An introduction to the main themes of the American Constitution—popular sovereignty, separation of powers, federalism, and rights.
Three Justices
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A Constituição dos Estados Unidos
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Akhil Reed AmarSterling Professor of Law and Political Science
Yale Law School
[APPLAUSE].
>> [COUGH] Good afternoon.
And welcome, once again, to Alumni Weekend.
Each year, the Yale Law School Association presents an Award of
Merit to an outstanding graduate.
It is our way of recognizing extraordinary alumni who have
made substantial contributions to public service and the legal profession.
We are a tiny school, but we have exercised an outsized influence
on the development of American law and public life.
Our Award of Merit has gone to presidents like Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton.
It has gone to senators like Jack Danforth, Arlen Specter,
Gary Hart, Joseph Lieberman, and Paul Tsongas.
It has gone to cabinet officials like Carla Hills, Herbert Brownell,
Hillary Clinton, Edward Levi, Robert Rubin, and Cyrus Vance.
Governors like William Scranton, mayors like John Lindsay, and outstanding
state judges, like Margaret Marshall, Randall Shepard and Drayton Nabers.
Today, we continue that tradition by honoring three alumni who, without
any question, have contributed immensely to the substance of American law.
Today, we honor three Justices of the United States Supreme Court.
The tale of each of these justices is a quintessentially American story.
A story of upward mobility, of hard, relentless work,
of staggering achievement, and of great inborn talent.
In different ways and in the name of different ideals, each of our honorees has
already left an indelible mark on the shape of our common jurisprudence.
For as far back as anyone in this room can remember,
this school has been the site of passionate argument and disagreement.
Our ambition has always been to nourish students in
the pursuit of their own values.
We strive to help young men and women become as thoughtful and
as effective as they can possibly be as they work out for
themselves how best to comprehend this large and complex world.
Every year, our alumni graduate with widely different world views, and
that is good.
If we have done our job right however, our graduates will share one thing.
They will appreciate the value of reason, of dialogue, of open and
productive conversation.
They will listen to those with whom they disagree, and they will learn from them.
Commitment to these values is a precious resource in today's world where ranker and
disrespect threaten to tear apart the shared fabric of our public life.
Without the virtues of respect and mutual engagement, virtues that lie
at the heart of the education Yale has always driven to provide, I fear for
our future as a nation.
The Supreme Court of the United States has always been at the heart of
implacable controversy.
I cannot begin to imagine the maelstrom of pressure that must engulf every justice.
It exhausts me simply to think about the courage and back breaking effort
it must take every day to stand up for the vision in which one believes, and yet
to remain open to the arguments of those with whom one disagrees.
In no institution, therefore, are the values of a Yale education more important,
more salient, than the Supreme Court.
And so it is a real pleasure to welcome back to Yale, these three justices,
each of whom, in their own distinct way, has displayed the fortitude and
virtuosity necessary to succeed in the highly pressurized chamber of the court.
It is a real pleasure to welcome them back to a space that is safe for
dialogue and discussion, and
that is oriented toward bringing out the best that is in each of us in the hope
that we will discover there in ourselves, shared values and aspirations.
Each of the justices we honor today graduated from Yale in the 1970s.
The biography of each justice is in the program before you.
And so in interest of time, and of allowing you to hear directly from them,
I shall not now repeat those biographies.
In fact, I will be very brief.
I shall say only that in coming to Yale as students, each of these three
justices enriched our community in ways that foreshadowed how they would later
enrich the entire country, in their roles as Justices of the Supreme Court.
I'm going to introduce the justices in order of seniority.
The first to graduate from Yale in 1974, was Justice Clarence Thomas.
Justice Thomas had been born into racial segregation and poverty.
The house in which he spent his earliest years had no running water, and
only a single electric light.
When he was seven, he was sent to live with his grandfather, Myers Anderson,
whom Thomas would later describe as the greatest man he had ever known.
Myers stressed the importance of education, so
that young Clarence could one day hold down a coat and tie job.
Even though he now wears robes rather than coats and
ties, I'm guessing that his grandfather would still be proud.
Justice Thomas's resources as a student at Yale were so limited that when
his son Jamal was born here, he could not afford a place for his child to sleep.
So Dean Jim Thomas, who is here today, celebrating his 50th reunion, and
who had the good sense to admit each of these three justices,
lent Clarence Thomas his own family crib.
Despite the difficulties of his background,
Justice Thomas arrived at Yale ready to make his mark.
Even before classes began, he secured a job with New Haven Legal Assistants.
Frank Cochran, the office's managing attorney at the time,
remembers Thomas as a quick learner, very well organized, and
the kind of person that you were able to trust to do the work well.
Thomas brought the same attitude to his studies.
Eager to balance his community engagement with immersion in the study of law, Thomas
obtained special permission to carry more than the maximum number of credits.
And he subjected himself to a rigorous curriculum of corporate law,
bankruptcy and commercial transactions.
He made a habit of staying at the library until it closed at one in the morning.
It was clear from the beginning,
Guido Calabrese recalls, just how really smart he was.
Thomas' acuity and diligence were equalled by an easy
sociability that led to enduring relationships with students and faculty.
He soon became close with the pioneering tact scholar Boris Bittker and
the Civil Rights professor, Tom Emerson.
And with Quintin Johnstone,
a Yale institution, who sadly passed away earlier this year.
Around the end of his first spring, Thomas lost his wallet and
he had it returned to him by a fellow classmate named John Bolton.
The two became fast friends.
Their discussions of politics even made Thomas hesitate before casting
a ballot for George McGovern in 1972.
Justice Thomas' voting preferences may have changed since then, but
his ability to relate to others has not.
>> [LAUGH].
>> There are many Yale Law students who, after graduation,
go on to clerk at the Supreme Court.
And to a person, to a person, they praise Justice Thomas as a human being.
They speak of his humor and welcoming demeanor.
They describe his kindness, his warmth, his infectious laugh.
They celebrate his deep personal humanity and his constant effort to reach out and
to be helpful to them in times of stress and
pain regardless of their political beliefs.
And that is no small thing for a justice in robes.
And of course when we puts on his robes,
there can be no doubt whatever of Justice Thomas' determination and
dedication, no justice is as fearless and relentless in affirming what he or
she considers to be right as Justice Clarence Thomas.
Appointed to the Court in 1991 at the age of 43,
Justice Thomas has been called the court's conservative intellectual path breaker.
On issue after issue, he has anticipated and shaped the development of doctrine,
passionately defending his convictions even when few agreed, until gradually, and
in no small part due to the force of Justice Thomas' reasoning and
writing, his views have made their way into the legal mainstream.
Akil Lamar has compared Justice Thomas' prescient iconoclasm to that of
John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in Plessy,
while UCLA scholar Eugene Volokh has suggested that Thomas should be counted
alongside Justices Holmes and Marshall as one of the court's true visionaries.
Court watching however, is always, always a tricky business, and
no one has made that clearer than our second honoree, Samuel Alito.
Who, in his prize-winning law journal note, analyzed the behind the scenes
negotiations in the early religion clause cases like McCollum and Zorak.
In that note, he cataloged, and I'm quoting him now, quote, a long list
of outwardly plausible but badly mistaken interpretations that resulted from
attempts to discern the motivations and intentions of the justice system.
Even as a student, Justice Alito, who graduated in 1975,
understood that outsiders could not begin to guess at the negotiations and
the endless compromises involved in constructing an opinion for the court.
If you examine the career of Justice Thomas, you will find it entirely
dedicated to public service, and so also the career of Samuel Alito which has
spanned from the United States Attorney's Office to the Office of Legal Counsel to
the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to his current chambers at One First Street.
Public service was in Justice Alito's genes.
His father, an Italian immigrant who taught high school history and
served as an executive director of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services.
His mother was a librarian, a teacher, and a school principal.
And both parents were the first in their families to attend college.
At Yale, Justice Alito was as his first year towards,
Professor Guido Calabresi remembers, the perfect law student.
He did everything right.
Good friends with all.
In short order, Justice Alito became an editor of the law journal and
a moot court champion.
Peter Callas,
an alum from the class of 1978, remembers seeing Justice Alito in class,
where he would always sit in the front row, staring intently at the professor.
He never took a note, and he never raised his hand.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But whenever there was a question that no one else could answer,
the professor would inevitably call on Samuel Alito, who would always nail it.
Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2006, Samuel Alito enjoys a reputation among
his colleagues as someone with the utmost integrity,
as a straight-shooter who calls them as he sees them.
He has been praised as one of the noblest men in American public life today, and
he is also a formidable, formidable jurist.
He combines a methodological approach and a mastery of craft that has led
legal linguist, Brian Garner to label him quote,
an exemplar of legal style who writes with power and with clarity.
Is is plain to court watchers that Justice Alito is assuming a position of leadership
on the Supreme Court, authoring major opinions that express deep convictions.
At the risk of being merely another uninformed outsider, I would venture to
guess that he is now conducting the very negotiations that he so
brilliantly studied many years ago as a Yale student.
And I would further venture to guess that the force of his presence and
of his intellect is hard to resist.
Our third and final honoree today is Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
She graduated from Yale in 1979.
Like Judge Thomas, her life story is one of determination and grit.
