His speeches are some of the same qualities but really great qualities in his opinions do but i think the advantage of the speech is that he could let more of his personality shine through, for one thing. He was a great performer in a little bit of a ham and he played macbeth in the High School Production of that play and he was i think the president of georgetown theater club so that the article side time through in the speeches in a way that just doesnt in the opinions. Court opinions are necessarily they have to follow certain conventions that are apt to turn off the average person who is not really a court follower or law student so we wanted a collection that would be of interest to the layman, really that would be interesting to the average american and not just the legal nerd. Host and like welladjusted normal people who dont spend all this time Reading Court opinion to exactly. Normal people want readable opinions but a write up of an opinion but not the whole thing. One of the advantages of these speeches especially the ones about the law that my dad could explain his approach to interpreting the constitution in the law uninterrupted without having to focus on a specific case but bring in multiple cases and the co editor and i were sure to pick one that would be understandable to anybody. This book has so many wonderful speeches about a High School Graduation or talking about his catholic faith to catholic audiences, talking about foreign just talking about so many subjects. One of the real appeals of the book. Guest a couple tall real. At that time really surprised me. Spoke a couple item time at the National Wild turkey federation. We included his peach from one of those conventions in which my father just explains how he becamed into interested in hunting. It showed a side of my father but learn more about through the speech. Host you mentioned you did this with ed whalen, law cushing. Law check, and a terrific writer. Was there a file cabinet full of typed up speeches or did you do any transcribing of audio recordings of speeches . Guest all of these speeches are ones that he had sharpened and revised pretty carefully himself. Only a couple had ever been published before. I think thats one of the great things of the collection, burt the way we set about this is basically we got a couple of binders of his speeches from his secretary, angela, and i think two binders with 50 speeches each, i think. Spanning going back to early 80s through the present, and in addition to those two binders, which were very easy to navigate. We had a big box of lose speeches, a couple of which were just different versions of or but most of them were fresh. We had to sort through the loose speeches and then another box of floppy disks which your viewers may not remember, but in an archaic form of storing information. Had to sort through those speeches and again a couple of them were ones we already had but a lot of new speeches. It involved a lot of sorting and sifting, but we were surprised by how many great speeches he had. We both knew he spoke a lot, but we knew he spoke not just about the law. He spoke at commentment addresses, spoke at my High School Graduation. So i was aware of that. But again the Turkey Hunting speech i had no idea about. The range of speeches was very surprising and the consistent quality was surprising. So as editors issue think the hardest thing we had to do was decide what to not include. Theres no filner here. Theres lot of good material we just couldnt include, going back to the general reader. I if something was too in at the weed objector a general audn aee weed objector a general audience we would exclude it. Host were there result pel versions of the same speech . Because i recall hearing Justice Scalia talk different places, different years and he had sort of a stump speech, sort of knew what he wanted to say, he is was a wonderful performer, and a good speechmaker part of it us the substance but part of it is the opinions he would emphasize. Is it the correct your sense he had sort of a speech about originalism and the law and could go to places and take that and deliver it and add material and just talk . Guest he delivered i think i know the stomach speech youre referring to its a speech he deliver about originalism and why its superior to what is cal the living constitution approach to Juris Prudence and i heard him deliver that speech, too, in madison, wisconsin in township and in 2001. He it had a wonderful passage where he compared the living constitution approach to a Television Commercial from the 190s where a prego commercial and somebody i makes pasta, heating up storebought pasta sauce and his husband says to your wife, youring would is in sauce, not doing it home made . What about the oregano and she wife says, its in there. And what about the pepper. Guest its in there the garlic . Its in there. And my dad would say, we have tot kind of a constitution now. You want a right to an borings . Its in there. You want 0 right to do . Identity in there anything that guess and true and beautiful, its in there no matter what the text says. Being a pop culture junkie and having watched that commercial with my father, i loved that passage. I was looking forward to finding it bit he never actually apparently wrote that speech down. So we have a version of it in the collection. One he delivered in australia in the early 90s. But that particular version, which he delivered very often, he never wrote down. Instead he worked from a very clipped series of note he called the outline. The outline was really just a set of prompts he would riff off of and if you didnt know the speech, you would look at this outline and think, what could this possibly mean . There are only 50 words on it. Some of them are misspelled. And then he would photocopy the outline and write notes on it for any given occasion so the people he should thank the speech or new ideas that popped into his head. Unfortunately theres no reference to the prego Television