supreme court chief justice john roberts at the university of minnesota law school in minneapolis. he is asked about several topics, including the public's perception of the court, how it operates, and if cameras belong in the courtroom. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. i appreciate that. thank you. thank you. thank you very much. thank you. before i sit down with professor event, i the main thought i would spend a moment touching upon the contentious events in washington of recent weeks. i will not criticize the political branches. we do that often enough in our opinions. [applause] -- [laughter] istice roberts: but what would like to do briefly is emphasized how the judicial veryh is, how it must be different. i have great respect for our public officials. after all, they speak for the people, and that commands a certain degree of humility from those of us in the judicial branch who do not. .e do not speak for the people our role is very clear -- we are to interpret the constitution and laws of the united very different. i have great respect for our public officials. states and ensure that the political branches act within them. that job obviously requires independence from the political branches. the story of the supreme court would be very different without that sort of independence. without independence, there is no brown v. board of education. without independence, there is barnettvirginia versus with the court held the government could not compel schoolchildren to salute the flag. without independence, there is steel seizure case where the court held president truman was subject to the constitution even in a time of war. while the court has from time to erred greatly, but when it has, it is because the court yielded to political in the case shamefully upholding the internment during world war ii a japanese-american citizens -- of japanese-american citizens. those of us on the court know that the best way to do our job is to work together in a collegial way. i'm not talking about mere civility, although that helps. i'm instead talking about a shared commitment to a ginger would exchange of ideas -- genuine exchange of ideas and thes through each step of process. we need to know at each step that we are in this together. there is a concrete expression of that collegiality in a tradition of the court that has prevailed for over a century. the bench toonto hear argument in the case, before we go into a conference room to discuss the case, we cause for a moment to shake each weer's hand -- we cause -- pause for a moment. it is a repeated reminder that, as our newest colleague put it, we do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle. we do not caucus in separate rooms. we do not serve one party or one interest. we serve one nation. i want to assure all of you that we will continue to do that to the best of our abilities, if or contentious. thanks very much. [applause] professor stein: well, let me welcome you to the university of minnesota law school. thank you for being here. good weather for you today. i think you told me the last time you were in minnesota, it january. justice roberts: it was in january 2 argue a case in the court of appeals. i had never been in the court of appeals here before, and i always like to visit the venue before the day of argument. we were staying in the st. paul hotel, i think. anyway, the courthouse was very close, and i thought i would walk about five blocks and after two blocks, i turned back and said i would see it in the morning. my wife went to law school here, as she puts it, for three winters. professor stein: we are delighted you are here and we have a wonderful sunny day to welcome you. friends, attorneys, totally filling this auditorium, thank you all for being here as well and welcome. this is the format we will follow this afternoon. the chief justice and i will have a conversation until about 5:00. following my questions, there will be an opportunity for you to ask chief justice roberts questions. microphones have been placed on both sides of the main floor of the auditorium for you to ask your questions of the chief justice. please remain in your seats during my conversation with the chief justice. mr. chief justice, let us begin our conversation with this question. your position, chief justice of a positionstates, is recognized in the constitution, and the associate justice positions have been created by statute. the size of the court has changed from the original six all the way up to 10 during the lincoln administration and has been at nine for the last 150 years. how is your position is chief justice -- as chief justice different from the other eight associate positions? justice roberts: the most important difference is i get 10,000 extra dollars. let's start with the important stuff. [laughter] justice roberts in many ways it is different. in the most important, it is not. i have one vote. i participate in the decision-making of the court like the associate justices. i have other responsibilities, some of which are absolutely fascinating. i am something called the chancellor of the smithsonian, which means i preside at their board of regents meetings. it's absolutely fascinated because i'm not expected to know they areabout what talking about but do get to participate. i am a chairman of the judicial conference, the body that establishes rules and regulations and policies for the lower federal courts, and that takes a good amount of time, too. those are the most important things. professor stein: do you speak first in your conferences after a case? do, so i haves: i some responsibility to lay out the case and a control -- not control. i monitor the discussion. i insist no one speaks twice until everyone has spoken once. i tried to make sure both sides have a chance to fully air their agreements or disagreements. : one of theein powers you have as chief justice is to assign the writing of the opinion if you are in the majority of a case. what considerations influence you which