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>> well, a lovely way to spend the night. thank you for joining us. thank you very much for being here. it's an honor tabby. i'm diana ingraham the executive director at hill central naval hospital and they have lots of things going on in this building. i'm very curious how many folks have ever been in the building before? welcome. [laughter] check out all the materials on your seats. this is a special year for hill center. i think everyone got one of our preservation fund brochures. we are celebrating the fifth anniversary of hill center's opening and the 150th anniversary of the first naval hospital, the old naval hospital in washington.

it takes a lot of time, energy and funding to keep this beautiful 150-year-old building in its day. please join our 150th anniversary so we can have these beautiful programs for your great-grandchildren, great grand nieces and nephews. tonight please join me in thanking the capital hill can community foundation for supporting free programming at hill center. a big round of applause. [applause] please take a moment to turn off your mobile devices and hill press is an award-winning journalist author provocateur broadcaster and has created a very special series top of the hill with bill press, conversations with fascinating people of our time.

so thank you, bill are all that you do for the hill center. [applause] it is such an honor. >> provocateur. >> maybe not tonight. it is such an honor to welcome the hill center. sonia sotomayor associate justice of the supreme court of united states, it's a very simple format. bill and her honor will be in conversation for half an hour and we will open it up to q&a. we are taping this for our youtube channel so charlotte will be passing around the microphone. please try and be very crisp and quick in questions for the justice. she has requested that we not photograph or videotape the conversation, so let's respect her wishes on that front and let me turn it over to bill. >> we are ready to go. thank you diana and justice it's

such fun in such an odd in such a not too happy you with us tonight. we have had these programs bishops and nuns and u.s. senators and members of the president's cabinet, never a justice of the supreme court. [applause] >> thank you. it's nice to occasionally being a first. >> you have made a life of it. as a reporter of the members of the white house press corps i was there in the east room of the white house when president obama announced your white house house -- your -- and it's so exciting to see you settle into the cord and exert a strong presence there. we welcome you tonight. >> i don't think i've ever told you, just before i entered the

conference room i was walking down the hall with the president and the vice president and because they have longer legs than i do, they were walking really faster than i was so at a certain point i whispered, please stop. and they both simultaneously turned around and faced me and smiled. at that moment i had an out of body experience. it was as if my conscious self flew up somewhere in the sky and looked down at what was happening and i realized that it was my way of disconnecting from the overwhelming emotions i was experiencing and giving myself an opportunity to do what i had to do which was give a speech. i don't know if i hadn't done that whether i could have and maintained my calm.

but i thought it would and the next day. it continued for about a year and a half. [laughter] it took a while to come back down to earth and now i'm fully here. it was a special day that day for me. >> just as there is in 800-pound gorilla back in the room which i want to tackle right away if i can. and ask you, are you in any way apprehensive about what happened in the nation last tuesday? >> i am going to tamir from answering that question that way. i will answer it in a different way which is i think that this is the time where every good person has an obligation both to continue being heard and to

continue doing the right thing. we can't afford for a president to fail and it is true for those who tell us that we have to support that which he does which is right and help guide him to those right decisions in whichever way we want to do that but we can't afford to despair and we can't afford to give up on pursuing the values that we and others have fought so hard to achieve. and so for me, this is a challenge. i will continue doing what i think is the right thing. and it's a challenge we all have to face. [applause] >> i think you answered it the right way with the right answer. one thing for sure is that the

new president will be beginning early in his term another nominating another supreme court of united states. for the last nine months with the death of antonin scalia in february the court has been operating shorthanded with eight justices. how is that handicapped the work of the court if it has? >> well, as you know last year we were quite fortunate in part because my dear colleague and friend justice scalia passed away in february, which was later in the term. we had already heard half of our caseloads essentially and so we managed to split in only four cases. and we tried very hard to work together to come together where we kid and i think anyone who is familiar with our jurisprudence has probably identified the

cases where we compromised, all right? mostly what we did was to avoid the issues we granted search on and took the cases on the other narrow grounds but that begs the question -- and it is the right question and the reason we don't do that is that we grant surged because there's a need to resolve the question that is perplexing the lower courts. the circuit courts are obviously split because virtually all circumstances where we hear it it is where the circuit exists and that means that justice is being applied differently across the country. their reason to grant cert is to resolve that situation and so a

narrowly decided case that avoids the issue that is perplexing the lower courts is perpetuating the unfairness of a continuing split country of that legal question. so it's not an ideal situation and it's not a format that they think any of the justices, and i obviously speak with knowledge to respect for myself. we function better because we can then resolve the questions that we need to. >> an incident that you mentioned justice scalia, your friends justice scalia. when i listen to questions i'm often asked how can you stand to sit across the table from bob novak or pat buchanan? some people might ask that question if you and justice scalia or some of the other justices.

