reported. i don't pretend to be a historian. we never denied it. it is not a question for us to acknowledge. coming to the jewish people to acknowledge other people's tragedies i understand. what i don't understand -- if it is to be resolved, it was the jewish people that resolve their relationship with germany. nobody else. nobody else. so it is the people who are the parties, weather it is 20 years or 50 years or 100 years.

>> occurred in the year 2000. something that shocked a lot of people. it didn't shock some of us who were watching it because the old anti-semitism was never really ca that are sized out, it was never purged out. probably the country that did most in facing its history in terms of antiseminhl was germany but the rest of europe some played victim, austria played victim, denied it, etc. and so the problem -- and then came the new anti-semitism which was the anti-semitism relating

to israel, what some have said israel became the jew of the nations in the same way that historically, you know, whatever was permitted for everybody else was not permitted for the jew. now israel was singled out in the since that all countries can, you know, defend it, israel cannot, all countries can choose their capital, israel cannot. what country's legitimacy is being challenged 60 years after its establishment? israel. so that added to anti-semitism in europe. you had a human conveyor belt of some radical muslims who helped. and so the biggest problem facing europe was denial. that means european leadership denied that there's a problem, that there's anti-semitism. i remember president chirac

coming to the united states with four jewish leaders, and he said there's no antiseminhl in france, ask my jews. two said yes, one said no, one said maybe. [laughter] and we said, president chirac, there's anti-semitism in new york. there's antiseminhl in paris. but as long as there was denial, they didn't do anything about it, and they didn't face it. somewhere around 2004, 2005 the attitudes changed. chirac woke up one morning to find out the night before police stopped an attack on a judeo school. and, god forbid, if the police had not stopped it, france would have become a place where 900 jewish children could have been -- god forbid. that changed his attitude, and he basically stood up, we need to do it, and today france is probably the model country as to how to deal with it in the sense

that there's an interadminister interadministerial committee and holocaust education is mandated. anti-semitism taken seriously, it is condemned wherever it rears its ugly head, etc. that's what europe needs to do. now, europe started doing something else through the e.u., and, first of all, there's a recognition of the holocaust commemoration day which is the day of the liberation of auschwitz, january 27th. it's been declared as a day of commemoration on the holocaust. there are efforts to continue to teach or to begin to teach the holocaust not only as a jewish tragedy, but as a universal tragedy in the sense that if you permit hate to reach another level. and the e.u. has had conferences on hate on the internet, it has translated some adl materials on

prejudice. we're engaged in efforts with some e.u. agencies to sensitize law enforcement. police officers sometimes they come on the scene of conflict can either become the problem or the solution. and if they don't understand prejudice or the prejudice themselves, it makes it worse. so the e.u. can facilitate not only as a voice, it's important to have a voice, but there's need for education. there's need for implementation of the resolutions which say, yes, there's anti-semitism. and a lot of material needs to be translated, needs to be made available, teachers need to be taught how to teach. so there's, you know, i'm delighted to give you a shopping list. but, basically, there is today recognition that there is a problem. and european union's dealing with islamphobia as well because that's a growing problem in europe today.

we're struggling with the issue of the internet. internet as both a magnificent vehicle for education, information and interaction, but it also provides a superhighway for bigotry. question is how do you balance freedom of speech, freedom of expression, privacy, how do you protect it? we're struggling with it. the e.u. is a good forum. we have problems of conflict of laws because there are laws in europe which says you cannot sell mine camp can buy it from amazon or barnes & noble or whatever. so we have issues to resolve, but again, the e.u. is a good place, a good fora to bring countries together. under the e.u. umbrella, there's a conference this week in turkey on holocaust studies which travels from country to country. so the answer is delighted that they finally recognized that a

problem exists. it needs more funding, more attention, and i'll be delighted to sit with you or discuss it later. >> before mrs. glrks -- glaser comes up we have time for one more question, and i'm afraid she won't do it if i don't take the one from her husband. mr. glaser. >> thank you. you're a great guy. we're glad to have you here. but my last question, you said god had a discussion with abraham. your name was abraham. was it you? [laughter] >> i believe so. and the question is? [laughter] >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. >> for more on abraham foxman and his work, visit the antidefamation league's web site, adl.org.