justice should receive the assignment? there areberts: well, several and i should say i enjoy that part of the process very much. it's like a riddle or puzzle to try to get everything to fit together. the first thing is jurisprudential consideration. for example, you could have firm people voting to a but for a variety of reasons, i need to make sure the assignment goes to somebody who commands the most votes, even though they are voting in favor of the same result. getting the work done is an important consideration. if it is april and one of my colleagues has three opinions that have not circulated yet, i will be reluctant to give that colleague a new opinion. i will give it to somebody else who is more likely to get it done on time. i like to make sure they have a mix of easy opinions and heart opinions, unanimous opinions and , bigly divided opinions opinions in terms of things that are interesting more broadly and what we call the dogs. i like to make sure there is variation of subject matter. there try to make sure not a steady repetition of people being on the opposite side of opinions they are writing. had in thele have past a knockdown drag out in the court, i try to make sure they employ each other's respected opinions in the next assignments. it's like one of those -- i don't know if they are popular .nymore -- rubiks cubes as soon as you get everything lined up on one axis, everyone has the right mix of unanimous and divided cases, you find out that that leaves so-and-so with nothing but his and his cases. -- business cases. i feel good when it goes correctly. --professor stein: do the justis lobby you? don't, anderts: they i appreciate that. i think they understand that there are a lot of factors that go into it and it would not be helpful for them to suggest a would like one case or another, and i also think they appreciate that i would regard that as a askthing if they were to for a decision and they would not likely get it. professor stein: you made some remarks at the fourth circuit court of appeals this summer and obligation toome be something of an honest broker among my colleagues and will not necessarily go out of my way to pick fights." can you explain what you were saying? justice roberts: think of it in the conference room. we are all around a nice table, having a healthy debate about a case. someone has to kind of moderate, and i will -- although i will have views probably one way or the other, sort of not jump in right away because then people would think -- i try to be fair in terms of you can talk now and you and you and if i were jumping in on one side or the other, that would be a pretty hard roll to fulfill. i'm going to have an opportunity to express my views, and i will, liket least initially, i to make sure the views get fully aired, and it's hard to do if you are one of the ones talking. professor stein: the court sat for the first time this term just over two weeks ago on the first monday in october and this year, there were eight justices on the court when you first set, and that was also true a couple of years ago when justice scalia gorsuch before justice was appointed. what, if any, are the differences when the corsets with eight justices as opposed to nine? justice roberts: it's a lot harder. very few courts have an even number of justices, for obvious reasons, and in the federal tie vote, it is a nothing gets done. the decision stays as it was, but there's no opinion, no guidance. it's a real waste of time for everybody. even when our initial vote is 4-4, we try to find ways that do something that moves the case along. it may not be a decision on the issue we had hoped to decide, but if there is some area in which we can come to agreement, sometimes perhaps an insignificant issue, but one that has to be resolved, we will do that just so the case rather than sit back without any resolution at all. professor stein: the court is back to nine justices as a result of justice kavanagh's justicetion succeeding kennedy. can you describe how the court changes every time a new member joins the court? justice roberts: the first thing that happens i think is the eight who were there before behave themselves better. it's like having a new and law at thanksgiving dinner. uncle fred will put on a clean shirt. evidencedertainly this past monday. a number of people commented to me that the oral argument was very well conducted. usually people are jumping on each other's questions, but nobody was doing that. and also i think causes the rest of us to take a hard look at some things we might have taken for granted. for 13 years, i've been explaining my view of a particular clause to my colleagues. they know it. they know what i think. new and yousomebody have to explain it a little more thoroughly because he or she has not heard it yet, and it causes you to take another look at it. i would not go so far as to say it causes re-examination, but a new articulation of a particular view, and that may cause others moreok at it a little bit carefully. professor stein: before we move off the subject, i would like to ask you to comment about the departure of justice kennedy from the court. he served the court for so long and was the senior member of the retired.the time he he was an extraordinarily consequential justice in terms of his impact on the law, but he was first and foremost an incredibly kind and decent man to all of his colleagues, in in myular helped me responsibilities as chief justice, as someone who had been there for a long period of time. extremely thoughtful, careful, considerate. in a's something he did tribute coming out by me in the harvard law review coming out. he compiled a list of reading that he thought was essential. it was for his grandchildren as they were growing up, for people to read to understand the concept from -- the concept of liberty. it goes all the way from ancient greek readings up to the movie "legally blonde." [laughter] justice roberts: it works. believe me. to get aike people hold of the list. i don't