sandra day o'connor founded in 2009. this is just over one hour. >> welcome everybody. justices, it is so great to have you here to help celebrate civic learning week. to those of you who are tuning in our here for the first part of the day, this is in operating a full week of activity all around the united states to emphasize the centrality of civic learning at this time and the ability to govern ourselves in this democratic republic. we are so delighted to be joined here by justices sotomayor and barrett. they need no introduction, but i

feel compelled to provide one nonetheless and to kind of add respect for their offices and for their achievements to share what we have here. so, justice sonia sotomayor , associate justice, was born in the bronx on june 25th, 1954. she earned a ba from princeton university, graduating summa, loudly, and receiving the highest academic honor presented to an undergraduate. in 1979 she earned a jd from yale law school. she served as editor of the yale law journal. she later served as an assistant district attorney in the new york county district attorneys office and then litigated international commercial matters in new york city in the firm of pavia and harcourt, where she served as an associate and leader partner. president george h. w. bush nominated her to the u.s. district court, southern district of new york and she served in that role from 1992 to

1998. in 1997, she was nominated by president bill clinton to the us court of appeals for the second circuit, where she served from 1988-2009. and president barack obama nominated her as an associate justice of the supreme court on may 26, 2009. and she assumed this role, august 8, 2009. [applause] >> associate justice amy coney barrett was born in new orleans, louisiana on january 28, 1972. she married jesse barrett in 1999 and they have seven children. she received a ba from rhodes college and a jd from notre dame law school. she served as a law clerk for judge silberman of the u.s. court of appeals of the d.c. circuit from 1997-1998 and for justice antonin scalia of the supreme court of the united states during the 1998 term. after two years in private practice in washington, d.c.,

she became a law professor joining the faculty of notre dame law school in 2002. she was appointed a judge of the united states court of appeals seventh circuit in 2017. president trump dominated her as an associate justice of the supreme court and she took her seat on october 27, 2020. [applause] i want to begin, justices, with just recognizing this time that we are in, both civic learning week itself, and the centrality of those themes, but also the time we are in in the country. we are approaching the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding in a couple of years, and unlike the bicentennial nearly half a century ago, there are a lot of debates about who we are as a country and where we are headed. one of the things true across the board, left and right, is

there has been a declining level of confidence and faith in institutions. before we get to that importance of civic learning, i wanted to get to the question of confidence in public institutions and why, from your vantage point, sitting at the highest court of the land, why this world that seems abstract, we talk about trust and confidence. . we know it when it disappears. we don't think about it much when it is there. i am curious for each of you, why you feel like confidence in institutions is so central not only to civic learning, but in civic life itself. justice sotomayor: thank you. you pointed out with the essence of the problem is. there is a famous saying, i think benjamin franklin if i am not mistaken, where it when asked what kind of government we had, his response was, "a republic of the people." and as my colleague, justice gorsuch wrote in one of his

books, he said, "it's a messy thing, a republic." there is a lot of voices you are trying to harmonize and function together. and entire structure of our constitution, and i think every schoolchild and probably every adult heard that we are a system of checks and balances, that we have three branches of government, that each of them has a function and that they serve their functions and we balance each other in an attempt to get things right. when there is discord within one of those branches, or without it or between them, that system is going to see its cracks. individually, it can fail. the failing starts with small things and they can move to large things. so when we don't have, for example, a

functioning executive, you will see the legislative branch stepping in. if you don't have a functioning legislative branch, you are tempting the executive to take more responsibility or to do more things than they were meant to. similarly, you challenge a court because if the other two branches are overstepping or not stepping up to their obligations, the citizenry is going to look to the courts to solve problems they really shouldn't. all of these present dangers to the society. that is why i think that having confidence, people's confidence that our branches of government can function, means that our republic can function. and without it, we lose something very fundamental. >> justice barrett? justice barrett: i agree with justice sotomayor that confidence in institutions is important, because institutions allow our republic to flourish.

you asked eric, what can we do to restore confidence in institutions, i think institutions are responsive to the people. one thing that institutions have lost a sense of is that we are a pluralistic society. they have lost the sense of perhaps, the ability to compromise which is hardwired into the constitution. it takes compromise to pass legislation, for example. and i feel like maybe in this era of polarization, of some would say bitter polarization, that ability to compromise has been lost. but institutions, i think, reflect back some things that are present in the citizenry themselves. that is true of our docket. justice o'connor used to say, if you want to know what is going on in america, you can look at our docket and see the battles being waged through litigation are often reflective of the battles that are being waged in the society at large. but i think if we demand of our

institutions compromise, what if we started a campaign for compromise and kindness and made clear that those are the kinds of things we want to see in our civic institutions, i think we shouldn't underestimate the ability of citizenry to demand that kind of change. >> part of what we are both speaking to is that a public that might be losing faith or confidence in institutions, can't be goaded into increasing your confidence. you can't tell the people "you should trust us more." you are both naming a way in which participants in these institutions, in any branch of government and, frankly, nongovernmental institutions, bear responsibility for setting those norms you are describing. of making it so that the actual practice of power and the way arguments are either litigated literally or just dealt with figuratively, don't result in that scorched-earth, bitter polarization you are talking about. in many ways, you have already named some of the core elements