Born in the East Bronx to parents who immigrated to
the United States from Puerto Rico during World War II, Justice Sotomayor grew up
in a family that refused to accept that economic disadvantage and
discrimination would dictate what their children would become.
Her mother Selena, who worked long hours as a nurse, was famous in the projects for
saving up to buy Sonia and her brother,
who is now a doctor, a complete edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
And, the books paid off.
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton in 1976, Sonia
headed straight to Yale Law School where she developed a reputation for
having an analytical mind, a balanced perspective and a fearless disposition.
Martha Minow, Sotomayor's Yale Law School classmate and
now the dean at another law school up the road-
>> [LAUGH].
>> described her as tough, clear, and very quick on her feet.
Her torts exam was remarkable, Guido remembers.
First termers tend to be careful.
>> [LAUGH].
>> They don't want to take chances.
But Sonia was one of those rare people who,
from the very beginning, took chances.
As a student, Justice Sotomayor,
like Justice Alito, chose to study matters that were close to her heart.
Her Yale Law Journal Note, which Professor Bill Eskridge, who was her Note editor,
believes is still the best work ever written on this subject,
concerned the application of the Equal Footing Doctrine to
potential Puerto Rican statehood.
Professor Stephen Carter, another editor on Justice Sotomayor's Note,
remembers how she was scrupulous about giving the strongest possible form.
Even to positions with which she disagreed.
And the Yale Law Journal found her note so
important, that it issued a press release to announce its publication.
Justice Sotomayor was appointed to the court in 2009.
Like Justices Thomas and Alito, her path to the court entailed a life dedicated.
To public service.
She is in fact the only current Supreme Court justice who has
had experience as a District Court judge.
And this has informed her pervasive sense of how the law actually operates in
the lives of ordinary people.
Rachel Barkow, a prominent criminal law scholar,
has written that Sotomayor's experience has, and I'm quoting now,
given the court a perspective on criminal justice that it has been lacking.
One that is fully informed by how things work on the ground, and how real people
interact with criminal justice policies in the vast majority of cases in the system.
What has been said about Justice Sotomayor's criminal
jurisprudence can also be said about her jurisprudence generally.
Justice Sotomayor has affirmed her commitment to realizing the rule of
law in its fullest sense.
Driven by her belief, that society is best served by and
I'm quoting now a shared acceptance of the laws judgement.
The idea that the law must be legitimate to all Americans,
is a noble and an essential ideal.
And anyone who has followed Justice Sortomeyer's work on
the court knows that she has pursued it with eloquence and tenacity.
So, my fellow alum's we have on the stage today three remarkable
graduates of this school.
Three graduates who have answered the call.
To public service and achievement, and
who have already made an unmistakable mark on the substance of American law.
Each of you has been an inspiration to the young students that we teach,
each in your own way.
And for giving them faith in the value of law, in the profession of law.
And in the possibilities of law, we thank you and
we confer upon you the Yale Law School Award of Merit, which looks like this.
[LAUGH] You will each get this sent to you.
And as you can see, it has a picture of lady justice in it,
which comes from the windows of the Sterling Law Building.
And I know that wherever lady justice is currently living,
she is very proud of each one of you.
Congratulations.
[APPLAUSE].
So now we turn to the highlight of the afternoon which is a conversation between
Justices Thomas, Elito and Sotomayor and our own Kate Stith.
The Lafayette S Foster professor of law.
Professor Sith's career in academia and public service includes stints as
an assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York.
As a staff economist at the Counsel of Economic Advisors.
And as a special assistant to the assistant attorney general in
the criminal division at DOJ.
It also includes more than 25 years as a professor at this law school.
Where she has written incisively and
taught passionately about constitutional law, criminal law, and criminal procedure.
When this school sought an interim dean after the departure of dean Harold Koh,
it naturally and spontaneously and unanimously turned to Kate.
So, I very much look forward to the conversation that Kate will lead
with our three, three larger than life honorees.
[APPLAUSE].
>> It's a real treat for us to have you back here.
Clarence and Sonya we decided to go informal.
They're here celebrating their reunions.
And Sam you're going to be able to see judge Garth later on.
He's moved up to to Branford.
So, we, we hope your whole weekend goes wonderful and we're very excited.
We have less than an hour and a half but some time to get to know you better.
My questions are going to proceed in three parts.
First we want to learn about your lives off the bench.
Then about your careers before you joined the supreme court.
And finally, some questions about your work on the court.
If there is a commonality, if there is a common theme,
it is the commonalities between you, in some respects.
So Robert spoke of your backgrounds and we surely all took note that
none of you came from a family of lawyers, you each chose this path.
With some independence and grit.
And so I'm going to ask you about where you got that grit to serve the law.
Sonia, let me begin with you.
You're quoted as saying: I was going to go to college, and
I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten.
No jest.
I want to ask you not so much what made you want to be an attorney but
what did becoming a lawyer mean for you as, at that tender
age of 10?
>> Oh, I thought you were going to ask [LAUGH].
>> As it meant to me.
To say what I was thinking at ten wasn't terribly sophisticated.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But I understood despite the repetitive theme
of The Perry Mason shows which would, would introduce me to lawyers.
Each of the cases that I heard from week to week was different.
They were different people, doing different kind of work,
interested in different parts of the world.
And in s, of the society they were in.
And I had a sense that the law gave one
that opportunity to learn new things constantly.
In fact, in high school I worked in an office with, it.
Back then it was one man and a bunch of women, okay?
And in the business office of the hospital.
And I used to relieve them during the summer when they went on vacation.
And I knew from the repetitiveness of the work
that I wanted something that would be constantly stimulating.
I wasn't thinking back then in the global terms I subsequently developed.
And so that has changed.
It's what law is to me now, and what made me choose it,
ultimately, in terms of for sure the career I was going to do after college-
>> And we-
>> -was that it was service.
>> We will, we will hear, hear more about what it's become to you.
Sam, your Princeton yearbook quotes you
as having said that you dreamed someday of warming a seat on the Supreme Court.
Now, I don't know if you really said that.
But is there some aspect of your early life or
maybe early professional experience that's particularly important in achieving that?
I did say it it was a joke [LAUGH] I was thinking of saying he
dreams of playing in the world series, and I might have said that just as both ideas.
>> You would have preferred that.
>> Seemed to yeah.
>> You you have gone to baseball camp right.
>> This I did yes I did but
both ideas would seem probably equally plausible at that point.
A couple of things got me interested in, in the law, I had no lawyers in my family,
but my father did research for the New Jersey legislature.
So he was drafting laws, and he used to discuss that with us.
That seemed very interesting.
After Reynolds versus Simms was decided, he had the,
the job of drawing new legislative districts and new congressional districts.
For the state and he would discuss that as well.
And I still couldn't remember lying in bed and
listening to the clank of the mechanical adding machine that he was using.
That shows you how much technology has changed.
But he was doing different maps to make
equal districts of equal population just using this.
A mechanical adding machine down on the kitchen table.
So that was one thing.
The other thing that got me interested in law was debating, and
I debated in high school.
And one year the debate topic, the nation high school debate topic had to do with
a constitutional criminal procedure question and it just fascinated me.
I remember that there was a little book put out that provided arguments on
both sides of of this question.
That was written by someone who, at the time, was labeled a the time
as a law clerk for, I believe for a justice on the California supreme court.
And the name of this, I it was the first time I think I ever saw the word Lockler.
The name of this individual was Lawrence Tribe.
That was the first book
>> [LAUGH] >> I think that he has, and that he wrote.
So that those were the two things that really got me interested that stand out.
>> Great.
Clarence, unlike your colleagues you once said that you never wanted to
be on the court.
That you prefer a private and anonymous life.
What changed your mind are you, and are you glad you changed it?
>> Oh, I don't know if I
ever changed my mind >> [LAUGH]
>> I think what changed is is this reflex.
When the President calls you always say, yes Mr.
President, and that sort of gets you-
>> [LAUGH]
>> Get's you into these Forrest Gump situations.
But >> [LAUGH]
>> Huh, you know, I,
the, I was just reflecting on my colleagues, and first of all,
it's an honor to be here.
With them, its, its a bit overwhelming.
I have to be honest with you.
Its a particular honor to be here with my Virginia.
Who's totally my best friend in the world.
This is certainly far more special than at the time when I thought my graduation was.
the, I did not think about being a lawyer.
I thought about being a priest that was my dream.
When you're an alter boy, the next step is to determine whether you have a vocation,
and then go on.
At that time to the minor seminary, and
that was a major change in my life in 1964.
>> And you went to seminary for a year.
>> I went to seminary for four years.
>> Four years. >> Including my first year at college.
And then in 19, late 1960s happened, and
a lot fo things happened in the summer of 1968 including loss of vocation.
And lost the faith and then you start thinking what do I do?
Where do I look?
How do I help?
And that's when the idea you re, I reflected back on.
People like Atticus Finch was the only lawyer I
knew anything about, in to Kill a Mockingbird.
I knew about Max from Native Son and so
these were the things that played out in your mind in the 1960s.
And those of us who were there in the late 1960s cannot say we
were thinking straight about a whole lot of things.
[LAUGH]
>> Even if we were not using illegal substances.