know when the log review will have it out, but i'm sure you can get it online. it's a remarkable reading list. to give you an insight not only into liberty and under our a remarkably but well read, very decent individual. i'm going to miss him. professor stein: well, he had a big impact on many of us. when he heard i was going to teach a course on great cases, insisted that a couple of cases be added to that list in his opinion. many of the people in the public do not know very much about the supreme court. i recall surveys when i was at the american bar association 50% of that as many as the public could not name a could supreme justice -- not name a single justice on the supreme court. as many as 10% of those surveyed identified judge judy as a justice on the supreme court. [laughter] this lack ofin: is knowledge about the court a problem in your opinion? justice roberts: yes and no. lack of knowledge about how the supreme court functions and in particular how it is different from the political branches is very unfortunate. i think too many people think that when we reach a decision on a case, it's pretty much the congress reaching a decision on a question of policy, and of course, it's not that at all. it's very different. people need to know that, but i'm not bothered by the fact that they cannot name people. in some sense, i think that's probably a very good think. we wear black robes to convey the notion that our individual -- personality does not have anything to do with the function we had to play in terms of coming to the correct decision on the law, so i don't feel the need to have people know the individuals who are performing the work of the court, but they do need to know how the work of the court is different from that of other entities in the government. timessor stein: are there when you have moved in public when you are not recognized? roberts: oh, sure. generally i'm not, and i would say when i am, almost 99% of the time, people who come up to me are very nice. they either say how much they like what i do and even the ones -- i don't keep track of how many -- but who don't agree with me, they will say they appreciate my service but they don't agree. sometimes they will be very effusive in praise for an opinion of the court saying how great the court was when it did this and how important it was, and i just don't have the heart to tell them i was a dissent. [laughter] professor stein: do you think allowing cameras in the court would be helpful in the work of the cord or getting more people familiar with how the court operates? ittice roberts: i think would be very helpful getting people familiar with how the court operates, but that's not our job to educate people. our job is to carry out our role under the constitution to interpret the constitution and laws according to the rule of law, and i think that having cameras in the courtroom would impede that process. we think the process works pretty well. i think if there were cameras that the lawyers would act .ifferently i think, frankly, some of my colleagues would act differently, and that would a verywhat we think is important and well functioning part of the decision process. i do not think there are a lot of public institutions, frankly, that has been improved in how they do business by cameras. baker told me at one point that he thought the televising of the senate proceedings -- he used a strong word. i'm sure it's not right, if it's ruined -- certainly hurt the proceedings. people have an absolute right to know what we're doing and that's true in courts around the country. we have an open courtroom. i think it is to a certain we areunfortunate that not televised because i think most people would be pleased with what they saw in terms of how seriously we take our work and the high level at which the exchange is conducted, but i do think it would have an adverse affect on our job under the constitution, and that has to come first. professor stein: you release your oral recordings the next week after the argument? justice roberts: right. transcript is available within an hour and the oral recordings within the week. professor stein: the opinions of the court receive a great deal of common, some favorable, some extremely critical, but the justices let their opinions speak for their decision. are you ever tempted to respond to a criticism that you think is really wrongheaded and the critic just does not get with the issue was and what you decided? how do you deal with criticism of your opinions? justice roberts: i try not to read it, frankly. in most of the cases, for the regular commentators, you can figure out what they are going to say once you see the byline. the good thing about life tenure is that it really doesn't bother you much. unlikely the, it's criticism will be harsher from the dissent. i read legal commentary. in other words, things i think will show a thoughtful analysis of things that might have been iftten better or to see there was an understanding of what i tried to do, but popular criticism or not, i assume the worst and feel there's no reason to read the rest. had asor stein: we session with students earlier today and what of the students asked a question, and if you don't mind, i will ask it again -- justice roberts: we will see if my answer is the same. professor stein: do you ever look back and think that you got it wrong before? justice roberts: i will give the same answer because it's the true one, and i always worry it will sound harsh or something, but the answer is no. my former boss and predecessor, chief justice rehnquist, once talked to me and my fellow law clerks about that and said there's just too much in front of you that if you start wringing your hands about something in the past, you will just never be able to keep up. sometimes the case is pertinent again. comes up and it's one of the presidents, you do look at it again, and maybe at that point, you see it may not be as compelling as you thought and may not be appropriate to follow it, but in terms of