how do you get along and how do you guys come together when you are deciding these cases? >> as we respect each other, because i know that as much as i care about this country, about our constitution and our system of government, they care as much as well. we are disagreeing on what the right answer in a particular situation and it's certainly not from evil intent. it is from a genuine belief that my answer is the right one. so, if you look at those cases where we are writing opinions that are very, what's the word

that i use with the kids, animated, those opinions where people think we are being a little harsh with each other. most of the time you'll notice that the vast majority of the harshness comes from the dissenter, the loser. it's a lot easier to forgive a loser for getting upset. he tickets if you are in the majority it's a lot easier to forgive when you understand that someone is articulating their reactions because they want to shake you and say please see it my way. what is wrong with you? i think we all understand that passion. we all appreciate what animates it, what drives us and how hard we work to get to our individual

vote and then to express what's important to us or others to understand and so i think that's one of the reasons we can remain friends. as you know, the two most unlikely friends on the court for justice ginsburg and justice scalia. i think most people may not know that he and i agreed about 70 to 75% of the time and in some areas more than others. he was a libertarian as you know and we found common ground in a lot of areas in criminal law. and so, it doesn't take much for a rational person to realize that the person you are fighting against today, you may need their vote tomorrow. so it's certainly is practical i think to recognize that when we

disagree it's not because we dislike each other as people. he was fun, he was humorous. to sit in a conference with him where someone -- singing it diddy of some sort from his childhood more often than not i would have to look at him and say i don't know what that is, what is that? [laughter] he loves eating. you have to hear him come back at one of our favorite places in the city. he likes doing new and interesting things. there's a picture of him and justice ginsburg on camera. there have to be some good, right? that was a joke, okay? my point is that he was a

devoted, devoted father and a devoted husband and those values are important to me, as they should be to other people. and so, it wasn't as hard as people imagine. i think you have to accept that people will disagree with you and perhaps on some things that are fundamental to you, but if you are working together you have to find a way to reach that void and maintain a relationship where you are talking. >> i was lucky to have the opportunity to interview justice scalia a couple of times and justice breyer and i remember i interviewed justice breyer after his book about the constitution

basically making the constitution a living document and then i interviewed justice scalia in front of a big audience who emphatically said no, the constitution is a dead document. >> he usually will sit there about a half-dozen times. >> do you care to weigh and? >> no, i won't weigh in. i will say when i have spoken to justice breyer he would tell me that he always had fun in those conversations because it was so easy to excite him. but i am aware of those conversations. i think everyone is. >> you have been seven years on the court now? >> i have started my eighth. >> looking back personally dealing with and wrestling with, is there any one case that was the toughest one for you to

decide and to come to grips with or a couple of them? >> i am not trying to be cute or to avoid your question that i am going to answer it in a different way, which is i think every case is hard and every case is hard for one simple reason. when we decide a case we automatically choose a winner and by definition, we declare a reason and the one thing i'm very conscious of, much more than i ever was when i was on the lower courts and as you know there was a district in the circuit court judge, i have not issued before coming to this court how much comfort i took from knowing that there were courts above me that would catch my worst mistakes.

there is no cord above this. when we render a decision we have two really declare someone entitled to a right, to a claim but we have also told a person the other side, that a right they thought they had is gone. that they claimed that they felt was important enough to bring to the supreme court has not been recognized. and so i am much, much more conscious in every single case about what my decision means and how much heartache is going to cause a group of people or institutions. that makes every case really tough. >> that is a burden that every justice dares i am sure.

your historic figure is the first latina on the court do you feel on top of that may be a special burden or a special responsibility? >> no. i have often said i am not a latina justice. i am a justice. i am a latina person but i am also everything else that i have done and experienced in my life. i am yes, a catholic, a child brought up in a single mother. ivy league educated, a former prosecutor, a former corporate lawyer representing some of those big corporations out there, okay? i have been a district been a district court judge, circuit court judge. there isn't one part of my life that defines sonia. i am an amalgam of all of those experiences.

and so i don't feel a particular responsibility merely because one part of me is latina. my responsibility is to do the right thing for the country, and so i don't think that anything enhances that sense of burden or minimizes it in any other way either. >> you talk of this wonderful book -- when you got started in law and practicing law, this is maybe a tough time for women in the law. as a woman do you feel that you had equal opportunity and has the situation in the legal profession for women improving?