of what all of us who are involved in the work of civic learning think about when we talk about that phrase. most americans don't walk around thinking, "today i will get smarter on civic learning." [laughter] >> they should. >> they should, and that is our message, the fact that they can walk around and take a million things for granted in a self-governing society, is itself a product of prior generations having done a bit of thinking about what that means. you name three elements in particular, you named corecivic knowledge, you referred to branches of government. it is a sad running, in civic discussions, how few americans can name all three branches. now it is one piece. you talk about skills, skills of compromise, skills of understanding the ways in which our, flows and when one branch is receding in one way, another branch might move to fill a

vacuum. those are skills of understanding people and situations. finally, you talked about norms. norms and values and the ways in which we behave. that tried of knowledge, skills and norms, is foundational to any of the work of civic learning here. and implicit in all three of them is a word you already use, power. a lot of the conversation about the constitution is about separation of powers, right? but i'm curious, from your vantage point, because the language you use of the law is a language of power. how can we, all of us in this room, do more to educate americans in general who aren't necessarily following the supreme court docket, but who understand vaguely what is going on? her. -- how can we educate people and what it means to separate power? that basic literacy in power is

something that seems to be absent in our society and leads people to jump to conclusions, or have a picture of what the court can do when the court can't do that, or expect things from people. how do you speak more broadly about our to a democracy? >> i think the work you do and the work that icivics does brings those lessons home to the citizenry and engages people in those conversations. i know there are educators present, i think, in our schools. i love talking to schools. i will professor for a long time and i think education is a big piece of it. in the supreme court, all of us went up talking to groups who come to the court to try to open the door so they can see what is going on and talk about the way we make decisions, delivery approach the constitution. and i think sometimes storytelling can really help draw people in. one story i like to tell which some of you may know, is the story of greg watson, the

sophomore in the university of texas who is responsible for the ratification of the 27th amendment. he was writing a college paper and discovered that the amendment, which says a sitting congress can't give itself a pay raise or a pay cut, that amendment had been proposed by james madison in 1789. watson discovered in 1782 --1925 that there was no time limit on its verification and he was single-handedly responsible to get the states to ratify it. when i tell that story to younger students and high-school students, it kind of energizes them. because they think about one person being invested in the constitution and making a difference. so the power of turning stories like that can also help draw people in. >> justice sotomayor, you also use stories in a lot of ways. >> i used stories a lot of time, as you know, eric. to me, storytelling is perhaps the best way to teach. you are right, i think maybe

your question has to focus in on what our responsibilities are as -- and i want to use the word citizenry with a small "c." i am not talking about immigration status. i am talking about citizenship in terms of community, and whether each of us as members of a larger community, what obligations we have to undertake not just to teach, but to learn. i think that is the ingredient that is missing. thankfully, we have organizations like icivics and yours that are involved in the teaching aspect of it. but how many of you in this room have read the constitution cover to cover? [laughter] >> this is a room full of readers. [laughter] >> yes. but i would say that that is not generally the story.

[laughter] >> i speak to more diverse audiences. [laughter] very few hands go up. i will not ask you to raise your hand, but i ask the question of many audiences, how many of you have actually read the supreme court decision cover to cover. again -- [laughter] >> a very atypical audience, think about your normal friends -- i don't mean normal, but think of your regular friends not involved in the realm you are involved in, you'll find most people really don't take the time. so i think there are two components to this. there is a component of what we

the responsibility we all have as members of the larger community to teach where we can. but our equal responsibility as citizens of the community to learn. and so we need the two things working hand-in-hand. >> really glad that you talk about that kind of ethical notion of small citizenship, as you put it. in our work at citizen university, we often say that to understand the conception that citizenship is a simple equation. that power plus character equal citizenship and to live as a member of contributing member of the body of a community is to both have some understanding of power and fluency. witches who decides in a county commissioner or scoreboard or in the family, who decides, is the central question of how power is flowing. and of course, your work product is called decisions. you are literally making decisions and codifying them for a public. at the same time suck you talk about what an abnormal group of people this is in the room today, we civic nerds who come for civic learning week -- [laughter]

the truth is many americans, even if they have the will, they don't have the time to actually read supreme court decisions and decipher them and understand what is meant and implied in different references and footnotes and so forth. so the question of how organizations like icivics, like citizen university, like so many represented in this room today, the institute for citizen scholars, generation citizen, the reagan institute, many people whose work is actually the translation of things that happen at a high level in decision-making to a way that can actually reach everyday americans. that, too, is the core of civic learning. and both of you are here not out of some sense of obligation to icivics, you are here because you are both educators, both by profession in the past, but also just by nature. you like to explain and make things understandable to folks. i want to actually reroute this