thinking -- i mean, i'm sure i made mistakes. it's a human enterprise, and no andis going to be perfect, ensure and my decisions past, there are some that are not right, the second thoughts and looking back on them, no. in terms of mistakes and errors, people think maybe that i'm being smarmy when i say it, but i'm not. it's a great comfort to me that i have my colleagues, and i cannot do anything unless i get ,or very bright, hard-working accompanist individuals to agree with me, so that is as much protection as i can get against error. are your stein: who writing to when you write your opinion? are you writing to the other justices to explain why you take that position, or do you write ? lawyers that argue the case to the law professors to explain how you are expanding the doctrine? are you writing to the public? who is the audience for your opinion? justice roberts: i'm writing for my three sisters. they are not lawyers. they are intelligent lay people. they are not in washington. they like to keep up with things in government and civic affairs, but it's not a preoccupation for them, and i would like someone in that position to be able to understand what their supreme has done. i would like to think -- and i'm sure this is an area in which i don't succeed all the time -- that the opinions are accessible. they don't need to know the nuances, but if they keep reading opinion and say in the end that they understand what the issue was an understand how it came out and have some idea of why, that is what i'm writing for. i think maybe sometimes that means the lawyers are disappointed that i did not chase every rabbit down every hole with the nuances of some arguments that they think should have been addressed, and i'm sure some of the law professors think that, but i think that is the proper audience. our job, we work for the public and they ought to be able to understand our product. like tor stein: i would ask you about a local connection. you quoted a famous minnesotan who has won a nobel prize for of yourre in one opinions -- bob dylan. can you tell us about that opinion and why you quoted bob dylan? was it just to make the opinion more interesting? justice roberts: no. [laughter] and i shouldts: say i had not seen the seven-story mural down the street before, but i enjoyed that. it was, again, i guess, along the same lines, to make i would jurisdiction is limited to actual cases and controversies. you have to have something at stake for we are allowed to decide it. it was a situation where a particular company was complaining about something but it turned out they did not have a concrete stake in it. i thought that would be a good time -- way up elucidating that concept. i said when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. i got into a little debate with the new york times about it. they said when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. when you look at the actual went -- it went when you have nothing to lose, you have nothing to lose. it is a double negative. i'm going back and forth with the correspondent from the times. at thei am looking actual published lyrics. i did not hear from bob dylan about it. >> maybe you will. one of the connections i wanted to ask you about, back in the -- under his given name, bobby zimmerman, some of us were here on campus. hear them.ance to him, ilast time i heard took my kids. he sang his latest album, it was a collection of perry, and sinatra songs. they did not understand what it was all about and to be candid, it is it. achieve greater consensus on the court. you hope to there would be more 9-0 decisions. rather than 7-4. do you feel that you have been -- during the time that you have been chief justice, do think that more justice would be on board -- justices would be on board? chief justice roberts: it is a process. some years we have had bigger numbers. i think judicial decisions should be narrower rather than broader. the way to do that is to get as many people on board as you can. if i'm going to reach a broad decision, a lot of people are going to set i am not quite sure i agree with that. they might something -- write something narrower. get more people to agree with that. one of our most important decisions, brown v. board of education is a perfect example of that. worked very hard to get everyone on board. he wanted it to be a unanimous decision to send a clear message to the american people that we are turning a page as a matter of luck. he was able to do that. -- as a matter of law. he was able to do that. brown versusn board of education was 11 pages long. one moreid if he wrote paragraph, people will start sprinting -- splintering off. have a lot of issues in the area that are not resolved and spent a generation resolving. warren thought it was more important to keep everyone together. revolutionary was in its own terms, very narrow. professor stein: would u.s. versus next and be another example of that? anothervs. nixon be example of that? justice roberts: yes. courts get in trouble when they try to sweep more brother than necessary. people onget as many as necessary forces you to have a narrow opinion. professor stein: are there cases that you think the supreme court is not uniquely suited to decide ? when they involve highly technical issues? what something not be known to the nine justices or even the clerks? my answer ists: no. usually, no matter how complex the case missing -- may seem, it indicates a broader question. the statute may be complicated but the question will be how you go about reading the statute. technical legal cases because we like technical legal cases, they are usually because they advocate a broader usual question -- broader question. i was not an expert in any area of the law. i like to think of myself as was good for arguing in a particular court, the supreme court. i would have to convince someone who came in with an important trademark case, who could hire the was leading expert in trademark law for me. -- or me. think that the case is a big deal for