Every you are, the opinion that matters the most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. Amy Coney Barrett considers the potential benefits of the code of ethics for the nations highest court. During a conversation with law students at the university of minnesota, or comments come in the wake of new stories detailing ethical concerns among some of the Court Justices. I think he said there is a Family Connection to the university of minnesota. Crux the professor did not know this when he invited me so i dont think that was the reason he invited me but my brother actually went to bu. It is not my first time visiting campus. He lived in a rental house in hankey town. I know you dont think about the university when you say the u. Crux i want to ask a question by your undergraduate college. You received your undergraduate degree in memphis which is a superb school and i noted several years ago the justice graduated from the college. It was the Memphis College of law. Were you aware that a Supreme Court justice had graduated from your undergraduate school . Did you think it all about the Supreme Court at that time . Crux i did not know i wanted to be a lawyer. I had some vague awareness that they want to roast college. I thought, about going. I also thought about going to law school. You are the only justice to graduate from law school other than harvard, yale and columbia since Justice Sandra day oconnor in 1981. Why do you think this is so . I think it is a neutral thing. I love all my colleagues. I would never criticize their alma maters. It is true that it has been like that of late but it hasnt always been that way. For example, i was thinking about it and reading some books over the summer, it is striking to me he had been a professor at harvard. Justice jackson learned law at a time when he was an apprentice. Hugo black was on the court and went to the university of alabama law school. It is true that the court has been populated more with those who have gone to Ivy League Law schools but it hasnt always been the case. I think i was needs to be the case. I think the university of minnesota and notre dame and there are plenty of places that produce excellent lawyers and they should not be overlooked. In addition to the fact that most of the justices graduated from the same ivy league schools, not all but most of them, most of the justices have the same background as a court of appeals judge. I think Justice Kagan may be the only one that was not a court of appeals judge before going out in the court and i things she was nominated for one. Do you think the court would benefit from more diversity in geographic backgrounds . Dust of the justices come from the court of appeals on the east coast. Whether it is geographic diversity and more professional experience such as legislative experience, would that be a benefit to the court . I think Justice Oconnor was last justice who served in the legislature before going on the court. I think that is right. Justice oconnor looked served in the Arizona State legislator and it may have been that state legislature that made her particularly committed to the federal. That is the balance of those nonlawyers in the room which is the independence of states and our federal system. Please quiet down and allow the lecture to continue. Demonstrations and disruptive disruptive behavior are not authorized inside the auditorium. Please quiet down and allow the lecture to continue. If the disruptive behavior does not cease, we will be compelled to invoke minnesota statute and disruptive parties will be required to vacate the room. Course it is ordered that this disruptive behavior sees. The university revokes any claim of right of individuals to continue to disrupt this event. All those who fail to comply with the violation of minnesota statute interference with the use of public property and minnesota statute 609. 60 five, trespass and will be placed under arrest by university police. All disruptive parties are asked to vacate the room or be subject to arrest. Lets resume. Crux we really are minnesota nice and we dont treat other people like that very often at all so we are so delighted you are here. You taught at notre dame for 15 years and you taught the constitutional law course. Now that youve been on the court for three years, is the quote what you thought it was when you taught it . How would you teach that coach course differently . Crux i think that the course is what it was when i taught it. I would teach at the same way because the cases are what the cases are in the rule of the court is what it is. But in thinking about what i know now that i did not know then and that i dont think i i was a law clerk at the court but i dont think i fully appreciated this even as a law clerk, the way opinions as an academic, as a professor. It can be frustrating when a Supreme Court opinion does not answer all the questions or it feels like some issues are glossed over. You think what about this, what about that . It is challenging to write on a multimember course of if you look at opinion and you read them very carefully, you remember the author of the opinion, when i write an opinion, i am not speaking only for myself or only in my own voice. I am ready for everyone else and that means after id like to thread the needle so what i say is something that everyone of my colleagues can agree to. Sometimes that means glossing over something where maybe people dont agree or people are just not ready to take a position on something and then we also i sometimes see them criticizing an opinion and sang the court did not decide it but it was not that we did not know better. It is usually a very deliberate choice because you want to be very careful not to answer too many questions in cases where those issues have not been front and center and they have