question back to both of you -- why civic education? why has this mattered to you in your own evolution and your own personal sense of how things work in the world? what was formative for you in civic learning that brought you here today? >> well, i had two things. the first is, when i was a junior in high school, i was working for a hospital in the south bronx. and the owner -- it probably could happen today -- was supporting a local candidate for mayor. and he volunteered my services to the candidate. [laughter] it was my first exposure to electoral politics, i hadn't even thought of doing it. and it was wonderful for me to be in the office as a 17-year-old and watching the passion with which these people supported the candidate. and i watched volunteers coming

in and out who were knocking on doors and getting the vote out. and i realized that as citizens, we could have a voice. that politics was not divorced from the people. it is the people. and so that was my first realization as a teenager that i could volunteer and do things and make a difference. i couldn't vote yet, but i could still do things that were important to help in governance. the second was when i was at college at princeton. i read in a local newspaper -- i worked in the library, and one of the wonderful things about the library then, firestone, now it is probably all-digital and i sort of miss the day when i

could walk into the space and other newspapers were laid out. would daily go in there and just flip through them. i read an article about a man from puerto rico whose plane had been diverted to newark. he didn't understand what was going on and was quite upset at the airport. the policeman who intervened couldn't, or didn't have translators available, and thought he was acting in a bizarre manner. they took him to trenton psychiatric hospital. and the newspaper was reporting that it took a week for him to convince someone to call his family so they could come and get him out. and i was so struck by that story, that there weren't enough at that time, that is totally changed now, that time, many years ago, amy -- [laughter]

close to when you were born. [laughter] but at that time, the hospital had very few spanish-speaking people. psychiatric center. and i organized the hispanic students on campus to, once a week, go and meet with the patients for a couple of hours and just talk to them. to have some contact in their native language. to assist them with calls. some of them did ask us to pass messages to family or things of that nature. and sometimes all we did at christmas was bring them home cooked food -- i didn't do that, but friends were good enough to do that. [laughter] bring them home cooked food and and play music with them. and i realized that civic engagement is not nearly

electoral politics. that is what many people think, that civic responsibility or engagement involves being an elected or government official in some way. it's not just that. it is something much bigger. it's about every act we do in that small citizenry to help solve the problem that a community has. that kind of engagement is what i call civic engagement. it is not just electoral or government structure, but community structure. and what we each undertake as individuals to help resolve the difficulties in the world around us. >> there is a living example of powerless character, but it's also an example of the ways in which those elements you were describing of knowledge, skills and norms, when you have them, don't just sit there, they are not a bundle of things, they

come to life in the choices you make to participate or not. >> those two incidents really propelled my interest in community involvement, and it continued throughout my career. obviously, i went into public service as a prosecutor, but when i was in private practice, i volunteered in the state agency and in a city agency and in a civil-rights organization. so it is not just the work you do everyday that pays you, that probably is critical obviously, to our society, but more important is the work you are to when you are not being paid. >> i agree. i didn't talk about this in advance, my answer in many ways tracks justice sotomayor's. i didn't have any experience in electoral politics at all. growing up, i don't really recall ever talking about

politics at dinner or having a yard sign for a candidate, but my parents were very invested and very civic- minded. when i was a child -- i don't remember why our present lost its polling place, but it did, and so my parents volunteered their garage. >> this was in new orleans? >> this was in new orleans. so many years, our garage was where people came to vote. [laughter] >> and this wasn't a convenient thing, but our parents, from late in the morning to late at night -- and it wasn't a convenient thing for our neighbors either because there was a lot of traffic and cars parked on the road, but they saw the need so they volunteered their home to fill it. but much as justice sotomayor was saying about investment in our communities, that is something also, my parents made a big value for us growing up because when they saw the needs, they filled them. the elderly, in my neighborhood

my mom was bringing them food. my dad was checking on the. they were dispatching my siblings and i to go and have conversations with them so that they wouldn't be lonely. my mother fostered a baby when we were younger. all those things of seeing needs and filling them -- we participated in toy drives at christmas every year, my siblings and i would wrap the gifts and deliver them. i think that kind of engagement in the community that is not governmental or political, but that is rooted in community, that is what self-government requires. it requires working together as a community. people before politics. you work together, you are invested in a community, you see needs and you fill them. be it the need for translation, visiting those who are lonely, offering care to those who need it, those are the things that

knit us together as a community. >> we want to center several questions that young people have brought into the room. icivics who is our hosting catalyst here, works with so many young people around the united states and we have a video which we can play now. we're all three of these questions, and then we will come back -- -- we'll hear all three of these questions that i will paraphrase them so that we can reconnect the thread of the conversation. let's play that if we can. >> hello. my name is howard and i am in 11th grade. i go to school in pennsylvania. my question that i would like to ask the justices is what do you consider some of your most formative civic experiences that put you on the path to the supreme court? >> ok, i sort of jumped the gun on harvard. [laughter] >> i am in the ninth grade. i go to school in new jersey. i would like to ask, considering the diverse backgrounds and

