Deference. An agency enjoys, when it interprets its own organic statute, for example, how much deference epa enjoys when it the Clean Air Act at the state levels. That same level of deference has under serious and sustained attack for a long time and and and successful attack and in a lot of states agencies simply do not enjoy deference when they interpret their own organic statutes. And i think thats really really deeply unfortunate and think there is something about the political economy of state of states or state governments as opposed to the federal government that really me less optimistic about about state regulatory apparatuses. And maybe ill just kind of leave it at that for and chris, when i think about some of the greatest changes in the criminal legal system and criminal procedure much of it has started at the state level. And when the us court decided that people with intellectual disability could no longer be subject to capital punishment, they surveyed states and there was a national trend. When the Us Supreme Court said that no longer can we subject under the age of 18 to the Death Penalty. They surveyed the state. Do we have some sort of movement going on in state courts to limit what scientifically describe as junk science. Well, i mean, just to zoom out a little bit when, you talk about federalism and the work of state courts, high courts and state constitutions. You know what much of my job at the Innocence Project is strategically engaging is an effort to change the law around the leading contributing factors are convictions so eyewitness misidentification, junk science, false confessions, all of these kind of core things that have been used to wrongfully make people. And so i a lot of our amicus practice in the Supreme Court and five years ago, seven years ago, i would once in a while support a petition to Supreme Court because i thought maybe on sixth amendment issues. There are a couple you find five votes for an issue that really cared about and for the last five years, anytime people have come to me for you know we want to support this case or that case, you know, and these are innocent people by and large. Right. You know, very plainly on the, you know, great facts, perfect facts and used to be good facts make good law. And then the reverse was true. But now, you know, i say is like, show me where you have five votes for this. I dont care how innocent your client is, you know, i mean, show where you got five votes, you know, and they will now take these really bad facts or great facts depending on what side on and not take a position that matters, but will deliberately gut it and say it doesnt matter. Right. If you look at the indecision, innocence matter. Right . Only process, only a fair trial. And then you look at what the the interpretation of due process in federal courts, and thats where innocent people go to die because of so much deference is given to state courts by the federal and by federal judiciary. As a result, Supreme Court precedent. So now all of the reform work that i focus on when im thinking ahead and designing litigation, state high courts. Yeah. And how important every election is is massive right so you know you have a case, you know, or an issue that you really care about, right . So were talking about trying to get better and the use of scientific. Suddenly we have a new governor. We can pass a law like we have in texas where the junk science right which i write lot about in the book where its the first law in the country where theres a path back into court for people who can demonstrate that the socalled science that was used at trial has been discredited by the progress its known now. Its state by state incremental change and further balkanization of the way that we treat people that are subjected to the criminal legal and sadly, i believe that youre right. These require national solutions. But i dont think politically possible anymore. You i mean, and so much of the litigation i do is in the deep, too. So then youre screwed in state court and youre screwed federal court, right . So really its what do we care about . And the legal system seems to put the highest priority finality. So a case was adjudicated in the state court regardless of what sort of new evidence comes forward subsequently in postconviction that the court wants to rely. On what the initial trial court found, which was a conviction. Exactly. I mean, i devote a chapter on, you know, denying innocence in the age of and the principle of finality in the age of innocence. And really that has been the paramount legal consideration by our courts for a long time as the jury verdict in and thats it. You know, youre entitled to a fair trial and no more. And this is why the Innocence Project and other similar organizations have been so disruptive and such a threat to the status quo, because that undermines the legitimacy of our entire criminal legal system when youre convicting innocent people because most used to be anyway people republicans democrats would agree that you shouldnt incarcerate innocent people shouldnt put innocent people to death. Im not sure that you can really say that anymore. Each you in many ways is is relying on the existing structure. And chris, even though you dont have faith and the rules of evidence in criminal procedure, youre youre still filing postconviction briefs, youre still using the existing tools. And really, our discussion is about how is. It that we can maybe return to have faith again in our legal institutions and our regulatory systems and each of offers prescriptions about suggestions in your book and and i want to give some hopefulness right to our despite fact that we have a decision like dobbs on abortion. The fact that we have a decision like sean versus martinez and jones which chris mentioned that limits the type of new evidence that a criminal defendant can bring into court after having litigated issues in state court. So if you can talk, about some of the intervention, some of the prescriptions in your book that can allow us to have faith in this system systems. Sure. Okay. So as i said in my in my first set of remarks, what