Booktv every sunday on cspan2 or anytime online at. Television for serious readers. There are a lot of places to get political information but only at cspan2 you get it straight from the source. No matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, cspan is americas network. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word, if it happens here or here or here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on cspan. Powered by cable. P. Diddy everyone and thank you so much for joining us, just the usual reminders to silence your cell phones and refrain from flash photography. Good evening and welcome to the free library of philadelphia. My name is andy kahan and i am honored to introduce our guests. The nations legal analyst and justice correspondent and a frequent contributor to msnbc, elie mystal is an fellow at the media center and the legal editor of of more perfect, radio labs podcast about the u. S. Supreme court. A Harvard Law School graduate and former litigator, he was executive editor of above the law, a new site sharing details and original commentator about the legal profession. Refer to by malcolm nance as a Tour De Force on the explainer in chief of american law, his new book allow me to retort a black guys guide to the constitution is a series of arguments for the layman about how one of our founding documents should be interpreted in opposition to republican claims. The cd will be joined in conversation with Danielle Conway, dean and professor of law at penn state dickinson law, the First Law School established in 1834 in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, one or two separately schools at Penn State University established in 1834. Dean conway is an expert in procurement law, entrepreneurship, intellectual property law in licensing intellectual property. She is the author of numerous books, articles and essays and she was formerly the dean of the university of maine law answered on the faculties at several other law schools. Please welcome elie mystal and Danielle Conway to the free library of philadelphia. [applause] thank you, everyone and we are excited to be here with you. Going to do a couple of adjustments. Great. How are you doing . Im a giant person. It takes a while to get situated. All right. Can you hear me . Yes. We dont actually need mics at no. Its an honor to be here this evening at the free library of philadelphia, an important site where knowledge is conveyed perform legally and transformative late through discourse, resistance, consternation and liberation to engage with the democratic process. Elie. Whatsapp . Thank you for writing this book, allow me to retort a black guys guide to the constitution. [applause] i do like you to introduce the theme of the book and what you hope the book will accomplish. Lets start here because it comes up quite a lot. Its called a black eye sketch of the constitution not a guy to the constitution for black eyes. Thats an important distinction, right . Because the goal of the book is to show what the law looks like and what our constitutional law looks like certainly the what our general, governmental structure looks like. From the perspective of a person that that structure was designed to ignore and, in fact, enslave. And it looks different. It hits different as the kids would say when youre reading a document that you know was purposefully designed to erect a western slave empire, whether or not the document is good, how we should interpret that document, whats going on in the kind of nether regions of the document, kind of become more important. We will talk later about the amendments and all this kind of stuff but at a fundamental level i like to make the analogy its like the constitution is like a ford focus, right . And after we have some wars, with mica, so we kind of stolen hubcaps off of cadillac like its a cadillac never know, it aint. Its still a fork or i can still tell by the engine that its a ford focus. It could get us to where we are going potentially like its not, im not saying its a car that has no utility that lets be honest about what this thing is, right . So thats the perspective of the book to kind of heaven honest look at the constitution from the perspective of somebody that is designed to ignore. Its labor is, the labor of it was really just trying to take a lot of thoughts and ideas that ive had the route the process of myself becoming and educator throughout law school and my practice and my coverage of the law, and tried to distill it into its most essential forms. Because almost every chapter in this book kind of started with me saying like in law school i would say what the is that . What . And then professor going, you know, you have to understand that what James Madison was why do i care . Its kind of distilling those kind of conversations and rejections into kind of book form. I love the idea that this is a constitutional law casebook. Number one speedy dont say that. People wont bite when you say that. It is an exciting political takedown. It really is, it really is. But you do it with such conciseness and brevity. But i sat with the title of the book a bit. I really did. Im glad you mentioned that. As i read it i got the distinct sense that your guiding the reader through what are often convoluted provisions of an elided meanings of the United States constitution. Adequately understood you to be centering black voices, mine or ties voices subordinated and oppress voices here you provide in this work the compelling example, many examples of how the u. S. Constitution as a founding