viewpoints among the justices, how do you navigate differences? also, are there norms or practices that you follow to help navigate disagreements with her in the majority or minority? >> hi. my name is dachshund i am into 12th grade and i go to school in connecticut. the question i have for the justices would be, given the importance of understanding civics, what advice do you offer to students, particularly in terms of proximity to civic engagement and also in the legal system? also, do you have any specific advice for those interested in pursuing careers in law and public service? >> wonderful. >> hello. my name is maurice and i am in 11th grade. i go to school in florida. my question is, how can young folks be encouraged to find common ground in a world filled with so much polarization? >> ok.

[applause] our thanks to howard and the others. to howard's first question, you began to speak to about formative civic experiences, and there was a throughline between how you both answered that initial question and talking about place, talking about being rooted in community. the precinct station in new orleans, if you had more time, you probably could have done a second-line parade coming into your garage, and done it new orleans style, right? [laughter] what you were doing in new york and new jersey was rooted in the texture of that community and that place and at that time, demographics were beginning to change and the need was felt. so guess what a variation on this question of formative civic experience is the rule in place, informing your sense of

civic engagement and civic responsibility whether that was in the new orleans phase of your life, or the bronx phase of your life. >> i should say that most civic learning starts in the home. amy gave her examples of sort of the bigger step than most people do, but many, many parents will organize giftgiving to the needy either at thanksgiving or christmas. my mother, for example, was a nurse and she held anybody in the community who required some assistance in their physical care. my mom was there. i can't tell you the number of times i opened the door to a stranger. and this is not the day you can do that. [laughter] and they would say, i have heard.

there is a nurse who lives here and she can help me. those examples were critical to us. i do hope that i emphasize most parents that you are the first learning experience for most children. so, that road to civic learning starts almost always in the home. school is, i think, the second, but home is first. embedded in the question as it was asked, was that somehow that led me to the supreme court. [laughter] new and my answer to that is no. i don't think that there is a necessary path to the supreme court. there is a lot of luck involved, in are you in the right place at the right time? i think if you live a life with a far off goal, intending to achieve something, you run the risk that circumstances may

preclude you from reaching it, and you may live disappointed in some way. i don't actually think that that's a very valuable way to perceive civic engagement, as something that gets you somewhere. i think it is more important to see it as a way to excite your passion in life, to give you a life goal that gives meaning in and of itself. and, it just so happens that when you love what you do, people will often notice and it will often lead you to better places -- sometimes it doesn't. it shouldn't matter. because if you are enjoying and you have that passion to help and to serve, itself, will provide. one of the students was asking about career advice. i think that's valuable advice for anyone who wants to be anything.

find that path that excites you. >> i agree with everything justice sotomayor has said, and i will say that, you never know what tomorrow will boring. i certainly didn't see myself on the path to the supreme court, but i think in all aspects of life, you invest yourself and what's in front of you that day. doing the best you can and making the most of the opportunities you have both for service and learning and teaching and loving and building communities, and everything that falls under that umbrella. and then you just see what the next day brings. and then you have another opportunity and perhaps a different set of opportunities to do it then. one quick word, eric, you asked about place? i think for young people especially, place might be receding in importance. but i would like to challenge young people to put place back in front. i think, in an increasingly

online world where people are living on social media or living in their bedrooms on their devices or their computers, we are maybe losing a sense of place and, of course, covid didn't help this, but we are losing a sense of interpersonal face-to-face interactions. but i think place and people are critical to building a civic society, just living in a world where we are entirely online and disconnected from the people who are actually around us. i think it's destructive to the social fabric. >> now i sound like an old person, but sitting in a restaurant and watching two young people not talking and under tablets or phones, instead of communicating? that's distressing to me. [laughter] but you are right that you cannot learn how to live with others unless you live with others. >> with others.

there is may no better embodiment of that than someone i wanted to bring into the room -- or bring her memory into the room, the founder of icivics, justice o'connor. mentor, model, path breaker, pathfinder for both of you and many others in this room. many civic nerds, you all know this, but many people do not know that justice o'connor, prior to having been tapped to the supreme court, had been a politician. she had been a member of the arizona state senate. >> majority leader. >> majority leader in the arizona state senate which was very purple at the time. so she had to learn how to navigate differences in conversation with people from the big city and from the rural areas, people who had a strong leaning towards government, and people who had a real allergy to government. she had to broker deals and compromises in that role, which prepared her well for her time on the court. that pivots to the second

question that was asked about how the two of you think about navigating differences on the court. this is a perennial question. we are sitting here one week after the recent decision, this question all the time that we can read the opinions and see the evidence of the ways in which you have thought about things and argued things productively, but, and we can even get a ticket to come and see your oral arguments, but what we can't get is, of course, how you spend time with each other. giving us as appropriate a glimpse as you can, how in the everyday flew over work you navigate differences of opinion or topic, differences in the world of view that may be expand beyond the given topic and how as a matter of skills and norms you go about doing that both in a specific instance, but in a

