If you years ago we began inviting to offer for every class, a extraordinary opportunity for our students as you embark on your legal education, to listen to and learn from someone whose career has shipped a law. Shaped a law. By attending georgetown law you laws where they are made. In the past few years people sotoheard from justice meyer, justice stevens, justice scalia. We have been so fortunate the last two years, the second year in a row to be joined by the legendary Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. [applause] a long introduction is not necessary. Your storiesss in you will read and discuss the many powerful and Supreme Court decisions as well as the influential dissent. He will also learned that she occupies a rare late in history. Marshallice thurgood Justice Ginsburg will be a historic figure as an advocate for gender equality. Even if she had never been a judge or justice. And, i same sure you all know, the justice, is also a cultural icon. How many of us can say that we avent sired inspired oneact opera, to coloring books, and a phenomenon known as the notorious rgb. Justice ginsburg is a special number of the Community Area for those who came down, you might have noticed we recently received a portrait of Justice Ginsburg which we now very proudly does leigh as you come into the auditorium. Her late husband Marty Ginsburg was a beloved professor for many years. We have a professorship named in his honor. Mary and wendy, mary is joining us today, the coauthors with her of her recent book my own words. The justice is a longtime support of the policy program and every year invites to the ea andfor t conversation. I am [applause] a couple of logistical announcements before we begin. Weer the justices remarks will go to the reception. That is one. Thats where you go next. To, silence your cell phones. I did mine on the way in. Talk for a will little bit about the past term, then after that i will ask some questions. We received a lot of questions from the audience. Will, time allowed, ask as many as i can. When i asked her a question i ask that you stand up so we can rent nice you recognize you. Please join me in welcoming Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. [applause] i feel so welcome you are mostly firstyear students, is that right . A very exciting time. I remember how i felt my first year at law school. It was a new kind of learning. Mostlyege, i was passively taking notes. Classes, i hope, are engaging you so youre thinking all the time throughout the class. I thought we could begin by my giving the largest Headline News last term was the appointment of a new justice, justice gorsuch, to replace justice scalia. For 14 months we were only eight on the bench. Neil gorsuch became the 113th justice, in time to join us for our last sitting in april. He had only one week, between his confirmation of the start of the setting, but he managed to prepare well for 13 cases. He also cast himself as a potential rival to justice sotomayor, as the justice who asks the most questions at oral arguments. The principal, inhouse beneficiary of Justice Gorsuchs appointment, is Justice Kagan, who is no longer our junior justice, meaning she escapes opening the Conference Room door when a messenger knocks, answering the rare ring of the telephone, and most daunting, conveying to the entourage of the Clerks Office, the legal office, and the reporters office, the dispositions the justices made at the conference. Justice kagan also relinquished to justice gorsuch, membership to the courts cafeteria committee. In that assignments, Justice Kagan suffered grumbling with good humor. Her single achievement . The installation of a frozen yogurt machine. [applause] a new statistic was reported the last term, adding to the last meter and count of questions asked by each of justice. It was the average number of words from the bench per argument. Justice breyer won hands down, with 814 words. Justice kagan took second with 646. Justice sotomayor, third, with 515. And i trailed, with only 284. Running neck and neck as fast as the fastest justice in getting out opinions, according to a journal, rapid ruth and swift sonja. [laughter] twice during the term, Justice Breyers cell phone rang during the midst of arguments. Like spectators, the justices are expected to leave their phones and other Electronic Devices behind. After the second occasion, the chief justice had a replica of a metal detector placed in the corridor for Justice Breyer to pass through before ascending to the bench. [laughter] for me, the most unforgettable argument of the term is a case you probably never heard of, maclin jack against the United States. This was the question presented. Could a naturalized citizen be stripped of her citizenship if she committed offense and failed to report it on her citizenship application . The chief justice was visibly shaken. Some time ago, he confessed, of course, outside the statute of limitations, he drove 60 miles an hour in a 55. So, would such a confession prompt cancellation of naturalization . Justice kagan said, i cant recall how many times i have lied about my weight. The council comfortingly responded, unless you did so under oath. The court reached 62 decisions last term and only nine of those 62 decisions were 54. In comparison to that sharp agreement rate, we disagreed in only 15 , we sharply disagreed in only 15 of the cases. We were unanimous in the bottom 31e judgment in at least cases, half of the decisions rendered in argued cases. And in 21 of the 31 unanimous