document is by Design Exclusive and oppressive. Please critique the u. S. Constitution for us tonight. Yeah. As you mightve heard me, you might know me from saying on television that the constitution is kind of trash because its kind of like the first line of the book is the constitution is not good. The last line of the book ill save you the trouble, the last line of the book is the constitution is trash. Its conservatives who say it always has to be, right . So the very frame of the book is that this document is not good. Why . Well, i dont know. It seems to me that the deal made by white slavers, white colonists and rich white abolitionists who, who were so willing to deal with slavers and colonists just may be doesnt represent the best that we can do as a society. Maybe not our highest, right . I think thats a fairly obvious point, right . The constitution is that its a dealmaking document, right . What the deal was supposed to do was yes, set up a republican form of government where you had essentially local control and were not ruled by a king across the sea. I was a big part of it but it was also to set up an economic empire based on slave labor. That could never be undone. And so a key thing that happens and you see this a lot in conservative media where they now chided gaslight people and act as if they very slavers who wrote the constitution put in a poison pill, put in some kind of secret deal to eventually unpack slavery. No, no. They put in various things that would make it almost impossible to ever unpack slavery. And you know how i can prove that . We had a war. Like, the constitution was so broken upon release that not only did it need a day one patch, that only didnt need the bill of rights that we know as a first ten amendments to just fix things and robison wrong with that in its initial inception. It was so broken that we could not come to a peaceable solution to the slavery question. We had to literally fight a civil war. After we fought that war was still so broken come after we amended it and whatever the people, white people unable to ignore those amendments for about 100 years and then we had to have another civil uprising to fix, to make good on the promises that we had a war. I cant that has strike to the constitution. Then okay fine, we have civil rights moment, the Voting Rights act, things seem to go better than we had about 40 years of like pretty good progress, architecture bending towards here for you to go from like and oppress people to the first black president , thats a pretty good, pretty good think im right . At how did white people react to that . They are so mad at that they take the black president out replaced them with a repeated orange con man and when that conmen lost, he launched a two. Thats our constitution. That is strike three. You summed it up but im to roll back. I want to roll back. Lets roll back to those Reconstruction Amendments and good ones. The second founding. Lets insert in their the role of the United StatesSupreme Court in actually limiting the 14th amendment. I want to say two things about Reconstruction Amendments. Three things. Number one, great. Shouldve done that in the first place. Those are real good. No slavery and equality for all and Voting Rights for everyone, men, not women. Just been because it at the time they were still sexist bastards and thats the point, right . Because even after a war that you fight over equality, the people forget to write the amendments granting freedom to the formal enslaved race are still white guys. They still even at that moment did not go and ask the formal enslaved people or the free black people, they didnt ask or think about this, they didnt ask Frederick Douglass what the amendment should be that gave people freedom. Why wouldnt you asking . I would have. I wouldve let him write the damn thing. And lest you think this is not important issue, imagine the kinds of rights 13th, 14th or 15th amendments might have conferred had actually asked the slave, the former slaves, what they thought full and equal rights look like the mightve added notches equal protection under the law and equal right to vote they mightve had an equal right to housing. That might have been a thing mightve added economic rights, so the right to work the land and the right to be paid fairly for the work the den, equal work for equal pay. Constitution. Women can finish short sentences that, you know, that could have been the 16th amendment right. So in these amendments that like things better, it was. Even in these amendments that made things better, it was so fundamentally a rich white male version of freedom and whatever and then we get to the Supreme Courts role which is to limit the effectiveness of those Reconstruction Amendments at every turn. This is an important lesson for liberals even an amendment, something as momentous, as a constitutional amendment, cannot survive conservatives on the Supreme Court and we have proof of that. We have proof of the Supreme Court ignoring the 14th amendments equal protection clause, just didnt care, completely ignoring, 400 years, 7 or 89 guys on the Supreme Court. The close Supreme Court case after passage of the Reconstruction Amendment, it was white people, white people arguing for their rights under the 13th and 14th amendment, the government ran to the monopoly, like, that seems like indentured servitude, lack of equal protection in the Supreme Court was like shut up. Right out of the gate, they would not seek expansively what these amendments could do and that is the constant struggle, the best