>> host: author and former cia analyst and head of the cia's bin laden unit, michael surer has a new book coming out, and michael surer joins us to preview his book. one of the things you write in your book is something i'd like you to expand on. bin laden is not the caricature that we made of him. indeed, if i only had ten qualities to enumerate in drafting a thumbnail biographical sketch of him, they would be pius, brave, generous, intelligent, charismatic, patient, visionary, stubborn, egalitarian and, most of all, realistic. >> guest: yes, sir. i think he's very much an enemy who we need to respect because of his capabilities. much like the allies felt about rommel during world war ii. they know they needed to kill

him, but they had to be respectful of his ability to fight them. and i'm afraid what we have gotten from some authors and most politicians is a caricature of bin laden as either a criminal or a thug or somehow a neoist or a madman, and i don't think that's true. and i think it retards our ability to understand the enemy we face. >> host: what's the danger of that caricature, in your view? is. >> guest: well, the danger is we underestimate capabilities of the man. bin laden runs an organization that is absolutely unique in the muslim world, for example, because it's multiethnic, multilinguist tick. and there is no other organization like it. it's more like a multi-national organization than it is a, certainly, a terrorist group. we also, the danger -- another danger we face is simply that we

underestimate the patience, the piety, and most especially the motivation of bin laden. he is truly within the parameters of islam. he is not somehow a renegade or someone who's outside of islam or making, or hijacking the religion. he is a pious, what is called a sol fist sunni muslim, and his appeal comes from the fact that he is believably defending the faith against what is deemed by many muslims as an attack from the west. >> host: well, knowing that or presuming that he is within the muslim faith and tradition, what should the u.s. strategy be? >> guest: well, i don't know exactly what our strategy should be, but i think before you can have a strategy you need to have the american people onboard in terms of understanding what the enemy is about.

we have spent, now, 15 years as of this coming august when bin laden declared war on us 15 years ago in august, 2011. and we have spent all of those years telling the american people that we're being attacked because we have liberty and freedom and women in the workplace and because we have elections or one or more of us may have beer after work. and that really has nothing to do with the enemy's motivation. if we were fighting an enemy who simply hated us for what we, how we lived, our lifestyle and how we thought, the threat would not even rise to a lethal nuisance. because there wouldn't be enough manpower to make it more than that. we're really fighting an enemy who is opposed to what we do, what the u.s. government does. and until we really understand that, i don't think it's

possible to form a strategy. >> host: you have a subchapter in your book called, "luring america," and you talk about how osama bin laden wanted to lure the u.s. to fighting in afghanistan. >> guest: yes, sir. he worked very hard from 1996 when he declared war on us until 2001, and i think we frustrated him on several occasions. he wanted us on the ground in afghanistan so they could apply -- they, the mujahideen, the taliban people -- they could apply the same military force against us that they applied against the red army in the 1980s. believing that we were a much weaker opponent than the soviets and that a fairly limited number of deaths would persuade us to leave eventually. and so the attacks on us in saudi arabia in 1996 and 1995,

in east africa in 1998, on the uss cole in 1999 were all designed, but failed, to get us into afghanistan. but 9/11 did the trick for them. >> host: in your upcoming book, mr. scheuer, you also talk about some of the other books that have come out on bin laden and his family. what do you think of those? lawrence wright, etc. >> guest: i think many of those books are very worthwhile, and what i tried to do is to take a different tack than those books so i wouldn't be repeating what had been written already. steve cole's book is an excellent book, i think. there are a number of very good books on bin laden, jason burke wrote one, a british journalist. and the problem i had with those books were they were primarily books that were based on what other people had said about osama bin laden. not what he had said or done

himself. and i have found over the past decade that whenever bin laden speaks, he's very often described as ranting or raving or issuing yet another diatribe. and so i thought that i would take the primary sources based on interviews, statements and speeches he made and write a book based on what he said and see how it turned out. and i think, very frankly, that when you take the primary sources which number in my archive, and i certainly don't have every one that's available, but i have over 800 pages. when you take that information, the man that emerges is not like the bin laden that emerges in lawrence wright's book or steve cole's book as sort of someone who is mentally disturbed or, or

hateful of our lifestyle. but rather, a man who is very clear about what he believes, what he intends to do, and most especially, matches words with deed which is very unusual for any politician in this day and age. >> host: because of your background with the cia, did this need to be cleared through the cia? >> guest: yes, sir, everything that i write whether it's a book or an article or even if i was a poetry writer, which i am not, for the rest of my life it has to be cleared by the cia, and this book was, in fact, reviewed twice. once before i sent it to the publisher, and then once after it was reviewed and we had made changes that the publisher wanted, or the editor wanted. so the agency -- i'm very careful to try to respect my obligation to have that reviewed before it's published. >> host: was anything taken out? >> guest: no, nothing was taken out, sir. in fact, i've worked with the

agency now for six years since i retired, probably have published, well, two books and probably 200 articles, and i've really only had four or five things taken out by the agency over that amount of time. and i have to say that at least on four of the five occasions they were correct, and i was wrong. they're simply looking to protect classified information and sources and methods. and they've been very good to work with. i've found them very, very accommodating and very helpful. >> host: three different presidents have chased osama bin laden. are you surprised we haven't found him? >> guest: well, i think we have found him, certainly between 1998 and 2001 mr. clinton had 13 opportunities to either capture him or kill him. and certainly mr. bush's generals had the chance to