way that also sustains the institution and keeps it going? >> what you see is the final product, but what you don't see until justices' papers are released is all the give-and-take that goes into that final product. one thing that is a very strong norm on the court is trying to accommodate one another in the drafting of opinions. one thing that's different about our work from the work of the legislature is that there is kind of a line beyond which we can't compromise. we wouldn't vote trade -- justice sotomayor and i both take an oath to uphold the constitution and our job is to say what we think the right answer is to the best of our ability. so neither of us can compromise on the bottom line. but there is a lot we can compromise on and how we -- in how we write opinions. you have the ability to write an opinion more broadly or more narrowly. not everything has to be decided in an opinion.

and we have a norm that people try to accommodate that -- i worked very hard to do that. sometimes the opinions i am proudest of are ones in which we have been able to achieve consensus. and by the way, we do that for one another. this is an just justice sotomayor and me. we do that for one another across the court, even when you don't need the vote. so once you have a majority on the court, if someone asks, " woody think about taking this out, or taking that out?" you are limited by what other people will agree to too, but we all worked very hard, down to little hard choices -- word choices, the smallest word choices, to accommodate one another. i think that really helps. i don't think any of us has a my way or the highway attitude. and i think we have been able -- you and i have been able to work

together. >> i think many of us do. justice barrett is right, the structure of our institution where unity majority, gives you a sort of built-in norm because you have to accommodate at least five people to accommodate that majority. and often the people are targeting at different directions and you have to navigate and find that metal. but there is also an attempt to reach beyond the five, and to talk in ways that each person can be comfortable with, because in the end when you are joining an opinion, you're putting your name and support behind it. now, eric, you mentioned justice o'connor. she really was, and still is too many on my court, the person who learned to establish the most important norm in the court, and that was a norm of collegiality.

prior to justice o'connor's coming to the court, she arrived in 1981, a tradition that had been there for a very long time, since the beginning of our court, the justices all lived in different places and far away from the meeting place of the supreme court. and most of them stayed in the same hotel. they ate lunch and dinner together, from what i understand. and it was required that everyone attend that social event. i think, although i don't know enough about this to have confirmed it, that they didn't really discuss cases during those meals. that had fallen into, not disfavor, but there had been a period in which the court was no longer socializing as often. and when justice o'connor came to the court, should be that

tradition. but most importantly, it was very, very significant to her, establishing our relationships vis-a-vis work, that we make is a priori collegiality -- make as a priority, collegiality. you mentioned she had done that when she was on the arizona state senate. she routinely had barbecues at her home in which she invited both democrats and republicans. i remember when i was being interviewed for my supreme court nomination that, i met with many, many senators, and i asked they went things had changed in the sort of partisan nature of them attributed it, and i know some will not be happy about this, to having cameras in the senate and house chambers.

because with the cameras, people felt no longer in obligation to sit in the room with their colleagues. so those conversations that occurred spontaneously in the corner for sitting side-by-side in the chamber were no longer occurring. most of the time, the senators didn't have to be there because they had staffers watching. i would see a debate going on, and i would be sitting there being interviewed by a senator who had no volume on. so he never heard his colleague speaking. that, thankfully, we avoid by the nature of our work because we are in every case together. we are hearing each other's thoughts and thinking about each other's thoughts. but that engagement, that place engagement, being in the same place listening, is an important part of working together.

>> there is so much in what you both have said and i want to unpack a little bit of it. in describing that norm of collegiality, the getting together for social gatherings or breaking bread together and talking about things that are not cases before you, about family, sports, is, in part, just not about collegiality, but also humanization. it's really difficult, even in the circumstance that you have where you have to work together all the time, you can't dehumanize each other if you have actually spent time talking about your lives, about how you were formed, what your hopes and dreams are for the people who are close to you. if you have talked about that, it is very difficult to say this justice is such and such. and put them in a two dimensional box. but the other thing you are talking about here with cameras is kind of the set of incentives and intention in civic life.

part of why this room is full and people are turning in is that the supreme court, by habit, by norms, by tradition, you don't do a lot of broadcasting, you don't have cameras in the courtroom. you don't let people do documentaries where people are exchanging notes back to haggle over language and so forth. and that helps you do your work in the most collegial way possible. so there is an argument there for people get along better if they aren't feeling like they have to perform, in a sense, and cameras in the way that in the house representatives creates a sense of performance. i will be less relational and more performative. all the language people like us to criticize -- used to criticize the younger generation, it's as old as everything. it's as old as tv and radio, it's as old as one pamphlets first came out, it creates an

incentive for people to perform to their base, rather than actually deal with each other as humans. but the supreme court, through all this time, has tried to preserve a bit of a bubble of that kind of media-exempt collegiality and trust within. and i guess one question i have -- and you>> eric, that is because we also have a situation where our decisions are always public. we write our decisions and explain how we got to where we got. and i fear that in other public spheres, there isn't that real opportunity. eric: hmm. >> the cameras provide the opportunity for explanation, as opposed to our the citizenry sort of engage in thinking through what led their politician to make a choice.