It was a different time.
And what I wound up with was working in the community.
That was a common theme for all of us.
So I wound up at New Haven Legal Assistants but
the whole effort was to come here and go back to Savannah.
And Yale was actually quite good because.
Very naively, I think you said,
Sonja, that you're thinking a ten was unsophisticated.
But my thinking at 20 was unsophisticated and,
I think Yale took me up, when, I think in my application, I'm just paraphrasing.
I said that I was real, I was quite taken by the law, and
I was excited and to learn about it.
And that has actually continued.
I mean, someone who read that actually believed me.
And it must've sound particularly naive, but it was true, and
it's still true to, today.
And what has changed, is that I think we, you know,
I'm sixty-six, I'm not twenty anymore, I'm not twenty-one.
And I feel as strongly about it after all the experiences, and
more idealistic perhaps now than I did back, than I was back then.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah.
Let me continue with this line of questioning.
So the same question to each of the three of you.
What personality trait do you think has been
the greatest impediment to your success?
Or if you prefer you can tell us about a trait that you found helpful and you can,
and you can decline to answer.
Lets start.
We'll start with you Clarence.
>> You know I finally figured out I'm pretty much an introvert.
And that turned out to be one of the traits that was enormously helpful.
For working that out I thank my law clerks and Susan Kane for pointing out.
At least in her book Quiet The Traits That You Have.
I think that's been very helpful to me, because I've been able to sort things out.
That were very, very difficult quietly the other thing I think for
me over the years, and whether I was teaching my self algebra, typing, or.
Working alone it was persistence.
I'm very comfortable with doing things over and over until I learn them.
I mean, and even here I found law school enormously elusive.
And learning, going over reading the tax revenues and
the tax regulations over and over until I, until it made sense.
I think it only made sense when I threw the volumes out.
>> [LAUGH]. >> But I think persistence, I also think
respect for others' opinions, it's been very helpful to me.
But as, as far as something that gets in the way
I really can't think of that many things.
I, I try to work with others in a way that it is cost-free for
them to disagree with me.
>> Thank- >> That it doesn't, there's no penalty
that I can respectfully and clearly disagree, but
not in a way that you think, oh I'm going to make this guy angry, or
he's going to blow up, or there's, we're going to have some unpleasantness.
So it works fine for me on the court.
I'm sure my colleagues can think of those things that I just gave you
as stubbornness or bullheadedness.
But to me that would be an incorrect assessment.
>> [LAUGH].
>> I can ask a couple of your colleagues, but I'll, I'll not do that right now.
>> Sonia?
>> I think to be successful generally, and
probably, each of us will say, he used the word persistent.
I use the word stubborn.
>> Yeah.
>> They're flip sides of the both things.
You just don't want to give up.
And so you don't.
I do think you have to respect people, and you have to like them.
But in direct answer to your question, I have a trait
that's been enormously helpful and enormously harmful at the same time.
I have an incredible power of concentration.
When I am involved in something whether it's reading, and
I have described this before in my office,
people would stand outside my door to talk because I would never hear them.
Once I was working, I shut everything out.
That can be very helpful for absorbing information and
thinking about it, when you are not distracted.
Harmful is that, that's what happens to me when I'm on the bench, and
I'm involved in an argument, and I become sort of oblivious to the world around me.
And I'm just trained in on the person who I'm engaged with and on seeking an answer.
And so to some,
it seems that I'm being combative, when I'm really just searching for an answer.
And that has held me in that stead.
>> Interesting. >> And
and I think that it sometimes still does.
And I try, and am trying harder as each year passes to correct some of that.
But I think, I hope, because I have to soothe myself,
that we all can see the good in ourselves and admit some of the bad too.
>> Thank you.
Sam.
>> Impediments more, more than I can think of, than I can mention.
But one has been, one has been mentioned already.
It probably would have been better if I said a bit more at various times.
You mentioned that I'm going to see Judge Garth for whom I clerked.
His joke is that I said two things to him during the course of a year that I
spent with him, hello Judge, on the first day, and goodbye Judge, on the day-
>> [LAUGH].
>> when I left.
>> [LAUGH]. >> I don't think that's exactly accurate.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Traits that have served me well >> You,
you became, you're very close friends with him and-
>> Yes. >> you grew up together on the
[INAUDIBLE]- >> Yes it was a wonderful experience.
He's a, a, a, a great, great mentor, and he's now in his 90s.
He's been doing active work for
my old court for the third circuit until this past summer.
And he's now, he's still mentally still very sharp and he lives, near here.
So that's an added benefit of my trip up here this weekend,
that I'll have a chance to see him.
Traits that have served me well, I think one of,
if not my single favorite movie is Being There, I think.
If you remember that movie being in the right place at
the right time that's that's the best.
>> [LAUGH].
>> I tell my students that about clerkships.
Sometimes it's just being there at the right time.
[COUGH] so let me get on a bit of a lighter lighter note.
[COUGH] beyond sharing a passion for
the law each of you is also a passionate sports fan.
Sam and Sonia, you are famously ardent baseball fans.
The man from Central New Jersey being a Phillies fan, and
Sonia from the Bronx of course, a Yankees fan.
And I thought I might have another commonality with Clarence.
I can't, if you've ever gone to a baseball game,
you know,
>> [LAUGH] >> You are, however,
I understand, with your wife Jenny, a devoted fan of the Nebraska Huskers.
Jenny's from Nebraska.
Is that why you're a Huskers fan?
>> yes.
>> [LAUGH].
>> I really, really like my wife a lot and-
>> [LAUGH].
I'm unabashed about it.
>> [APPLAUSE].
>> The, [LAUGH], and I really liked her mother.
And she, her mother really liked me.
So my advice to people who get married, look out for the mother-in-law.
>> [LAUGH] >> The but
they were big Nebraska fans and I also liked the fact that the players graduate.
I just think it's wrong for these kids to go to school and
use up their eligibility and possibly their health, and they don't graduate.
>> And in Nebraska, they graduate.
>> The kids graduate.
And I think at this moment we're dispensing or dispatching with Rutgers.
So, hopefully that's over by now.
>> [LAUGH].
>> I want to ask you,
beyond sports, what you do with your leisure time if you have any?
When you're not on Supreme Court duty.
In this round, I'm going to give the answer and then you're going to tell
me whom I'm referring to in the style of the old What's My Line TV show.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Okay.
One of you inspired a coffee shop to name one of its blends Bold Justice.
Who do you think?
>> [LAUGH].
>> Okay.
Do you want to ask the audience to participate?
>> [LAUGH].
>> Obviously it's me.
>> Yep. >> [LAUGH].
>> There's a little story behind it.
This is this comes from my days on the third circuit.
My chambers was in Newark and right around the corner from the court,
from the courthouse there was an old coffee shop that long,
long predates Starbucks and all the new things.
This goes back to the 19th century.
One year I had law clerks who liked coffee, but
they didn't want to make coffee.
And this coffee shop had a promotion.
You could sign up for a year and go in every morning and
fill up a big thermos of coffee, and so you'd have coffee for the year.
And so they, as a promotion they said that if during the course of
the year you sampled every blend of coffee that they made,
then you could create your own blend at the end of the year and name it.
So they did that, and
this involved a lot of sacrifice because there were blends like blueberry coffee.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Horrible things.
They suffered through all that and so then they created this, they created this blend
which is designed for about 3 o'clock in the afternoon if you're working and
you're starting to fall asleep.
If you have this, it will jolt you awake.
So that's the, the story behind it.
The clerk who was the leader, the coffee expert, among the three who
the four who did that has ended up as a law professor.
And of course where would he go?
To Seattle.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Teaches at the University of Washington Law School.
>> So it sounds like you're serious about your coffee.
>> Yes.
>> What types do you drink?
>> Strong.
>> [LAUGH].
>> And Sonia?
Serious about coffee?
>> Oh, very much so, but I've had to give it up.
>> Oh, you have?
>> Yeah. And so, but I still get sent regularly,
pounds of coffee from Puerto Rico because they know I was an avid coffee drinker.
And so everybody sends me coffee.
>> That's great. >> I have an office full of it,
a home full of it, friends have it.
Just get on my list.
>> [LAUGH]. >> Okay.
Clarence.
Oh, Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts are fine.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Folger, I didn't know Folgers was made anymore.
>> Well, I'm, you can see I'm not, I'm eclectic.
>> [LAUGH].
I'm not particularly, I'm not a, a connoisseur.
>> One of you-
>> That's pretty obvious, right?
>> [LAUGH].
>> One of you enjoys traveling cross country with your spouse in a 40 foot RV.
Who's that?
>> Well, that's technically incorrect.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Is it not an RV?
>> It is a motorcoach [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH].
>> Is that bigger than an RV?
Well, it could be, but it is a better vehicle than an RV.
>> [LAUGH] >> An RV is normally built-
>> So you're a connoisseur about some things.
>> Yeah, an RV is normally built on a light truck chassis.
A motorcoach is a tour bus.
So, at any rate, yes, I-
>> He is a connoisseur about some things.
>> [LAUGH] >> Well I mean it's, it's old, but
it's really nice >> [LAUGH].
>> the I do travel a lot and it is this is a wonderful country.
