My good friend died exactly that way. Her last words when the ambulance arrived. To this day, it wasnt going to go to the hospital or i dont want to die. So the bi so, the bill that went through were trying to the Legislature Last year and youve talked here about the respect or like the movement that would take a decade or two. Thats what specifically can people do to try to gett something thats not the past several times through finally . Thats what has to happen in california. Thats what had to happen. I dont know about montana and how long that took. We have to simply keep pushing. And jamie in maryland introduced the first time someone else, then the second time it went down. I have a feeling, i may be totally wrong. Thats like marriage i had the feeling that california could be the turning point that you may have a great many states following through more quickly now then california has passed its law. But you write letters and emails to your own legislator and that is all you can do. Thank you. I work as a professional gardener and if so i have thega good fortune of being able to listen to your Program Every day and sometimes i get the information that you might be an gardener so im wondering are you a gardener and will you be doing some of that when youou fe leave . Thank you for this lovely question. We had a house for 40 years in maryland, and we created the most beautiful garden and i was out there every single day in the spring and summer and just give you the sense of how beautiful it was, our daughter was married into the garden on june 16 in 1992. It turned out to be the hottest day for 75 years and theres one photograph that was so wonderful fe of all the mens jacket on the fence. Yes i love gardening, that living now in a condo, my gardening is restricted to my balcony so just a few potted plants. We have time for just one more question. Ing, i dont he had a feeling i dont know how he had that feeling that he was right so i want to preface by saying that you are looking fabulous. [applause]abulous for fabulous for any age. [applause] my personal experience with aging i never really knew anyone. I lived with a woman over the summer was also 79 and she was vibrant and living her life and my own grandmother died muchhe younger than you and my grandfather who is still much younger had a pretty bado me, i dementia survival boston cl of older people that are likeke li kicking it so i know this isnt really in the original question im asked all the time what do you do that keeps you happiest and healthiest to this day . Im with friends, and i with my dog, and i have taken a playing the piano again so those are the things that keep me the happiest right now. Thank you all so much. [applause] i was going to say i have a feeling we are going to have aav little standing ovation here. Everyone please go to the signing. [inaudible conversations] when i tune in on the weekends at his offer authors sg new releases. Watching the authors on booktv is the best television for serious readers. They can have a longer conversation and delve into their subjects. They bring you author after author. I like booktv and i am a cspan fan. I would like to welcome you to the Supreme CourtInstitute Spring book fare. I look forward to my book fare every year and im happy that im in the position i get here. I want to thank anthony for this wonderful panel of authors and im looking forward to hearing about some books that i actually want to read, not knocking the articles were the briefs but its starting a little bold so i am looking forward to hearing about what these folks have come up with. We have tony hear from the National Journal to lead the discussion whos been covering the Supreme Court for about 36 years. Anyone who would be better able to lead the discussion, take it away. Thank you very much for hosting this and anthony for hosting it. It always seems when you talk about Supreme Court books its kind of a genre that keeps growing and literature both fiction and nonfiction. We had a panel like this three years ago intended to celebrate the fact the Supreme Court seems to be the subject of more and more books of all kinds and judging by the corner of my desk if only increased since the last event so we thought we would do this again since the Supreme Court is in the news more than ever these days. Im pleased with the panel thats been assembled this evening. Ive written about all of these authors and mentioned them in my annual list of the top ten books for the Supreme Court aficionados. Your books have shed some new light so i will introduce each of them briefly then start the discussion with questions from some of mine and yours and then we will have an opportunity to buy the books. I hope the panelists will discuss things with each other as well and allow an amount of time about the books and all other things. It is definitely the case that all the authors both fiction and nonfiction are the two experts about the course not just those that stumbled on and thought it might be a cool subject for a book. First im pleased to announce a lawyer whose latest gattaca daughter is just released last month. For his book the last justice is no less suspenseful or accurate when it comes to details about the Supreme Court. Next to him i is david, the founder and managing editor of the blog that all of the lawyers read it daily whether they admit it or not. David branched out in a very successful way with his book supreme ambitions. Hehe has written both fiction d Nonfiction Books. His model is allegiance and its morbid ativaitsmorbid ativan ar Nonfiction Book ever could. Next to him is a professor at Boston University law to Justice Ginsburg. As the title in the balance about injustice going through a midlife crisis. Its been said that a book of the Supreme Court humor would be a very thin book but jerry has added to that genre. Finally, the reporter at msnbc and the co author of the terrific biography nonfiction. Its not your typical screen grid biography and that is a good thing. I will start with a question asking each of you to describe your book and tell us what special challenges you found