This is booktv on cspan2. I would like to welcome you to the Supreme CourtInstitute Spring book fair. When i was a kid i looked forward to my School Book Fair and now i am lapy in the position i get to go to the law school one. Here i want to thank Anthony Franze especially for coming up with the idea and recruiting this wonderful panel on authors. Really looking forward to hearing about books i will actually want to read. Not mocking law articles or briefs but it is starting to get old so i am looking forward to hearing what these folks have come up with. We have tony mauro here to led the discussion. We has been covering the he Supreme Court for about 36 years and there is no one who would be better able to lead the panel. Thank you very much for hosting this and thanks also to anthony for organizing it. I hope it will be a fun event. It always is when you talk about Supreme Court books it is kind of a genre that keeps growing in literature, fiction and nonfiction, we had a panel like this three years ago and it really was intended to celebrate the fact that the Supreme Court seems to be the subject of more and more books of all kinds, and judging by the corner of my desk where i stack books about the court that have come in from publishers the genre only increased since the last of it. We thought we would do it again especially since the Supreme Court is in the news more than ever these days. I am pleased with the panel that has been assembled. I have written about all of these fine authors and mentioned them in my annual list of the top10 books for Supreme Court off off off officnato. I praised each of them because their books have shed new light on the Supreme Court which sorely needs more light. I will introduce each one briefly and start with questions, first some of mine, then yours, and we will have an opportunity to buy the books. I hope the panelist will discuss things with each other as well. Whether it is the conformation mess or Justice Scalia and his absence on the court. All of the authors here, fiction and nonfiction, are true experts about the court. Not just dabblers who stumbled on it and thought it might be a cool subject for a book. First, Anthony Franze, whose latest Supreme Court thriller, the advocates daughter a thriller was released last month. The body count is lower for his first book, the last justice, but no less suspenseful or accurate when it comes to details about the Supreme Court. Next to anthony is david lat, the founder of a blog all lawyers read daily. David branched out to fiction in a very successful way with his book, supreme ambitions which is an aspiration for judges on the ninth circuit. David just happened to clerk on the ninth circuit a number of years ago. Next to david is tim roosevelt. He has written fiction and nonfiction books and happens to be the great great grandson of theodore roosevelt. His book is allegiance. Next to kim is jay wexler, professor at Boston University of law and former law clerk to justi justi Justice Ginsburg and wrote a book about a justice going through a midlife crisis. It has been said a book on Supreme Court humor would be thin but jay added to that. And finally, we have our last author who wrote a book on ginsburg. A terrific book. I will start off with a broad question asking each of you to describe your book and what special challenges you found in writing about the Supreme Court or Appellate Courts. I will start. By book is the the advocates daughter a thriller. It is a thriller. The protagnist is a prominent washington, d. C. Lawyer who is on the short list to be the next nominee to the Supreme Court. He has big deep dark secret. A youthful crime that haunted him for 30 years and has been kept secret. And the book is about his daughter being murdered and his fears that may relate to his possible nomnition or the secret from his past. I am a practicing lawyer and i have cases in the Supreme Court and sometimes i have justice in my novels do terrible things. When you file briefs with your name and books in barnes and noble where a justice does unthinkable things it stays with you in the back of your mind a little bit. That has been my major chal c g chlg challenge. But i hope recognizing for a thriller core component is mayhem, murder and mischief. That is my book. My involve is titled supreme ambitions and it is set actually in the ninth circuit one step below the Supreme Court. Even though only part of the involve really takes place in the washington, d. C. Or the vicinity of the Supreme Court, it is like the great white wale the protagonist and mentor is after. It tells the story of a young clerk graduate who is clerking for a judge on the ninth circuit. And oddrys wish is to serve on the Supreme Court. Her boss wants to sit on the Supreme Court as a justice. The book examines what one has to do to advance in a Legal Profession and vindicate ones ambation. Ambition. It is kind of like john grisham wrote a legal thriller about jurisdiction. And the other one, because you have to strong ambition women, one new to the field and the other at the top, i like to say it is the devil meets played prada. Challenges, i think the main challenge which the fellow panelist can refer to. I think one of the challenges was writing about the legal world. A lot is up here. A lot is mental and on paper and my book has no car chases, no murders. So how do get people to keep turning pages which is all about filings and briefs and motions . That is a big challenge for involves set in the legal world. Novels. By look is calle called allegiance and set during world war ii and tell the story of a guy from philadelphia who is in law school who pearl harbor is attacked. He wants to join the military but serves the physical and thinks he gets a chance to serve in another way and gets to