We've been doing it for 15 years, and we've been through Connecticut.
We've seen western Connecticut, Massachusetts other parts of New England,
upstate New York, the Adirondacks and in the West, the South.
It's an amazingly beautiful country.
So we've had an opportunity to drive around.
>> And do people ever come up to you and say you look like Clarence Thomas?
>> Well it happened, well after Bush v Gore,
you all probably don't recall that case.
>> [LAUGH].
>> So, the one thing about these old motorcoaches is you spend a lot of
time repairing them,
so my wife, I would take it in and it was constantly being repaired.
She said say, oh, I get it.
This always goes on, right?
So, you're always taking it to be repaired.
It was scheduled the week that we had Bush v Gore to be in Florida.
Of course, I had to drive it there.
And the, so I rescheduled, and
the week after, things were a little bit dicey driving down to Florida.
And I stopped in Brunswick Georgia at a Flying J truckstop.
Not many people even know those places exist, but
it's actually pretty interesting.
So I'm refueling, which is an interesting experience with all the 18-wheelers,
and one of the truck drivers walks by as I'm refueling and
he says to me, did anybody ever tell you you look like Clarence Thomas?
>> [LAUGH].
>> And I said, oh yeah.
And he said, I bet it happens all the time, doesn't it?
>> [LAUGH].
And he went on about his business and that was it.
>> That's great.
I did not know that answer.
Okay one of you is a passionate salsa dancer, and I guess we know who that is.
>> [LAUGH].
>> That's me again.
>> Tell us about your career in salsa.
And I want to ask you also, does any other justice dance salsa?
>> Oh, I doubt it.
>> [LAUGH].
>> That last part I doubt very much.
I asked my mom what I did as a child because
we had parties in my home for most of my early childhood at my grandmother's home.
And I know that most of my cousins can dance, but I couldn't.
And she said, every time lessons started you would run off and do something else.
I later found out that I'm pitch deaf, so
it doesn't help dancing when you're pitch deaf.
It's supposed to not help singing, but I can't keep a beat to save my life, okay.
So, I lived like a potted plant, there's an expression in Spanish, and
I lived like a potted plant most of my adulthood.
And as I was turning 50, I had gone on to the Court of Appeals,
and I kept getting invited to Hispanic events where Salsa was being played.
And I would sit there as all these guys are asking me to get up and dance.
And I was single.
For those women in there [LAUGH].
And I finally decided, you know, this is something that I just want to change.
So I took lessons.
>> Oh, great.
>> And I found out that I am totally, cannot keep a beat to save my life.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Doesn't matter what I do, can't keep a beat.
But I have a facility that some of my colleagues would find very strange.
I can follow.
>> [LAUGH].
>> [APPLAUSE].
>> That's great.
>> That's funny.
>> And this will fall a little flat in this audience,
except among the Hispanics here.
If my partner can keep a beat, and I can see it, I can follow it.
So among Hispanic men the best dancers in terms of keeping the beat are Dominicans.
>> Is that? >> The worst are Cubans because they have
[LAUGH] Dominicans have big, big steps.
>> That's profiling, isn't it?
>> Yeah it is.
[LAUGH] But it proves itself right a lot.
And Cubans have these very tight little steps.
[LAUGH] I never dance with a Cuban.
[LAUGH] [LAUGH].
>> And Puerto Ricans, I can dance with to.
>> [LAUGH]. >> I,
I'm, I'm not only partially jesting because before I
say yes to anybody who asks me to dance.
I have to watch them first, to make sure I can follow them.
[LAUGH] So if you can't lead, you follow.
[LAUGH].
>> You're pretty funny. >> That's great.
[LAUGH] [COUGH].
>> You're going to be a problem with the Cubans.
>> I know, I know.
>> My next question sound.
But they're very elegant.
[LAUGH].
>> Excuse me, you know, I gotta tell you.
[LAUGH] My husband always says he's the only Puerto Rican,
who doesn't know how to dance.
>> Aah! >> How to keep a beat?
And so now- >> Jose,
I'll give you the name of my instructor, okay.
[LAUGH].
>> So, it's a revelation to know that Sonia likes to follow.
I think we're going to start dancing in the conference room.
[LAUGH] [APPLAUSE].
>> Well, now you know.
[LAUGH] [NOISE].
>> Getting to know you better.
I'm going to ask a question that sounds banal but
it works really well, when Bryan Lamb asks on CSPAN.
Tell us about a book you've read recently, and why it was good.
Sam?
>> Oh boy.
Well, [NOISE] I have two books that are inspirational.
And I keep them on the table by my bed.
I try to read them a little bit, every night.
It's My Grandfather's Son in my Beloved World.
[LAUGH]
[APPLAUSE].
>> Quick thinking.
[LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE].
>> Aquilla Morris raising each book.
[LAUGH]. >> [INAUDIBLE].
>> He is keeping it with his two constitutions in his pocket.
[LAUGH].
>> Right.
>> I, it's a hearty question to answer.
I, I try to read other things, other than the law over the summer and but
then, when the summer comes to an end, I always vow, you have to keep this up,
you can't just read briefs because most, so
much of our, our lives is reading and incredible amount of legal materials.
So, [NOISE] this, this summer I, I found, and I also love the list, so
I, I found a list of, of short works, things that you can read in a day.
And I that's my vow for the coming, I started it already and
that's my, my vow for the coming term.
So a lot of things somethings that I had read Many years ago like a,
a story from Dubliners and I had read in high school, and I, I re-read it and
I said, wow, you didn't really understand this back when you were 17 years old.
Some very, you know, very moving things like that.
So that's what I'm, that's what I'm doing now.
>> Sounds good.
Sonia?
>> Well, I do a combination of legal books and non-legal books.
the, the summer I, I,
read a book on my colleague Nino Scalia and I'm not going to rank it, okay?
[LAUGH] he didn't write it.
So it's about him, okay?
And I'm, also read Justice Stevens' books on the amendments he
would propose if he had the power.
In terms of fun things, because like Sam, you want to escape from it.
I read because my college roommate, and and some of you may know from my
book that my college roommate told me which ca, classics to read.
And she still, sends me books and it was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
>> yeah.
>> And I loved that book.
Not only did it teach me science in an understandable way.
But it had a very moving and an, at least to me, impactful description
of how science not only changes the world, but the individuals affected by it.
To me, it was beautifully done, and incredibly interesting.
On my night stand is a personal book it's timeless Morganthall and Me,
Bob Morganthall was my first boss, and his wife Lucinda Franks has written a book.
And it's a little bit of Law because it talks about his cases, but
it's really about him and her, as people.
>> Yeah. >> And I'm enjoying it.
so, you pick up the things your friends, I do.
Friends recommend things to me,
there are things that I just have a personal interest in, so it varies.
>> Great.
Clarence, a recent book, and why, obviously.
>> Well, I must admit I do,
you know, I, I'm one of these, I think reading's a gift.
And it's a gift that I prayed for,
when I was a kid and I'm just very thankful for it.
But I read quite a bit but I agree to do things, to teach courses and things I'm
interested in and I just recently, agreed to teach a Law and Literature class.
Well, for the last two years, at least one class on Law and Literature.
And this year we we're doing Native Son.
Native Son is to me one of the, it certainly was critical in
my own development and my own life and there's so much in there.
So I've re-read that many times and most recently re-read it a few weeks ago.
Last year we did To Kill a Mockingbird, which I've read countless times, but each
time it's one of these things that each you read it, you see something different.
>> And where is this that you're teaching?
>> It was at George Washington University.
>> Uh-huh.
>> A seminar on Law and Literature.
I'm teaching another course at actually,
the stories behind Constitutional Law Precedent.
And this is my fourth year.
That's full semester.
And I taught another one on Swift v Tyson for, to Erie v Tompkins.
Which is another set of readings.
So, you can see I really need a full-time job.
>> [LAUGH] >> But.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But it's, what it, what it does is it forces me to read a different way,
things that become imp, that were important to me, are important to me.
And that are helpful in thinking about things.
But reading Richard Wright at this point in
my life is quite different from when I first read it.
>> When did you first read it?
>> Pardon me. >> When did you first read Native Son?
>> I was 16. I was in the seminary.
I was the only black in the seminary.
And you react quite differently.
I read it again during my college years.
During my Law school years.
It was a bad time to read it here, and then I read it afterwards.
I've read it many times.
But, at each stage, you see different things or you see things differently.
Or, from a different perspective.
>> Well, Judge Alito gave my answer.
Which I read your, both your memoirs already, and
then re-read them in preparing for today and.
Terrific.
And, I'm sure our audience will look at it.
Sam, you gotta get moving here.
On a, on a memoir.
>> [LAUGH] >> [COUGH] I want to move on to your,
to Law school and your pre-Supreme Court careers.
So let me first ask about your time at Yale Law School.
Let us in on some formative episodes.
Good or bad. And I know that Sonia and
Clarence have written some about this.
You can tell us something that's in your books, or something else entirely.
And Sam, you can tell us whether it's really true that you sat at the front of
class, didn't take a note, never raised your hand, and got all the answers right.
[LAUGH].
>> That sounds good so I'm not going to deny it.