writing about the Supreme Court and the Appellate Court my book as tony mentioned the advocates daughter. John is a prominent dc lawyer. In the gears to the possible nomination and the secret from the past. We have cases in the Supreme Court and sometimes i have justices in my novels do some incredible things. They do some unthinkable things into sticks with you in the back of your mind a little bit but that has been my challenge. I think and i hope that the institution comes through the book recognizing the component is mayhem and mission. It was set in the circuit one step below the Supreme Court. Its kind of like the great white whale that the protagonist and mentor after. I told the story of a young graduate working for the judge who was a judge on the ninth circuit and her wishes to clerk for the Supreme Court which is a high honor the panelists had the opportunity to do and her boss wants to sit on the Supreme Court as a justice to the book examines what one has to do to examine the Legal Profession for ones ambition. I have to shorthands like it for the buck which the audience will appreciate even if its not going to be in the best seller list anytime soon. Its like a legal thriller about jurisdiction and the other one i like to give because you have two strong ambitious women one of us is new to the field and the other is sitting on the topic that i would like to see that its the Devil Wears Prada meets the judiciary so those are kind of my shorthands for the buck that otherwise is geared to explain to people. The challenge which some of the panelists can relate to. One of the challenges was writing about the legal world and a lot of it is mental and is on paper and my book has no car chasing, no murders. So how do you get people to keep turning pages when its all about filing of briefs and motions . That is a challenge for the writers. Its set in the Supreme Court during world war ii and it tells the story of the guy from philadelphia. He wants to join the military but failed the physical then you get the chance to serve the country in another way for the justice on the Supreme Court and of course during world war ii, the government removed japanese americans on the west coast and finds them in camps in the interior of the country so my protagonist is clerking when one of the cases are decided and after this and he goes to work for the Justice Department and hes in the alien enemy control unit said he is one of those responsible for defending the program in court. He ends up writing the brief for the case and as time goes on he learns more and more about what the government has done, supposedly to keep them safe and he starts having doubts about where his allegiance lies. I was trying to do is take an episode that had a relevance to the presence so im trying to explore the question of what we do when we feel afraid or in secure and how we decide who we can trust and how dangerous and whose interest counts and who will be sacrificed to make the rest of us feel safer and i do have a murder actually no car chases but i faced the same problem i thought the legal material is all super fascinating and that would carry the story. My editor disagreed so i ended up putting in a murder or two. The other challenge i found this historical fiction was much more difficult than i had realized. I worked in th a law firm and i felt confident inventing scenes between characters but with historical fiction i had anxiety about getting the details right and not having people say things they wouldnt have sent were wearing things they wouldnt have worn so i needed to do research to have the confidencee to write the simplest. I have a question about this up in court just as having a crisis in the biggest turn in the recent years. 60 or so, drinks too much, hes divorced. He gets into the fourth century philosopher. They are not something anybody should rely on which is somewhat destabilizing for a judge that is to make the decisions in cases. Whether the position makes any sense at all. The Supreme Court is slightly skewed so in order to do that you have to write about the Supreme Court convincing the manner to then twisted 5 and maybe get the reader to buy in if it is something that is outrageously crazy that is a whole different matter swift looks almost like reality but not quite. Thank you for that introduction and its fun to be here at georgetown as im sure you know Marty Ginsburg is one of my favorite comments about the book is that somebody said when they read the chapter they felt like what they think they are supposed to feel when they watch a romantic comedy. [laughter] so i am outnumbered a little bit on this panel. Among other reasons i didnt write a work of fiction. We are also the only book that started out as a tumbler so my coauthor and i did not invited by the decision of breaking record from the defense for a single week. The idea was to juxtapose this and think about the ways that both of them are speaking truth to power. The challenge that we faced in putting together our book was how do we bring substance to this first celebratory and how do we make a buck that lawyers want to read that the nonlawyers want to read and that we are trying to reach . We saw that we wanted the book to have the same sort of visual content but we also wanted it to be substantive and to do justi justice. We have the law professors at the clerk. But we had a the Justice Ginsburgs famous recipe. They have the civil rights issues to which the justice devoted her life and we wanted it to feel fine. The fever description was the one in the New York Times that said that it was as if they they scrap booascrapbook had a bb. [laughter] for the panelists why do we think so many lawyers whether they are practiced in academia or the media or the novels were they feel the need to do something other than the law. I thought a fair amount about the connection of the Legal Practice and i teach a creative seminar. Its the writing generally because we have exercises every weekend fo the students critique them and get feedback and we talk about them in the class so at least they are paying attention to the writing