how regulation relates to the statute and have particular revision and statutes -- provision and statutes should be read. you need someone who reads it like justices do. at the time they would say that i want somebody who knows something about trent lott. that was understandable -- trade law. that was understandable. experte to expert -- too in trademark law. then they would be speaking over each other. sometimes the justices don't want that. professor stein: do you think the media tries to focus on trumpet abided 5-4 -- sharply divided 5-4 decisions? justice roberts: they know what is important to them. it is not that they focus too much on 5-4 decisions. i don't mean to be critical of our press court. i can be curmudgeonly. i wish i could be critical of them. they are very good. it is partly because they are a dedicated core. that we haveate people there who know how to read supreme court opinions and all of that. and withome instances other reporters, you will have a decision that is sharply divided 5-4. then they will have an interview with somebody from an environmental case. they will have somebody from the industry or the sierra club. side -- once i thinks it is a horrible disaster, the other side of victory. -- one side thinks it is a , arible disaster, the other victory. if anybody has looked at it, they would see what the language --d and a businessperson reasonable person would say that i see what the problem was. it doesn't have to be this or that. it has to be portrayed more in a more political way. is more must think readily understandable. perspective, i would like to see the sentence that causes people to split. this way, a reasonable person could see why there's two sides to that story. aboutsor stein: we talked collegiality on the court. collegiality, even as passions about the case cause deep divisions in our country. can you talk a little bit about the collegiality of the court as you see it right now? also, whether you would take any steps to foster that collegiality? justice roberts: i think the collegiality on the court is very good. we think we are in this important enterprise together. there are some ways in which the nine of us are surprisingly similar in terms of coming from two different law schools. it is to our surprise. other ways in which we are very -- thent are collegiality is very good. in many ways, it is unlike any other job. there are many jobs where everybody is doing the exact same thing. if you are at a company, you are all in sales but you are selling to different people. we do the same thing. we read the same briefs and go to the same arguments and read the same cases. a real bond to develop between you. also, because of obvious reasons, we are often the only people we can talk to about certain subjects. you don't want to talk about a lot of different things with members of the public. certainly, not politics. we can talk to each other about it. that forms a bond. we appreciate the pressures that we are under. that is a certain kind of entity that you may not have in other enterprises. there have been times on the court when there have been unpleasant people there. that midlife unpleasant. you work in such close quarters. now is not one of those times. professor stein: i am thinking way back. when justice jackson was in toember and wrote a letter the new york times criticizing justice black. justice roberts: that has not happened yet. in terms of things we have done together, we have lunch together. any argument day or compensate, it works out to half a day in a month. we have lunch together. it is in a lovely dining room. there are plates and all of that. on the plate, you would put the food you got in the cafeteria. i enforce there is that we don't talk about work. i enforce is that we don't talk about work. you can learn how the phillies are doing from justice alito. there are all sorts of things that people like to talk about. it is a nice break from work. also, it is very important that the term runs for 10 months. until we aree done. we are usually done before the fourth of july. then we leave washington. we don't see each other except for occasional overlapping for two months. justice, justice brandeis put it, he said he could do the 12 months worth of work in 10 months but not 12 months. we need a little break from each other and we get it. professor stein: what about case -- 5-4 with a sharp dissent? do you sense any coolness between the justices? justice roberts: no, to be honest. it is something my predecessor legend once. it goes back to when i was clerking. this was a very big case. very big casee a last year and we will have a very big case next year. -- causingt getting those big cases to interfere with your personal relationships, it is going to be a very long career. they are big cases. we were very hard on them. -- worked very hard on them. i have not seen a situation where it comes between two colleagues and interferes with their relationship justice roberts:. how would you describe your style as chief justice? -- with their relationship. professor stein: how would you describe your style as chief justice? have you incorporated other things you have seen from other justices? justice roberts: i have. i remember when i was looking at the conference room, there are two. there are the first eight chief justices and one. the last eight in the other. i imagined them looking down in horror at this guy. the one thing that struck me is that i had no idea who half of them were. i think many people would. there is a lovely portrait of morrison waite. he was a chief justice for a dozen years. hundreds of lawyers would be in the room. i said that nobody had any idea. including law professors. how many know john rutledge? morrison waite? fred vincent? i would have thought it would have been one of the devastating questions during my confirmation hearings. ok, you will be the 17th chief justice if you get through. name as many of the 16 as you can. that would have been very embarrassing. question, ito your try to