amendment, the best ideas at every point code overturned by 5 white people on the Supreme Court. I will shift gears. Anyone who knows me knows that im a fan of insanity. I really like that. Especially when strategically deployed. It breaks tension, brings humor to the conversation but i want to know what you think, why profanity and snarky humor are critical . Im talking about law. You talk about law and im honored and you got to shock them out of their complacency. When i am writing an article, i understand it is a huge stuff to do, bills to pay. I have a thought, everybody stop. You should read these thoughts. Im not giving entertainment value, just trying to get people into the stories, but again, one of the reasons there is such asymmetry and fighting about the law is they are always willing to put their legal theories in the simplest most basic terms. Thing about a base conservative voter i dont think a base amag a person is any smarter than a base liberal person. You are not going to make me believe that but conservative leaders do a 1to1 connection. If you dont like those men kissing on each other got to have the Supreme Court, if you want to have your guns to shoot negroes, have the Supreme Court. They dont know civics or anything more than other people but they make a 1to1 connection. We the liberals do not make that connection. Do you want anything to happen with the environment . Anything . You have to have this quote comedy want anything up in court comedy want anything to happen with gun regulation or Police Reform . You have to have the Supreme Court, we dont make that connection or put it in ways people can understand. The law is complicated but not Rocket Science or heart surgery, my wifes job is complicated, my job is not. The problems that lawyers use a lot of jargon, insight, baseball terminology to make themselves sound like an expert and i am trying to put it where everybody can understand it, to understand and appreciate these concepts because everybody understood it. Host i will ask you to read chapter 7, on the heels of that response about accessibility of language and constitutional provision and in chapter 7 not because it is concise which is what youre getting at but it spoke to me when i read it, the black mother of a black son, who is 10 years old who i guard with every fiber of my being. Its the shortest chapter. Stopping Police Brutality. There is a theme in the austin powers movie, doctor evil executing a elaborate plot, the bad guy makes an unnecessarily complicated contraption for killing the hero which the hero predictably escapes. Doctor evils son questions the plan, he could get away. I have a gun in my room, give me 5 seconds, i will get it, come back down and blow his brains out. Doctor evil ignores him, you just dont get it, do you . That is the joker, to make the movie work it can never be that simple. Script writers of action movies have to have convoluted plans of the late so it seems plausible for the protagonist to escape. I hope people can see we could stop Police Brutality in 5 seconds if we wanted to. It is really not that complicated. The last 3 chapters of the book point the way through the constitution as already written to end the use of violence against black people. The right of the people to be secure in their persons houses, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, persons or things to be seized. Make stopping people because they are black and unreasonable, make shooting people because they are black and unreasonable seizure. Make shall not be violated include prosecuting cops and holding them personally accountable when they violate these principles, the way to do that was written in the constitution before there were police in need of fixing. The police are a relatively recent invention in American History. The unnecessary destruction of black lives would stop not all at once but over time as cops learn to play by the rules that have always been there. At the margins still some close cases where the suspect had a weapon and was threatening police or others. There would be times reasonable unbiased people disagreed about whether the police tried to deescalate the situation and those close cases would still be resolved in favor of the Police Officer but applying the Fourth Amendment would make Police Officers think twice before killing black children, make officers hesitate before brutalizing unarmed black teens who pose no credible threat to the officer. Would make the police liable for shooting black people in the back, cops would continue to risk jail or poverty and that risk, that threat of accountability is what is needed. Black lives can only matter if there is a punishment for the people who take them. I sold it. I have solved Police Brutality in america. Please tell me where i can except my nobel peace prize. We wont be influencing the Fourth Amendment as i suggested. I looked it up. Just in case. Because white people want the police. They want them violent and unshackled. Enough of them most of the time. I cant stop Police Brutality not because it is difficult but because too many white people in america want the police to be brutal. I point specifically to amy cooper, the central park karen as she has come to be known. She got into an argument with chris cooper because chris asked her to leash her dog as central park rules require. Chris cooper happens to be black. Amy threatened to call the cops and then she did just that alleging in a false hysterical voice a black man attacking me in the park. In that moment amy cooper was asking the cops to show up