and if you compare that to the seminar that is advanced constitutional theory is more useful for them but as the years went on and theres a deep connection between that writing fiction. Theres certain facts that are not disputed and certain facts that are disputed and you could leave those in or out of the narrative but ultimately what you want to do to win the case is tell a story that the finder of facts find more plausible and how do you make the story plausible laxatives all the techniques the writers use, being able to set the scene and cast of characters correctl cord have a narrative with a good flow so i think that lawyers probably few they are sort of immersed in the world of storytelling and its not surprising they want to step up and get into the storytelling more proper. Ive been asked this question a lot. Its not a new phenomenon. You can go back to the 18 hundreds and lawyers would write for entertainment value and i even found when he was practicing law, Abraham Lincoln wrote a fictional version of the criminal case, so this didnt start with grisham and its been around for centuries but my favorite theory in the washingtonian magazine they did a whole feature why do so many lawyers write novels and dave wrote with a number of authors, several of us, me, david and others and after spending time with us and getting to know us and hearing us out on the widely right to take away was basically we have a bunch of big egos and we want to be renaissance men and women and that is the driving motivators. Theres lots of lawyers that write fiction and it could be that theres lots of lawyers so they produce a lot of fiction. Thinking about my friends and wondering if they write fiction and hoping a lot of them dont, i dont know. I would like to know the per capita fiction writing data. [laughter] i found ove i found over the years there are a lot who want to be something other than a lawyer so thats one out of life. They might be birdwatchers, too but you need some kind of relief from the law once in a while. So, this is a question for everyone but especially the law professors do you think fiction can serve as a teaching tool . Im thinking especially of the book that would be great to better understand the japanese internment cases. This is something that is teachable through fiction. I think absolutely it can teach us. Theres a lot of cases you can get from an academic presentation and also it can reach different people in a way that academic analysis doesnt because the studies have shown this. People tend to organize their lives in terms of narratives and how they make sense of the world and if you speak to someone in an academic analytical language thats not the place in most peoples head so it doesnt necessarily come across as something that is internalized they can take on sites themselves and change inside themselves so i think that if you are trying to teach people something in a way that really gets inside them and changes the way they think about things often fiction is the most effective way to do that. I dont think that my novel should be read anywhere near a classroom. [laughter] i do generally agree that fiction can serve as a teaching tool. The universities have fiction writing as a department or a program of study and the reason is because it is a particular art people can engage that shows the world a certain way of understanding through economics or history or Something Like that. They are also great ways to understand the world but the idea of having a program in the law toomey would make a lot of sense so generally, yes my book, no. I think your book is it could be exhibit a for why theres another method to get ri is to f it. [laughter] that is something that is worth teaching. Any other thoughts . I wanted to ask you especially about your book and how much access you have to Justice Ginsburg and her friends papers etc. And what has been her reactions book was published . She started about a year and a half before we began working on the book. So, when it came to suddenly becoming a popculture icon i thinpop culture icon ithink thas initially perplexed and then amused. She said she had to ask her clerk who is the notorious and then once known she said okay great we are both from brooklyn. [laughter] once it was a book i think to be honest she was a little but not at preemptive but a little bit uncertain. She has been with the georgetown emeritus faculty on her official biography. This is a very different project. This was a project that was supposed to be a beautiful object, a fun story. Again we took the substance very seriously that he was ver but ih an irreverent piece of work and not meant to be the definitive work of her life so she said you know, i think that we started to realize that she was not opposed to the project when clerks and others would call th the chambes to say we are okay to talk and then the door started opening and eyeing as a reporter had previously requested an interview with her before i started working on the book together so efficientl efficiene wasnt giving the buck but suddenly it was happening. So i got a chance to sit down and actually bring the cameras into the Supreme Court which you know is very challenging even if it is not an oral argument it is very intense and stressful in terms of the crew and the production having time to set up in a very nervous atmosphere. Over time i think once she was convinced we got more and more access comes with the most incredible moment for us we have interviewed her children and grandchildren. He wrote to her shortly before she died and i would cry. Near the end of the chapter about their marriage that was significant to us not just because it is a beautiful marriage although it is but because it really informed her ideas, her equality and jurisprudence and optimism men could become better partners. It inspired her to imagine a world of equality between men and women so we were trying to get the original of the letter because one of the key parts of the book in this aspect is primary documents. We got some information from Justice Ginsburg from gloria steinem. The original letter from