clerk for hugo black on the Supreme Court. And during world war ii, the government removes japaneseamericans from homes in the west coast and confines them to camps. One of the cases is decided and after the clerk goes to work for the Justice Department and he is in the ally enemies program and responsible for defending the program in court. And he writes the brief for the case and as time goes on he learns more and more about what the government has done supposedly to keep him safe. And he starts having doubts about where his true allegiance lies. I was trying to take a historical episode and explore the question of what we do as a nation when we feel afraid and insecure and how we decide who we can trust and who is dangerous. And how we decide whose interests counts and who is sacrificed to make the rest of us feel safer. I do have a murder. But i faced the problem david is talking about. I ended up putting in a murderer or two. I will not tell you how many there are. I dont want to spoil it. But that was one of the challenges. The other challenge i found was historical fiction was more difficult than i realized. My first novel was about life in a law firm. I knew that and worked in a law firm for two years and felt confidant inventing scenes. But i had anxiety about getting there details right and not having people say things or wear things they would not have worn. I had to do an enormous amount of research to have the confidence to write the simplest theme even. My involve is called how to learn the balance and it is about a Supreme Court justice having a mid life crisis. Huddle is 60ish, drinks too much, he is divorced, super horny, looking for love perhaps contracting syphilis, i am not really sure. And also, we gets really into a forth century bc philosopher who teaches that rationality and logic are not something anyone should rely on which is destabilizing for a judge who has to make decisions in cases. He kind of unravels over the course of the book and so the book is about what happens when somebody starts really doubting whether they ought to be in the position they are in, and whether the position makes any sense at all. For me, the challenge, i think was trying to i knew i wanted to write about the Supreme Court but slightly skewed so in order to do that you have to write about the Supreme Court in a convincing manner so it looks real and then you can twist it 5 to the left and get the reader to buy in where as if you are writing something crazy but i wanted Something Like reality but not write. Thank you, tony for the wonderful introduction. It is fun to be here at georgetown. Former home of Marty Ginsburg who one of my favorite comments about our book is somebody said when they read the captor about marty and ruths marriage they felt what they think they were supposed to feel when they watch a romantic comedy. I think i am outnumbered among other reasons i didnt write a work of fiction. We are also the only book that started out as a tumbler. My coauthorer inspired by the Voting Rights decision, or shelby counter versus holder, and specifically Justice Ginsburg breaking the record for decent from the bench, started rbg as a mash up of the tiny fierce, womens right pioneer and the 350plus pound dead rapper and the idea was both juxtapose this and how both are thinking about truth to power. It struck a cord obviously. The challenge we maced in putting together our book is how do we bring substance to this fun, irreverent phenomena . How do we make a book lawyers want to read but the nonlawyers want to read a key body work we were trying to reach . We thought we wanted the book to have the same breezy visual content of the tumbler but wanted it to be substance, do justice to the scenes to which Justice Ginsburg devoted her life. We had a distinguished law professor including one former ginsburg clerk and a few other folks annotate experts. But we had justices favorite recipe for marty and we had the rgb workout and interviewed her personal trainer. While the book is a serious accounting of the femine jurisprudence and civil rights issues she devoted her life we wanted it to be fun. So my favorite description of our book was the one in the New York Times as if tall mode and a scrapbook had a baby. I want to just ask another general question and we will get into specifics for each panelist. But why do you think so many lawyers write novels . Why do they feel the need to do something other than law . I have an answer. I have thought about the connection between fiction and law practice because i teach at the law School Atmosphere the university of pennsylvania. I thought this was something i had to justify and tried to justify it in terms of its utility for writing. If you compare that to advance constitutional theory that i taught i realize this is more beneficial. But i think also maybe to a lesser extent in other fields which is what litigators are doing is telling a story. And youvete got the two sides o have case, and there are certain not disputed, and there are certain facts that arh disputed, and you can weave those in or out of your narrative as you want. But ultimately, you tell a story that the finder of fact finds more plausible. And howi do you make your storyy plausible . Its being able to set a scene and cast your characters correctly i and have a narrative with a good flow to it. So i think that lawyers probably feel theyre immersed sort of in the world of storytelling, and its not surprising at all to me that they want to ten out and to step out and get into novel writing and storytelling more proper. I, you know, ive been asked this question a lot x i looked into it a little bit. Its not a new phenomenon. You cand go back to the 1800s, and lawyers back then would write fictionalized accounts of their real cases for