capture him or kill him at tora bora in december of 2001. i think now especially in the last five years, sir, it's not surprising that we haven't gotten him. first, like any other thing in life of if you have an opportunity to do something and you don't do it, sometimes the opportunity doesn't come around again. but second, we have so massively undermanned our operations in afghanistan that there's simply not enough american soldiers and intelligence officers to go around. they have so many tasks and so few people to do them that i don't think it's a surprise that we haven't got him at this point. >> host: well, that said, what would you like to see the u.s. do in the afghanistan, beef up or pull out or what? >> guest: i think, sir, that we've been there too long. i don't think we have enough soldiers in the u.s. military if we committed every ground troop

that was available to really rectify the situation. and america as a society no longer knows how to fight a war, no longer has the stomach for it. we have lost, you know, less than 2,000 people in afghanistan from a population of 310 million, and we are, we are rapidly, rabidly wanting to leave. my own view is we should have fought and won there, but i am a hawk only if the we spend to win -- we intend to win, and i'm afraid mr. bush and mr. obama have never been able to define a winning strategy. so my own view is that it's not worth another american marine or another american soldier's life to stay there. the one thing i would add, though, is when we leave, it will be a tremendous defeat for the united states. however we dress it up, if we

say the afghans had their chance and they couldn't do it, be if we say that we have somehow satisfied what we went there to do, we may fool the american people, but we will not fool the muslim world. when we leave afghanistan without accomplishing what we said we were going to, it will be viewed as the mujahideen defeating the second superpower, and all that can -- that can only mean, rather, that the muslim world will be more galvanized against us, and more young men will flow to the battlefields wherever they are and, certainly, more will take up arms inside the united states. >> host: michael scheuer's new book, "osama bin laden," will be in bookstores in february 2011. >> booktv is on twitter. follow us for regular updates on our programming and news on nonfiction books and authors.

twitter.com/booktv. >> host: well, ronald reagan would have been 100 years old in february of 2011, and one of the many books coming out on his legacy is written by his son, michael reagan, and it's called, "the new reagan revolution." mr. reagan, what's the thesis of your book? >> guest: well, the thesis of my book is really taken from his 1976 speech he gave in kansas city. it's the first time i ever saw my father lose. and he steps down from the podium and really gives one of the great speeches of his entire career, not written, off the top of his head. and he talks about bold colors, he talks about, you know, the rights that we have today, are we going to make the right decisions today so those people who live in the 300th year of this great country, are they going to have those same rights? it's all determined by the rights and the way that we vote, in fact, today.

so that's the thesis of the book. >> host: so from that 1976 speech what can we learn about a new revolution? >> guest: you learn a lot about ronald reagan from that 1976 speech. he talks about a call to arms, that we need to leave -- [inaudible] united, we need to go forward. you know, i've spoken across this country quite a bit in the last few years, and i even talk about this in the book, the new reagan revolution. you know, would ronald reagan, if he were here today, even be nominated today? in this country that we live in because of all the different factions that find reasons not to agree with someone instead of ways to agree with people? and i think about my father putting together coalitions whether it's here in california as governor or as president of the united states or, in fact, putting together a coalition of pope john paul and margaret thatcher and, ultimately,

mikhail gorbachev. did he let the little stuff get in the way of the big picture? i think today in america so often we let the little stuff get in the way of the big, big picture, and we end up accomplishing nothing where ronald reagan accomplished everything. >> host: so, michael reagan, what's your advice to today's politicians? >> guest: my advice to today's politicians is you have to gain the trust. ronald reagan was trusted. i tell the story in the book about an actor, ""30 rock"," who everybody knows. and i remember going up to him one day, and i was saying to him, i said, you know, hello, i'm mike reagan, jane weimann's my mother. and he looked at me, and i said, well, i wanted to stay standing. i felt if i told you ronald reagan was my father, you may deck me. and he kind of chuckle led at me, and i said to him, i really enjoy your acting even though i

don't enjoy your politics. he said, let me tell you something, i wish we had your father back. and i said, you wish we had my father back? how can you say that? you're against everything he stood for. he said, but i didn't realize then what i realize today. your father had a good soul, and what this world is missing is that good, good soul and how we need that soul back. even though i disagree with him politically, i trust him, and i trust the fact that he had a great do-good soul. and, you know, today if you talk to people on the streets and they're wondering about the soul of america not only outside the beltway, but certainly inside the beltway. >> host: now, the forward to this book was written by newt gingrich. >> guest: yeah. >> host: do you think newt gingrich shares your father's soul or integrity? >> guest: i think there's a lot of people who, in fact, really knew ronald reagan and shared parts and pieces of ronald reagan. and i think one of the mistakes