and that is a norm that i think we have lost, actually. i think there was more of that in the past in america, where people actually sat down and heard debates on publications, and it used to occur very much in the senate. i remember in much earlier times where you would see, on daily news shows, clips of two senators going back-and-forth on an issue. and you've got a sense of what was motivating each of them and what were the issues that they thought were important. today, you have more press releases than explanations. i think >> you are naming anything often times in our work we teach, the difference between free expression and free exchange. you get a series of people expressing their points of view

without necessarily tuning into each other or dealing with each other. what you are describing is exchange. i had not thought of it that way, or you raised something that i should accommodate somehow. i should consider that facet, and in doing that depth of free exchange within the chambers of the court, i want to say a little bit more on the question. you talked about the compromise and the give-and-take, but like any, the justices call this a family, it may be a dysfunctional family. maybe some things where you might get hot under the color, and i feel strongly about this. how do you when you were talking about the meat of the case come back and deal with each other in a way that is not still hot and tempted to dehumanize and flatten together. justice barrett: we do not speak in a hot way in our conferences.

he did not raise voices no matter how hot but the case. we always speak with respect. there is a norm without we speak . the chief justice begins because he has the most senior. most senior down to the most junior and you say what you think about the case and you cannot interrupt the other person, so we hear everybody out and it is not until everyone is -- has spoken that there was a back and forth. it would be a violation of norms to do so, and that makes it easier even if inside you are frustrated or hot under the caller as you put it. you do not express that in the conference room, which makes it easier when you go back to your chambers and meet at lunch, you are not carrying over something negative. you did not feel guilty about looking someone across the lunch

table. justice sotomayor and i sit across from one another. [laughter] >> that is a really good preschool. don't raise your voices. justice barrett: that is true. we see -- sit in the seats of the justice you succeeded. it is one place in our dining room where we do not sit in order of seniority. we sit in the order of seats you have taken, but we sit across from one another, and i know that justice sotomayor respects me and we have affection for one another. even when we disagree deeply about the merits, we keep it true to merits, we keep it in our discussion and we keep it even when it is heated on the page of our merits, and if there is one thing i want to communicate to you and the students were watching, the

court is a place where we have civil disagreements, and to be are simultaneously the most transparent ranch i think, because it is said we know exactly why we reach the decisions that we did, because we make the transparent, but we keep a great deal confidential and that gives us of the room to be able to deliberate and talk and think. it is not a rowdy -- it is not like the floor of parliament, but we worked very hard to maintain those norms that i think we are successful. justice sotomayor: we are generally, and the rule of hearing each other out is terrifically important, because it permits you to listen to something you disagree with and know that you will get your turn to explain why you do. that is not to say -- people are passionate. there are issues that do -- that are important to people in a more visceral way, and in the presentation you can see that,

and occasionally someone might come close to something that could be viewed as hurtful. it has happened in my experience a few times. generally one of our senior colleagues will call the person who was perceived as may having gotten a little close and tell them may be you should think of an apology or patching it up a little bit, and that does happen. it happens in the writing. occasionally someone write something that an individual feels is offensive, not just explanatory of a view but presently offensive to them or could be perceived by others as offensive, and there is dialogue around that. i difference of expression, and it happens, because it is just human nature. you are stuck in your own head writing about the thing that is

important to you, and you may forget momentarily how others may be perceiving it, so all of these things are ways to manage emotions without losing respect for one another and without losing an understanding that each of us is operating in good faith, and i think the public discourse has lost some of that. there are a lot of personal attacks on people's character. i really do not ever feel that a disagreement involves the character. we are all people of good faith. we are all very passionate about the work that we do. we are all trying to do our best and to support the principles of the constitution as much as we can and according to the principles that guide us. i may disagree with how many of my colleagues approach these

questions, but i am very vocal about that disagreement and i lay out why i think they are wrong, and i hope someday they will see the error of their ways. [laughter] eric: again, you have been answering -- like this is been a great socratic session. you have been naming some of the answers to the questions you have been posed in talking about these norms, these skills, this knowledge that you bring to bear and one of the things undergirding both of the things that you said about the court is you have to do these things because the baseline norm at the court is you are involved in an infinite game. the object is not to make a minority lose you can get rid of them and get them off the face of the earth and out of the court. you are stuck with each other

and this court is going to be here forever as long as the united states is forever, and what you are describing are less healthy forms of exchange in the wider political coverages the mentality now. i would rather the person from the other side to just not be here. i would rather not have to deal with the way of that thinking, i would rather not encounter that one of you because i find it repugnant or i feel they find me repugnant, but you do not have the luxury of exempting us us from discomfort in that way, and in that there are a set of lessons for us outside the chambers and how to practice this kind of civil disagreement. justice sotomayor: by nature any side, i may not have any in this case but i will need it tomorrow