stephen weidenfeld. But this letter that would be a polite science and i thought this is inappropriate maybe she doesnt want to give us this letter they just want a picture. Anyway her son agreed to write the book right before it went to press for Fact Checking and said this is great but why do you have my dads letter in this font you should have the original and i said yes. So come at the 11th hour we got an email from the justice that said my son says you should have this letter and there it was in his handwriting. We wouldnt know one of the things we write about is the precision and her love of copy editing which he knows very we well. We wouldnt know that he had corrected in the margins. [laughter] you can read about in the book. Not for research reasons but could you talk to your justices about what youre writing . I didnt talk to the justice during the process. The way that i was trying to depict the court in some of the lessons i thought were eminent e in the historic material did come from my experiences in some of the things he says so he did have an influence on the book in that sense. I sent the book to her and she wrote a letter back that said Something Like i think its interesting you use this name because the former judge from the fifth circuit. He would never have had a midlife crisis. I want to go back to you on your book. What concerns do you have about writing to figures like justice black and you also use their dol names of other characters like eugene and some others. Why did you do that and was it tricky to work out . In some cases it was a little tricky for the reasons i wont go into because it would spoil a little bit of the plot but generally i was guided by two principles. That gave me a little bit of a sense of freedom but the second theres a difference between fact anthat fact and truth and t or elimination. You could imagine a bad biography that gives you disconnected facts and you wouldnt say you got any truth or insight into you could imagine a better biography that gives you facts about a person that arranges them in a way so they tell a compelling story that makes connections between then and highlights and brings out the themes from this persons life and you might say that gives you the truth of the person and the insight but what the biographer has done is similar to what a fiction writer does so i think fiction can help us get inside and you could almost say it can get you to the truth in some cases. I think of this example as Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter which is a movie i havent seen and probably you havent either but if you assume it is an accurate reflection of what its about, theres something that is clearly fiction like a brave man that fought against evil and it tells you some things about the world was a struggle against the system that sustains itself on the blood of innocent people. Now i didnt really go there to the vampire hunting route because generally speaking with just a couple exceptions i tried to have the real people in the book do things that he really did. So are they doing what i can verify they actually did and i get a way from that sometimes but i try to have real people doing real things and fictional people doing fictional things thats what i was trying to do with that is used to fictional elements to bring out the things i thought were important and i did think that the resources about me to write something that was more illuminating and i hope in some ways more truthful. I meant to ask david and anthony about the reactions theyve gotten and i know you got some reaction in your book. Its interesting i have to confess the book there are some characters in the book that of the standard disclaimer but there are some characters that bear a striking resemblance is to real people and that is something i was wondering about as a clerk on the ninth circuit myself but i was pleasantly surprised by the reaction a number of them were contacted for the New York Times article and most of them were appreciative of the project. I think that part of it is the difference between the Appellate Courts and the Supreme Court that didnt get quite as much attention on the Appellate Court and so some of them were tickled and flattered. And the genre of the books is growing. They hosted an event in pasadena at the courthouse where the other authors got to talk about the work. They had a book club. I was very pleased by how well they took it even does anthony was saying not all of the judges in this book behave wonderfully but nobody really seemed to take offense so that was good. I had the experience the main character was the solicitor general and was called the last justice the character took a bribe. And they did inappropriate things and i had a solicitor general introduced me so we did all the things the characters could so it was nice. I had a similar experience i had a judge to send me a very funny email that basically said i like your book. The judges were more sexualized than in real life but at least it gives us something to strive for. [laughter] and so i said this is a funny email i dont like to read from my book so i went around all of these and i read his email and it was so funny and this time he sent me a very kind i like your book i look forward to seeing you. But overall, its been a surprisingly warm exception for my book given with some of the characters do. I want to open up to the audience they may have some followup questions but please let us know what you are wondering about in the fiction or nonfiction and Current Events about the court that is stranger than fiction in many ways. In my case i hope that it does. Im a constitutional law professor and this is about the Supreme Court constitution american identity and those kind of things. I dont do many things. I spend time with my kids and i teach, i write law review articles that i treasure exercise enough that i dont drop dead but basically thats my life. [laughter] that sounds a lot of things. Its enough that its a struggle to get them in. But i try not to take up too many hobbies. I do the same but without the exercise part. I have a