we make is while looking for the next ronald reagan, we may walk right by the next great leader of the conservative movement, the great leader in this country. and i say that when i go out and speak that, you know, there's a lot of of great leaders out there. we need to find them but don't walk past them looking for ronald reagan. feel lucky that in our lifetimes we had a ronald reagan who was president of the united states of america. feel good about that, but when you start looking at everybody in relationship to ronald reagan, nobody's going to add up. we didn't vote for ronald reagan because we were looking for abraham lincoln. we didn't vote for ronald reagan because we were looking for george washington. we were electing a leader and somebody that, in fact, we trusted, and that's what we're looking for today. and if we don't find that person, we're going to keep on going in the spiraling downhill mode that we're in and what we need to do is find that person who's going to stand up and be honest with us. but in order to be honest with

us, they have to be honest with themselves. >> host: so do you think your father would govern differently today? >> guest: oh, i don't think my father would govern differently at all. i think it was in him. you know, ronald reagan, ronald reagan was who he was. he was very comfortable in his own skin. he never forgot where he came from, who he was. if you go visit his homes and you go out to the ranch in santa barbara and go to the interior of the homes, you really don't see a difference. you see the humility, the humbleness of the man. he wasn't caught up in himself and who he was, he was caught up in the greatness of the united states of america and what she was and what she was to the rest of the world. >> host: now, michael reagan, your brother, ron reagan, is coming out with a book as well, "my father at 100." have you had a chance to read that? >> guest: i have not had a chance, no, i have not, and i'm looking forward to seeing what ron has to say about our father.

and so i look at -- i don't know if his is as political as mine. i was with my dad from the 1960s when he ran for governor of california. i tell great stories in it, you know, because i was there through it all whether in the '60s, his governorship, or going into the presidency in 1976, running against an incumbent president and, of course, the 1980s. and so the book is filled with stories that relate to those periods of time and what he was going through. what i tried to do in the book is really say, okay, here's what ronald reagan would do, and here's why i know he would do it this way, because i was with him when he had to make that decision himself, and he made the decision in this way, he would make the decision the same way today. >> host: now, mr. reagan, there are two stories you tell from the 1976 republican convention that i want you to expand a little bit on. number one, your sister, the late maureen reagan, talking about wanting to be head of the california delegation.

>> guest: yeah. maureen so much wanted to be head of the california delegation. here we are in kansas city, she's worked her tail off for our dad, i was out there working for my father also. she was, of course, way more political than i was through all of her life. and be she went to my dad, we were both there together, and wanted to be, you know, appointed a delegate. my father had one left in his pocket that he could give, she wanted to be there with the california delegation and make the big announcement on the floor that the california delegation gives its votes to its favorite southern, and my dad looked at her and said, maureen, my brother is kind of old and may not be here for another one of these conventions, and so i'm going to give it to moon. moon's, like, three years older than my father, and my dad saying how old moon is. [laughter] and so moon, his brother neil, ended up getting that delegate spot on the floor of the

convention. maureen, of course, would have to wait four years until 1980, but she finally got her chance in 1980. in many '76 we didn't know there was going to be a 1980. >> host: the second story i wanted to ask you about was the drunk that came to the skybox. what was that all about? [laughter] >> guest: if you ever look at the film, you'll see what i mean here. but we were up in the skybox, and this drunk comes up, knocks on the door, and he says, i'm looking for michael dever. we turn around and find mike, and we're all in there, and he says in a drunken slur, he says, listen, the president of the united states is going to speak tonight, my seat is right down there, and he points down to where the podium is and kind of where his seats are. he said, i'll be sitting right there. if president's going to address the nation, address the convention, and when it's all over, he says, he's going to look up here to the box, and he's going to say, ron, come on down, say a few words and bring

your lovely wife nancy. and everybody went, yeah, okay. he'll never do that, thank you very much. we closed the door, and we all just forget about it because he was so drunk. and just couldn't keep two words together. we just didn't buy it. so if you look at the film of that, you will see that the glass booth is almost empty when ford is finishing his speech because we all left. we all got in our cars to get back to the hotel before the big rush leaving the convention hall. so my sister, maureen, myself, my wife, colleen, are sitting in the bar at the hotel across the street watching the end of, you know, the president's speech, gerald ford's speech. he gets to the end of it, stops, looks up at the glass booth and says, hey, ron, come on down and bring your lovely wife, nancy. and we just all looked at each other and went, you've got to be kidding me! the guy was telling the truth. so we're sitting at the bar having a glass of wine when dad