and forced the supremacy of her rightness. She was in the wrong. Who calls the cops when they are the ones in violation of City Ordinance . A white person who knows the cops are there to protect her privilege, not enforced the law and keep the peace. Most white people i know think of themselves as better than amy cooper, most tell me they were disgusted by her actions and would never call the cops like she did or any number of socalled karens have been shown to do in this era of camera phones but most of them are lying, most are reacting negatively to her application of her privilege and not the underlying concept on which it rests. Most white people want there to be somebody to call when they feel threatened by blackness. They will use their power more judiciously than amy cooper but they want the power nonetheless and many of those who dont want the police deal with threats from white people, for firearms to handle any threats. And the concept of self defense, was linked with white violence done to black people. Police brutality and violence, as a black issue, was created by and for the benefit of white people. I dont hold personal enmity towards the cops. And their issues were their own. They keep their cops on a leash. There is no good or bad cops but just white people. That was harsh. Off of that a little bit, we often think systemic problems are individual racial problems but these systemic problems are the ones that keep black bodies in danger. This concept of some white people but not all, the reason i say most white peoples i can see how they vote. The democratic candidate for president has lost the white popular vote in every president ial election since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Thats not a phase. That is not randomness because i didnt like that candidate. Barack obama lost the white vote. Hillary clinton lost the white vote. Whoever ran against nixon, humphrey, humphrey lost the white vote. Every one since passage of the Civil Rights Act lost the white vote. Why . When i say a majority of white people im talking the majority of white voters that show up again and again and again. Yes we have a minority of white people, welcome to the party, minority my whole life, i welcome you. But you have to understand where the pushback is coming from. The other thing that is worth, that one big thing, happy you have a chance, the other kind of big thing we have to talk about is host we were talking about guest i would not consider myself a police abolitionist, which is weird who people think of me as a radically dispose person. Im not a police abolitionist, not because i think cops are good or have been used appropriately or whatever but because we havent tried holding them accountable. It has never been done. The abolitionists say it has never been done because it cant be done, interesting point. We havent tried but it hasnt tried. Lets at least try once, lets try, we have never lived a day in this country where cops were prosecuted by independent thirdparty as opposed to the da they are buddies with to stop other crime, never tried it. Try taking qualified immunity from cops, that opens up to private lawsuits but you threaten me for being poor, maybe we hesitate little more, to gun down an unarmed youth, hits a little differently if they know that if they screw up they could be sued on their private property and the third thing is my idea about objective use of force, all a cop has to say is i think he had a gun, doesnt have to actually have a gun, could be a cell phone or a hair pick, lets make the standard objective. If you shoot somebody because you think they have a gun they had better have a gun. If they dont, you go to jail. Not i thought it couldnt have been, we hold them to a higher standard, youre going to shoot somebody to death because you think they have a gun you best be sure, if not you go to jail because that would happen to anybody else can , you cant come home and see a person rummaging through my trash and shoot them in the back of the head, i thought it was a gun when it was a lightsaber. I cant do that. Why wouldnt you hold the police to the same high standards. Thats why i am not a police abolitionist. We have not tried holding these people accountable. That is why im using the leash analogy in the book. We havent tried putting them on the leash. I use the dog analogy a lot because i love dogs, there are no bad dogs. There are just bad dogs. Reform for abolition. Guest they make a good point but i think it is worth it to try but last thing i will say about this is people say it is a bad slogan, we dont like the slogan, the from the police, then give me your slogan. Which we cant do is pretend there is no problem which thats where having defund comes in. Ive got a 9yearold who is supersweet, hes a pleaser, manipulator but a sweet kid. He likes to dance poorly and make bad jokes and sweet little kid stuff. When do i take it away from him. When do i reach into his life and tell them you cant run up and hug that person, run in a store and see what happens . It got taken away from me when i was 13. We were playing in the black neighborhood, my parents did better and we moved to a white neighborhood and we were playing ball and it was one of those guys out of field of dreams, supermean neighbor guy, we have a ball, draw straws, i drew the small stick, run away and everything is fine. Parents pick me up. How was your day . This person hits the break, my mom goes he is going to get shot, just has a breakdown. They just like you can never do that. I drew the last straw. I dont