fulltime job as a reporter asked msnbc where i covered the womens rights politics and the law and my coauthor during the time we were writing the book and we were on an insane deadline. Part of it was we were inspired by the fact that justice throughout long periods of her life got two or three hours of sleep and produced incredible work. A she found out she passed the bar the day the book came out. And got a nice note from Justice Ginsburg herself. I guess i also dont do too much exercise and so thats the time in which i write. People train for marathons, and people dont ask them how do you do your marathon training with your work . So, but since it is writing him a of the work is also writing it gets that it does look so different like to bestow people its different. Its like a people are trying for the marathon. Im in my little closet typing. Spirit a good point. From lawyers who are interested in writing fiction, it can be a challenge if your day job also involves writing and editing which when does as a journalist and blogger. I found it helpful to separate out the blogging, journalism, nonfiction stuff. Editor like to think we write nonfiction. And the fiction stuff which was sort of drawing on different writing muscles. I found it a little difficult to write or generate original material during the week. I worked on a somewhat weekday, weekend schedule why did a lot of the fiction work on the weekend. I might add it a bit during the week in the evenings, i would say in the mornings but im not a morning person. During the evening. I found it helpful t to have soe kind of mental separation between these two things. Question . Many tony begin with a little bit of dismissive comment about judicial biographies and im wondering to what extent you all have read, you know, Supreme Court justice biographies . Im picturing the one of John Marshall that is this big him id bookshelf and i did read it. And i wonder what you learn what you think readers would learn from biographies about what makes a good Supreme Court justice, what makes an effective Supreme Court justice, et cetera . I didnt read that take John Marshall biography im sorry to say but i do think enough of what i have read about John Marshall is what makes for good Supreme Court justice, which is a consensus builder, and someone who can bring people together. And as far as, also sense of humor. I saw something recently talking about marshall and the court was getting criticized about the justices drinking too much or something, and marshall made this rule like we only drink wine when it is run. Inevitably, they would all get together and the sun would be oh so he would have and a look at the window and he would say we have a big jurisdiction, a vast jurisdiction. Its going to be raining somewhere. [laughter] we were privileged of a lot of Supreme Court biographies to draw on for hours in addition to the original reporting and research we did. It was kind of freeing to not have to tell every story, and it was freeing also to bring the lynne stewart. Our project is very much within this kind of renaissance of feminism that happen on the internet. So thinking about how do you take these serious topics, these legal concepts, and how to bring them to people who are curious about Justice Ginsburg because they think shes going because they are famous and angry but recent Supreme Court decisions that bring the globe into that world of this years biographies. We drawn biographies. There were some great stories. The most recent biography of Justice Brennan just was really helpful. And Justice Ginsburg herself a stunt such a good job looking back in history also to the justices wise in thinking and harland in particular she coedited writings, she coedited excerpts from martinez died become so when she identified with. We were trying to bridge that hoosier. A lot of it involves looking back into history in places where women and other marginalized people are just not fair and tried to get how do you make that also part of our conversation and the current a conversation. I read autobiographies. Sort of naturally because i have a bunch of Supreme Court justices as my characters. Im not sure it taught me what it takes to be a good justice. I think first of all the probably several giveaways to get adjusted to could have some consensus builders, also could have some brilliant mavericks. You probably want a mix of different people on the corporate i think you want a mix of different Life Experience and experience in different governmental institutions. Its unfortunate we are just now getting federal appellate judges. If i had to guess i would say i think the most important quality for Supreme Court justice are being openminded and willing to learn and also i was a genuinely humble. Nutty buddy tells you they are humble is, in fact, humble. But justices who do have a sense of humility about the role and understand that they are one branch and they were reviewing the actions of other branches and sometimes state government. Sometimes the views of these other government actors deserve respect. Sometimes they do sometimes they dont. Its good to have a theory about why that is so. Pretty sure ive never read a biography of a Supreme Court justice. Maybe if more of them had syphilis i would read more. [laughter] justice douglass. Cant libel the dead. [laughter] [inaudible] ive read i just ordered my second, third and fourth copies of notorious rbg and i enjoyed all of them. Thank you. There was a historical novel published for two years ago in which the lead characters name is Kermit Roosevelt. When you take it he takes a trip down amazon with his dad, it doesnt end well for Kermit Roosevelt. How did you feel about having your ancestor in namesake used in historical fiction . Did that influence how you treated real people in your novel . A novel is called roosevelt thesis and i think its a great novel, but i suppose it gave me a little bit more confidence than what i was doing because i was able to look, im not a hypocrite. Hear someone who wrote a novel about my namesake, my ancestors, my family. I think thats great. To our parts that are