gave that phenomenal speech that the book is based on at the 1976 convention. >> host: and you say that ronald reagan whispered to nancy reagan. >> guest: well, he didn't know what to say. what do i have to say? and, because he had nothing written. he had no idea. nobody told him he was going to be called down to speak. mike dever didn't go up and say anything, nobody said anything to him because it was just so out of line. it happened. he's walking and, i don't know what to say. nancy, you know, you'll find something. and, of course, dad found one of the great speeches of his life. in five and a half or six minutes there from that convention. >> host: did you ever discover who that person at the door was? >> guest: we never did. never discovered who that person was. somebody with the rnc who had had a few toddies too many, and it was just, it was one of those moments within that convention, and it was, it was a great story to tell because that's how that got together because everybody's

always asked the question, how did that happen? [laughter] that's how it happened. >> host: and that's one of the stories that michael reagan along with his co-author tell in "the new reagan revolution: how ronald reagan's principles can restore america's greatness." the book publishes on january 18th. >> up next, supreme court justice stephen breyer presents a history of the u.s. supreme court. he examines the american public's relationship with the high court and contends that the public's trust should not be taken for granted. associate justice breyer discusses his book at the national archives here in washington. this program's about an hour, 20 minutes. [applause] >> okay, i guess we're on. [laughter] pour a little water here.

>> good idea. >> let me start out, you heard those introductions which i didn't quite hear, but -- >> we know them by heart. [laughter] >> right. so making our democracy work, a fascinating book, is really the application of justice breyer's earlier book, "active liberty." this is kind of applied active liberty, right? so who here has read active liberty? a few. okay, i recommend that too. [laughter] >> these are sort of embarrassing questions. [laughter] >> so i'll start out by mentioning that you frame l your argument, you frame the book with, actually, one of my favorite quotes from shakespeare from henry iv. you quote the boast, glenn says, i can call spirits from the

vasty deep, and hosper replies, well, so can i, but will they come when you do call for them? [laughter] and that's the question about the supreme court. you use that quote a couple times in the book to address the question -- couple of questions -- why does the supreme court get the support it gets from the public even when the public disagrees with it, and what does the court have to do, and i guess this is the really important question, to maintain that level of public trust and respect? and i think i understand your answer. you say the key lies in the court's ability to apply the constitution's enduring values to changing circumstances. unwavering values apply to ever-changing circumstances. so what does that mean? you're a judge, you're a pragmatic judge. you talk about pragmatism.

what does pragmatism mean when it comes to a judge interpreting the constitution or a statute? what is pragmatism? >> this is the point of the difficulty of the book and why i'm writing that half of the book. the trouble is that when you say, well, the supreme court really there are two bits of this, the public has to accept the court and that's been a long story which we can go into some about later. but also the court has to act in a certain way and people say, no, no, really. and i believe this really, a public acceptance is a question by and large of history and teaching and education, and the court can't do too much about that. >> we're kind of hard-wired. >> but the court can do it bit, and that's the question, what's its bit? as soon as i say, well, you take these -- if it's a constitutional area and you take the values that are written into this constitution and you say

how do they apply today, people think you've given a fourth of july speech. and they all applaud because it's a nice-sounding sentiments. and then you sit down and go home. but i want to say there isn't just a fourth of july speech. and someone who has a certain set of values and recognizes that in the constitution can develop approaches for different kinds of cases that the supreme court handles. so the framework that i use is to recognize that this document, the constitution, is not just about the court. i mean, there are states, there's a federal government, there's congress, there's the executive branch. we've divided power vertically and horizontally, and the court is just really patrolling the borders, and hamilton was right when he said it's the weakest branch and it has no purse, and

it has no sword. all that's true. the key in my mind is one way of going about this is to recognize that it's several parts of the government, and what the court can do is to develop working relationships, sensible relationships, productive relationships with other branches of the government. so now -- and it's going to be a little hard to get through some of these chapters because i want to say what is the relation with congress? the relation with congress and the court is about 60% of the court's work. what the court does is it interprets statutes. now, as soon as you start writing about that in newspaper, normally people get pretty bored. you don't know how often we do, but we do a lot. and you probably, only a few people know that 40% of the time we're even unanimous, 30-40%. and we're 5-4 maybe only 20 or 25%. and the real 5-4s are sometimes more mixed up than you think, and i don't just mean they're confusing opinion bees. i mean, people are not always on

the same side of this or that or the other thing. so it's complicated. there's a key when we're interpreting statute, and the key, to me in difficult cases, is purpose. what did congress intend? now, that's a little not quite fourth of july. and the reason that's not quite fourth of july is there's really a difference of opinion. everyone thinks when you judge, interpret a statute, you've got some words here. and these words, i use a good example from i found somewhere in a french newspaper about somebody who was trying to transport some snails. >> oh, go into that. >> all right. it was a schoolteacher. i didn't know they brought snails around in trains in paris, but apparently they do. and this man was taking some live snails from normandy to paris to show to his biology class, and he put them in a basket. and the conductor said you have to pay a fare for the basket, there are life animals in there -- live animals in there. and they said, no, read this, it

