Keep in mind that were going to see the results of those cases no later than june of a president ial election year. So the kinds of institutional concerns about rocking the boat and being a Disruptive Force in the political system may weigh heavily on the justices minds than they are right now. For instance if they a one man one vote ruling depending on what they say, coming right before a big election, you know might be the kind of thing that slightly increases from 0. 1 to 0. 11 to the Supreme Court as a political decision. Weve come to the end of our time. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] this weekend on the cspan networks, politics, books, and american history. A road to the white house coverage features nearly all of the president ial candidates and begins friday night in iowa. At 8 00 eastern were live on cspan for the Democratic Party hall of fame dinner. All day saturday starting at 11 00 a. M. Eastern live at the family leadership summit in ames iowa. And interviews with two republican president ial candidates, first South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and Ohio Governor john kasich who plans to announce his candidacy on monday. Saturday morning on cspan2, live from new york city for the harlem book fair, on economics, africanamerican identity and race and politics, with a story of an urban painter. Sunday night at 10 00, political commentator ann colter said the greatest issue facing the u. S. Is immigration. American history tv on cspan3, saturday afternoon starting at 1 00 eastern, were live with the warren g. Harding symposium. The executive director of the first ladies library. And a little after 9 00 showing how the u. S. Government used propaganda during world war ii to persuade citizens to join the military, buy war bonds and keep national secrets. Get our complete schedule at cspan. Org. Nasa researchers today showed some of the latest and most detailed photographs of the dwarf planet pluto, and its moons, coming from the new horizons spacecraft. Well hear from five of the project scientists talking about the image also of pluto and its satellite at this onehour briefing. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Johns Hopkins laboratory in lower maryland. To set the stage for todays press conference, please welcome to the podium associate administrator, from washington, d. C. , dr. John brunsfeld. [ applause ] welcome, everyone. Its a full auditorium here at the Johns Hopkins university applied physics lab. I was a little bit worried no one would show up. Actually, i wasnt worried at all. Anybody get any sleep last night . Im not hearing two many affirmations of a good nights sleep. Im not going to ask the team because i know they were probably pretty excited about this mornings data path, as was i. I would like to take you on a short tour to frame the discussion. Im not going to say a whole lot. The first image that id like to bring up was taken just about two hours ago by the Solar Dynamics observatory. I hope you recognize that object. And i think you know where were going. Mercury. From the messenger mission, venus. From magellan. If anybody doesnt recognize the next planet id like you to leave the auditorium. Security will escort you to area 51. [ laughter ] [ applause ] the red planet mars. I had to get a hubble image in there somewhere. [ applause ] i realize i missed a series which the spacecraft is orbiting right now. Jupiter with the moons and shadows. Cassini at saturn. What a wonderful mission. This is just a striking image. Neptune. And for a grand finale i turn it over to allen stearn, the Principal Investigator of the pluto new horizons mission. [ applause ] before we turn it over to allen, ive got a few words to say. Yesterday, americas Space Program took another historic leap for humankind. Today, the new Horizons Team is bringing what was previously a blurred point of light into focus. Well have presentations from our panel. Well open it up for questions with media here. On social media. And well go to the phone lines. You can join the conversation on social media twitter, facebook at pluto flyby. If you have questions, send those in to ask nasa. Of course, the images and information you will hear today, for more days and weeks and months, will be online at www. Nasa. Gov new horizons. Youve heard from dr. John grunsfeld. Of course, allen stearn needs no introduction. So i will go to hall weaver, who is project scientist from the Johns Hopkins applied physics laboratory. Followed by will grundy, new horizons coinvestigator Lowell Observatory in flagstaff, arizona. He will be followed by kathy olken from the southwest research institute. And john spencer another new horizons coinvestigator from the southwest research institute. And with that, allen its all yours. Thank you. I had a pretty good day yesterday. How about you . [ applause ] new horizons is now more than a million miles on the other side of pluto. Thats how fast were moving. Having made close approach yesterday morning. The spacecraft is in good health. Its communicated with the earth again for a period of a number of hours this morning