not been fully briefed and we havent had the benefit of a lot of opinions from the lower court. I think i would pay a lot more attention now. I encourage law students to think that and think about an opinion being written the way it was written or why something is missing that i think ought to be there. I think appreciating that and the challenges of writing in this situation where i will be running for one or two other colleagues. I think that is the thing i have grown to appreciate the most that would that i would approach differently in the classroom. Crux the court not only has four women justices serving for the first time in its history but you often align more with some of the conservative justices. Justice sotomayor are and jackson often join with other liberal justices. It is not true in many cases but are there occasions when the four women justices get together for any purpose . The any reason. Just to celebrate the fact that there is for now . Four now . I am so delighted to have Justice Jackson as my new colleague. I would say the women i will start by saying that my first term on the court was in a fixed case. It was not the way you might be expecting when you open newspapers. Six men, i was running the defense for Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor and me. It is certainly not always the case that women are on different sides. Actually, last term, i think it is the case that there were only five decisions in which the three other women were in dissent. That was only five of the 57 or so cases that we heard. There are all kinds of other lineups. I find myself in a grouping that includes Justice Kagan or Justice Sotomayor. I wouldnt want to leave the impression that i am alongside them. Got to them. I just say my perspective is different just by virtue of being a woman, because we bring to the law are methodological and jurisprudential commitments that are independent of our sex. But i think that it is delightful to have the companionship of them on the court. It was the formerly most senior justice throws a Welcome Party for the new junior justice, Justice Jackson. I got to do that, we did it last january. Its just for the justices and their spouses, and retired justices and their spouses as well. So you can pick your favorite food and she picked her favorite entertainment. She really loves hamilton, i found someone who sang on broadway, and he serenaded her with some songs. But its really important to have people on the court to consider friends. The mako justice kavanaugh, and his wife ashley found some new orleans singers to sing some jazz music, including a second line. I wanted to ask you about one difference between you and the other women justices of the court. You might be the first mother with minor children to serve on the court. Indeed, you are a justice and a mother with several children in school. How do you manage your work as a justice and the challenge of parenting schoolage children . Justice barrett lets see. I think that might days and the struggle of balancing being a mother and having children and school and sports and School Activities are probably no different than most working mothers. The same struggle of balancing it and fitting it in with everything that we have as professors and being on the court of appeals. Its no different than other working mothers. I think that it can be funny. I have four children who are in high school or grade school. So, in the morning we get them out the door to school, and my youngest son has downs syndrome, and he really enjoys music, so we are packing his backpack and i will be back in my briefcase, and he chooses the song. There was one day when benjamin had been choosing music, including not so much the classic who let the dogs out. [laughter] as we were walking the hallways and the basement area with all the portraits of the justices who served before, and theyre so dignified looking, and all along in my brain, dont listen to that song if you dont wanted to be in your mind all day long. Im looking at these dignified men and who let the dogs out is playing. There is a juxtaposition. I leave work and i will wind up at volleyball games with a bunch of the other mothers, or one day last week i was serving hot lunch at my kids school, as a parent volunteer. I think all of those things are things that in my current position i really appreciate. They are really grounding. They are very much rooted in real life. The moms i sit on the sidelines of soccer games with, with my goal and my career. Following graduation from notre dame, you worked for George Silverman on the d. C. Circuit judge and for Justice Justice scalia on the Supreme Court. You expressed Great Respect for both of them, particularly you have talked about Justice Scalia, and i think after your appointment to the court you were quoted as saying Justice Scalia is judgmental Justice Scalias judicial philosophy was your philosophy. How would you describe that philosophy . Justice scalia was very wellknown for his commitment to originalism and constitutional interpretations. And some of that is in statute. And you can boil these down to the proposition that the text is the law and the text controls. I share that philosophy and i share that commitment. I think that there would be very little difference between us if you asked about the potential role of the judge to adhere to the text when it has a clear answer. And not impose ones own own views on the law with respect to the law. We certainly have some differences and styles, for example, hes a fantastic writer, very well known for being fantastic. And he was he could become a like im saying, when youre at a restaurant and looking at the menu and it is like you have space to things on and you might have reality is next one, im more of the one jalapeno judge. I keep the heat, i preferred