[LAUGH] I, I've learned about,
anyway [NOISE] formative, interesting things that happened.
I had some wonderful courses, wonderful classes, some great,
some great professors.
They we were walked over I was walked over to
the Law School this morning by a first year student.
I think that maybe they thought I couldn't find my way here, but
I had a good chance to talk to him on the way over.
And I asked him what courses he was taking?
And who was teaching them?
And he said well, my, I,
I'm taking torts and Guido Calabresi is teaching the course.
So, so many things have changed here since I was-
>> [LAUGH].
>> But it's good that one thing, you know, that some things do stay the same.
He was a wonderful teacher.
And I'm happy to hear that he's doing very well, after some recent surgery.
I had some other very, very good courses.
I was reminded, earlier this week of moot court because I judged the moot court.
And every time I do that, I remember participating in moot court here.
And in particular I marveled that I somehow made it to the final round because
of an incident that I, I mentioned to the students I spoke to this morning.
During one of the preliminary rounds, one of the judges was just hammering me
with one particular question, he asked me the question.
I answered it as best I could.
He asked the same question again, I tried again,
I don't know how many times this went on, and then he said.
And then I said I'd like to move on to my other argument.
He said, you haven't answered my question to my satisfaction yet.
[LAUGH] And my response was well, I've answered it to my satisfaction.
>> [LAUGH].
>> This was an incredible.
This is an incredibly open-minded person who let me move on to.
[LAUGH] The next round after that.
>> That's great.
[COUGH] >> Sam I never knew that about you.
[LAUGH].
>> What about you, Clarence?
>> Oh, I, I think,
I think of Law School as a blur
>> [LAUGH]
>> The, there were some good people who were very, very good to me.
You mentioned Dean Post mentioned Dean James Thomas was very good to me,
I consumed a lot of his time.
There are professors here,
Boris Bittker, Quintin Johnstone, Marvin Chirelstein, Harry Wellington.
They were all very, very good to me and spent time with me.
Boris Bittker the, what a gentleman.
Joe Bishop spent time with me, when I took his, a couple of his courses.
I just found it stimulating.
I also loved, I had a group of friends.
Back then, you were required, I think,
to eat at least one meal at the Law School, or something.
So there was a group of us who met in the mornings.
Levita Coleman and mostly kids who lived in the dorm.
And we would just meet at breakfast.
I thought that was one of the delightful times.
I would never miss that.
I think it was at 8 o'clock or something.
the, I also had some study groups.
And that were just delightful.
The rule was if you didn't contribute, you were booted out.
I was not the enforcer.
But it was a wonderful.
It was Tax and Corporate Finance.
Some of those courses, so I found those interesting.
But I must admit that I did
not get as much out of the Law School as I should have.
And that was simply because of my attitude which I
encouraged the students this morning not to replicate.
And the, it, it was a very difficult time and
there was a lot of negativity on my part.
>> 'Kay.
Sonia?
>> Clarence, I really didn't know how to take full advantage of the Law School.
>> Yeah.
>> Good point.
>> You know given our backgrounds and
the fact that we didn't have anybody in Law or related to Law,
I did the things that sounded like you had to do, [COUGH] do the Law journal.
I would've, moot court seemed like too much writing to me [LAUGH] so
I did Barrister's Union.
Okay?
And I was already doing plenty of writing and other activities.
But until Jose talked to me about clerking, and
that was in my third year of Law School, I hadn't heard about clerking.
I hadn't thought about it.
So I do think that there are kids who come, still today, to Yale.
Who don't come with enough knowledge of the system to know how to
take full advantage.
I understand that there's now sort of talk with students in my, in our position.
>> Mm.
>> But, I, I'm, I think that some of it is us, too.
>> I think you make a good point I found about,
out about the clerkships about two years after I was gone.
>> Yeah. [LAUGH]
I, look, I'm not going to repeat what's in
my book, I hope that those of you have haven't read it, will.
[LAUGH] but I will say that, that you know, in, in,
high scho, I said this to the students this morning,
in high school, I was near the top of my class and Valedictorian.
And in college, you may have heard I graduated with honors,
I got to Yale and I learned a deep sense of humility.
>> Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
>> Because sitting next to my classmates, listening to them in class.
Taught me how much smarter so may other people were,
and how smart has different faces.
>> Very interesting, resonating with you there Clarence.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Well I just, I, I tend to agree.
For me it was more there was this, by the time you leave, I left,
there was a sense of confidence that I had an assessment of where I needed to be.
And, then it was a question of would I make the commitment to get there.
But I think that Sonia is absolutely right, there was a lot we didn't know and
of course, there are some things that I'm involved in now where we try to bridge
that gap for talented kids from difficult backgrounds or challenging backgrounds.
But the, I do think that that Yale,
when I left Yale I had a sense of how bright, or
how much others knew and how much I needed to learn to be where they were.
And that would take years, so it was just simply a matter.
That's where I go back to the point about persistence was I going to
be persistent enough and have the will to continue preparing to get there.
>> So, so let me talk a little or ask a little bit about getting there.
This is another commonality.
After you left Yale Law School you each started your
careers as government attorneys, and not government attorneys in Washington,
D.C. Clarence you served as an assistant attorney general in Missouri,
doing tax work primarily under John Danforth, our graduate.
Sam, your first job after the Army Reserves and your
courtship with Judge Garth was to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey.
And Sonia you've mentioned you went from law school to serve as
an Assistant District Attorney under our graduate, great Bob Morgenthau.
Another commonality is of course, at some point each of you got on a U.S.
Court of Appeals.
We want to know how these post law school experiences shaped you.
I don't want to say shaped you as a justice cause then you
may not want to answer it.
So I'll just say shaped you maybe we could start with you, Clarence.
Which of your jobs, and there are a lot of them, which of these was, I'm going to
put it this way, the most important preparation for the Supreme Court?
And just so the audience knows and Robert mentioned some of these, you were in
the Missouri Attorney General's office then two years in house at Monsanto or
a year and a half.
You worked on the hill as an aid to Senator Danforth.
You served as assistant secretary for
civil rights at the department of education, and
you served as chair of the EEOC before your year and a half on the DC circuit.
So, which of these was the most important preparation?
>> Oh, well, first of all, I was in Missouri.
I probably wound up in these jobs.
I don't want anyone to think that I had some conscious plan.
You know, I couldn't get a job that's how I wound up in Jeff City
that was the only job offer I had.
the, I would have to say each job was a good job.
And even the difficulties were opportunities to learn and to grow.
And that's the way I looked at them and not all of them
were the most gratifying or fulfilling jobs, but I have not have a bad job.
The job in Jeff City was the best job I've ever had.
>> Because of, because it was the only job you could get?
>> Well, that was part of the reason.
But it was Jack Danforth, and he's a good man.
And it was more work.
He said he could promise us more work for less money than anybody in the country.
>> [LAUGH] >> And he delivered on that in space.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But it was a wonderful, wonderful learning opportunity.
The best job I had for me personally among the jobs I've had to prepare me for
what I do, I would have to say EEOC >> Tell us about that.
>> Well, EEOC was, there were a lot of challenges I mean I'm
not going to go back and regurgitate all those things or
relive that, but there were challenges and there was there were criticisms and
I was constantly in trouble, >> So that got you, go you-
>> Well, I mean, that was just, but you learn how to be, make calm, be,
remain calm and make hard decisions under difficult circumstances.
And, you learn to double check and recheck, make sure you're right.
also, you learn how not to become unpleasant.
Because there's unpleasantness around you to accept certain things.
You couldn't always become or
retaliate so I would have to say EEOC.
And I also learned that people who work closely with you, I appreciate you
being loyal and good to them, as Jack Danforth was to me from 1974 on, and
to try and be a good model.
But I would have to say EEOC taught me that discipline, and
that calmness in difficult circumstances.
>> Right.
Sam, you, you spent four years as an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey
where I gather a big portion of your caseload was appeals to the third circuit.
And then you went to the Solicitor General's Office,
arguing 12 cases before the Supreme Court.
After that you spent two years as Deputy at OLC.
And then you were appointed by the President to be the U.S.
Attorney for the District of New Jersey.
Tell us about these.
And the latter is particularly interesting,
you went from being a legal eagle most of your life to now running an office.
What was that like?
>> It was a lot of fun.
It was the biggest change in, in my career a lot different from what had gone before,
and radically different from what came after.
I think that being a, a circuit judge particularly on, on my old court and on.
I think probably most of the regional courts of appeals where the judges
are geographically spread out is one of the most isolated legal jobs that exists.
Other courts may operate differently but on my old court, and we got along very,
very well but, I could go literally for weeks without ever seeing another human
being at work except for the people in my, my own office.
The US Attorney job was completely different.
In, on the court of appeals basically all I did was read and
right and occasionally, and exchange emails with my colleagues every six weeks,
go to Philadelphia for oral arguments.
On the, in the US attorney's office was a big office by the standards of the day,
65 attorneys.
And there was always something happening always exciting.
Every day when I came in, I might have things that I planned to do but
there would be a dozen things that I hadn't planned.
Good things, not so good things.
the, the assistants would come in,
do you know what judge so and so is doing in this case.
And so we'd have to deal with that problem different the heads
of different investigative agencies came in so it was, it was fascinating.
