Transcripts For CSPAN Interview 20240705 : comparemela.com

U. S. Supreme Court Justice elena kagan was interviewed by Jeffrey Sutton at the library of congress in washington, d. C. , to discuss her life and career, including other Career Options that she considered before deciding on law, what it was like to clerk under the firstever black supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and her approach to writing opinions. This is about one hour and 10 minutes. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining the law library of congress and the United States Supreme Court for the 2024 Supreme Court fellow program lecture. I have the honor and privilege of serving as the librarian of congress. It is my pleasure to send greetings from the beautiful auditorium of the library of congress of Jefferson Building to our in person audience and everyone watching online. I have the honor and privilege of serving as the law library and of congress. It is my pleasure to send greetings from the beautiful auditorium of the library of Congress Jefferson building to both our in person audience and all of you watching us online. Let me just say a couple of words about the lot library of congress. The law library serves as a custodian of the legislative collection of nearly 3 million items from all countries and Legal Systems around the world. Our Skilled Staff of attorneys and bought librarians provide Research Assistance and Reference Services on United States federal and state legal issues. Our foreign law specialist are a Diverse Group of foreigntrained attorneys who provide full and comparative low research and analysis to all three branches of government. Our team is responsible for developing the collection for more than 300 Legal Systems including foreign and international jurisdictions, as well as the u. S. States and territories in all formats. Each month the law library host free webinars on topics covering the u. S. Is a foreign, and international and comparative law and invite you to sign up for these webinars on a website, law. Gov. We are so honored today to have the u. S. Supreme Court Associate Justice honorable elena kagan at the library of congress. I want to mention our Manuscripts Division contains the papers that many supreme Court Justices, and the law library of congress is a proud suppository of records and a collection. So after the event to date, we hope you will return to explore these wonderful collections. And at this time, i would like to ask that you please silencer phones, and i would also please ask you to refrain from taking any audio or video recordings or photos of the event. And with that, i would like to introduce the counselor to the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, judge robert and doug ducey. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much. I thank you. Sincerely thanks to dr. Hayden and everyone at the library of congress for hosting the 2020 for Supreme Court Fellows Program lecture. I am honored to welcome you here today and my dual role as counselor to the chief justice and executive director of the Supreme Court Fellows Program. The Fellows Program celebrates its 51st year and i am pleased to tell our audience more about it today. The Fellows Program offers mid career professionals, recent ball schoo graduates from the law and Political Science fields an opportunity to broaden their understanding of the judicial system through exposure to federal court administration. The Supreme Court fellows commission selects four talented individuals to work for one of four federal judicial agencies for a yearlong appointment here in washington, d. C. Those agencies of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Administrative Office of the u. S. Courts, the federal judicial center, and the u. S. Sentencing commission. All fellows gain practical expense in judicial administration, policy development, and education. They also benefit from time to study and write, and from that Vantage Point in which they can develop an Academic Research agenda as well. In it is so wonderful and it is so wonderful to see our fellow alumni. I saw some of you on the walkover, in the audience today, and also the funds for our 2024 2025 fellows class. Every class of fellows is special but this years class i want to tell you is composed of Exceptional Individuals who are talented lawyers and goodhearted humans. I see them walking all the time into our building and sometimes i even encountered them over at the Administrative Office and i will say my phrase for them them his all for one and one for all. They are so supportive of each other and they have adopted what we call in the Counselors Office our mantra, which is other duties as assigned. [laughter] there are many times working from any of those agencies but particularly over at the Supreme Court you never know what each day will bring in this class of fellows has been wonderful in pitching and wherever they are needed so let me just tell you a little bit about each of them. Adam kugler is the fellow assigned to the judicial center, the educational and Research Agency for the courts. Adam joined the federal Fellows Program for the u. S. District court from connecticut where he clerked. I know adam is sitting right in front of me. There he is. They are but there. They are right, believe me, the bright lights are here, its hard to pick anyone up, but adams future bosses sitting right in front of being the Second Circuit so adam you have a good home to go to when youd leave us. He earned honors from the university of connecticut where he was the managing editor of the connecticut law review. The fellow assigned to the Supreme Court and the Counselors Office is torry nickel, she joined the Fellows Program from private practice in missoula, montana and she previously clerked for the ninth circuit and the u. S. District court for the district of montana which believe it or not is one district. She earned her ba summa cum laude in Political Science from Carroll College and a jd with high honors from the university of Montana School of law where she was coeditorinchief of the montana law review. Torry has truly mastered other duties as assigned. [laughter] our next fellow is viviana visio with the fellow assigned to the u. S. Sentencing commission which is the Agency Responsible for the establishment of sentencing policies and practices for the u. S. Courts. She joined the Fellows Program from the u. S. District court for the Southern District of new york where she clerked for judge Gregory Woods and she previously clerked for judge anthony personally for the u. S. District court for the middle district of florida, she was a participant in the attending journal Honors Program at the u. S. To permit of justice serving as a trial lawyer in Money Laundering and Asset Recovery section of the criminal division, so if you have a problem in that area, she is your person. She earned a ba summa cum laude in a jd magna cum laude from Stetson University where she served as editorinchief of the stetson law review. Our fourth fellow is jose vasquez who is assigned to the admin Strata Office of the u. S. Courts in the Central Support agency for the judicial branch. He joined the Fellows Program from the u. S. Court of appeals for the 11th circuit where he clerked for judge adelbert jordan in previous he clerked for judge jaclyn becerra of the u. S. District court for the Southern District of florida and he earned his ba in government from georgetown and his jd from the university of miami law school, but degrees earned magna cum laude. We have four really smart