on something else. eric: justice barrett, you said the public things because there are six with one perceived ideological leaning and three of others, it is 6-3 of the time, but you pointed out how many cases scramble those numbers. it is a different combination of folks, and i should say as a matter of norms for our discussion and our friends in the media at that one of the norms of this conversation is we do not discuss opinions and the particulars of cases before the court, but within that context, justice barrett, we were talking in the green room before we came out about the connect the dots between the personal and the civic how just in family life you find it important to teach her children how to apologize, and we were reflecting conversation about what a lost or missing art that is in civic

life generally, again in a social media inflamed age where it is about owning the other guy , it is about shaming them or rushing then or humiliating then than actually being able to on the fact that maybe i overstepped were maybe i did not see that point that you were making or maybe i just totally stepped in it. or maybe i got hot in a way where i thought later on that was not so productive, but that we have laws that are. can you tell us more about your thinking about that? that skill of taking responsibility for one is own part -- one's own part. justice barrett: sometimes we do need to apologize, because we are human, so sometimes you say something that comes across may be in a way that you did not intend, and what i have been

staring -- saying to eric and the green room at a time is apology, i try to teach my children, if there is a disagreement i say apologize. and the responses i don't feel sorry, i am not sorry and i'm going to wait until i am sorry to apologize. forgiveness and apology are not emotions. they are decisions. you decide to acknowledge that you were wrong and sometimes even if you think the other person misunderstood what you said, the value of a relationship can be to say, listen, i am sorry, i did not mean for it to come across that way and i did not intend to hurt you, but apology and receiving apology, assuming the best of the other person, think of the person and did not try to hurt you or even if they did, even if they overstepped, and how many times have any of us overstepped and that something that came

across in an unkind way deliberately or accidentally. it so i think those goats are important, and we were talking about family, in this is an institution in which we cannot obliterate one another. the supreme court i effort it described as an arranged marriage with no opportunity for divorce. we did not choose one another as colleagues, we have life tenure, so we are not going anywhere, so we have to get along. i am joking about that, but shouldn't that be true of all of us in the civic community? why should any of us want to obliterate the opposition? i think we should all be doing better off. [applause] eric: picking up on that as you spoke already to a couple of questions that came from the students about the paths that you took and justice sotomayor,

the wisdom in your answer, you do not set out to end up on the supreme court, find a point of passion and pursue that and then you wind up on the supreme court. [laughter] maybe, but i went to move now -- it has been implicit in how we are talking about civil discourse. sometimes conversations about civility, and there are in fact proper divides in civic life. there are areas of deep foundational disagreement, and in our work we teach america is an argument between liberty and equality, which the average american thinks i love them both. these things are intention with one another. too much emphasis on liberty impedes equality and vice versa.

there is a built-in tension between the plurubus and th eunum. the ability to solve national problems and if we live in a citizen in a way like justice sotomayor describing, we have do not only learn civility and navigate a pluralistic society, but we have to know the arguments. we have to get fluent in the first ways on what are these core things that americans will always perpetually be contending with them be contesting. a country that is founded on a creed is a built-in argument machine. there is no chinese idea when i think about my ancestors from china, and if there were a chinese idea it would be told from xi jinping on down what the chinese idea is, but in the united states the american idea, the set of promises only give us

an invitation to continually argue, debate, and contest the meanings of equal protection of the law, equal justice under law, so i would like you to speak to us about how we outside the court and even we outside this room of people who are the highly motivated self-selected into this stuff, how we can learn more to get fluent in these core arguments in american life and to be able to as a matter of knowledge but as a matter of skills get comfortable with arguing? you created a project that said, as toxic and polarized as we are in american life, we do not need fewer arguments. we just need less stupid ones. that led to a better arguments project which connects to the governors association initiative that you two spoke at weeks ago called the argue better initiative. trying to get republican and

democratic governors to do with each other again, not like let's be friends and let's talk about sports and humanize each other, but let's learn that argue better. on the role of the state come at the citizen, the market on everyday life, and how from what you know what you do get better at arguing? justice barrett: getting better at arguing fundamentally is getting better at relating with people, because that has to do with how you go about arguing and whether you are demonizing the other person, but you also asked about how do we know what the arguments are, and to argue better, but in the area of weight we do and the area of the constitution and figuring out either side, seek out resources like the national constitution center does a great job when it talks about cases on the court's docket. it will talk about concepts of