beginning about 5 50. We got data down from five of the scientific instruments already. Were going to report on some of those results. But frankly, were just skimming the top of it. Theres a lot in just the things were going to talk to you about. We have big news. From the first resolved image of hide dra plutos outermost moon the sharing has been active. [ applause ] and there are mountains in the quaker belt. Youll enjoy that. The system is amazing. Now, all of our news today relates to the surfaces of pluto, and its satellite. Well be talking more about the surfaces in the press event on friday down at nasa headquarters. But well also be bringing in atmospheric results at this point. I do want to report one piece of news thats more or less operational, and that is that the spectrometer got a great data set from the ground from the uv solar oscillation, learning about plutos atmosphere. So stay tuned friday for that. With that, ill turn it over to hall weaver, who is our project scientist. Hals going to give you a little bit of hydrotherapy. Hal . Thank you very much, allen. Well pluto and sharon are going to steal the day today. This is going to be these awesome images youll see in a few minutes. Lets not forget that pluto has four small moons as well that we want to collect data on. Starting from closest to the pluto, and going out to. This morning we got the first well really wellresolved scale. Two miles per pixel. This is about the same number of pixels across hydra. Prior to the new horizons revealing of the hydra here, we were uncertain hugh big hydra was. It could have been from 20 miles across to almost 100 miles across. New horizons has made it easy. Just count the number of pixels across. 28 by 19 miles. The elongated object hydra is not a planet. But 30 larger in one dimension than another. This is very interesting. You see variations in the brightness across the surface. If you go to the next slide this shows what we did here is subsample the image by a factor of four. Its four times subsampled to take away the pixelated look. And overlay contours showing the brightness changes, and we took cuts across to measure the approximate places where you have the longest dimensions, in the green and the shorter dimension in the yellow. The surface of hydra is surprisingly large. Its about 45 reflectivity. About 45 of the sunlight gets reflected away. That can only mean that the hydra surface is composed primarily of water. The only way to get it that bright. Thats cool. [ laughter ] its intermediate in brightness between sharon and pluto. The nice thing about we have coming up actually more observations of hydra which will be higher resolution by a factor of two or three better. Were looking forward to those. But its great. Weve already seen hydra revealed. And it looks very interesting. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Will grundy leads our Composition Team. And is going to report some results that theyve obtained. Okay. So, the ralph instrument is the instrument where were relying mostly on for surface compositions. It has a color camera and infrared imaging spectrometer called lisa. We dont get any data down today from either of those instruments, and so what im showing you is data that came down in the failsafe data set. That came down overnight between the 12th and the 13th. So this is a little earlier. This is a base map thats just showing you the geometry. You can see that the heart region is just rotating on. So this is a little while ago. Could i have the next time stamp . This is an overlay of lisa data. So what i did is each of those large blocky pixels about 150 kilometers across, is an infrared spectrum. It tells you what that pixel is made out of. Were going to get much higher Resolution Data than this but this is whats in the can now. These colors are just preinfrared wave lengths. We get 256 wave lengths. We could make an enormous variety of maps to pull out the information. This particular one is focusing on methane. I put an absorption band at about 1. 65 microns into the blue color channel. A continuum region between two methane bands into the green channel. And a much stronger methane band into the red channel. All im doing here is showing, again, lower resolution than the color images yesterday the diversity of terrains. What im going to do now is to pick out a couple of specific regions, although you can see theres many different regions here. So if i could get the next time stamp, please. These two regions of interest ones a 3 by 3 pixel block, and another one is a squiggly thing in the darker regions. Im concentrating on the solar cap and the darker regions. The last time stamp that i have, you can see theyre quite different from each other. They both have methane. But the overall shape of the spectrum is very different. And we can really be spending years modeling these and thinking about what they tell us. Theres a lot of information. We only have a small subset of the wave lengths at this point, because we just dont have the bandwidth to get more down. But this is providing a lot of information about the different regions, and how