the heat to be lower in a sense, going back and forth, thats a lot more entertaining to me. Your husband is from a Southern Italian background as he put more peppers on . More fire, more fire. Thats right. Justice scalia participated in a debate in this auditorium just a few months before his death. Could you talk about your you started talking about Justice Scalia just now, could you talk about your relationship for the years both as a clerk and in the years since . Justice barrett Justice Scalia was a great role model for young lawyer, it was very funny, being his clerk involved hearing lots of funny stories and being regaled with stories, i remember him hearing hearing him singing opera in his office. But he was very committed, we were talking about this recently, actually. We are asking itself ourselves what we thought was the most important thing that the justice gave us, and he gave us the advice to have an immovable commitment to be home with your family. Thats the most important thing. No matter if you have to work later at night to do it. And we all remember being struck by that. And i think even apart from everything he taught me about the law and how to think about the law and being a judge, i think he was an example just as much about being a person who he was great at maintaining friendships and he had friends that had very different views from his own. Justice ginsburg is a great example. But he was full of life and he did not hold back. And his i would like to say i have tax ideas and the people and if you cant tell the difference is a justice you are in the wrong line of work. As irate as he might have been because of his italian background, it was good at maintaining relationships and being committed to his family and that was very important for me. That was a remarkable friendship between Justice Scalia, and Justice Ginsburg, and she told stories of the two of them, and opera had been written about their friendship. I think it is called scalia ginsberg, scalia ginsberg. I have not seen that opera. Justice barrett i have not either. Apparently, he was imprisoned for excessive dissenting in the opera. [laughter] and she rescues him by coming through a glass ceiling, which she breaks. They have a wonderful relationship, the two of them. When you joined the court in 2020, i wanted to ask you if there were some justices that reached out and work more welcoming than others . You mentioned justice kavanaugh, getting this together for you. How was it when you join . Justice barrett i joined during covid, the pandemic was still raging and people had not fully come back to work. When i was sworn in, i would not say that anyone of my colleagues was more welcoming than another, they were all equally welcoming and wonderful. And when i was sworn in by the chief justice, Justice Breyer was filling in in boston, it was a problem for him until he could travel without greater exposure. Those in washington came to swearing and weight and not sit in a big Conference Room and everybody had masks on and we spread out in the Conference Room and everyone was there. One of the things that meant a lot to me was right around halloween and Justice Sotomayor came to my office and they had come to the swearing in and he was going to be leaving in an hour or two to go back to south bend to hold down the fort while i was commuting back and forth from washington. Justice sotomayor in and she had me big bags of halloween candy for each one of my children to take back with them. I had no staff, i had no staff, no locker, no Office Supplies for anything that day, you cant really hire staff before you are confirmed. We were scrambling. I had my first oral arguments in just a few days. I did not even know how to get into the computer system. Justice gorsuch found out and he did that and he had his assistants come over and at some iphones and stacking up with Office Supplies, thing everything. I was living by myself two weeks of the month, in washington. In the house that i was renting. And i had dinner invitations for my colleagues and much invitations, they did everything in their power to make me feel welcome. That was a difficult time. They had just lost a beloved colleague, Justice Ginsburg had passed away. Everybody was under the stress of covid, and everyone went above and beyond to make the feel welcome. That leads into the next question i was going to ask you. There have been sharp differences in cases over the last couple years between the majority and dissent. Have those sharp differences reflected the relationship between the justices at all and continuing to be a case where justice is one another . Justice barrett it is, its that same idea. I attacked ideas and not people. That is what opinions are. The fire gets put on the page, but is not expressed in interpersonal relationships. The Court Decides issues of great importance. There are lawyers on the court were very smart and passionate about what theyre doing. Convinced, because everybody gives a great deal of study and time and attention. And you spent months listening to oral arguments when you first participate in them, listening again to oral arguments and talking with your clerks and colleagues. At the end of that process, you are sure that you are your answer is right. When youre on a multimember court, there will be others that see differently in many cases, especially ones that are the most difficult and ones that press on jurisprudential divides , say between originalism and textualism and theories that lead more play in the joints of the text. Those are difficult cases in which jurisprudential disagreements can be sharp. But it really does state to the page. And i think, thats one reason why some of the things that we were saying at the beginning about this lecture are important. Part of that is time span. So, we are in