>> who am i to say as a supreme court justice? [laughter] it's like when i tell law students i have one professional regret in life and i look at them and say that's a disingenuous statement. one big mistake that i has made and still gotten on the supreme court. my answer to that is i should have -- which i still think it's important, a career choice that i should have made differently and couldn't decide. >> do you want to talk about some the things that people have called you? >> no, no i mean it's so hurtful during my nominating process wind there for some people saying that i wasn't smart enough. now, you sit there and you sort

of look at my record. i graduated summa cum laude phi beta kappa from princeton before before -- by the way, way before grade inflation. at yale i had a fairly decent record there. i was the editor of the yale law journal. i was the managing editor of the international law journal. i have been a fairly successful prosecutor and i think it's successful as a judge, as a lower court judge and it was hurtful for me to hear people say that i wasn't smart enough. and when i thought about it, i realized that it is the language that many paint when it comes to positions of responsibility. either not smart enough, not

creative enough, not something enough. with me they said i was too tough. [laughter] you know i mean my former colleague and i justice scalia sparred on who would ask the most questions and i certainly didn't think that i was harsh on lawyers but i was described and am described as very aggressive. he wasn't described as aggressive and boy, was he. if you looked at the two of us i may have been tough but i was never harsh. he could be both. but that adjective wasn't used to describe him. yes there are gender differences not only in those ways but having a marshal when i was on the courts below say -- can you

imagine anyone calling a federal male judge honey? may be his or her wife or spouse but it would be unlikely. or sitting in a room as a lawyer and a roomful of male lawyers and someone turning to me insane could you give us coffee, please? i didn't have to respond then. i was working with a mentor and a colleague until the day he died remained a dear, dear friends but he turned to the lawyer and said the phone is over there and i will give you the number for a coffee shop. she is a lawyer. what would i have said? to this day i'm not sure. my friend didn't give me a chance but i know that it was hurtful when it happened. i think every woman has had a

similar situation occurred in her professional life or something close to it because it is a natural sort of part of our lives in the professional world. people don't hear often what they are saying. and they often don't take about how they address the impact that it's having on the other person. so yes, but i don't know in the end that it impeded me much. >> that justice loves taking questions from the audience and we will get to that just after one more. i want you to get your questions ready and charlotte has the microphone if she is nearby. just as, in terms of kind of a

couple of questions in one. what inspired you in your life to go into, to want to study law and to practice law and when you were at princeton were you helped by affirmative action and this is still important today? >> well, without question i was helped by affirmative action from high school to college. at my high school there had only been one other minority accepted to princeton before i got there and he was asian-american, chinese in fact, still a dear friend of mine. he is the one who called me and i described the call in my book and said sonia you have to apply to ivy league colleges. you have to read my book to understand my background and the

fact that i just wasn't familiar with the ivy league schools. my college applications were after he called me harvard, gail, princeton, columbia, city university and stony brook state university which is where i thought i was going. that is how unsophisticated my knowledge was back then. so why was princeton or why did it except me and not any of the other kids from my high school? we were in the minority in our high school but this was the era in which institutions in the country were understanding that civil rights meant not just du jour changes in the law and segregation of public entities but an obligation to ensure that

we took care of de facto segregation's, the institutions can and i still do believe have an op edition to recognize that there are structural barriers in our society to equality. the first and most important structural barrier to equality is the lack of equality in education. i firmly believe that if we don't take care of that quality first we are never going to have an equal society. because if you can't educate your population on an equal basis than we are never ever going to be able to achieve equality and opportunity. but at any rate, princeton at that time felt an op occasion to reach more broadly than the schools that it had previously

drawn from all of the high schools that it had sought students from pat a great source of the types of students they were accustomed to accepting that they didn't have many minority students. so they experimented in reaching more broadly in their search than they ever had before. and they are still doing that today. i think that's to the better because it is reaching a greater portion of the population and not merely minorities. kids off, for lack of a better word, non-minority kids from appalachia didn't start having opportunities like places at princeton, harvard and yale until the civil right movement made these institutions think about diversity in different ways and so yes i was very much a product of that. do we still need it?