true, parts that are made up. What he was trying to do, and this is exactly what i try to do, he was trying to use the fantastic fictional element to get out of deeper truth about the character that maybe you cant coax out of the better narrative of facts. But that you can develop more fully with fiction. I thought he did a great job of that. Didnt you in your novel reference the death of i did come district thursday moment where things dont go well for Kermit Roosevelt also. Who else . Was thank you, marty . Well, i will ask since we are talking about what makes a good justice, do you think were going to get a Justice Merrick garland now or later or ever . What are your thoughts . He was a former partner of my law firm and by all accounts an extraordinarily qualified nominee. So i hope so. I will say that every nominee, even the villainous ones, got a hearing, up and down votes. I would hope the sink or i would like to think if i was conjuring a character does going to block the process i might throw them in a ceo doing some unsavory thing so the vote could go forward. The long answer, the short answer is i dont know. I think you can libel Chuck Grassley. He is very much alive last night if i had to guess i would say no, just based on incentives that republicans had to wait it out. We may have a justice nominated by president donald trump. I might guess yes in the lameduck session. I was predicting judge boggs was going to be elevated, so take my predictions for whatever little they are worth. Although in hindsight the pic of judge garland was brilliant and its like at the end of sixth sense, like, yeah, i didnt see that coming. Sorry, im a moron. I think that you can see it in a lameduck session. Some of the republican senator said no, no, no, we cant do that by thinkers like the government shut down. Either incentives for them to hold the ranks of . Sure that once november is done and maybe we have president elect Hillary Clinton i think 63 year old moderate judge garland is going to start looking very good for them. If this were like the west wing of the sequel to supreme ambitions or something the president would pull the nomination and nominate pam karlan or someone and how do you like that . Arlette president clinton and nominate pam karlan or someone else who was much younger and much to the left of judge garland. Anyway, i think we might see one. Com is very interesting. As one often thinks of him as somebody who is not really going to give us fabulous Supreme Court justices but he does he going to give us a shortlist already of a dozen. I love the trees to see who was on the. Hes told us he is not nominating his sister was on the third circuit. Even though she became a Minor Campaign issue, thats not happening. The judges he mentioned like judge bill pryor, diane sykes, these are not outlandish, its not like these are not crazy ideas. These are well respected judges who are pretty conservative. Theyre probably the kind of judges he under another republican president. Its not like its going to be nominating some contestants on the apprentice. Its not an endorsement of donald trump of course. Im just saying. I think you should use a very osha like the apprentice to select the nominee. [laughter] they could have a robe contest like swishing down the runway. I would watch that. A request, do a robe challenge. They never took my idea. Those who you of written from sort come into the courtroom what you think the justices are feeling or how are they coping with all the focus on them right now and on the death of Justice Scalia . I have the sense that its a difficult time for the court. Any thoughts . I think the justices would like to be back at the court of nine. For some of them thats going to obviously have partisan effects. Welcome for all of them it will have partisan effects. For some of them it will be welcome, less welcome depended on who gets seeded alderwood. I do think all of the justices care about the court as an institution and vacancy in certain cases it cant do what it is supposed to do. Sometimes the court doesnt take cases that sometimes that allows circuit split to percolate even in situations were different courts in different parts of the country have said Different Things with the meaning of federal law or the constitution, sometimes that can go one. But i think the justices all do wish they had a court that could resolve those issues when they want to. And sometimes we see them deadlocking 44 and that just means they cant do their job. Speak thats got to be right i think. Plus that must be just so odd and sad i would think i was at the court washing o oral origins for the first time in a long time last week, and just pashtun there are only eight, its a very, very odd thing to say. I imagine everybody must miss Justice Scalia in some way or another quite a bit. His presence was so enormous that it must be just like a big hole for all of them. Justice kagan spoke yesterday at nyu and she mentioned i think that the Supreme Court was a bit duller and bit more great institution, and that the justices are sad to have lost their college. So its very interesting. We are here at Georgetown Law School where weve covered on above the law a number of professors had dueling emails to the entire community about whether or not they really mourned Justice Scalia your but i think that for his colleagues at the court, certainly including Justice Ginsburg who gave some of the most moving testimony, testimonials to him, he is very much missed. I think for the justices that are very invested in the functioning of the court as an institution about politics, this is a difficult moment because, yeah, Chuck Grassley gave a speech today in which he said that its john roberts fault that theyre not confirming the nominee because he has politicized the court with his Obamacare Vote which i was pretty ironic considering that those votes stamp investment that the court can be about what the Republican Party wants chief Justice Roberts to do. So the longer that republicans show that they are unwilling to fill Justice Scalia succeed purely on the basis of partisan politics, it begins