says right here in the tariff, no one can bring live animals onto a train unless they're in a basket, and if they are in a basket, you have to pay a full fare. he said, smails? that's what it says. [laughter] now, question for the class -- this isn't really the statutory, but it's the kind of thing we do. should he get paid or not paid? what does that mean, animals in a basket? and if he shouldn't have paid, why didn't he pay 20 fares? this after all, there were 20 snails. [laughter] so that's not such an easy question. and when, in fact, judges go after questions of that kind, what they do is they look at the text. and they look at the history of those words. and they look at the traditions that surround the word. now, i have to admit if it's damages or fees or costs, there's more of a tradition of legal interpretation than if word is snails, i have to admit that. but the fact is you look attrition, you look at

history -- tradition, you look at history, you look at texts, press dealts, there weren't too many snail precedents, anyway, you look at purposes. what were they after in writing this? why did they do it? and you look at consequences, not any old consequence in the world, but the consequence in light of the purposes. now, everybody looks at those six things. but some people say let's tone down this purpose and consequence business. that'll give the judge too much power to introduce his subjective views. let's never do it if we can. well, some people do think that in this very good faith, and they have reasons. but that is not me. i think, you know, let's look at purposes. let's look at consequences. so what i'm trying to do there is explain how you do that and why. all right? now, there are five other parts to this, but i don't want to keep you here all night. >> are well, i'm going to back up a minute. i'll back up a minute in case

people don't have kind of the full structure of the court's docket in mind. so sometimes the court decides constitutional cases which require the court to interpret different clauses of the constitution, sometimes the court decides statutory cases which require the court to figure out what congress meant, often congress doesn't speak clearly, congress speaks quite ambiguously, and there are more of these statutory cases than, i think, people are generally aware of. i think about half the docket, if not more, is statutory. >> and sometimes it's a question of an administrative law ruling. >> with right. >> and the administrators interpret it this way or that way. >> and sometimes it's a question of interpreting a statute so that it avoids fronting a constitutional question -- confronting a constitutional question. you have some very interesting thoughts about that in the book. so just to kind of put that in context, let me provide another bit of context. there's a big debate within the

court currently over as justice breyer alluded to, over the legit maas is si of of interpreting -- legitimacy of interpreting statute by a technique that enables the judge to go beyond the plain text. that's the snail example. it says you have to pay for animals, the snail's an animal, so you have to pay. that's the text. and another justice on the current court has written a book some years ago explaining his means of interpretation. so what's, what's different about this emphasis on purpose and emphasis on consequences and even sis on trying to make the system work is what's really interesting, i think, about your approach to statutory interpretation. so just to bring that out a little more, now, you come to the court, i guess, uniquely among the current justices you worked on the hill. you were chief counsel to the

senate judiciary committee under senator kennedy in a very important period when congress was dealing with deregulation, with criminal sentencing. you really were in the nitty-gritty of how congress works and how congressional staff behaves, and there are probably people in this audience who have something to do with the hill. so you bring a kind of a real world sensibility to this idea that when legislative history is written, it's not simply the criticism that one hear about legislation issues as well. the taffe is just off on their -- staff is just off on their own and, who knows, maybe the members of congress didn't read the bill or they have different views about the bill, the final product doesn't necessarily reflect a consensus. so what do you say to that kind of criticism? >> i try to explain why, in my view, when you do look at what the staff -- i was on the staff.

>> right. >> so maybe i'm pretty biased about that. but when i worked for senator kennedy, my job on the staff was to make certain that those reports and those floor statements and the words in the bill pretty much reflected what he thought or was prepared to accept. and i suspect if they had ended up having things that he wasn't prepared to accept and i hadn't told him about that or tried to do something about that, i think i would, perhaps, be looking for another job and not in massachusetts either. i think i'd have to go, perhaps, to mexico or some place. [laughter] but the job of the person and only of my former colleagues, we were both there, we mow that the senator doesn't read every word of a bill. the president of general motors get cans down with a wrench and puts a bolt in every car? we also know that it is an enterprise that people pull

together in. you're there to represent that point of view, and it's a very, very interesting enterprise and very complex. and it doesn't always work perfectly. but the object is not so hard to figure out, and compromise and trying to get those reports to say the wrong thing, at least when we worked there, it's unheard of that the representatives on the staff of every single senator in that committee. so they knew if they wanted to write a dissent, they could. if they wanted to have it modified, they could. it isn't just some staff over there trying to run everything that they want, at least not when that system works well. so it is a complicated system, and the court, in my area, has to be part of a rather complex system with the object in mind of trying to help congress from

the point of view that if you make the statute do what, essentially, they want, the public knows who's responsible for what occurs eventually. and if you have a public that wants an environmental law that's pretty strong and they write these words and that's what they're trying to get and the courts interpret it that way, well, the public knows who to hold responsible if they like the consequences or not. and if, in fact, the courts are out there with some other system of interpretation that may or may not reflect what the member of congress wants and then things go wrong with, well, who's to blame? no one knows, all right? too complicated, too confusing. everyone's blaming someone else. so i suspect and think that the democratic process works better when you have a system of courts that will try to work out the objective of these words in the bill and interpret accordingly.