It did not involve very much reading.
It did not involve a lot of deep legal analysis.
But it was a, it's a very practical job.
Trying to make sure that everybody in the office was moving in the right
direction and was handling their cases and their investigations properly.
>> Sonia, after serving under Bob Morganfield you were in
private practice for nine years.
As Robert mentioned, you then served for five years as a district court
judge making you the only justice with that experience.
How have these different roles and
positions informed your perspective, on the law?
>> I had a thought, even from law school, that you knew the profession was
moving towards specialization and at some point, that I would have to pick an area.
But even in law school I spent time learning about
different fields that I thought made a more well rounded lawyer.
And so I even though,
I was specializing in international law, at law school a little bit.
I hands my note.
I took corporations, I took contracts too, I took evidence,
I took taxation, I took estates and
trust, the all of the subjects that I thought made a well rounded attorney.
And when I got to the DA's office and,
and there was just, there was some frustration there.
A state court is very different than a federal state prosecutors, prosecution's
very different than state prosecution, resources are scarce, the people
involved in the work are well-meaninged but also sometimes not well-trained.
And witnesses are often scared, and
we don't have the federal resources of witness protection in the same way.
So you had to cajole a lot of people to bringing cases.
After four and a half years,
I decided that I had rounded out the criminal side of my lawyering.
And I wanted to move and learn something about the civil side.
So, I went to a commercial law firm.
But I did everything, as a litigator.
Name the field of now.
I have a sub-specialty in, in intellectual property.
But, I did estates there.
I handled real estate matters, I handled banking matters, securities matters.
You name it, I did a little bit of everything and some big things as well.
I think that that prepared me for the District Court.
>> For the District Court?
>> Yes.
I actually, watching judges who have become judges recently,.
A lot of them come from specialties, and
I think they have a narrower on basics of law, and I had developed a more
wide basis of legal knowledge starting my district court job.
And even with that, there was a ton new to learn.
Somebody I think mentioned In one of my conversations recently,
I've learned a lot of >> [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH].
>> The District Court.
Well, let me tell you a story.
And I won't.
Last year, I was having lunch with the Chief and Justice Kagan.
And, and it was just the three of us.
And we started talking about how hard our
senior justices worked in the various federal circuits.
And without thinking about it out of my mouth came, when and
if I retire I'm going to go back to the district court.
And when asked why, I said, why would I want to go do what I've been doing for
however many years it's been on the appealic court and the supreme court?
I want to go back to my first love.
And this district court is a very different and exciting place.
And, at least for me, it was the formative experience of preparing me for the court
because I still look at cases, a lot like district courts do, district court judges.
I look at the facts and I try to apply the facts to law.
And my colleagues look at the law.
And that's all, sometimes, they're looking at.
And so, it's a very different perspective.
And one that I will never disavow, because I think it has value.
And so for me, my greatest time
was on the district court, in terms of preparing me for the supreme court.
>> And Sam, what, how about being, was being U.S.
attorney or arguing cases in the supreme court?
Which of those two things do you think you took the most from,
now sitting as a justice?
>> Arguing is much more closely related obviously to what I'm doing.
So that had a greater effect.
But I, I treasure the experience of being U.S. Attorney.
>> That's also very much district court.
So its, we've sort of on to your service on the supreme court.
And one initial question,
what surprised each of you most when you got to the court?
Sam, you must have been pretty familiar with it but
did anything surprise you, mundane or important?
>> Well as far as mundane, matters, we are very, very way, one, one more formal
in the way we operate internally than I was used to on the Court of Appeals.
The work that we do is not that much different.
Two-thirds of our cases come from the, from the Federal Courts of Appeals, but
we're more formal in the way we, we operate.
Our arguments are more formal on the Court of Appeals.
There was rarely anybody present besides the lawyers who were arguing the cases and
so, if the time expired and any judge had more questions, more time would be given.
Or if the lawyers hadn't covered everything more time would be given.
You really can't do that when you have nine on the bench and
you have the, the kind of schedule that we have.
we're, we're very our internal operations are, are very old-fashioned.
We still send around, we don't communicate with each other at all by email.
All my,
all my communications with my colleagues on the third circuit were by email.
On the supreme court, it's all done, by hard copy.
We still have spittoons by our seats on the bench.
[LAUGH].
>> Now, Sam, let me ask you that.
So you said being on this court of appeals, a regional court of appeals,
at least one that's got many states.
Is isolating or isolated?
Now you'll all in the same building.
I thought you were going to say our communications are by telephone or
by face to face but you said they're by written communication.
>> The communications about cases are almost always
written except when we're in conference and we're.
We're talking there, but there are some and
there's nothing wrong with it, communications that are, that are oral.
But i, if you are, if you have comments about someone's opinion, a draft opinion.
the, the standard procedure is to write a letter and
circulate it to everybody to everybody on the court.
We are together a lot more.
It's, it's much le, it's a much, for me it's a much less isolated job.
We're in the same city, we're in the same building.
We're together many more days.
The days when we have arguments, the days when we have conferences.
We have lunch together very frequently so we see each other a lot more than I,
I d, I did on my old court.
>> Clarence?
>> Oh, I don't, I can't say I was surprised.
I had no idea what I've gotten myself into.
[LAUGH] the, it was very formal.
I like formality, I don't like a lot of the informal stuff.
I, your your old boss, Byron White, he would send around
a memo: Clarence, dear Clarence, I don't agree with a thing you said.
Cheers, Byron.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Every letter was: cheers, Byron.
[LAUGH].
>> I, I like the formality of it I it, it,
there's a little, it's a little disconcerting.
because we're all in the same building, and
we don't see each other that much except when we're sitting or we have conference.
I usually come in, I go to my chambers, I work.
And I go back to the basement get in my car and go home.
I use email but when I first got to the court there was not internal email.
So I don't think we have gotten there yet
but I think in time we will start communicating by internal email.
I was in charge in, in those days of the automation.
So we have all that now.
We have all the track changes, and we could do a lot of
things on the computer on a document together but we don't do it.
I do it with my law clerks but
as between each other I think people prefer hard copies and things like that.
But I work paperless, almost exclusively paperless intrachambers.
And we could do it I think at some point we'll do it at in the court.
The thing that surprised me though is just how warm everybody was when I
got there you know I and.
And the, I was pleasantly surprised by that, I was pleasantly surprised by.
How engaged every one was, for example I would walk from an argument with
John Stevens who is a delightful man, and a brilliant man.
And he would just you could start talking about cases that you had
earlier in the work, or you were working on an opinion, and he was fully engaged.
Or Justice O'Connor same thing.
It, it was a wonderful environment.
And I just thought it was an environment where people weren't raising their voices,
but they were actually thinking that the.
They, they, they were of the view it appeared to me that the work was
more important than they were.
And that our job was to turn out the best product that we could.
That's the court that I came to and that's the way I think the court is now.
the, I was very pleasantly surprised at how much work it took.
And I, I came on the court, I was 40 years younger than Justice Blackman at the time.
And, I said well, you know, he's doing this in this in his 80s,
so, it can't be all that hard.
Well. >> [LAUGH].
>> At the end of my first term he was cruising along, and
I was just, I was, I had fallen along the way, you know.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But I think you learn as your boss used to tell me.
Clarence, you got to get a system.
And you have to learn how to do this job systematically.
But you know I have to say the number one thing for me was just how warm and
respectful and dignified the people were with whom I worked.
Whether they agreed with you or didn't, that was my biggest surprise.
>> Sonia?
>> I was surprised by all of this as well.
But for me, the tradition had one positive thing, which it taught me
that the court, as an institution, was much more important.
Then I was as an individual Justice.
And that is really a, a very important lesson I think for
Justice's to learn, and to live by.
And so sometimes the tradition though is a, you know sometimes it's a little silly.
>> [LAUGH].
>> You know at lunch.
We have to sit in our prese-prese-press.
Why have I forgotten them?
>> [LAUGH] >> Our previous justice's chair.
>> Yeah. >> And that's not by seniority.
>> Yeah. >> But that chair has been sat in.
>> [LAUGH] >> By
all the judges >> The line.
>> The justices in your lineage, okay?
And when someone moves, you see a lot of eyebrows raised okay?
[LAUGH] >> Why are you sitting there?
>> Yeah, why,why are you sitting there?
You know, I, I'm sorry, I've fallen prey to that.
What are you doing here son?
You're [LAUGH] it, it, it is, it can be overwhelming at times the traditions.
I think that there's two reasons why the justices.
Use technology so much.
One is tradition.
But the other is that some of them don't know how.
[LAUGH] >> Oh, then there's that.
>> There's that.
Now the almost 90 year old justice when I came to the court,
Justice Stephens, actually did use emails.
>> Yeah.
And, and, but his, you know, you could send him something and he would respond.
But it was very short.
[LAUGH] So I knew he wasn't a great typist, okay?
But colleagues who you might be otherwise surprised don't.
I think the, the most computer savvy justice is you, Clarence.
Oh I don't.
>> I think so.
>> Well you know,
actually in his defense Justice Stevens was my ally in automating the agency.
>> I think that's probably.
>> Because he actually was a very very productive man.