a lot of the book attempts to find a way to do to harmonize these ideas of expertise and democracy. And so the obvious question, well, how do you do that . How did you then in this context and so i think in the regulatory context are a couple of ways. Number one, start with maybe with the most obvious one, success has of buddies. And so i think if you can manage to create successful regulatory programs, then you will find that those programs and the agencies that that promote end up getting more end up becoming more legitimate. Now, thats an obvious one. Well just do a better job and you know, youll more support. So you have to think go beyond that. I mean, how do you actually make that happen . And i think one of the ways you make that happen is, you know, you pull some levers kind of at the institutional design level to try to incentivize these these good results that will then lead more to more democratically intimacy. So in the book, i talk about trying to dont attempt president ial control over bureaucratic output kind of leaving job more to oversimplify to leave the job more to the actual experts rather than to the politicians in the white house or even to politicians at the Agency Headquarters building. I also argue that courts should play a role here by calibrating their judicial review of agency based on the extent to which the agency has used procedures that may well incent, that may well promote expertise. Right. So if the agency of falls down on using the right procedures to promote to use expertise, then maybe the judicial review should be a little more skeptical, more stringent, and the reverse be true of the agency does something else. I also argue that there need to be reforms with regard to the use of information in administrative agencies or information should be a lot freer. In other words and not subject to the political pencil. That is to say to political. So some of you may remember ive never remember 14 years ago, james hansen, famous climate scientist at columbia, went to capitol hill and said, i disavow the testimony that is now being entered in the record because that testimony, in fact, cooked by my bosses at epa orbit, nasas wherever he happened to be. So i think there really need to be reforms with regard to information, how information is created and how its disseminated. And then finally and this is maybe the best. Well, second to last, agencies have to have their their staffing up. We are operating under a very, very thin Civil Service or with a very thin Civil Service. And there absolutely needs to be reformed. We need more bureaucrats and we need fewer contractors and outsourced jobs. Finally, and this really is kind of the big one, you know, need to change the process by which agencies interact with the public the way the system runs. And this is, again, a big oversimplification but the way the process runs now is. Agencies make some decisions about what they want to do. They embark on a technically very complex rulemaking. And at that point they ask the public, do you have anything interesting add here . And of course, most members of the public dont because these are really issues. However, if the agency had sought out public input at earlier stages, maybe stages that are more politically fraught in terms of kind of making decision ins about which initiatives we should prioritize here. So i think i use the faa. Im not sure i even gave you the example that i was talking that i had in mind. So how this how about the faa going to the public saying the following things . We have time and space for one big rulemaking this year about passenger rights. Lets have a citizen jury convene and lets talk about whether youd a rulemaking on tarmac versus a rulemaking on for baggage loss. Now thats a very simple example but if can involve the public in making sorts of politically fraught decisions politically, fraught because they involve value choices, then basically the is in fact able to participate in the process by which the agency makes its decision. As opposed to what . Well, as opposed to starting a process kind of getting into the technical weeds and only then asking public if they have anything interesting to add which of course they likely want. And then, you know, the public walks away of feeling what that really wasnt much a process. And everyone sort of walks away dissatisfied. So i think if you can do these sorts of things, these sorts, these sorts of reforms, maybe you have a way of of squaring that circle that definitely would increase. And even the credibility of some of these agencies will or. Chris yeah sure. So just quickly highlight three things which are several solutions we should be looking to, but im highlighting these three in particular because they with each other in a way to show how we can actually get to sustainable change. So one, the history has shown that social have been the leading sort of driver of constitutional change. So we look at abolitionist movement, right that long preexisted the point when we got to the 13th amendment that outlawed slavery immediately and universally right the movements for suffrage whether its black suffrage or womens suffrage that was very much part of a movement. Right . Women in several states were trying to the right to vote, but they were. And it actually continued push at the National Level to get the 19th amendment secured. The movement for temperance. We ended up getting the prohibition amendment, the 18th amendment ill fated ill probably not the best example things but it did have a really long sustainable Temperance Movement was driving it and sort of led to like youre sort of like scorecards that they sort of movement behind it. The institutions that were working with it led to the score cards that we kind of of today that members of congress are checked against in terms of advocacy organizations. So social movements and obviously we to the civil rights era. And then you have like robust social movements on on looking to change on several dimensions. So social movements and then relatedly Civil Society and the engagement, these sort of organizations. Right. And so i mentioned the idea of