Commercial on the outline. We were surprised thats is how he did it. He he knew what he wanted to say so clearly, it is easy for if to riff off the basic outline. Host you said you were a student at the university of wisconsin during that time . Guest yes. Host one thing i remember is that he would go out to a lot of universities and there would be he would im surely have a lot of protesters, maybe its gotten worse now but even 20 years ago or whatever, i always admired the fact that he would go to law schools and universities where he knew there was going to be some people who didnt like him and he did it anyway. He was not shy about what he thought he was a brave guy and didnt mind being criticized. Its unfortunate the way politics have gone these days, people go to places where theyll be welcomed and not to the other liberals go one place, conservative dozen another. So you actually remember him going to wisconsin and getting some protests or some guest yeah. It was in 2001, shortly after the bush v gore decision so he one terribly popular in madison, wisconsin there was handful of demonstrators holding pictures of hitler, mussolini and my dad. So, pretty subdued stuff. Not too terrible. And like you i wonder what would be the case now. Im assuming it would be more intense now. That was outside. Inside the lecture hall, the audience was respectful. There were pretty intense questions afterwards. There were certainly plenty of people there who disagreed with him and let him know that, and there was some combative back and forth even. It wasnt all polite. So, my father delivered speeches in what you might call hostile territory because he was he believed he could persuade people and he believed that people enn general were persuadable and open to reason, even people who disagreed with him. At the very least he wanted them to hear this ideas unfiltered and thats why he deliver speeches as often as he did and as many speeches as he did. He really believe that. He could persuade people, and i think that even if he didnt persuade people to agree with him, he was at least able to show that he wasnt the caricature that people had going into the speech or the event. Host thats always the reaction i heard from those speeches, either talking to people or reading about them, is that a fair number of students would be quoted saying, what did you think . Said, i didnt agree with Justice Scalia but he made a really in argument for this. They came away thinking that theyd actually learn something, that caused them to think twice about what they thought and he could really win over people to say, this is a really smart guy. He has a very good point. I hadnt really thought of that. I didnt really understand the argument he was making. He also had a sort of, like, nobody else at the court, that the law is sort of loved to argue and that the sort of a combative ideas, i remember asking him once about he had written some opinionses that were sort of critical of Justice Oconnor, and people said, you know, sounds like youre going hard on Justice Oconnor. He said were friends. We if a agree. You come out to the middle of the ring and tap gloves and come out swinging. Thats Justice Oconnor probably didnt see it exactly that way but his view was that you sort of argued about the law, that was the way to do it because thats the way to grapple with what is the right answer. People disagree. You should talk it out. Guest and he often said he often quoted as sawing i dont attack people, i attack ideas. A lot of very good people have some very bad ideas and thats how he saw it. He didnt in miss opinions, voicely do, ad hominem attacks and didnt do that either in speeches help expected people to give it back to him. He expected people to take their own punches at him, too. Justice ginsburg writes the forward and she mentions that they people may know they were good friend. They also were good colleagues because they helped each other writing their opinions by pushing back at each other in the drafts. Kind of explaining how they could improve an element of their argument by taking into account this point or changing this phrasing here and there. Even though they disagreed. They were trying to help each other out by pushing back, and my father thought that, again, going back to concept of persuasion, its possible to persuade people and its possible to help one another kind of arrive at the truth of the matter by but not by just saying what you want without any feedback. There had to be some give and take there and some conversation basically. Host their friendship is one of the wonderful thing insidewards that you dont see much anymore. They were sort of on the opposite ideological sides of a lot of big issues but it never they always they were friends in the 1980s and friends up to the en. Got together regularly. Justice scalia always spoke well of Justice Ginsburg. He might not join one of her opinions but he was never die he respected her and she respected him and its unfortunate you dont see that anymore. People funamll different played politically or ideaolly but they can Work Together as friends. Guest ideology has taken ahold of everything and i think if people let that happen, theyre missing out on encounters with a lot of great people and great friendshipped. In their case, they focused on what they had in common. It was an awful lot. They were born in my dad was born in trenton but grew up in new york the same time so they had that in common. That was an element to their friendship. They both loved opera. They had cameo appearances in operad together, and their spouses were great friend, too. My mother is a great cook, Justice Ginsburgs husband, marty, was basically a gourmet chef, and Justice Ginsburg and my dad liked to eat so that was another element of their friendship. That i really think kind of just by focusing on those things they had in common, was how the friendship thrived. Somebody asked my father once basically, how could you like Justice Ginsburg so me when you