that isn't always an easy thing to do. and sometimes you just can't do it. but i think that that is a basic objective, and that's why i put that particular one or two of the six possibilities that are all used up high. >> yeah, the -- i really, i commend you all to the chapter on statutory interpretation because it is your i view that the court should be working in partnership with congress, not as an adversary to congress and not as a hand maid to congress. but a partnership to the objective of the title of your book, "making our democracy work." to the extent that the court has the respect not to hold it to the stupidest, inadvertent language that might have come out in the statute but to the purpose for which the statute was intended, it motivates

congress to a transparency and the ability to really reflect what was going on in the congressional debates. you know, you don't hear that very often. it's something that's quite novel. >> not necessarily what i'm after. but that's a complement, and i appreciate it. but then you go to a different area. administrative law. and there i have kind of, i think, an approach that i would follow is one that looks to the comparative expertise as judges and say the nasa administrator who knows more about space than most judges or more about the environment and the environmental thing. but you look at the statute and see what's at issue and judge comparative expertise in accordance with that.

or when you're talking about states -- it's not just brandeis' idea of the states being laboratories and experiment, but that's part of it. it's several ideas. the europeans thought of what they call a subsidiary itself captures a lot of those ideas and having those general ideas that your mind helps when you reach difficult questions in that area or when you're dealing with lower court trial decisions, recognizing that these lower courts and higher courts, the right word is not hierarchy in my opinion. the right word is specialization. they have different jobs. it's not that they're a hierarchy, though they're on paper. it's the trial judge's job is different from that of the appellate court judge, and to understand that is to help decide a whole set of cases. and when you're talking about the constitution and civil liberties, i think that normally what we do -- and what we do do

in this many cases whether we say it or not is you look for the general value that's up there. in a hard case where it was hard to find the general value where we really disagreed was the gun control case. people disagreed about the basic values there that were being protected. and then you apply those values to today's circumstances. through complicated ways, but they're not impossible looking at how much the values infringe and for what reasons and whether they're alternatives. and then when you're dealing with the president in his most august capacity, an important nonadministrative capacity which is that security of the nation, the difficulty there, and you can see it in the past, you can see it in the core mat sue case. 70,000 american citizens of japanese origin in this 1942 were taken from san francisco and california and other places and moved into camped. and history by 1944, two years later, showed there was no justification for that

whatsoever. and the supreme court upheld it. and there were good civil libertarians on the court who voted to uphold it. and there were three in this dissent, jackson, murphy, roberts. and why? why did they do it? and to ask that question is to put a very big problem. because the court is responsible for seeing that the president, too, is held accountable to those standards of civil liberties and liberty that's there in the court -- in the constitution. but the constitution's not a suicide pact. so what i think, for example, in the case was the court just couldn't figure out how to do it. they said, well, president roosevelt has to run the war, or we do. and we know we can't. and, therefore, whatever he says has to go. and contrast that with the guantanamo cases where the

courts tried the majorities in those cases where i was part of it, so i'm somewhat biased in that respect. but they're trying, i think, we're trying to find a way to achieve a degree of accountability without, at the same time, undoing the power of the president and the congress to protect the security of the united states. did the court succeed? i'll never know. we won't know for years. when history hooks back and -- looks back and says that proved okay and at least we certainly hope not terrible, and that's true of a lot of cases. but what is it, why am i doing this? i mean, it's easy to think i'm doing it because i look back personally, was interested personally in my cases and trying to see whether those cases fitted together in some way, and i have to admit personally that's part of it, but there's a different reason. because whether i am right or whether i am wrong as to about these approaches, i think by illustrating these approaches, by illustrating what i'm doing, what i think i'm trying to do i

can, through that part, try to show people who aren't judges and who aren't lawyers, i can try to show people what the supreme court looks like through the eyes of one judge when the court is trying to make some of its most difficult decisions. and i want people to know that. and i want them to know that just as i want them to know about the cherokee indian case where the court said the land belongs to the cherokees. and the president of the united states, andrew jackson, said, i'll send in troops, but not to help the cherokees, to evict them and send them to oklahoma. john marshall's made his decision, let him enforce it. and i want them to understand the little rock case where eisenhower was told that if you try to enforce the court's order to integrate those schools in little rock, you're going to have to have a second reconstruction and occupy the south. that's what jimmy burns told him. the best that will happen, jimmy

