Supreme Court Justice spoke to first year law students wednesday on the challenge facing women who enter the legal field. She also gave a brief overview of the Upcoming Court term. This is an hour and 10 minutes. William Justice Ginsburg, it is a privilege to welcome you here today. A few years ago, we began inviting people to offer reflections to our entering class. This has been an extraordinary opportunity for our students, as you embark on your legal education, to listen to and learn from someone whose career has shaped the law. And by attending georgetown law, you have chosen to learn the law in a place where laws are made. And this is evident in the speakers who have welcomed our first year students. People have heard from Justice Sotomayor, justice stevens, and the late justice scalia. And we have been so fortunate the last two years, this is the second year in a row, to be joined by the legendary Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. [applause] william i know a long introduction of Justice Ginsburg is not necessary for georgetown students. As you progress in your studies you will eat and discuss her many powerful decisions as well as her pointed and influential dissents. And you will also learn that she occupies a rare place in legal history. Like Justice Thurgood marshall, Justice Ginsburg would be a historic figure, in her case, as an advocate for gender equality, even if she had never been a judge or a justice. And as im sure you all know, the judge, the justice, is also a cultural icon. How many of us can say that we have inspired a oneact opera, two coloring books [laughter] and the phenomenon known as. He notorious rbg we recently received a portrait of Justice Ginsburg, which we now very proudly display as you come into the auditorium. Her late husband, marty ginsburg, was a beloved professor, past professor and scholar at georgetown law for many years, and we have a professorship named in his honor. Justice ginsburgs authorized biographers, and the coauthors with her, of a recent book my own words, are members of our faculty. The justice is a longtime supporter of our womens law and Public Policy program. Im deeply grateful to you for your commitment to our students and alumni. Thank you, Justice Ginsburg. [applause] william a couple of logistical announcements before we begin. After the justices remarks, we will go to the reception in the sport and fitness aetrium. That is one. That is where you go to next. Two, silence your cell phone. I did mine on the way in. And in terms of the format, the justice will talk for a little bit, about the past term. Then, after that, i will ask some questions. And we received a lot of questions from the audience, so i will, time allowed, ask as many of them as i can. When you asked her questions, i would ask that you stand up so we can recognize you. Now members of our 2017 entering class, please join me in welcoming, Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. [applause] Justice Ginsberg i feel so welcome. And you are mostly firstyear students, is that right . A very exciting time. I remember how i felt, my first year of law school. It was a new kind of learning. In college, i was mostly, passively taking notes. But your law school classes, i hope, are engaging you so you are thinking all the time. I thought we could begin by my giving you a resume of what last term was like at the Supreme Court, and say a few things about the term that will start on the first monday in october. 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 sitting, 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. [laughter] 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. [laughter] Justice Ginsberg a new statistic was reported the last term, adding to the last meter and count of questions asked by each of the justices. It was the average number of words from the per argument. Justice breyer won hands down, with 814 words. Justice kagan took second with 646. Justice sotomayor, third, with 550. And i trailed, with only 284. Running neck and neck as the fastest justice in getting out opinions, rapid ruth and swift sonja. [laughter] Justice Ginsberg twice during the term, Justice Breyers cell phone rang during the midst of arguments. Just 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] Justice Ginsberg for me, the most unforgettable argument of the term is a case you probably never heard of, maslenjack against the United States. This was the question presented. Could a naturalized citizen be stripped of her citizenship if she committed an 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 line judgment in at least 31 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. Sessions versus moralessantana and ziglar against abassi. Both were among the most closely watched. Moralessantana concerned a birthright statute, treating 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 acquire citizenship at birth if her mother had previously resided in the United States for a continuous period of one year. Unwed u. S. Citizen fathers were subjected to a more demanding residency requirement. Moralessantana was a dominican father. Moralessantana did not meet the statutory requirements for u. S. Citizenship at birth. 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 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 period applied to married parents, as well as to unwed fathers. Congress, we thought, would not have wanted the exception for unwed mothers to swallow the main rule. The abassi 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 threemonth eight 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 basic hygiene items, toilet paper, soap, towel, toothpaste, and eating utensils. Denied for extended periods, telephone calls to family and lawyers, allowed no the court took up the case with only six sitting justices. Justice is a sotomayor and kagan were recused. Testis 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. And Justice Gorsuch had not yet joined the court when we heard the arguments. Four of the justices voted to reverse, and principle, and pivotal to the courts decision was a 1971 president cedent, 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 court held bivens did not reach claims like those asserted in abossi, 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 case concerned a Border Patrol agent on the texas side of the border who fatally shot of 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 culvert was a maintained area, 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. 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. 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, ending our dutch 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 plaintiffs, 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, and the government agreed that the slants case was controlling, and that there would be no need for oral argument. In another case, the issue was access to the 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. That 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 note 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 facebook, or amazon. Com. 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, 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. In religion clauses figured another case. There was an application by the inrch to participate missouris scrapped tile program to resurface a preschool playground at its facility. 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 public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion. Trinity lutheran challenged the departments ruling, urging that its 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 Supreme 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 beneficiarys religious identity. Dissent, 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 the same rights to wed as heterosexual partners. In smith, we reversed the decision of the Supreme Court of arkansas concerning birth certificates. We held