study goes and figure out who they were and learn a little bit about them. i think there were valuable lessons. some people cheated. john marshall insisted that the justices live in the same boarding house. he was one of the largest importers of madeira. they would discuss the cases over dinner and everybody loved him. very pleasant was and very direct and very fair. think those are very important trade for a chief justice to have. as a chief justice, you hold the reins of power. if you taught on it too tightly, you will find out they are not attached to anything. in to appreciate that figuring out a style of leadership that works. professor stein: i mentioned earlier that justice kennedy .anted a couple of cases let's talk about the workload of the court. term, past year, the 2017 when you clicked for justice rehnquist 35 years ago, the court decided as many cases every year. what is the court deciding so few cases -- why is the court deciding so few cases? do you have some colleagues that want to take more cases? yes, we havets: the capacity to do it. we can. you are hearing for cases a day. i thought the quality of the work deteriorated when getting close to the end. you have a lot more on your plate. we can do more. i am one of the ones who think we should do more. the cases are not there. we have of addictive a criteria for the cases we want to take. obviously if they find an act of time unconstitutional, we will take it. there is a matter of comedy to the branches across the street. we should be the ones to say that. other than that, if the court in california decides that this tax provision is deductible and under the same provision says no it's not, those are most of the cases we take. that is the bulk of our business. for whatever reason, that is not happening as often as it did in the past. professor stein: they were 9000 applications? justice roberts: closer to 8000. that is still a lot. i think the technology may have something to do other -- with it. you got the impression that they disagreed with each other because they did not know all of the law that was out there. if they had known, maybe it would be different. maybe the lower courts are finding ways to reconcile the differences without the need for us. professor stein: you argue more cases than any other justice who has been appointed. know now that you did not know that about the favorably would have influenced how you argued cases? >> it is more a question of believing what people told you. youle always tell you that should be brief and assisting in your brief writing. it was only when i had to read all the breaks that i would appreciate how serious that advice with. the word limits come at 250 pages of reef. you pick up a brief and it is 50 pages long. he picked up the next one and it is 50 pages long. over and over it is 50 pages long. the first thing you look at is the cover. you see that the lawyer is and you say i like her. -- the first thing you do is look at who the lawyer is and say i like her. she must have a lot of confidence in her arguments. she gets them in in 35 pages. she doesn't need the extra pages. it is not only shorter but usually better britain. it has the arguments and it is much the sink and it doesn't have all the distractions. that is one thing. i would have taken it more seriously. the advice to keep things short. i would have taken more seriously the advice during the argument to have a little dispassion and distance from your case and to not be extraordinarily combative. i see it all the time. you ask a question and the first thing the lawyer does is resist the implication. you are asking a hard question. they want to test the limits of your argument. that thatat we know is not going on in this case. that is why it is called the hypothetical. [applause] [laughter] -- erects a wall. if you are more welcome, you say yes. no, first of all. we explain it and becomes a process where the two of you are working together to figure it out. have an lawyer opportunity to get involved rather than just pushing back. is askingstein: who the most questions on the court these days? now that justice scalia isn't there? any statistics on that? justice roberts: you have to be careful how you judge them. it is not me, i can ensure you that. can ask five questions in a short amount of time or you can ask one question that takes up a lot of time. i would not want to comment on that. professor stein: i do not think you would. -- did not think you would. the last term, you are in a case involving the scope of the fourth amendment in the digital age. this is a very important case. could you talk about the case? also, the challenges of new technology in constitutional cases? justice roberts: carpenter was the name of the case. companies. telephone a have been for the last several years. where your phone has been. the question is what police have to do to get access to those records. the case was compelling. they got the phone records of this one person who was in five different locations over a. of time. each time he was there, a bank was robbed. he put it together, a pretty strong case before the jury. what do you do? you are out of luck, they are not your records, they are the phone company's. the police can get them with a simple subpoena rather than a search warrant. i thought that doctrine had developed at a time where people -- people are talking about papers and records. it did not make any sense given the new technology. the company's already had information. you do not want to share these. withouts them to access the protection of the fourth amendment. that would leave us with much diminished privacy. you had to look at the question about what you thought the drafters of the fourth amendment would have thought about that. about the government having access to information about every place you have been for the last five years. they were worried about british soldiers rifling through their desks. i asked this question of teenagers and other people i know. what would you regard as a