And people used to make fun of him when he went to Florida but
we dreaded when he went to Florida.
Because he would start churning all this stuff out.
>> [LAUGH] >> And he was always on his computer.
But we want him,
just come back, you know, you're like 80% as productive as you are in Florida.
But I just thought,.
>> [LAUGH].
>> He was a wonderful ally.
In fact that, he, when there was some consternation early on about automation.
He was one of the people I could count on to always help me
convince my colleagues to, to, to move in that direction.
>> Now I will say something.
A different view of the isolation that both of you talk about.
I've chosen to be on the second floor, and I'm the only justice that's up there.
And, I recognize it's a problem, because I'm separated from my colleagues.
And you know those steps down?
>> Yeah.
>> Are, sometimes they seem a bigger barrier than they should.
And so, I don't just decide, as I've done before when I was in other courts and.
My colleagues were nearby to just walk by and plop myself down to say hello.
And I keep telling myself I have to do it and
I don't, but we have colleagues who do that.
And I think it's just part of the.
>> Steve Bryan.
>> [LAUGH] And a couple of others.
>> [CROSSTALK].
>> and, and, We do have some colleagues who like doing it and doing it.
I think it's personality.
I really do think it's, you know,
what we're most comfortable with as individuals.
With respect to the question, Kate, that you asked, I've often said.
You know, I fell pray to what I think the public does in reading our opinions.
You read our opinion, you agreed with one side or
another, and you think to yourself, now this was perfectly clear.
This wasn't that hard to figure out.
And then what you don't see.
Is how difficult almost every case before us is.
>> Yeah.
>> Doesn't come to us unless there's a circuit split.
And if there's circuit split it's because, some, and, you know,
some could argue this point.
But the reality is that I think most of our court of appeals
judges are reasonable people.
And they're giving their best effort at giving an answer.
And I find myself struggling a lot more than I anticipated.
>> And yet when you write the opinion, all of you and
your colleagues, you read the majority opinion, you read the dissenting opinion.
And each one seems quite confident they got it right.
But you're saying it takes a while to get.
>> Well don't you understand?
You picked great lawyers.
Every one of us was an advocate.
Every one of us can pitch the best argument on either side.
That you could raise.
Now once we've come,
we've come to our conclusion, the purpose of opinion is to persuade.
And you're going to do an opinion that you hope persuades.
Even though you may be experiencing some initial doubt about the answer.
I don't, I think that, for me that part of it was very much a surprise.
>> Very interesting.
Sam, you have anything to add to this >> no, what Sonia
>> Maybe what makes a case hard,
or, >> Well,
what Sonia said ab, about the difficulty of the cases is absolutely correct.
Most of them are cases where there's a conflict.
By definition those are cases with respect
there are two reasonable positions that you can take.
I keep in mind the fact that the last opinion of mine from the 3rd Circuit
that went to the Supreme Court, which was an opinion for the en banc court.
Was reversed by the Supreme Court nine to nothing.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And I am still absolutely sure that I was correct.
>> [LAUGH] >> The issue was whether a woman was
ineligible for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits because she could do.
The last job that she previously had,
this woman's last job was as an elevator operator.
So I said rather simple-mindedly that the ability to do your last job
really shouldn't count if that job doesn't exist any more anywhere in the real world.
But the Supreme Court, in its great wisdom, said,
it doesn't matter whether the job exists anymore.
So I do keep that in mind.
>> Picky, picky, picky.
>> He's still a good lawyer.
[LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH]. >> It still get, it still bothers you huh.
>> No Clarence, I've gotten over it.
>> Remember it very well.
[COUGH] well, speaking of your colleagues, there's, there's something ironic here.
Yale Law School is,
of course, supreme when it comes to populating law school faculties.
And that's one fact, another fact is that four of your colleagues were,
at an earlier point in their careers, full-time law professors.
Briar, Ginsberg, Kagan, and Scalia, those justices.
So, by that measure, this is the most academic court of all time.
Yet, none of the former professors are Yalee's, none of you.
So I'm getting to a question here.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Are there too many former professors?
[LAUGH] Are there too many former appeals, court judges?
Not enough of something else?
And anyone can take this on.
>> Well as far as academics is concerned we're at a dangerous tipping point.
They're almost in the majority.
Here's what they'll do to us when they.
>> When they have control.
>> When they have control.
>> [LAUGH].
>> What'd you say?
>> Being a, being a court of appeals judge is the perfect preparation for
the Supreme Court.
>> [LAUGH] >> No question about it.
it's, it's helpful I don't know whether that kind of.
And being a court of appeals, former court of appeals judge, being an academic,
having held an elected position, I don't know whether that
kind of diversity of experience is, is critically important.
Diversity of experience is very valuable in many different types of diversity.
We are all, we all have as some you mentioned.
A very few people today have the kind of generalist background that she required.
A lot of people spent a lot of their career specializing in some areas.
And we all have areas.
Where we have to we have to write opinions that are going to be binding on
the the country in areas where we have no background.
For example, I,
I did not one bit of patent work before I went the Supreme Count.
My first, you know,
my first involvement in patent law is writing or voting on patent cases.
It's unavoidable.
That's going to be true for, for all of us.
So it is valuable for us to have certainly that kind of
diversity as far as fields of specialization and knowledge.
>> Anybody else care to comment on the observation of the courts make up and,.
Oh I don't think it-
>> Justice Cummins, you turned, you've served on courts, different courts.
It's changed.
>> Well, I'd served about two weeks on the court of appeals.
But >> No, I mean on,
on different Supreme Courts-
>> Yeah. >> If you think about it.
New people coming in.
>> You know, I the, the, the, the I have great respect and for I, you know,
I think the, the work that our judges did, I don't I think that they allow us.
You were, the earlier question about confidence and
the opinions, I don't think we can write, woe is me.
Oh, I'm having a hard time with this.
I'm crossing the Rubicon and all that sort of, stuff, you know, you have to
write the opinion and you write it as best and as clearly as you can.
But sometimes, I think we write it in a way that be lies the insecurities we
might have-
>> Just the-
>> About or the uncertainties in the argument and
then we have to be open in the next cases to, to reexamine that.
That's something that I try to do in chambers go back and, and
make sure rethink all opinions.
But the as far as the make up of the court I,
I don't feel that I'm in a position to say, who is better qualified.
Our colleagues who are academics are from the academic world.
I mean who would we replace?
I like them all.
And I think their all fabulous, I mean you don't have to agree with them to know, I
mean you don't have to agree with Justice Ginsburg to know she does fabulous work.
And when you are in a sort of a disagreement with her,
she's going to force you to do better work.
And the so I just, I, I think I like the court the way it is.
I do think we should be concerned that all of us are, virtually all of us,
are from two law schools.
[LAUGH] the, I'm sure that, you know, Harvard and Yale likes that but the, I
think we should be concerned about that to some extent because this is a big country.
I also think we might want to think about the fact that we are,
we have such a strong north eastern orientation.
When the countries, there's a lot of countries between here and the west coast.
I mean, they're will be those are my peeves but I wouldn't.
I couldn't say to you that somebody on the court
who's been a colleague of mine should not have been there or shouldn't be there.
They are wonderful people.
>> I may have, surprising, the dissenting view.
[LAUGH] I, I [COUGH] you know,
any one individual doesn't represent anything.
You don't represent the justice who's an elected official.
You don't represent the justice, who's come from a single practice.
and, and it's not as if you're going to be an advocate-
>> Yah. >> For an interest group.
So, justices don't play advocates in that sense of the word.
But I do think, that as you're evaluating the human condition, as you're
talking about ,which you, how you expect the reasonable person to re, to respond,.
How you talk about what a reasonable police officer would or
would not do and all of these questions that we look at constantly.
It is hopeful to have people with life experiences that are varied.
>> Yeah.
>> Just because it enriches the conversation.
And so like Clarence, I'm horribly worried that we are not geographically diverse.
And I don't, by the way, I didn't think the President was going to pick me
because of that, but I'm surely happy that he ignored me.
Okay?
And picked me, anyway.
[LAUGH] >> Yeah.
>> You know, it's hard to say,
who you would give up because nobody wants to say it should be them.
[LAUGH] But I, I do think geographic.
I think religious.
We all believe in God, but there are issues that come up,
in terms of reactions, where having a different perspective may be useful.
[COUGH] But I also think that we're missing things on the court.
We're missing any judge, justice who has had criminal defense experience.
>> Yeah.
>> Everybody has either been a US attorney [APPLAUSE] a government attorney.
[APPLAUSE] [LAUGH] We don't have a civil rights lawyer, except Ruth.
But we don't have one involved in general civil rights.
She is not general, though it doesn't mean she can't understand it.
I think that's a type of practice that's different.
Tony did a little bit of, Tony Kennedy did a little bit of solo practice but
his was a unique practice in California.
And and it was a products of his dad.
He joined his father.
We've got a lot of big firm lawyers.
Except for me, there's no mid-firm, mid-size or small, single practitioner.
All, I think you need diversity, not just of-
>> Yeah.
>> Life background, but of legal experience background.
We're being asked to decide questions involving, not just ordinary people,
but the profession.
And so, I, I, for one-
>> Yeah.
>> If I had the power.
Which I don't obviously.