disagree and he said whats there not to like, shes a wonderful person. Host except our views on the law. Guest exactly. Host i saw them toth at gw a couple years ago on the stage and they could joke with each other. Justice scalia was saying we took that trip to indiaing to. A big problem for ruth because we were on an elephant and i was in front and all of her feminist friend didnt like the fact she was sitting behind me, and as he finished Justice Ginsburg in that sort of mod voice says it was told it was matter of redistribution of weight. Which he got a real kick out 0 of. They could joke with each other and have fun. This book its full of wonderful tell me your favorite . Its hard to interior row it down to a handful. Obviously the legal speeched are probably the ones we hope will secure his legacy but theres so much more. There was so much more to him in life, and i think thats the great thing about the collection. You see so much of that. So a couple of my favorites, one of my favorites is one that we have for the sake of the collection called the part the arts the cop text is fascinating. I didnt know he delivered this speech so i was fascinate when i discovered it. He delivered it at the Juilliard School in new york city, school of very wellnope school of the arts, and it was on he indication of the schools 100th anniversary there was a symposium about the arts in american society, and the schools president , knew that my father was interested in the opera, and new he was a conservative justice who would offer opinions that wouldnt be heard very often in new york city. And so he thought, on the one hand, my father would fit right in, or he might challenge the audience. To his great great credit he reached tout my dad and says my dad was skeptical at first, but was convinced and decided to participate. Im really glad he did. Hi was part of a fascinating panel. Other speakers on the panel were david mccullough, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian, he believe, and opera singer, renee fleming, and broadway composer, Steven Sondheim. So pretty fantastic group of people and very disparate bunch, too. Im not sure my father realizedded be Steven Sondheim cowrote the music for west side story and the father was a big fan of overcrop can krupky and e worked some worded from the that into a dissent, some court opinion, and i dont think my father realized that at the time but i wish they had a chance to talk about that during their encounterment apparently my father got along with him very well and before the speech, and then at the speech itself, he says it went over great. I was faculty, students are, artists and law students, and my father begin this speech by kind of recognizing how out of place he is, how incongruous his presence the is. Let me fine the beginning. Its pretty great. Host it remember that one. Guest he said aim happy too be here this afternoon. And to tell you the truth, somewhat surprised to be here this afternoon. Todays program reads like an iq test. Which of the following is out of place. Diva, author, composer, lawyer. So he begins i think its brilliant speech because he begins with this selfdepricating humor. Then explains why lawyers are important to artists. They create the conditions in which the arts can thrive. Through contract law and things like that. So, he eventually kind of win this audience over and he refers to we lovers of the orders, kind of get them on his side a little bit, and brilliant rhetoric, i think. But the second half of the peach, he challenges them by saying, by discussing the First Amendment. And he says, we lovers of the arts like to believe that all matter of the arts would be protected by the First Amendment, by the freedom of speech. In fact, that not the case and my father goes on to explain why some of the arts everybody in the room would like, dance, for example, would not actually be protected by the freedom of speech, and his argument was that through an originalist term addition of the freedom of speech, that phrase maintain something in particular to founders and wouldnt include an opera lib it might include would include the libretto but not the opera music. It might not even include the libretto if the libretto were just ugly, and poorly written. That its technically not protected, if i remember his argument correctly. So, he challenges the audience by saying, we may want all of these things to be protected under the First Amendment but they arent necessarily. The appropriate approach to the constitution isnt to understand it as defending and protecting everything you like. It protect as lot of things you dont like and leaves a lot of things you like up protected. So, i think its just a kind of a brilliant speech because of the different ways he approaches the audience, and again, the context was so fascinating. Host i thought the same thingment one of the speeches where the people were there for the arts and in 15 minutes they learn a lot of copyright law and First Amendment law. He speaks very concisely and sort of tells you in a way thaw can understand a whole lot of body of law in a very short time. He says in one of the speeches, he was invited to give a lot of commencement addresses and he would ask people for advice, and the one consistent advice he got was, keep it to 15 minutes. I dont know whether he did that but i think a lot of his speeches are concise. They say a lot in a relatively few words few pages. Guest yeah. Especially in High School Commencements, he knew he wasnt the real story there it was the students so so he wanted to move how to quickly. Heard him speak at a few commencement addresses addressee include a couple of them in here and they were always entertaining, easy for his audiences to understand, but still not just full of platitudes. Again, challenging. He taught and he challenge evidence every time he spoke. Host a classic on that one that i called platitudes and wisdom. And it says he gave this speech at your brother, pauls rescuer graduation at L