newspapers for entertainment value. And i even found that when he was practicing law, abraham w lincoln wrote an embellished version of one of his criminal cases. So this didnt start with grisham x its been around for centuries. Myd favorite theory though about why lawyers write is david rourke called us, did a whole feature why do so many d. C. Lawyers write a novels . Several of us, me, david and others. And after spending time with us and getting to know us and hearing us out on why we write, the takeaway was that, you know, basically we all are a bunch of big have a bunch of big egos, and thats really the driving motivator. So thats one theory. [laughter] i im just wondering about the premise. Ide dont it very well coulde that many, that lots and lots ow lawyers write fiction, or it. Could be there are lots and lots and lots of lawyers. I dont know, im trying to think about my friends who are lawyers and colleagues and wondering if they write fiction and hoping that a lot of them dont. [laughter] but so i dont know. Id like to sort of know the per capita fiction writing data. I want some data [laughter] well, ive found over the years that there are a lot ofa. Lawyers who want to be doing something other than lawyering. [laughter]in so thats one outlet. Wy they may be bird watchers too,et but you need some kind of relief from the law once in a while. So this is a question for everyone but especially the law professors. Professors. Do you think fiction can serve as a teaching tool . I am thinking of kims book which is a good way to explain the internment cases. Is this teachable through fiction . I think absolutely. I think fiction can teach us just as much about a lot of cases and issues as you could get from an academic presentation and i think it can reach different people, reach people in a way that academic analysis doesnt because studies have shown this, i think. People tend to organize their lives in terms of narratives. People tell stories about their own lives and that is how they make sense of the world. If you speak to someone in an academic, analytical language, that is the voice in some peoples head but not most peoples head. So it doesnt necessarily come across as something that is easily internalized and that they can take inside and change themselves with. The voice of narrative and fiction does. If you are trying to teach people something in a way that really gets inside them and changes the way they think about things; fiction is the most effective way to do that very often. I dont think my novel should be let anywhere near a classroom. I taught this novel to my class. No, thank you. That was a really fun class. I do generally agree with kim, though, that fiction can serve as a teaching tool. I think our universities have fiction writing as a department; right . Or a program of study. The reason that is is because it is a particular art that people can engage in that shows the world in a certain way. It is a way of understanding the world that is different than understanding it through income or history. Those economics in history are great ways to understand the world and so is fiction. The idea of having like a program in law and creative fiction to me would make a lot of sense. So generally, yes. My book, no. I think your book is a good reading on why we should any other thoughts about teachable fiction . All right. Aaron, i wanted to ask you about your book and how much access you had to Justice Ginsburg and her friends, papers and what has been her reaction since the book was published . Shanna started her tumbler a year and half before working on the book so when it came to being a pop culture icon she was per plexed and then amused. She had to ask her clerks who is this notorious and once known she said great, we are both from brooklyn. Once it was a book, she was not apprehensive, but uncertain. She has been collaborating with two distinguished georgetown faculty members on her official biography. This was a project that was supposed to be a beautiful object, fun story, and very much irreverent piece of work. We realized she was part of the projects when clerks called and asked to talk to us. I requested an interview as a reporter before working on the book, together with shanna, she she was officially not giving an interview for the book but a week later i resent the prior interview request and suddenly it was happening. To bring cameras in the Supreme Court, which you know is very, very challenging even if not an oral argument. It was a very nervous atmosphere. Over time, i think she was convinced this was a serious and fun project we got more access. The most incredible moment, we interviewed her children and grandchildren, jeffrey tube published a letter from Marty Ginsburg in the new yorker he wrote her before dying and every time i read the letter i would cry. It was near the end of the chapter about their marriage and it was a beautiful marriage and significant because it informed her ideas, her equality jurisprudence and optimism that men could become better partners and inspired her to imagine a world of equality between men and women including romantic partnerships. We were trying to get the letter because primary documents was a key part of the book. We got permission from the justice to reprint letters including a letter from glori a steinman and the original letter to the editor from steven wine field. But this letter, every time asking, there was silence. And thought maybe this is appropriate. We just wanted the picture in hand writing. Her son agreed to write there book before it went to press for Fact Checking and he said this is great. But why do you have my dad letter in this weird font . You should have the original. And i said yeah, i would love the original. At the 11th hour, we had to top the pre