judgments, we were unanimous in the opinion, as well. So, agreement, you can see is substantially higher than sharp disagreement on the court. We decided several high profile cases, and i will describe some of them. Two cases came to us from the Second Circuit. Both were among the most closely watched. Borelli santana concerned a birthright citizenship statute that treated unwed u. S. Citizen mothers more favorably than unwed u. S. Citizen fathers. A child born abroad to an unwed, u. S. Citizen mother would require citizenship at birth if her mother had previously resided in the United States for d of onentinuous perio year. Unwed u. S. Citizen fathers were subjected to a more demanding residency requirement. Morellisantana was a dominican father. Morellisantana did not meet the statutory requirements for u. S. Citizenship at birth. Congress specification for different requirements for unwed citizen mothers and fathers, the Second Circuit held was incompatible with the equal protection principle. Six of the eight participating justices joined in affirming that equal protection holding. Addressing the toughest question in the case, however, the court ultimately concluded that striking down rather than extending the favorable treatment for unwed mothers was the remedy congress would have preferred had it known of the constitutional infirmity of the genderbased differential it enacted. That was so, we explained, because the longer residency applied to married parents, one a citizen, one an alien, as well as to unwed fathers. Congress, we thought, would not have wanted the exception for unwed mothers to swallow the main rule. The bossi litigation stemmed from the government response in new york city to the september 11 tragedy. Plaintiffs sued Justice Department officials and wardens of the metropolitan Detention Center in brooklyn, new york, where plaintiffs were confined for periods running from 38 months. Those arrested had overstayed their visas, but were not accused of any criminal law infractions. They alleged discrimination, based on the perception that they were muslim, and they alleged gross mistreatment. Many of their allegations were confirmed by an Inspector General report. The report corroborated that the plaintiffs were held in cramped cells for over 23 hours a day, kept awake day and night by bright lights and loud sounds, denied access to basis hygiene items, toilet paper, soap, towel, toothpaste, and eating utensils. Denied for extended periods telephone calls to family and lawyers, allowed no mail or visitors, frequently stripped searched and subjected to physical and verbal abuse. The District Court dismissed most of their claims, reversing, in part, the Second Circuit held that many of the claims could pass the courts threshold. The court took up the case with only six sitting justices. Justices sotomayor and kagan were recused. Justice sotomayor because she had been on the Second Circuit during the early portions of the case. And Justice Kagan, because she was our solicitor general when the case was pending. Justice gorsuch had not yet joined the court when we heard the arguments. Four of the justices voted to reverse. And pivotal to the courts decision was a 1971 precedent. The case was bivens against six unnamed agents of the bureau of narcotics, a case im sure you will become familiar with during your time here. The court held that plaintiff could state a stain for relief directly under the constitution. It was the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, even when there was no statute granting the right to sue. The president the court held was bivens did not reach claims like those asserted in a bossi, given the compelling interest in national security. Justice breyer dissented, in an opinion i joined. He took the unusual step of summarizing his dissent from the bench, and that meant that he thought the courts decision was not just wrong, but egregiously so. Without a right to sue, he urged , the constitutional safeguards against arbitrary detention and abusive treatment of detainees, would be toothless. Abossi guided the court in a case decided soon after, hernandez versus mesa. The episode concerned a Border Patrol agent on the texas side of the border who fatally shot a 15yearold mexican national. The agent fired while the boy was playing in a culvert that separated the two countries. The boys parents sued the officer seeking monetary compensation. With all of the courts judges sitting, the fifth circuit held that because the boy was shot while he was on the mexican side of the border the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the officers use of deadly force. In an unsigned opinion, the court instructed the fifth circuit to consider, as an initial matter, and in light of the abossi decision, whether a claim could be mounted under bivens. Again, Justice Breyer dissented, and again, i joined him. The colbert was jointly controlled and maintained. Justice breyer emphasized, the area was policed by both mexico and the United States. It should not have been material, in our view, where in the culvert that bullet fired by the federal officer struck the boy. A case coming to us from the federal circuit, mattel against tam, targeted a provision of the lanham act, our trademark act, a law that prohibited the patent and Trademark Office from registering a disparaging trademark. Simon tam sought to trademark a name he chose for his band. The slants. His aim was to reappropriate a term long used to disparage a minority group, and to render the term, instead of a