fellows. You have been a joy and we are happy to say your expenses only half over. So we will look forward to seeing what your compass and the remainder of your term. I now had the joy also of introducing our two guests for today for your lecture. Chief judge Jeffrey Sutton has served on the u. S. Court of appeals for the six circuit since 2000 three and its chief judge since 2021. He is a current member of the executive committee of the judicial conference of the United States and most pertinent to todays events, the chair of the Supreme Court fellows commission. Usually chief judge sutton has chaired the committee on the rules of practice and procedure in the Advisory Committee on appellate rules. He is an academic too having taught at Ohio State University college of law since 1993 and also at Harvard Law School. He is best known in the academic world for his work on federalism and his casebook on state constitutional law. Chief judge sutton clerked for the second certain and justice antonin scalia. Justice elena kagan has served on the Supreme Court of the nightside since 2010. Prior to her appointment to the court, she was a solicitor general of the United States, the federal governments top appellate lawyer sometimes referred to as the 10th justice. Prior to that, justin kagan was the very popular and successful dean kagan of the Harvard Law School and she had previous he can a law professor at harvard and the university of chicago and she served in the Clinton Administration as associate counsel and his Deputy Assistant to the president for domestic policy. Justice kagan clerked for judge abner nicola on the d. C. Circuit judge Justice Thurgood marshall. Please join me in welcoming two of my favorite people on the planet for what i am sure will be a fun and far ranging conversation. [applause] you can see me. I cant see you. [laughter] thank you, judge. Another slow day at the office . Yeah. [laughter] everybody is laughing, so they must know what i did this morning. They see the irony. I was thinking the opposite. It would be impossible to make news donate because everybody would be focused on the morning, which i think is good. I will see what i can do. [laughter] i will point out that the fellows Commission Set this date long ago in the fall. [laughter] you know that because if they hadnt, i would have said no. Well. And it says so much about you. That i did not cancel. [laughter] that is exactly what im saying. [laughter] so anyway, its an honor to be with you anyway but today in particular, so thank you. I really appreciate it. So i am so thrilled to be doing this. So your father was a lawyer. Your mother was a teacher. You did both. I was a lawyer and a teacher. So this is easy to understand. They had a big impact on your career choices but whether other teachers or coaches who had an influence on you . I think constantly. Every place i have been i have had great mentors and i do not think, i think this is true of most people, right, you dont, people help you along the way, and people help you a lot along the way, and i have been really lucky every place i have been. I have had people who looked out for me so i guess i am a little reluctant to name names because i am afraid i will miss people because truly, i have had a lot of jobs. It used to be before i got this job sometimes people would introduce me the way bob introduced me and it would be so clear i would change my jobs every four that i would say you know, the secret about me is i cant keep a job. Every place, you know, there is somebody i could look to for advice and support and counsel, and i dont think you can do stuff unless that is true. All right. Do you have a particular person . I do, but you will have to save those questions until we are done. [laughter] but how about your writing . I think everybody here would love to know who might have been some of the influence on your writing. The first influence was my mother did my mother was in Elementary School teacher and this was something she thought about was how to teach young people and she cared a lot about good writing, and so, that was my first influence. She i think taught me to write. I think the second person, i will name names for this was because i think there are two people who are a little bit head and shoulders above everybody else in terms of writing. The second person was my senior thesis advisor. I went to princeton. You had to do a big paper your senior year. I was a history major. I had really the extraordinary opportunity of working with a very young professor at the time who is not so young anymore but he is at princeton. Yes. I did my junior paper with him in my senior thesis and he literally went over every page of both multiple times and taught me better ways of writing. And you know, i learned an extraordinary amount from him, you know, about being a good historian, i guess for that time but the stuff that really really has made a difference in my life , is i came out of that experience a much better writer than i went into it. Now shifting a little bit to court opinions. When you think of your writing, you are trying to explain why you are doing what youre doing, but you have an audience in mind when you are writing . I do. I dont know if this really makes sense because some of the opinions i write, probably the only people who, them are the lawyers read them are the lawyers in the case or some set of lawyers who specialize in the subject matter. Try being a court of appeals judge. It is worse. Yeah. I tried to not think about that. I try not to think about that the only people who will read this opinion are specialized lawyers. I really try to write so that interested americans can figure out what i am saying and why i am saying it. And you try not to dumb it down too much, so there is a balance you have to strike because you dont want to dumb it down. You dont want to be in terms of the substance, sophisticated and you know, to treat difficult things as though they are difficult things, but at the same time, i guess what i would like is that it should be the case that even you know, even if they dont understand every in and out that an interested person with some amount, you know, like i say, i think of myself as like writing for, you know, serious newspaper readers or Something Like that, you know. That they should be able to pick it up and get the gist and figure out why it is the Supreme Court decided what it decided today. Do you ever have your moms voice in the back of your mind . Like what would mom think of this . [laughter] i think that would be a little bit scary, honestly. It would be a little bit scary. You could never really meet her standards. [laughter] she was tough. So i have a more generous voice, you know. [laughter] well, i would jump ahead to a point i wanted to talk about a little bit later was Justice Scalia. He had something similar with his father. My understanding is his father would mark his d. C. Circuit judge. Oh my gosh. If my mother had been alive by the time i was judging, she would have done the same thing. While we are on the topic of Justice Scalia it is funny when you said that because some of the things i sometimes set up a Justice Scalia is sometimes just as clea and i come i will give you a shot, we were on different sides of an issue. [laughter] i am trying to think. I used to have a little scalia voice right over here. So effective at that. He did the same thing to me. Ok. You were probably on different sides less often but i used to think what would he say about this argument. And that isnt actually helpful thing to have. It is like, ok, if i know how