greater invasion of privacy? somebody going through your desk or your iphone? the answer is always the iphone. it seems to make sense to me -- athe fourth amendment these the doctrines under it should be changed to match modern technology. that will be the changes. not just privacy areas but speech every as. what it means to send a message over the internet in terms of hate speech, libel. anything like that. obviously, technology in terms of commercial. i forget what the number is. how many separate patents are advocated in that. those are the antitrust applications of that. all sorts of things. it is a challenge. it is a challenge for us to keep up with enough knowledge about the technology to be able to correctly decide some of these cases. professor stein: we are at 5:00. i wish we could go further ourselves. we said we would take questions from students or others in the audience. for the next 15 minutes or so. i will try to alter -- move from one side to the other. is someone behind the microphone? let's start on the left side. >> thank you for taking my question. currently -- professor stein: if you're a student, say you are l1, l2, l3. i'm currently in a judicial law class. we were talking about the socratic method and have some people are forged and some are against it. what is your opinion on that? is it still viable justice roberts:? if it is done well, i am in favor of it. this is the socratic method. this is like the professor going fornd and grilling students answers and find to pursue a line of discussion. it makes a point about law. had tons of people. they knew they could because on at any minute. they were all participating in this great educational exercise. you do have to be very good at it. you have people who are not and you would ask a question and they would answer and they would say and? that was not moving the discussion forward. i like it. it is good training to be a lawyer. if you are in court, you're going to get a lot of questions. you have to think quickly on your feet. all of us are nervous. a lot of these are participating. you don't want lawyer who is incompetent. it is a good skill to develop. they have to be good at it. it is getting harder and harder to find people who do it. a lot of people think that there are a lot of forces that convey information. as opposed to have to think under stress. i think the latter could be more important than just getting a particular bunch of information in your head. >> thank you mr. stein for having us on here. my question is about your opening statements. you say the supreme court role was to the constitution, not the people. however, many people have come to rely on the supreme court has the court of last resort when injustices, political injustices can't be solved through politics in gridlock or other means. ?o you believe this should there be a reliance on this role? justice roberts: the point i was trying to make and the examples i gave was the important part of our role is to support viewpoints that are not the viewpoints that are dominant with the majority. for example, i am pretty sure that if you took a poll, most people would say schoolchildren should be forced to salute the flag and say the pledge of allegiance. have this up in court independent of political pressure, the court was able to say no under the first amendment. that child and the child's parents cannot be forced to express views that they don't agree with. the same thing in this case. needed a piecen in the labor every. i don't know what the vote would have been about whether or not he should be able to take over the production capacity. those were on and as examples of the role of the court to protect minority rights against the majority. that is what i meant by saying that we don't speak for the people. we don't take a poll about what we think is the right result. we speak for that was designed to protect minority interests against the majority. >> thank you. over to the side. >> my name is elijah. student atergraduate university of minnesota. thank you for hosting us. chief justice, thank you for coming. what advice do you give to someone who wants to go to law school? the most popular answer is don't. what motivated you to go to law school? what motivated you to get through law school? what motivated: me to go to law school is that there were not a lot of jobs for history teachers. [laughter] hoped to pursue a career in academia. in 1976, when i got out of college, that was a full's errand. there were not any jobs available. even assuming you would go down and get a doctorate degree before you could teach. i thought what they were doing in moscow sounded a little bit like history. they look at old cases. maybe that is how it would work out. i went to law school. i just really enjoyed it. i love the process of taking a set body of law and trying to to therticular guides conduct in it and the thinking. i did not leave history behind. that is what i like to do when i was looking for recreational things to be. the idea of being a historian was not in the cards anymore. how to get through it? it is tough. i found that working with other law students was very helpful. whether you formed a study group or sitting down with people from time to time to go through your reactions to what the teacher is trying to instill. the only thing i would say is it used to be the case when i was in law school. i think it may still be the case as well. you should think long and hard about what you want to go to law school. in my case, it worked out all right. [laughter] justice roberts: i would not recommend that people just go to law school because he wanted to do something else and was looking for something else to do. you should have a good idea of what you want. i will be honest, it is very hard. the profession is hard. the only advice i give you is make sure you will do really well if you go to law school. it is hard. the market is hard and the law profession is changing. even good lawyers, the business part of it is not very attractive. have