slur, a badge of pride. The patent and Trademark Office refused to register the mark on the sole ground that it disparaged people of asian descent. Sitting with all of its judges, a fractured federal circuit held that the provision that bans disparaging marks, a viewpoint discriminatory measure incompatible with the First Amendment. We affirmed that judgment. There were 2 opinions from each of the four justices. All of us agreed that the trademark is the trademark holders speech, and not the governments speech. The underlying issue had received considerably more attention in the dispute over the nfls Washington Redskins trademark. The patent and Trademark Office canceled protection for the redskin trademark in 2014, at the request of a group of native americans. The federal District Court upheld the cancellation, ruling that redskins was disparaging to a substantial composite of native americans. The appeal to the Fourth Circuit was placed on hold pending our decision in the slants case. But one of the problems these cases present is what exactly does disparaging mean . Beauty is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. To the Trademark Office examiner slants was a racial , insult. To the slants themselves, it was an expression of pride in their heritage. I checked before coming here to find out what happened to the redskin case. In june, the Fourth Circuit asked the parties to inform the court in light of the decision in the slants case if oral argument was necessary. The lawyer for the redskins, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, the native americans that had complained, and the government agreed that the slants case was controlling and that there would be no need for oral argument. Another First Amendment case, the issue was access to internet by former sex offenders. A state law made it a felony for a registered sex offender to access a broad array of social networking websites. The offender knew that the sites did not restrict membership to adults. Packingham had served a sentence for taking indecent liberties with a 13yearold. He served his time. Several years later, he posted a Facebook Page celebrating his success in getting a traffic ticket dismissed. For that posting, he was charged with violating a North Carolina law banning him from using ace from using facebook, or amazon. Com, the washington post, and more. In defense of the statute, North Carolina stressed its vital interest in protecting children from sexual predators. But the law was stunningly overbroad the Supreme Court , held, because it barred packingham from using all the sites that others use to engage in ordinary and protected speech, for example, interacting with their elected representatives, obtaining online education, and finding gainful employment. Applying the First Amendment to the internet, the court recognized would be a trying , task and no doubt the future would bring more opportunities to address the matter. The state department of Natural Resources denied funding on the ground that Trinity Lutheran was a church. The department did so relying on an article of the Missouri State constitution that read no money shall ever be taken from the , directly orry indirectly, in age of any church, sect, or denomination of religion. Trinity lutheran challenged the departments ruling, urging that exclusion from the Grant Program violated the free exercise and equal protection clauses by discriminating on the basis of religious status. Disagreeing with the lower court, the court held excluding the church from the Grant Program violated the federal constitution. Generally available benefit the court reasoned could not be withheld on account of the beneficiaries religious identity. Justice sotomayor explained in her view First Amendment religion clauses demanded a stricter separation of church and state. Two cases on our docket concern questions stemming from the courts 2015 decision in obergefell against hodges. Obergefell held samesex couples must be afforded same rights to wed as heterosexual partners. In smith, we summarily reversed the decision of the Supreme Court of arkansas concerning birth certificates. We held that state may not deny to marry samesex couples the right afforded by state law to married opposite sex couples to have the name of the birth mothers spouse ended as the second parent on the childs birth certificate. On the same day that we so ruled, we granted a review in a case arising under the colorado antidiscrimination act, a case that has gotten more attention, i think, than any other of our current docket. Masterpiece capeshaw against colorado civil Rights Commission. A baker, based on religious beliefs refused to bake wedding , cakes for samesex couples. He withheld cookies and ordinary cakes, but he would not create a cake celebrating their marriage. Colorado sanctions him for violating the states antidiscrimination law and we will decide in the term about to begin whether the bakers claim to freedom of religion prevails over the states application of antidiscrimination law. For the current term, we have so far granted review in 26 cases, garnering considerable interest is carpenter against United States. The historic communication act permits the government to obtain without getting a warrant cellphone records that reveal a persons whereabouts over the course of several months. The petition in carpenter asked whether constitution requires a warrant to access such records. Answered no. Cuit it held a cell phone user voluntarily shares information including her whereabouts