if we are committed to ensuring that as a society everyone is stepping outside of their sort of regular routine and stepping outside of what is easy to do to create a more equal society, then we do need if not affirmative action, we need that spirit that says we want to be more than we are. we want to be a country that stands for every one of its systems. so i am a person who very much doesn't believe in the old balky type of affirmative action, quoting in things like that but i do believe we have to be committed to ensuring that the processes we have in place to

select people are really selecting on the basis of potential merit and not on the basis that happens in many situations of ingrained habits. and how many institutions, especially in places have ingrained sources of selecting people that exclude so many others. that is what we find. >> i can't resist the temptation to transition to your taking questions of the audience but you look at this audience, how many young people are here tonight? >> i am really grateful. >> they are here because they admire you and they look up to you and i'm particularly looking at these two girls on the second row on this side. when they see you. >> you weren't with me last night, were you? okay. >> when they see you and see where you are what you want them to know and remember from your

life and your experience and what is your message to them tonight? >> apec toloth -- i picked law because it was the way i thought i could help. what lawyering is for me, good lawyering is helping people and their relationships with each other and with societies and institutions. lawyers who are doing the right thing are help people who are trying to work together and help those people figure out how to do it in the best way. so both of their interest are protected. that's what lawyers do. so for me that was a the service that i wanted to be a part of, a service that i like being part of as a judge but most importantly, it brings me

something that you should find in your own lives, passion. i love what i do. i have loved being a lawyer. i loved being a judge. it's something that i wake up to every day and i feel good about myself and about what i do. and so as you live your own life , be looking for that passion and that thing that drives you inside, that makes you excited about living. if you can find that excitement you will have the happiest life. just like i have. [applause] >> where do we start? fire away.

>> i will tell you what the benefit is for asking a question. let me just say the following. i don't like sitting down. you will know that when i was a child i was very curious about everything and never stopped running. my mom said that at seven months i got up from the floor and didn't walk, just ran and i still do. you have to be careful because you see some of these guys and ladies around here? they are my police force. they are here to protect me from me, not you but that means if you're asked a question you can get up but don't get up unexpectedly, it scares me, okay? i will walk around. i need a hands down, that's the only thing i need. you get a picture with me if you get up. no social media with it but you get it for personal use. who wants to take advantage?

i always know how to bribe people. hello. >> hi. i will be the guinea pig. we know a lot more about the court from a public perspective. >> tell me who you are first. >> my name is sarah montgomery and i'm an attorney with the federal government. i wondered if when he arrived at the court there was any tradition or practice or quirks that you found kind if personalized experience for you that you could share with us to help us know a little less of the public side and more one aspect of how things function? >> you know, i don't know what i expected that when i got to my lower courts, in both the

district and the circuit court there weren't manuals that there were judges who through the ages that sort of created writings about how to transition to being a judge. and it was very helpful. that didn't happen on the supreme court. the closest to that was the first day i arrived in the middle of my desk was justice ginsburg's chambers manual and that is what i think most justices and their law folks create. for manual that they pass on from year-to-year two new law clerks to show them how law clerks operate and how do i identify how the justices think about certain things. for example what does justice ginsburg and what do i think

about granting extensions to people who want an extension of time to file their petition and justice ginsburg's manual and now mine basically tells incoming clerks, this is what the justices want. ever quest two extend time, timely. as the person exercised due diligence? what is the nature of their excuse for seeking the extension and ultimately what is the value of petitions being sought or that might be soft? those sorts of things i would not have known intuitively or otherwise. it would have taken me time to develop those for myself. having her manual was invaluable but unlike my other ports, nobody offered to tell me how they set up chambers. and i guess i could have, and

found out but at that point i had been a judge for 17 years and so i had my way of doing things. so i figured that out. there are a lot of things in the court that are not written down, that are just what happens and i often felt that i was walking into the middle of a conversation among the other justices. a lot of them had been together for decades and it wouldn't have happened where somebody would say something, i would look at myself and say that wasn't in the papers. what are they talking about? they didn't mention that case and a colleague justice stevens and justice breyer on occasion and even justice alito would lean over and say sonia don't

worry about it, he brings it up with everything. it gave me some confidence or purposes about things like, i'm trying to think of something simple because i can bridge competences. when we grant corporate status to an applicant and when don't we? and go straight to the merits and when do we deny a form of practice? things like that are not written down anywhere so you have to live in the experience so you get to know those processes. so what is more surprising than i think the public would understand and not infrequently we will turn in the middle of a conversation and say to the chief can you find out what the court has done in the past? it might be helpful someday if we had a justice taking notes.