care, you with all these white boys and not even your neighborhood and you have a white mans face for a ball . You will never go to that persons house without 10 balls. You never you have to make your friends understand you wont play along and it was really i thought my dad was okay, father, maybe somebody needs a scotch tonight but you come to realize you understand why he was making a point. Host as i said, a black woman, a black child, you can imagine, my 10yearold is huge. If the bigger he gets, the more i have to protect. Guest i find that is something black families and closely understand. Its not the age of our kids but the height. The size. We start treating them with what you happen to be because that is the way society is run. That is the way they interact. Your girls are not protected, the girl protection white girls have. Before this gets away, you have time to ask questions. We are disagreeing with each other. Host i hear amens in the audience. Let me ask this question. How do we use the second founding of the Reconstruction Amendment plus the nineteenth amendment . How do we use the second founding to strip the veneer from the founding document so as to expose the hypocrisy of can cell culture, the right to bear arms for self defense, racial profiling or subordination of women endo pression of people who identify as lgbt q for example . Having said im not overly impressed, there are other ways to go, the south african example, when Nelson Mandela gets out of prison and matt damon in the rugby patch, they take their apartheid constitution and put on some amendments . They threw it in the trash and started over. A new Constitutional Convention including women and right now on the world stage, one of them, one of the best written constitutions out there in terms of protection of individual rights, a great documents, better than ours. We got what we got and i dont want a new Constitutional Convention, a lot of the same racism we have today because we are focused on land, i would have a Constitutional Convention, 58 delegates from california and one from wyoming but it doesnt work like that. So instead i say it is fine. I only need two things. The 14th amendment and parts of the first but the rest, i can do Everything Else i need to do with the 14th amendment because it says right they are equal protection of the law and due process and we interpret that to be substantive due process, real fairness and procedural fairness, substantive fairness and equal protection. That is all i need. That is it because it does Everything Else, look the opposite of that, i call myself 1 14 amendment guy because everything, everything i do would be strained through does this law mean equal protection . Answer me those questions and you have your law, if it fails those questions for any reason that law is no good, is that equal protection . Substantively fair . Those are the only things that matter for any new law and then you get into, it is a political debate but before that it is not a political debate but an issue of fundamental justice. That is not a political question but a question of who we are as a society and i am always trying to get to the point we are substantively fair, its not that hard a standard. One of the things with the gayrights are people against gay rights, you dont have to get gay married, you understand that . You can just marry a woman, you can just do that and leave these people alone. Whats the problem . The idea we cant understand the concept of live and let live, letting people do what to them in the privacy of their own mind and bedroom, constantly shocking. I talk about it in the book the baker with a bouquet could doesnt want to do the cake, no one is asking you to jump out of the cake. Nobodys says, just you went into business to make cakes, take money these people are giving you for your business. You dont even write anything on a wedding cake. Or say i will not write something on my cake, give me the cake and i will put my own groom and groom on it and you can take your money and go home but we have to have literal federal case over the bigoted baker. Take it down. I want to give you what i think is a really good word for who you are so we know Frederick Douglass was a woman rights man. That is what he said. But i think you are a reconstruction man so that actually gives to your fourteenth amendment. Reconstruction was great. We had black participation in government, we were arcing get towards goodness in the reconstruction and then Rutherford B Hayes had a contested election that went to Electoral College ties so it went to congress to secure his election. He was a republican, needed votes from southern democrats in exchange for him taking troops out of the south and rutherford did and the south went back to its confederate ways and that is where we find them today in so many ways. The difference between missouri today and missouri in 1880 and missouri in 1850 are not that different so what we see in this country is white southerners have not been linked to accept freedom and equality unless their white northern cousins are shoving it down their throat with guns. You had to do it in the civil war and reconstruction and ruby bridges to go to school need an armed guard. If you dont have force they wont accept it, something that is a constant problem with our constitutional structure. Republicans and conservatives take constitutional setbacks, they take constitutional losses as mere setbacks, temporary, we lost that battle but we will win the war, they never stop coming even when they knew, they never