the scorecard that was sort of developed around the Temperance Movement and the amendment, but you can think of all the great organizations that engaged with society and and led these sort of movements the naacp comes to mind sort of first and foremost in terms of the civil rights right with their district in to what they were doing in terms of strategic litigation and trying to find these test cases throughout the country that they could bring these amazing cases to challenge the status quo. Was they i mean, they were also lobbying they had a district who might as well have been living on capitol hill. Right. Testifying for the range constitutional change, formal or sub constitutional are the informal ways to try to push this forward. So then you have social movements, you have the engagement, Civil Society and then really is the academy honestly is a role for academics in this. Right. Were not going to have these unless we have general ideas being generated in the academy. People who have the time, the privilege, honor and i argue the duty to think about what is ailing our democ and how we can sort of turn these big ideas or like one, come up with the big ideas what it could look like in our current constitutional sort of framework or we need to get out of our current constitutional framework into what that might look like in practice. So the implementation of these things and one person who comes to mind for me is murray. And we would not talking about the equal rights amendment if it werent for pauli murray. Shes talked the idea she wrote a seminal law review article called describing crow. Right. So playing on the idea of jim crow, which was denying the rights to black americans throughout the country but particularly in the south, this idea of crow, which also existed where women were not thought of anything but extend of their husbands and sort of male family. Right. And she used this to help not only sort of propel ruth bader strategic litigation to use the 14th amendment for constitutional change to protect such sex discrimination against sex discrimination, but also push for the equal rights amendment, which were still talking about today, something that is being debated at the d. C. Circuit right now. Right. So these ideas are interrelated social movements, engagement by Civil Society, and then the academy. And i think that that is one idea or one sort of a panoply of ideas that can help us get out of the malaise were in now. Thank you for. Uplifting pauli murray, who is getting renewed attention. I think there is a great profile in the new yorker on within the last few years. Thats probably with an eye if anyones interested chris you know i always struggle for optimism in these types of talks that give something. Yeah. One of the things though that i think becoming much more part of mainstream thought. That the criminal legal system is and needs reform and thats become know for different reasons. You know on the right its of a financial matter. It doesnt make financial sense. And on the left, you know, i think you know, these the arguments are im going to assume that you do the mass incarceration is a bad thing. Right. We have you know 2. 3 Million People in this country in various forms of incarceration at any given time. By far the greatest in the world. And yet were not a particularly safe. So locking up all these people is not working. Plainly, the one of the things that i was heartened before the actual result of the 2016 election was that Hillary Clinton was forced apologize for her husband. Criminal justice policies, which have led to a lot of what weve been talking about today. And so a lot of this goes down to the antiterrorism and effective Death Penalty act called adverse. This was passed during the clinton years. What it effectively did was sort of relief in or the ability to get federal courts to review state court convictions. The overwhelming majority of crimes and particularly Violent Crimes are prosecuted in state court. Thats also where overwhelming majority of wrongful convictions occur. Many of those would have and could have been corrected by federal judges who have lifetime tenure, and theyre more arms length from the facts of those cases. And what the apa did was give all this power to the Supreme Court to define this statute and what is now today the law is that you can point to something that is clearly established Supreme Court precedent that was violated in your clients case, you cant get into federal court at all. And the way that thats been interpreted, its been so restrictive now we talked about this other opinion that that you cant bring in new evidence in federal court to demonstrate your innocence of the way the Supreme Court is interpreting this law. So i think in light of this and i went back to where were talking about the importance of elections. So if we have a and 2024 a blue wave crests and then there may be political momentum to doing away with that bar and epa is really the thing prevents so much injustice from being corrected at the federal level and the politics and i a chapter to this in my book if youre trying to overturn a conviction you have to bring in new evidence and you have to present that evidence in front of the same judge and the same prosecute her who wrongfully convicted you in the first place. Right. So the confirmation bias on the, you know, whether or not this new evidence would altered the outcome is and in wait and it all the more difficult to get it overturned state court and because of epa. Its almost impossible to it overturned in federal court and these are really good factual cases. So my comes from maybe a political will depending on the tide that will at least amend if not abolish at who. And i think its also laypeople are becoming increasingly more aware of all the injustice that exist, the criminal legal system. And its through uplifting stories like those of your clients when i think about, you know, the of serial and podcasts and the shift that we see in sort of true crime depictions on television, its not just sort of law and order special victims unit as dominant sort of narrative of what a crimi