[laughter] i am not one of them but it would be helpful. >> thank you. >> absolutely. >> thank you so much. >> i offered a picture to the two young girls. are you related or not? if you are not i will take separate pictures. they are related? okay. is that a cousin or a sister or? keep it because she might deny it someday. >> thank you you guys. >> thank you justice and thank you bill. my question is maybe twofold and

you may exercise your prerogative to answer what you wish. one is i have never understood how a justice can be quoted and originalist or a strict constructionist and how can one see in the mind of what our founders experienced and the second part again i don't understand how you can -- we reaching a decision that i was brought up to believe that judges ruled strictly based on order. can you offer some observations on that? >> tell me her name. >> jay i'm a retired professor. >> hello. for the non-lawyers in the room, i'm going to simplify this

explanation greatly because i don't want to receive criticism for being too simplistic but i will try. originalists like my colleague justice scalia believed that all questions should be interpreted through the historical lens of what the founding fathers were confronting when they wrote the provisions of the constitution, so that when you get a case involving an issue and i will give you an example. it's an exchange between justice scalia and justice alito, all right, who pretty much saw things the same way a lot but a number of years ago we had a case involving the prohibition of the sale of certain video games to children without their

parents consent. and justice alito in questioning one of the lawyers basically said do you really think our founding fathers ever imagined the day when a video could represent killing of someone in such realistic terms that it is today because some of these animated cartoons seemed life like through the lawyers said no justice, i don't think so and justice scalia said that our founding fathers knew about violence. they didn't permit the control of violence, and so a strict originalist as he was would say since they didn't control violence, this may be a more extreme violence today but it's

still at its core a violent. so i am not going to vote to permit the suppression of this kind of information. justice alito dissented in that case and i think you would describe himself as an originalist buts in a slightly different way. on the other side is what bill press called the living constitution which is that the constitution is not a dead document but a new one that was intended to last as long as the country could last and our founders hoped it would be, basically forever and that it was intended to grow in society and to be interpreted within the norms that the society developed. and so for example, on issues

like cruel and unusual punishment, a person or a justice moore at cannes to the living constitution would say you know, it was okay back when to burn people to death. today, our norms of decency have changed. today that is cruel and unusual. justice scalia at one point in the start of his tenure said he is really not a strict originalist because he probably wouldn't permit burning people today. shortly before his stint he said i'm going to go back to being an originalist. the society is going to tolerate it, it's okay but his quip in that situation i think tells you

a lot. there are justices who are closer to the strict originalist but even those have veered away from it strictly because the society does change. our precedence have had creating experiences within the law that you can't ignore and so even the strictest originalist have had to make exceptions. so have those who believe themselves to be living constitutional theorists. we have to go back to understand what our forefathers meant to be able to give a framework answer to a new problem. and so i don't think that there is any real strict person completely at either end. having said that, where does

life experience come in? in many ways the most important is an understanding the impact of laws on people and that you can't ignore, and it's why we need diversity on the court as you do in every human endeavor because to be able to understand the arguments of everyone involved, you need people who can present those arguments with clarity. you know, i'll give an example, a small one. many many years ago there was a case involving a school that had searched a 13-year-old girl for an alleged possession of aspirin. there had been a triple hearsay

of someone who reported the girl for having taken an aspirin and a no drug school. they searched the girl on the basis of this triple layer hearsay and searched her without informing her parents, strip-searched. so the case came to argument before the supreme court. schools are public institutions and they are subject to fourth amendment, unreasonable search and seizure and during the argument, i wasn't there so i am claiming something is public information, okay? one or more of my colleagues analogized the strip-search to undressing and a locker room. basically how much different was it, all right? my colleagues justice ginsburg was criticizing but at one point

she was overheard to have said i don't think some of my colleagues understand what it's like to be a 13-year-old girl and how sensitive a child is to their personal integrity. now, do i think that change any votes? i wasn't there, remember. do i think there was value from the fact that no opinion in that case analogized the search to a locker room situation. yes, i think there is value to that so yes, your experiences, and it happens, someone in an opinion uses a word that is

offensive and it's not a question of political correctness. it's a question of unknowing injury. you know, if you can avoid unknowing injury when it's not necessary to the point you are making you might elect to change your opinion but you should be informed. you should not do things from ignorance and i think having justices with different experiences helps ensure that we as an institution are not doing things from ignorance. would you like your picture? valasco. >> okay. >> thank you. >> all right, i'm coming this way.