stopped trying. Host i will ask one last question even though i have so many, i want to give audience numbers an opportunity to speak with you. I have an interest in the Reconstruction Amendment plus the 19th amendment in context, specifically, in the nineteenth amendment, the duality of the movement, students and lawyers. These consumers are always surprised to learn the nineteenth amendment did not facilitate access to voting for black women at the time of its ratification in 1920. Instead black women were made to wait 45 more years to have a fundamental badge of citizenship recognized by the Voting Rights act of 65. Why is this important concept to know for current discussions about voter suppression, the john lewis Voting Rights act and the scotus nomination of judge Ketanji Brown jackson. Guest that is the most important piece of legislation in American History bar none. As i said, the conservatives ignored the 15th amendment 400 years, ignored the 19th amendment as applied to women of color for 50 years. Without a law. Without a statute that makes the amendment enforceable, it constitutional amendment is a suggestion. After the civil war it was a suggestion we let people vote regardless of race the same way after prohibition there was a suggestion we stop from drinking, it was the volstead act that meant prohibition was a thing, similarly the Voting Rights act made the fifteenth amendment a thing and it was wildly successful. Not only the most important piece of legislation in American History, i could make an argument it is the most successful piece of legislation in American History and i point to the election of a black president 40 years after it was passed which is an amazing trajectory. What did white conservatives do . They took away the fifteenth amendment by cutting away the Voting Rights act before that black president was done with his term. 2013 john roberts and Shelby County even this are rates section 5 of the Voting Rights act, the section that said you have to ask for federal permission before you change the Voting Rights act, that was so universally accepted that not only had it been ratified in 2006 by george w. Bush, noted not care or of black people, but it was also, Ronald Reagan who started his campaign in philadelphia, mississippi, Mississippi Burning territory, and said the Voting Rights act humiliates the south which i am cool with but he meant that as a bad thing. He had to expand the Voting Rights act about john roberts, on other, unaccountable person was able to taken away in 2015 and has been rolling since then. They eviscerate roberts and alito, section 2 of the Voting Rights act, all the voting, the attacks on democracy we see now in the news those did not come from donald trump. I know he is a bad guy, those did not come from donald trump. They came from john roberts. It is john roberts who is the actual, he is the guy behind the curtain who is pulled the strings to eviscerate our voting protections so that an orange buffoon like donald trump can then in his gestapo jackboots people can i dont want to i dont want to give him them that level, like a jackbooted idiot people, that is why they had this open because john robert set the scene for them. If you dont control i come back to if you dont control anything, the john lewis Voting Rights act great idea, freedom to vote act, still fine but what makes democrats think those things will matter. John roberts, he has more help than he did in 2013. If you dont pack the courts you are not taking back anything, the john lewis Voting Rights act, they passed it and roberts would not be down before breakfast. Samuel alito would knock it down, to have Voting Rights and that is always true since even the passage of the 15th amendment. Host thank you. [applause] how are we doing . Excellent. So please raise your hand, we have a question in the front and another question, sort of mid. What got you to go to clemson . The question was what got you to go to clemson . Guest it was a Manhattan Law Firm where i worked out of law school, what got me to go there, money. Not the first person in my family to go to college or graduate school, i bring it up to say when i had my first years salary that was more money than either of my collegeeducated parents ever made in a year, more as a 25yearold, sacrifices had to be made to go to Harvard Law School, vacations were not taken, people didnt buy dresses and lots of things went into making me have that education. I felt i owed it to people to try to like me. It was a great firm into corporate law, was a good place doing a case and it is an oil company, nigeria, i am on the side of the oil company. I was like man ancestors did not sacrifice so i could be sitting here talking about just to take it. Whatever i am supposed to be doing that is not this but from that epiphany, i could. Host next question, the gentleman midway. 