they work. Thank you, will. [ applause ] yesterday we showed you a Beautiful Image of pluto that was made just before the closest approach, as part of the failsafe data sets. Today well show an image of a similar resolution on the big satellite sharon. Kathy will discuss those. Originally i thought sharon might be an ancient terrain covered in craters. Many people on the team thought that might have been the case. And so sharon just blew our socks off when we had the new image today. So if we can pull it up so you can take a look at it. [ applause ] so we were just thrilled. All morning the team has been abuzz. Look at this look at that oh, my god, thats amazing ill walk you guys through some of the things weve seen in the image and tell you what were thinking about. And im going to start in the north and kind of work my way down. So youve seen the darkish area that is at the north pole. And informally weve been referring to that as moreador. Thats awesome. So morador is the darkest area near the pole. You can see, this is a natural color image. And so the red around it the red coloring that weve seen, extends beyond just the deepest, darkest part of that polar region morador. We think that the dark coloring could perhaps be a veneer. You can see locations at the north pole where a crater has perhaps dug into that region, and excavated underneath it. So you can see those brighter regions that may be craters. So thats part of the reason why i say we think it could be a thin veneer. So lets see. And also you can see that that area is kind of a polygon shape. And then the red color is more diffuse around it. Moving down across, a little bit lower, going from the northeast to the southwest, is a series of troughs. And cliffs. And thats just striking to me. Its amazing to see this image. They extend about 600 miles across the planet. So this is a huge area. And it could be that its due to internal processing. And we will be looking at that in more detail. Just below that region, the line that you see cutting across from the northeast to the southwest, more eastwest than northsouth is a region where its relatively smooth. Theres less craters. So perhaps its been geologically active or recently resurfacing that area. So thats very exciting to see as well. Two features that i want to go back up a little bit higher on the near the top at about the 2 00 position. You see a canyon. You can see a long linear feature. And you can actually at the very top see kind of a notch, where youre looking through to the space on the other side. And that canyon is really quite deep. Its about 4 to 6 miles deep. I find that fascinating. So its a small world with deep canyons, troughs, cliffs dark regions that are still slightly mysterious to us. Theres another canyon on the other side at maybe the 10 00 or 11 00 position and that one is about three miles deep. There is so much interesting science in this one image alone. And we have higher resolution image that well get. One covers a whole all of char charon, but will get some of the dark area and some of the middle area. Its going to be about a factor of 5 better in resolution. So as weve been saying it did not disappoint. I can add charon did not disappoint either. Thank you. [ applause ] yesterday when we showed that Beautiful Image of pluto we noted that we would have imagery with ten times the resolution on the ground by today. In fact john spencer is going to tell us about the first just the first frame of that mosaic thats already down on the ground. Which is already giving us a big surprise. John . Thank you, allen. So, yeah, weve got a whole bunch of highresolution observations now onboard the spacecraft. This is just one small part of one of those observations. And if i can have the first slide. Dont get excited yet. [ laughter ] this is what we saw yesterday. And this is spectacular image. But we now are focusing in on the small details on this amazing world. Before i go to that, i should say that we now have an informal name for the heart. The heart is a good name that we want to honor the discovery of pluto. We are calling this regio. [ applause ] and so if i can have the slide back. Were now going to focus on a small region at the bottom of this image which is near the day night line. So were going to be focusing on an area just a little bit to the left of the bottom of the frame. And if we can now run the movie. Okay. Were zooming in on this area. Here it comes. [ applause ] yeah, that was our reaction, too. So this is it covers the whole region around it covering a quite variety of terrain. This is one of the things that really caught our attention. Its about 150 miles across. Weve seen features as small as half a mile here. You can see the a. P. L. Campus on this kind of image. The most stunning things about this well, theres many stunning things, but the most striking geologically we havent found an impact crater on this image. That means this is a young surface. Pluto has been bombarded by other objects in the belt. And craters are bound to happen. So just eyeballing it we think it has to be probably less than 100 million years old, which is a small fraction of the 4. 