constitutional law and present people with opposing viewpoints. when i was a law professor i wrote one of them. whatever and then meant, the suspension clause or 15th amendment or article one, and it will have opposing views. you get the text and scholars with opposing views and that amendment and what it might mean in american society, and drawing the numbers are so psyched at that are nonpartisan and designed to lay out the arguments is a way to disagree better because you have better arguments, but then i would go back to the theme that we have been hammering on this whole time is that once you have your ideas, believe me, i am not going to change justice sotomayor's mind about fundamental things, but we learn from one another. we learned to give where we can, and it is all friend in the kind of dialogue that is respectful, that apologizes when apology is

necessary and understand to be in a pluralistic society. one side cannot take all. it cannot be a complete conquest of ideas on either side, because we are a huge, diverse society and we have to figure out how to live under one roof. >> media literacy is a big statement right now. fake news, however you define it, it exists. there is an obligation as a person existing in the world to find sources that you can rely upon, to be objective. there is no perfect approach to constitutional law. every textualist colleagues,

there is always a principle, a reason for why they are doing it , but there is always a reason, and so with any way that you look at the world, you are not going to address a certain subset of problems but probably motivate the opposition into believing it is not a solution, and that is where the area of compromise become so important. when you were talking about liberty you also have to worry about security, and what we do as a society is always try to balance where is the right point , and there was a point that you have to region society is played with it various ways, some of them not so healthy. world war ii with the interment of the japanese, we have always as a society realized we went too far, interning american

citizens with no cause other than their ancestry. so that part of understanding that we just cannot study your side. you have to study the other side , and you have to look forward in their arguments the weaknesses that they are pointing to and yours -- in yours, and if you cannot do that you will never be able to engage in a unique full conversation. eric: the actual exchange. justice sotomayor: exactly, and it is a way of reaching for solutions. eric: the last question i want to pose goes to things you have both spoken to. justice barrett, when you were talking about this idea on the court you cannot obliterate the opposition and cannot think about people is the opposition, in no when what you were

teaching us in the patterns of behavior on the court is both how to be better losers and winners in the case of a setting where you are continuing having to do with each other. justice sotomayor, when you spoke about the internment of japanese americans after pearl harbor and now how today we americans regard that as a serious error both under law and under norms, the fact that we americans have come to that was not a process really of legal judgment. there was an act of congress that provided reparation, but it was a matter of norms, and what i want to close on is what you will been talking about so much in this conversation. you have given us insight into the way the structure of the institution of the court actually operates, but in our work we teach that culture precedes structure. cultures, norms, values,

narratives, and habits shoot to the frame of the possible when you get to the structure, and i think so many of the things you described, and we joked about that as a preschool, but if all of us took to heart what is a circle where i move in where i can have these rituals, these norms, these explicit expectations that nobody speaks twice before everyone is spoken once, that we sit in the seeds of that are not just in signed -- i signed it inhibited seats. every one of us is a steward of his seat in civic life, and if we started thinking in those terms there is so much that we have to do, but it would have to be on purpose, and that is what is most striking about when you were describing here is how much of the culture of the court is on purpose, and i would like you both to speak to this with words of advice for the young people,

but for all of us, how can we in our lives and work build containers of culture, of civic culture that moves things in a healthier direction that you have been embodying and we have been talking about here today? justice sotomayor: i start always by finding the best thinking. if you start there, it is the perfect place to accept that every human being -- there may be an exception. i was a former prosecutor, and i often said prosecute as many people, and there were only a couple i came to the conclusion that they were evil people. fundamentally they were missing some component of humanity, but that was very rare.

in reality virtually everyone has good in them, and if you spend the time looking for that is harder to dehumanize that person and does arguments. if you bear that in mind with persons whom you disagree, but they have a reason for why they are thinking a particular way, and you make the effort to engage them in figuring that out that there is a much more possibility that you will remain not just civil to each other, but that you might actually grow to like each other. there are historical examples of democrats and republicans, many of them with the best and friends -- a best of friends,

and yet they put it differently so often that they manage compromise as well, but i think that you can find a way to improve virtually any situation if you start with the finding what is the best in each other. [applause] justice barrett: i think finding the best and assuming the best, and you pointed out the number of norms that we have that a very deliberate, but over time the court continues to choose and deliberately follows and one thing i would challenge the students were listening to do is to make a deliberate choice to seek out people who think about things differently than you do and spend time with them. you probably have to make that an affirmative choice, because otherwise by a process of naturally gravitating toward people who think like you, it

will probably make effort. people have book clubs, they talk about movies. why not read a book together that has to do with civic engagement? read a book and talk about it and get practice talking about ideas, arguing about ideas, and listening to the other side. listening to those arguments. we have to create opportunities for those kinds of dialogues. justice sotomayor: i got some of this from debate club. [laughter] eric: in the semi justice sotomayor said we are talking here about small c citizenship, i want to end with small c and u. we are here in a small c and u university. learning how to practice what

justice sotomayor and justice barrett have been sharing with each other and learning had to figure out how we should live together as a diverse society that is by definition in a way that is a feature and not a bug deeply divided come up and if we can learn to embrace that, one more round to go and pass it on to another generation. and is moderated by journalist

bari weiss. >> the f