14th amendment section 3. Is there a practical way to use the 14th amendment section 3 to get rid of the politicians who supported the january 6th insurrection . This question has come up a lot recently because people are trying to use it to exclude traders from running for office again especially the orange trader in chief. I will start here. This book, i finished after january 6th and didnt go into a big section 3. Thats how new this idea is. There is a lot written about it in a year or so. This is a relatively new use of the amendment. I dont want to say anything too aggressive. Is there a way . Sure but who gets to decide if there is a way . The same 6 conservatives who currently control the Supreme Court. The 14th amendment to this is after the civil war, anybody who held office but then kind of worked against the government could not hold office again. Jeff davis, you are out. People who were in the confederacy could run for office but people who actually held office in the United States government and abandoned that office to join the confederacy, those were the people who were excluded. Donald trump would be the guy you are thinking about. He held office and then, arguably was part of the coup attempt. It can work, but the problem is who gets to decide . John roberts and his cabal. I can answer it the same way. Look at gallup poll. People want term limits and there are all these plans to get term limits without needing a constitutional amendment to get term limits but john roberts makes the call. I cant go to john roberts and say you should be much less and expect to win and similarly, cant walk into robertss court and use this amendment to exclude republicans who are appointed some of you from running for office and expected to agree. Which is her sad. Host your opinion of Mitch Mcconnell and his insolence on the Supreme Court and we are where we are today in regards to the Supreme Court primarily because Mitch Mcconnell in the senate and now hes going to be a great possibility that in the next coming couple years he will be the dominant speaker in control, he is a very insidious and host Mitch Mcconnell. He is we got the question. Guest the most dangerous man in american the most effective dangerous man in america for 15, twenty years. What he has done is he understands that his party is unpopular and that is what people forget. There are republicans who think they are popular, they are not. They are just wrong. Their agenda and that form is massively unpopular. Mcconnells secret strength is he knows how unlikable he and his people are so he used the court because he knows that, he knows that the court is the institution that is removed from the popular vote. You cant vote a Supreme Court justice out with the changing of the wind. Once you get them on there, they are there functionally forever and are able to manipulate the laws and have a veto power on other branches of the government, that has been his insight, brazen willingness to play hardball, democrats tend to not be able to match his fire with fire but i dont just blame democratic politicians for that. There is enough to go around. I also blame the Democratic Base because the bottom line is you cannot win a republican primary for president or Senate Without being strong on the court. Think about 2016, donald trump, antiestablishment, mexicans are rapists, going to build a wall, crazy person, the Supreme Court, normal thing. All of a sudden, here you go and im a regular person. That was 2016. Fast forward to 2,020, everybody running, Bernie Sanders running, the coffin man running, everybody running, joe biden is the most conservative person, pete. Judge buttigieg has a plan, we could have 100 justices, warren is incident, biden, no, maybe a commission, maybe. Did it cost him a vote . It didnt cost him a vote, didnt cost him the nomination. Thats the asymmetry. Republicans go to the masters for this stuff. As long as democrats dont democratic politicians wont ask them. [inaudible question] the person who gets it, Sheldon Whitehouse gets it and he was up, wanted to be chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, democrats went with dick durbin not that dick durbin is bad but the white house wanted that job but these things thanks for being here. We are only halfway through but my question, one of my favorite essays you have written, white people telling you how you should respond to racism and it shocked me i have to say. I thought i was pretty good. I know a lot of really good people, good white people who think they are doing the right thing and i think i am doing the right thing but i know they are not and i know we are not always and maybe we are. What do you need personally because you cant speak for all black people to what do black people need from us . What can we do on a daily basis . Guest i appreciate you saying i understand it is important that im not trying to. However, what i generally need from an ally is for them to sound like me in the rooms where i am invited. Which, now, my white friends will attest to this, thats a pretty high bar when you are me because when i am invited into the room the conversation goes sideways quick. When i asked my white allies to sound like me im asking them to sound like me, the country club, parent pta meeting and it is not easy for them and they will text me, this person is saying, what should i say, i will tell them what they should say and they will say i cant say that, why . I would. You are crazy. Now next time we go out for drinks im going to yell at you. For me that is a high bar but that is my bar because i am not going to thanksgiving dinner with these people. Im not invited into these spaces all the time. I say that on tv too. Im not in the executive suite with people who make decisions on the television network. If you are my ally sound like i would sound when you are invited into that meeting. I point out as much as it is easy for me to say because i dont have attachments like that a lot of my black friends are not as free as i am. They have to be concerned about their paper, their job, their money, their position. And yet often enough, they will risk it all to tell that white man to shut his damn mouth. If youve ever been in a meeting, you will see a black person making that