5 billion year age of the solar system. These mountains here that were seeing are quite spectacular. These are up to 11,000 feet high. There may be higher ones elsewhere. We know the surface of pluto is covered in a lot of Nitrogen Hydrogen ice. Its too soft and doesnt have the strength to make mountains. Were seeing the bedrock, or bed ice of pluto. Were seeing the icy crust. Water ice are Strong Enough to hold big mountains, and we think thats what were seeing here. The nitrogen and methane are just the coating on the icy bedrock, and were seeing that here. Now, whats particularly exciting to me about this is this is the first time weve seen an icy world in a giant climate. We see strange geological features on moons. We usually attribute this to heating. And interactions with other moons. That cant happen on pluto. There is no giant body that can be deforming pluto on an ongoing regular basis to keep the interior. Charon is just too small to do that. You do not need tidal heating to power ongoing recent geological activity on icy worlds. Thats a really important discovery we just made this morning. [ applause ] [ applause ] so i know this is just the first of many amazing lessons were going to get from pluto. There will be more on friday. Well have more of this mosaic to show you on friday which is going to show equally amazing things, im sure. So stay tuned. And im going to follow up on this same image so we can leave it on the screen for you to enjoy. A couple of other implications that weve reached as a result of this discovery just to expand on what john last said which is very very important. We now have an isolated small planet thats showing activity after 4. 5 billion years. We thought this might be the case after voyager 2 discovered the tritan orbiting neptune, also has virtually no impact craters. But we couldnt be sure for just the reason that john said. Because theres always an out that tidal energy could have powered activity tidal energy due to breaking into orbit around neptune could have been powering the activity on tritan. So that may have been the case for titan, but it cant be the case for pluto. Now we settled the fact that the very small planets can be very active after a long time. I think it will send a lot of geophysicists back to the drawing boards to try to understand how exactly you do that. Theres another implication, and sometimes things work out in science, a couple of months ago in may kelsey singer and myself submitted a paper to the as tro physical journal, making predictions. To follow up on that as john said the steep topography means that the bedrock that makes those mountains, must be made of h20 of water ice. Even though the Composition Team tells us that they found places where the nitrogen veneer has been eroded or scraped off, and we see water ice on pluto for the first time, we can be very sure that the water is there in great abundance. And actually models predicted that. But its nice to see it driven home. The other thing that that means as john said, is that the volatiles are just the frosting. Just the veneer on the surface. Now, the sticky point in this is that plutos atmosphere is being lost to space. At a rate of a few times 27th molecule per seconds, tons per second, and over the age of the solar system, that corresponds to the loss of an equivalent layer of 300 meters of nitrogen and 3 kilometers of nitrogen. If we only see a veneer which we now know whats going on. What kelsey and i predicted in that paper is that if we saw steep topography on pluto and therefore, were only seeing a volatile veneer, then there must be internal activity thats dredging nitrogen up through this active into the present on this planet. Geysers and volcanos but this is very strong evidence that will send uglooking as we get more and more data across the surface of the hemisphere to look for this phenomenon. That paper submitted in may was accepted today. Hows that . [ applause ] i should point out the editor of the journal is only learning of the results were telling you because shes watching it. All right. Thats summarizes the primary things we wanted to tell you about the data that landed just this morning. Each of the images and data sets have a lot more to tell us about plutos history and small planets and how they are formed and einvolvevolve. We could see the heart very far from pluto. When we were still 70 million miles out and only barely resolving the planet little better than hubble can do from three billion miles away you can see that shining like a beacon. Because its the most prominent feature on the planet thats we want to call it tom balreggio. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, before we take questions from the media here and on the phone lines on social media, i want to take a moment to say it has been a remarkable week. It has been magical and as we transition from the johns hopcons applied Physics Library here to nasa press conferences, the world has been watching. Dr. John grumsfeld five time astronaut hubble repairman and head of almost 100 missions with new horizons being one of them. Hes a household name and household nationally and international. And the new Horizons Team and the Johns Hopkins, household names. Show the world how much you appreciate that and what they have done this week with as nice and as loud as you can round of applause for their accomplishments. [ applause ] okay. Now lets get to the questions. If you can raise your hand high, we have a full house. I want to make sure i can get as many as i can and see you clearly. Lets start with here and wait for the mic and give you name and affiliation please. Irene with reuters. Theres a lot to digest. So i guess one of the first questions i have is for cathy. Does the realization that charon is active have any implications for the origin theories that it was splat off of pluto in another body . Thanks. I dont think that i dont know quite yet. So what id say off the top of my head is that i was thinking we would see lots of craters and that would tell us something about how long ago charon creed. That would tell us something about that giant impact. The fact we dont see the craters makes that difficult to do. But i dont know that we are going to have to put our thinking caps on and understand how this all fits together and what it means. So this image just came down today, and were making a lot of it right now. But thats my kind of yeah. Yeah. Briefly we dont know how many craters there are. Some of the details are obscured well get better images as exacty said tomorrow. Speculating now would be very embarrassing because wed be proved wrong very quickly. But this looks like its something much more recent. So, again, we have a story that we have some way of keeping heat going and activity going in objects for quite a long time. Rick. Those mountains look really big. Do you have any theories of how they originated . I mean are they volcanos . Or tet tonic . We have no idea at this point. We mentioned that theyre about 11,000 feet high. So they look to be tens of miles wide. So these are pretty substantial mountains. They stand up against the Rocky Mountains or other significant mountain ranges here on the earth. But we want to see a lot more about the distribution and we are getting so much data soon that right now were still scratching our heads. Kelly. John to follow irenes question, the large gash across charon, is that in any way related to a tidal despining, or this, plus the smooth areas telling you theres something churning inside . We have to have better images to do that. We know there arent very many craters. In terms of the timing of all this well need better images well get very soon. Chip reed with cbs news. Id like to ask you a question with no scientific words in it. I interviewed you by the fly by and the only prediction you would make is we would see something wonderful. Have your expectations been met . What is the most wonderful thing youve seen so far . Ill give you a technical answer. You think . I think the whole system is amazing and my prediction written 20 years ago on a little slip of paper held in a manila envelope since 1993 was proven right by new horizons. The pluto system is something wonderful. Bill . Yeah, question for cathy. Bill with cbs. The structure of that dark Northern Region on this photo is so much more different areas seem to be within that area. Does this inform anything about the pluto atmosphere transport thoughts weve been talking about. How this was deposited on the surface . Thanks. Yeah. Theres definitely subregions inside that region. And you can see it in this picture. If you zoom in, you can see it in more detail as well. There are a number of different theories about what that dark region might be. I dont know that the distribution of the darker parts within it actually in detail inform that. To really inform that, im looking forward to getting the specterscopic information back from the ralph instrument. Another aspect, a lot of us are looking forward to the stereo data because we can do a topographic evaluation. If its a raised pluateau that would mean Something Else. With regards to both the features on pluto and charon, what besides tidal energy could be powering active geology . We think we well okay. Let me think. As you can tell i dont want to say we have a couple of options. One would be that raid we know there is Radioactive Material inside pluto and charon as there are inside any body. Radioactive heat is powering a lot of the energy in the earth. This may be telling us even very small bodies if theyre icy radioactive heat is enough to produce the activity. But there may be way as body can store heat from its formation for a long period of time. Maybe you can have an ocean which is very gradually freezing. As it does gradually freeze, that releases heat into the crust and maybe that can power activity. Whether this is the heat generation is ongoing or still living off this reserve of stored energy from its formation, thats for a lot more work to decide. One thing we can say for sure is that tidal energy is not at work here. We know that because pluto and charon are in tidal equilibrium. Charon is spinning at the same rate as pluto spins