I would encourage the appoint, people who appoint justices or
judges generally, to look at that diversity.
When senators ask me, what I thought how they should pick,
nominees to the district and circuit courts.
I would say, look at your bench.
And see what life experience or professional experience it's missing.
And look for people, who can bring and enrich the court with that.
>> All of you have mentioned collegeship and
are there other friendships on the court.
And of course, we, we can, we don't witness your,
your interactions both formal and informal, and in some measure
of your colleagueship, I am going to try something, I am going to ask each of you.
To tell us something, about one of the other two,
and maybe something we might not know, or something we do know.
And I've chosen these pairings at random.
So, Sonia, tell us something about Clarence.
>> [NOISE] Clarence knows the name
[LAUGH] of every employee in the courthouse,
from the lowest position to the the highest,
with virtually all of them [APPLAUSE] with
virtually all of them, he knows their families,
their happinesses, and their tragedies.
It is a, when Robert introduced him, he talked about his humanity and caring.
That fact alone, when I learned to made me
understand that as much as we may disagree on a lot of legal issues,
we don't disagree on the fundamental value of people.
And you can respect, someone who you disagree with legally.
If you start with that foundation and principle.
>> Great. >> Thank you.
>> Sam, can you tell us something about Sonia?
And Clarence, you can figure out, and you can start thinking ahead.
[LAUGH].
>> Let's see if he read my book.
[LAUGH].
>> Every night [LAUGH] well, I think I'm not going to tell you something
that you don't already know, but these are traits that I admire.
Sonia is very independent.
She is very, very, very thorough in her preparation.
[NOISE].
>> Yeah.
>> Not only on the merits cases but on the, the-
>> [INAUDIBLE].
>> Hundreds of cert petitions that we discuss every term.
She is very strong in her views, and she doesn't give up on
the rest of us [LAUGH] even when she sees that we're going off and
majority is going off in in the wrong direction.
You might just, kind of throw up your hands and say, well, what can I do?
But she's, she has hope-
>> She's insistent.
>> She has hope that she can convince us [LAUGH] and she makes [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE]. >> She makes good,
she makes good arguments.
[LAUGH] And sometimes she succeeds.
>> [LAUGH] >> Great.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I've been called incessantly optimistic.
>> Clarence.
>> Oh, goodness, she never gives up.
[LAUGH].
>> Just relist that.
I'm sure I can give [LAUGH] it to one of you.
[LAUGH] The Sam is first of all he's married to Martha Ann, who is a delight.
And the is a wonderful person.
Sam is really smart really
funny principled, and a man of his word.
I, and it's something I,
just when you can looks someone in the eye and he tells you something.
And you can take him at his word.
And that is a, treasure I, you know,
I tell my law clerks often that reputation is hard to build and easy to lose,
and I think with us, Sam has a wonderful reputation of integrity and honesty.
Plus he's really a funny guy.
[LAUGH]. >> Kay.
>> And for some reason, he likes those Philadelphia teams.
Which I do not understand.
[LAUGH]
>> Thankfully the one time, we had a bet I won.
[LAUGH] >> You had a bet and you won it?
>> When, my first year on the bench, the Phillies and
the Yankees were playing against each other.
And we made a lunch bet.
I had to treat him to Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwiches, and
he had to treat me to New York hot dogs and beer.
And I got a really good lunch.
Thank you,Sam [LAUGH]
>> You did, and I, it was not easy to find Brooklyn Lager at that time in Washington.
[LAUGH]. >> [INAUDIBLE].
>> You had to search a lot of places to find that.
Unfortunately, this was a bet on the 2009 World Series.
I think it's going to be a long time before we have another bet.
[LAUGH]. >> Oh, regrettably, I agree with you.
>> This year it's going to be Kansas City but [COUGH] Justice Thomas you mentioned,
that you often tell your law clerks reputation is hard-fought and
can easily be lost.
Let me use the final question to ask each of you, what's the best or
the most important advice you gave to the students, with whom you met this morning?
Each of you met separately with 30 students chosen by lottery and Sam?
[NOISE].
>> I met with a really smart group of students,
who had the good sense not to ask me for advice.
[LAUGH]. >> And so
[LAUGH] I can't tell you advice that I actually gave them,
but I will tell you advice I would have given them if they have asked me.
I think I [LAUGH]
>> People around here, just give advice without being asked.
[LAUGH].
>> Maybe I will filter out to them.
I would have told them two things.
The first, and, and I don't know how relevant this is to their own experiences,
because an awful lot of time,
unfortunately, has passed since I was here as a student.
The first is to, find your own path.
At least when I was here there were a lot of really smart students who had been on
an achievement track.
So, eh, eh, the question was not what really,
what do I want to do next, but what is the thing to do next-
>> Right.
>> As I, as I compete to get into the best college and
then get into the best Law School.
And then get the best clerkship, And then work for the best firm.
at, at some point I think you need to, to get off that track and
ask what what you personally want to do.
And if you haven't done it before when you graduate from Law School,
I think that's the time to do it.
And the second is not to confuse your, your legal career with your life.
Don't make your legal career, your were entire life, don't define your worth,
in terms exclusively of what you do in your legal career.
I know people from my Law School class,
who did that I think and it led to very unfortunate consequences.
So I don't think I,
I, that's advice I would have given but did not have the chance.
[LAUGH].
>> Thank you.
Sonia?
>> Well, I don't know what the students would say, but I'll, but
I'll change up a little bit of what I said.
When I was looking into which Law Schools to
attend, I narrowed it to Harvard or Yale.
And I talked, this is the age before the internet guys, okay?
So I had to talk to people, about both institutions, and
every Harvard graduate that I spoke to,
Harvard Law School graduate, would say, the toughest years of my life.
But, I loved it.
And, every Yale Alumni that I talk to, would say the best years of my life.
And that difference in response is what convinced me to come to Yale.
And I've subsequently, through the years, thought about.
Why I said the same thing?
And I think its important what Sam has said, yes there's tracking.
But I think there's tracking because there's a model of success that
people see and want to duplicate because that's the only model they know of.
But, but the one thing I loved about Yale is,
it lets you be passionate about whatever you wanted to be.
>> Amen.
>> I mean, you could work with whatever professor doing whatever kind of
work you wanted to do, and people volunteer to do it.
And they did it because it was important to them to do.
And I love that.
My friends in other institutions, now they'll remain nameless,
are sort of picked by reason of how smart the professors think
they are or they're picked for programs based on that.
I mean, when I was here, law journals you wrote on, and, and
you could volunteer for almost any organization and get in.
I hope that that's still the case.
But my point basically is, I now echo Sam, I told the students, be happy here.
I didn't finish my advice by saying, be happy by doing what makes you happy.
Be passionate about what you're doing.
And that is the value of what you're getting.
>> Thank you.
Clarence.
>> Well, I guess I tell them not to do what I did.
>> [LAUGH].
I, I, I think I and, and
I think Sonya is right that there's a lot we didn't know.
And I wish that I was at,
I came here at a time where I could have been more positive.
>> Oh. >> Because there was so
much here that I walked right by because I had closed my eyes and my heart to it.
I credit Jack Danforth with a lot of opening my eyes to things.
When I met him, again through Guido Calabresi, who did not teach me torts-
>> [LAUGH].
>> the, I remember meeting him when he came on campus, and he was a young,
tall Attorney General with that spot in his, in his hair.
>> Grey spot.
>> And he would, he clapped his hands really loud and
said, Clarence, plenty of room at the top!
Plenty of room at the top!
I said, [LAUGH], boy that guy is really off his rocker.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But that was just how cynical and negative I was.
And here he was, positive and
energetic and believe in you, believe in, in the possibilities.
And what I tried to convey to the students is that attitude of hopefulness.
I mean, you're here.
You're at one of the best, if not the best law school, in the nation.
You're here.
And make the most of it,
the friendships, the opportunities to learn, to do things, to grow.
I also suggest to them that when they take a job, the jobs are wonderful.
There are lots of great jobs but if all thing else,
all of the other things are equal, work for the person, work for a good person.
A good person can turn a difficult job into a wonderful job,
and a bad person can turn a beautiful job into a miserable job.
I was fortunate to work for Jack Danforth, and some people might not have
thought the work was glamorous, but I got to work for a good man.
And who 40 plus years later, I think of in an even more
positive light than I did when I worked for him in 1974.
So I think it's important to work for
good people, people of integrity, people who are positive.
And finally, although I did not get a chance to say this to them,
I do believe this.
You treat people the way you expect to be treated, whether they deserve it or not.
They are owed that.
That is hard to do.
A part of going through the things that Sonya mentioned earlier is
the ability to let things go, to forgive and to forget, to turn and to move on.
That is not so easy, but you want to be forgiven.
You want people to give you a pass sometimes.
You want people to think better of you, so you do it to others.
So I feel very strongly that we are required to treat people the way we
want to be treated.
And finally I think even when it's hard, you are required to be honest,
not to give into fads, not to go along to get along.
I mean, I think a lot of people, I grew up under segregation and
I'm convinced that some people went along because it was easier to do that
than it was to oppose something that was dreadfully, morally wrong in our society.
>> We're so very proud of all of you and we're grateful to you.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
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