to tarnish the court. I think Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalias friendship, at least for her, was premised on the id of the court as an institution that could function despite different ideologies and political commitments. That it was about making the institution were. I think they generally liked each other and to let go to the opera but i think was also a performative friendship that was about showing that were up of just the fact were deeply different values. And so for it now to come down to this bareknuckle political fight about what is going to be the lameduck which be a complete abdication of whatever principle they are citing or whatever it would be they are vulnerable republicans in purple states. I personally think that has always been there but i think it undermined the legitimacy of the court to say that a duly elected president that his nominee cannot even get a hearing or an up and down vote. Any other questions . Well, before we end, i had suggested to the panelists that if they had a passage from the books they wanted to read to the audience that illuminate some aspect of the court, they would have that opportunity. Anybody want to take a stab at it . I do have my book with me so let me just say to everyone in the audience can if you will ret youll find many passages that illuminate the court. Spin is a beautifully written book. I could read two paragraphs or so which should eliminate some of the premises upon which the court backs and decide cases, some things are so fundamental we might not even really think about the them. This is the court is in a pornography First Amendment case in justice title is a swing voting is one who is going to decide which one it goes but, of course, he is into the you sort of doesnt come as what about logic and reason and such. The solicitor general of texas is making an appointment and she citing some cases about various things. And toddle fidget, she citing cases whether others on the other side sometimes the court does one thing, sometimes under the sometimes the justices say one thing. Sometimes Say Something else. So what . Its all just words. Hes headed up to the proverbial here with all the worse. He interrupts the string of citations. Counselor, i cant help but notice what your opponent you insist on framing argument with words. Does the strength of your argument relies on a presumption that words mean something rather than nothing . He is looking intently, the lib links once and then again. He imagines then again. He imagines he can close and open like an Early Morning cartoon to blink, blink. The questions blink. The question is thrown off blink. The questions throughout the cold of the texas top argument at all the many practice i could just take to get ready. That went to any of the lawyers claim the justices ask or defend the human races shared assumptions regarding the capacity of language to convey meaning. It just had not come up. [laughter] [alause] thank you. Sounds like a question justices clear could have asked in come in an odd moment. But anyway, anyone else . I will go ahead. Because were talking about Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburgs friendship. I was here at georgetown several years ago for the end of the term event that the Supreme Court institute put on. For those of you who dont know, the Supreme Court institute which is graciously hosting this program does this tremendous Public Service where they moved or perform moves for advocates arguing for the Supreme Court they practice argument sessions for all of the cases are virtually all of the cases every turn. After the last argument they have a gathering basically i think you to the volunteers who serve as mock justices for these practice sessions. And one year at the event Justice Ginsburg appeared and was honored. And Justice Scalia gave us a very warm introduction to her, and ginsburg being an avid opera than they are range for some Opera Singers to come and stare nader. Usually a beautiful type of thing that stuck with me and i incorporated that scene into my novel. So i will read just to briefly, tony asked us to get something that captures the essence of the Supreme Court or the Supreme Court committee. This is a quirky thing if those of you government anyway the green card bar. They can to talk in the own language and jargon. So my character is at that event, a fictionalized version of that event and is making some observations about that. So it says we were spoilt at always a gee, cecelia said. Like most of the Supreme Court community. Cecelia spoken abbreviations and acronyms that it wasnt the office of solicitor general. It was osg. It was a justice anderson. It was our are a. I case was dismissed as improbably granted. It was big. There was the gdr, the cvsg, and the list went on. And ivory tower version of annoying teenage text speak. [laughter] [applause] these are tough acts to follow. My passage is not funny actually, so maybe im at a disadvantage. To this is a short passage and it does i think capture even though its not sit at the Supreme Court i think it captures in some ways the psychology of how do you get to become one of the nine, out of the 1. 4 million in america, how do you wind up as one of the nine who are sitting not too far from where we are right networks this is funny. I can if you like this is by what is like to be at a confirmation and. We are sitting not too far from the capital. To our these bright lights shining down. There are cameras on. So anyway this is probably the closest ill ever get to a confirmation and. I wil would read this short pas. The background is a character in the book who is narrating this particular passage, a character has found out that she will not be working for the Supreme Court. I would never have the privilege of working for the Supreme Court. A longtime dream of mine was dashed at the same time would never have the corresponding burdens. Take no mistake about it being a Supreme Court clerk came with burdens. The weight of high expectations. Within a few years of leaving her clerkship youre expected to enjoy a certain amount of professional