a good sense about why you want to go to law school. try to keep your eyes on that. there are a lot of lawyers working were pretty unhappy. -- who are pretty unhappy. they did not about why they wanted to go to law school. they forgot why they went to law school and ended up doing things that are not like what they thought they would like to do. it is a tough choice. any career decision at this stage is. i would spend a lot of time talking to lawyers and law students and trying to figure out for yourself why it is that you want to go to loss. -- law school. >> thank you for posting this. thank you for being here. my name is kate. i am a senior, i studied political science. i want to know if you think having more women on the court has impacted the way you look at cases? justice roberts: i guess i don't really know. itnderstand argument that brings a different perspective and changes it. on the other hand, it may but i it is subconscious in the sense that i don't hear anything and think that is a peculiarly female perspective on the law. in terms of the legal work and the presentation, i don't see a difference. maybe i am not attuned to it. i think my female colleagues perform pre-much the same way my male colleagues do. i think that is it. i don't see any difference in their legal analysis or anything like that. professor stein: that to the side. >> i am caleb. you said in the past that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the base of race. think race is? think isunt of race do correct? justice roberts: that is a difficult question. looking at this in some of the affirmative action areas. in terms of what types of characteristics it takes to qualify for preferences. i don't know any more than that. over on the side. >> thank you for coming all the way out here. i am benjamin. i am a freshman at the university of minnesota. i wanted to touch on your personal beliefs conflicting with the way you may decide. i was wondering if you would give a brief example about some to workt you decided with your opinion and one with but personally thought it was different. justice roberts: there are lots of them. in a casee opinion against the westboro baptist church. this was an externality offensive group. they would protest at funerals for servicemen in the most vulgar way. it, if you asked what my personal view was, if you have a family that just wants to bury their son or daughter that has died at 18 or 19 years old. they had these vulgar protesters that are criticizing the son or daughter in the most offensive ways. throw them in and lock away the -- lock them up and throw away the key is is what i think. the first amendment. they were on the public sidewalk. they had a particular point of view, as offensive as it was. was 8-1.he opinion, it to protestheir right in that manner. i did not like it but i thought that that was the right answer. there are a surprising number of cases that are like that. flag burning. i don't like the idea that people burn the american flag. for ourre of a symbol nation than most others. we don't have a common identity as french or italian. we don't have a common religion. it is the constitution and the flag that unites us. why do somebody have to burn it and offend all of these other people? on the other hand, the first amendment was clear. i thought the court reached the right result in that case. i don't want to be glib but the reality is actually not that hard. it is what lawyers do every day. people who defend people accused --murder obviously don't they may not like their client if they are guilty. it happens surprisingly often. -- i do like that the first amendment allows the seventh activity. it is the activity i don't like. -- the first amendment allows this type of activity. it is the activity i don't like. >> i am a one l. my first question goes to your introduction. you say that the court errors on following policy. can they avoid that? justice roberts: that is a great question. on theseok back mistakes and in retrospect you pretty obviously a mistake. you would like to think that if you were in their position at the time that you would have done something different. but it requires a degree of arrogance to say i wouldn't have done that when others do. i don't know. excuse me. my greatest comfort is my colleagues. this was for korematsu and everything else. i don't know that there is a magic formula for making sure that you don't make a mistake other than work as hard as you can. listen as carefully as you can to all of the views of all of your colleagues. do the best you can. >> please join me in thanking chief justice john roberts. [applause] thank you very: much. i appreciate it. >> i am happy to tell you that there is a perception but on a reception on the now.m right see you there. >> here is a look at our live coverage on wednesday. the senate judiciary committee meets to consider nominations for the fourth circuit court of appeals and judicial district in florida and alabama. that is followed by an event marking the 20th anniversary of the children's online privacy protection act with massachusetts senator ed markey among the speakers. then at 5:30, there is the discussion from the center pork strategic and international studies about free speech and national security. parker talksim about the future of medicaid and prescription drug prices. that is followed by rob rosenstein. he discusses ways to address the opioid epidemic. and at 7:00, a look at how democrats and republicans are campaigning with less than a month to go before the 2018 midterm elections. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today, we continue to bring unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington dc and around the country. yourn is brought to you by cable or satellite provider. sanders talks about the rise of authoritarianism throughout europe and south america. also, the state of american foreign policy. this was at john hopkins university school of

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