calculation it is all worth it . I am about to lose everything just to yell at this man and they are trying if you could just get up and i could keep you are thinking, think of a respectable job and i have been in the Christmas Party with her. We have a mortgage and we need to keep it. I understand it is difficult sometimes but that is always the goal, the top ask and if we get close to that, we break bread and call ourselves friends. Host part of it, your building the muscle, and out of the gate. Right . I am the dean of a law school, not doing that out the gate. It is building the muscle and saying today i am going to Say Something and tomorrow at a couple more to that and by the end of the week i have a fool sense and i will be able to back it up with conviction. I see a lot in my own life with women issues where you are in the proverbial locker room and jokes are flying around, building the muscle is exactly right, we are not going to do that. We are not going to do that. We dont believe that. You know . It has worked. Host right here. I am sorry, two more. This gentleman first and then here. What do you think of Court Expansion . Court expansion, the only thing that is going to work. The answer is people laugh, why are you laughing . I am right. Like we should have 20 more justices. Who has 29 justices . The ninth Circuit Court of appeals right now. Not too many. The benefit of 20 more justices even beyond the revenge of just like screw these republicans is of this. It makes it very unlikely, harder for republicans to come back over the top. You do four republicans are like we will do five which i dont care, we are down 6three. We go to 136 and the republicans come back in and go to 1613 how is that worse . How is that worse . I have no problem with republicans coming back but you put 20 on, they put 40 on, now it is a higher bar to come back for that. It gives me something to trade. I can income to mcconnell and say i am about to put 20 justices on the court, it is going to be it is going to be 11nine. The nastiness you did with Merrick Garland we didnt forget and brett kavanaugh, those were some nasty things you did. It is going to be 119 but give me some votes in some play and it will be 119, you could have 9 of these 20 people and we could have a bipartisan joint commission to make sure of the 11 people we pick, whatever you want to do. Or you dont play ball, they will put 20 of my most firebreathing people on the court and see what you can do the next 4 or 5 years so the most important thing, people say they want moderate Mainstream Center decisions. How do you get that, you might go down under, to the club. If you get your dinner together 15 of your friends you will go to applebees. To the olive garden. You are going to do much more moderate thing if you get more people involved if you have 29 budget sisters and majority opinion requires 15 people the decision will be much more moderate, mainstream ineffective. And concise. I would like to double down on what you stated to what i can do and you said represent me, and specifically speaking to the effect where having one black juror has tremendous effect on the jury of what is acceptable, just dont throw things out and shows how important that is so tied that to the crt dba, you have the board of education where people are saying crazy stuff and eliminating things like toni morrison. Not just the table discussion at thanksgiving, the need for this moment because i see that, trying to create the next constituency to donald trump. My book became a Critical Race Theory book when i was writing it and white people changed the definition of Critical Race Theory and i was writing a Critical Race Theory book, who knew . What that debate is and i said this a lot, what that really is is white people committed to making their kids dumb. Dont want to do that because my kid has to fill out his College Essay to go to harvard or yale my kid will know history. My kid will know who Abraham Lincoln is. Like it is going to know who starkly Stokely Carmichael is. It will be your dumb ass kid who doesnt know these things and get outcompeted by my kids. Then affirmativeaction. Why are you making your kids dumb . We talk about the allyship in this context. I say to my friends all you have to do to to the School Board Meeting is advocate for your kids to be smart. You dont have to advocate any racial rule or whatever, just advocate for your kids to be smart, that is all education should be, tell your kids the truth and the rest will play itself out. We dont want to expose our white children to how terrible slavery was. Why is it okay for me to expose my kids to the truth but not okay for you to expose your kids to the truth . Why is it okay for me to tell my kids what your grandmother did but not you cant tell your kids what your grandmother did. How does that work . If you want your kids to compete in a global world, you should want them to know the truth about how history works the same way, i want my kids to know about American History and european history so we dont get things like i cant believe there is a war in europe. I want my kids to know about roman history. I want my kids to be smart. If you are white ally just ask for your kids. Host i want to thank my hosts at the free library of philadelphia. I want to thank the audience for being engaged, this is what it is to be in a democracy, the discourse, the resistance, the compensation for the liberation of the mind. Thank you for being here. Guest appreciate you getting the book. 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