success, a partnership at a major law firm, a tenured professorship at an elite law school, a high government office. If youre not a federal judge by age 45 people would wonder, what went wrong . Even making it to a coveted life candid seat on the federal bench did not put an end to ambition. District judge judges wanted toe circuit judges. Circuit judges want to be particularly wellrespected circuit judges such as theater judges or better yet Supreme Court justices. I recalled what judge stems until we do my clerkship interview. I like to be a judge was going places. Success did not take it off the treadmill but simply put you on a different treadmill at a high speed and with a steeper incline. But now i didnt have to worry about any of that. With no hope of a Supreme Court clerkship in my future i was free to just be an ordinary person. It felt liberating to the weight of ambition lifted from me, or so i tried to tell myself. [applause] in the spirit of talking about clerkships and court life im going to read a brief excerpt from the chapter about some of the counts of Justice Ginsburg, one of the we edited for the book and the city next meter when rbg hard to the grapevine or clark paul was David Kirkland for retired justice blackmun, berman got buzzed by the intercom and change their members together for apprehensively thinking he messed something up. I did not do a special friend of the court, rbg said he must have are up 14. Todaytwo days later rbg set upa small table in her chambers with the placement and tea set and spent 30 minutes with the young couple. Later she performed the wedding ceremony, something she is done for several clerks. I will never forget the end. Instead of by the power invested in me i wouldve, she said, by the power vested in a by the United States constitution. My wife always jokes that if we got divorced would be unconstitutional. [laughter] abhijit even occasionally gets in on clerk shenanigans. In judge alitos first full term, his coach persuading to field his own fantasy baseball league. The week the ginsburg clerk teams played against alito we beat them soundly reports scott, the clerk that you. He eagerly reported that victory to rbg and suggested she sent a memo to alito crowing about the victory. She looked at me like i was crazy, he recalled. He boldly slid a draft memo across the table. Abhijit looked down at the page. Now, tell me what fantasy baseball is again, she said she took out her pen to make some corrections. In the end as they remembered as the number read, dear sam, i understand that this week my clerks be george team by a score can do nothing. We expect more even from the junior justice. [laughter] [applause] thanks. I do have a copy of a book and for me. Im going to read a passage about a clerk trying to decide a case which is part with this book is about. Here military authorities imposed a curfew on the west coast japanese americans. And remove them from their homes. Orderings and report to solicitor for transport to relocation camps. He broke the curfew refuse to assemble. For this he was convicted in federal court. Now the aclu has chosen him to make the challenge the exclusion orders. Theyve chosen because its they have chosen because its crude oil. Is an eagle scout, a baseball fan can no threat to the safety of the coast. Good facts but the court cannot decide for him alone. Alone. It will decide for everyone excluded. And how do we decide what i used the methods my professors taught me. The lawyers brought me a story meant to walk into fbi office told them he would not do. Through those murky waters i draw the same intellect or im looking for the bright fish of the law but i find nothing. I am lost. Im adrift in an endless sea. There is no law neither in the sundappled shallows for the dark depths. There are only men. I. C. Only face the. I see gordon korematsu with his merit badges, general dewitt with his ribbons and medals. American soldiers standing in the camp guard towers and causing Pacific Beach at the young men at the aclu and congress and the president and the department of justice. Here is how decide a constitutional case justice robertroberts once said the latt gadget alongside the constitution and see if it. He must have been joking i think no. Theres no law that would decide his case. The only question is whom to trust. Be these people are dangerous they can be excluded. If they are loyal they cannot. They are the faces industry and other voices in the breeze. Whose word will be except with the japanese are loyal, the aclu says. There were no acts of sabotage on the coast before the evacuation. Therthere have been no in a why. The evacuation was driven by racism and fear mongering. We did not so we did not know said the department of justice. They sent their children to japan for school. If of sabotage occurred, might that not mean they were gathering for a concerted bloke with the evacuation was a reasonable measure. After all, it is milder than the draft. The Pacific Coast states to get stronger tone. These people are disloyal they said they are not like us. They do not assembly. They have their own religion, the own language schools. They sent 10 for home before heart pearl harbor. The radio signals from the coast and lights flashing messages to the chipset cities. Raids found dynamite, guns and ammunition the envelope the questioner they admitted it all. [applause] thank you. We will adjourn and there is a reception and several stacks of books that are available for purchase its been a great time, great discussion. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] this is booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. Battle happens next on cspan2s booktv. First up, james traub with a look at john quincy adams. James traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine where he has worked since 1998, and is a regular columnist for foreign policy. Com. His books include the best intentions, kofi annan, and the u. N. In the era of American World power. The devils playground, a century of pleasure and profit in times square. City on a hill, and the freedom agenda. In his review