burns said, is they'll close the school. and eisenhower decided to send the 101st airborne which people at that time knew just what that was. they were heros of the battle of the bulge. they were heros of normandy. they had been caught on those steeples and shot down the day of d day, and that's the troops that eisenhower said i'm putting a thousand of them on airplanes, and they're going to little rock, and they're going to take those children by the hand, those black children and there's the white school, and they're going in. and, you see, that was a great day for the law because nine judges couldn't do that. 9,000 judges couldn't do it. >> and, of course, arkansas then did close the schools. >> they did close the schools, but they was a step. it was an important step. it was right, and he fought it out, and a lot of other people did too. it's not just the judges, and it's not just the president. it's a lot of people, and what i want to see, i want o see if i

can explain to people who aren't lawyers or judges, you know, it's you too? you know this court was put there for you too? and it can't decide everything, and there are hardly anything it's always right about, and that doesn't matter that much because it's there as a kind of protection. it's there to do sometimes very unpopular things, and sometimes they're even wrong in your opinion and maybe in mine, but overall over the course of 200 years or so we have had a lot of bad things in our history. but overall we've got to a point with this institution where people will follow it. you see, that's what i'm trying to express. i'm trying to express what i feel when i see people of every race, every religion, every point of view who really disagree, and it's a big country, and there are plenty of points of view, and there's plenty of disagreement. and i see them come in the, and they've decided to resolve their differences under law and not with guns in the streets.

and that's the great virtue and treasure that i see every day. and how can i explain that? how can i -- i don't want it to be a fourth of of july speech which i've just given. [laughter] do you see why i go into the detail? >> so let me ask you, what's the biggest obstacle to the public coming to the kind of understanding that you'd like them top? after all, one way in which the court is unique is that justices explain themselves, right? you didn't agree with the majority in heller, the second amendment d.c. gun case. you explained what you thought was wrong. justice stevens in his dissent explained. the court really, members of the court take accountability for their opinions, and they explain them. so what's the problem, why can't -- why does it take a book like this? >> oh, by the way, the book will be a drop in the bucket. and what i think is the biggest obstacle is, and it's right there in your mind. as soon as i say it, you're going to say, well, maybe that's true.

i think the biggest obstacle is more and more people think that what the court does is political and that this is nine junior varsity politicians. that's what they think. [laughter] and everything tells them that. and the decisions they don't agree with, the articles that are written, the tremendous desire to politicize things and what -- and. i want to say, and the trouble is you can't just say, no, you can't say no 100 president. so i want to say, look, it's complicated. and basically the answer is, really, no. in the sense i understand by politics, are you democrat, republican, popular, unpopular? and that didn't what goes on. now, i don't always approve of everything that goes on because i'm in dissent some of the time. but still i don't think that's a very helpful characterization. then people say, well, if it isn't politics, these nine judges up there doing whatever they think happens to be good.

i say it isn't that either. it isn't that either. it's far more complex. it isn't really. judges do have -- well, is it just that you've values? values, that's part of it. i group up in san francisco, i went to public high school, i've lived a long time and had a lot of experience in this law and people do, in fact, form views about what the country's like, how law relates to people and so forth. that's certainly true. and it can be different with different people, that's certainly true. and presidents may fail to appoint judges who will always decide their way. we all know that. you know how teddy roosevelt appointed oliver wendell holmes, and in three months holmes had decided northern security was on the wrong side, and roosevelt said i could carve a judge with more backbone out of a banana. [laughter] pairly annoyed. sometimes they have more success. it's hardly surprising that people have different general philosophies or ways of looking at law and life and america and

so forth. and that isn't a bad thing. it's a big country. there are 300 million people. but i want to give a sense of what it -- in the best way i can do this is through my own eyes because we all know ourselves the best. that's both a good thing and a bad thing about human nature. but i can put forth, i can express best how i'm seeing this, and then i hope in doing that whether people agree or disagree with the way that i do see it, they'll begin to think that others on the court as well have perhaps somewhat different versions, but these are the kinds of thoughts and arguments that go into deciding cases. these are the different kinds of cases they have, and this is where the court's been in the public mind. over 200 years so that when has happened. a year ago the chief justice of ghana was in my office, and she said she's trying to do a good job in ghana of trying to

develop these democratic institutions. and she said, what's the secret? hmm? good questionment -- good question. i have to say i don't know. there isn't a secret. and what i'm tempted to do is to tell you a little bit of the history. and the history i want to tell is the history of some good things and some bad thicks. there's -- things. there's the cherokee case, there's the dred scott case, but on the other hand there's also little rock. and there also is much to be pleased about. and by the time you get through that, i hope you have some kind of, i hope somebody will have, you know, a reader who isn't even -- fine if they're lawyers. but if they're not lawyers, they'll have an idea of where the court's been in american life and why, and they may have an idea, too, of how in these really complicated and difficult areas it's not a fourth of july speech, but that fourth of july speech can be spun out and can