>> i'm a private sector attorney my question is on the court if any of those specifically inspired you and some i? >> interesting. hello, how are you? thank you for being here. i will say the following. i consider one former justice to be a mentor and that is -- so my overlaps with for only one year. i still think of him as a mentor

because he taught me to have the courage to speak when i thought speaking most important even if others disagreed. and when you think about the group dynamics involved and it conglomerate of nine individuals, you realize there is a lot of pressure on the majority and if there isn't pressure to conform with the full nine there is pressure to conform with their subgroup. deviation is not something that is looked upon favorably by people who are trying to get your vote, and so it is very unusual in any given situation for any justice to be a solo dissenter in any case or to speak out by themselves.

and there is a reason for that. it's just called dynamics that justice stevens gave me comfort and understanding that yes you would like others to join you but when you think that is something is important enough to be said even if you are not going to win, say it. i think that probably i hope took off a number of years from mike coming to that conclusion myself. it was very nice to have a mentor who said it's okay to do that. and so, yes. i feel privileged and in fact when i heard about his retiring i went to try to talk him out of it. i obviously wasn't successful. come on up.

>> we have time for at least one more. >> thank you. are you related? does he treat you well? she is not talking. [laughter] come on you too. the only people who get pictures who don't ask questions or kids. thank you for being here. >> just as we have a question here. >> i'm sorry did you have a question? i didn't know she had the microphone. >> tell me who you are.

>> my name is jessica. >> hello jessica. what do you do? >> i am a security guard. >> do you ever walk branches to look? >> guess i do. i traveled all the way from europe just to see you and i have read your whole book and i was very touched by it. >> thank you. >> i don't have any special title in life but i want to know. >> we all do. do you like what you do? >> i like it but it's not my passion. >> so you have got to work at finding your passion. >> i'm in my 20s and for somebody like you who has lived a large life what would your advice be for -- [inaudible] in any aspect of your life? >> that's a hard one.

i understand it because they see so many people who live with that. i'm not perfect. i get discouraged and i get sad and there are moments in my life where i thought life is hard. you can't change the minds of some people so why do you even try? i think in the end what i have decided that something related to a condition i have, diabetes which taught me this when i was very, very young. when i was first diagnosed the prognosis for diabetes was very poor. i believed most of my childhood and i probably wouldn't change my mind until i reached 50 but i was going to die young and the one thing that thought gave me

was a drive to pack as much as i could into my life as fast as i could. and so when i tell people and they don't believe it but my mom will tell you, when i was in high school i would go to school all day, i was an active participant in student government and a whole bunch of activities including four in six and debate and all that other stuff. i would go home and study every night. i would go to bed and i would do that all week long, monday through thursday. friday and saturday nights i would -- but i would get up and work saturday and sunday because in my family i had to because of our economic situation. i would party intel 12, sometimes one or two.

my mother was of the opinion that i could be trusted and if i called her and told her i want to stay out late it was okay as long as i told her where i was. but i was up at 6:00 in the morning to start working at 8:00 in the morning. i can't keep up that pace now. but i'm. active and i do lots of things because that experience has taught me that we are given a gift, a treasure. we are given life and we have no idea how long it will last but we know that if we take advantage of every minute we are given, if we try to do something meaningful that then we give value to that gift we receive. ..

when i get down and i despair i just think back to the value of that special gift that only i have, which is i can make other people happy for what i can give them and every time i learn a.

someday when you find your passion you will use that knowledge. don't give up. good luck. [applause] one final question. we heard you speak a little bit about your experience and career and the hurt he felt after that, and i was wondering for women who may experience a similar bias, what advice or encouragement would you give to keep it from impacting and living out your passion?

>> i don't know if there is an answer that there is a magic pill for the approach. it's the way to resolve an issue of bias. so for example i thought back to myself what to write -- what do i do. that was my instinct. but i thought back and realized i think that he will seize me as a friendly judge. some people can take that to the level of familiarity that they shouldn't and that's what i

thought had happened. so i thought about it for the moment and i said i know we are friends and i really like you thabut if somebody heard you cal me honey, they would think something wrong is going on and i don't think that's good for you for me so how about we stick with judge, and he didn't make the same mistake. so i was at a mock trial and there were jurors from the community and their positions on in the first round. -- there was a gentle man in the front row who clearly didn't like me. it's like every time you say

something it's a sort of discussed. so at the end of the mock trial, i went up to him and said i could tell you didn't like me. what was i doing wrong and he said you weren't doing anything wrong. you can't do anything about why i didn't like you. don't worry about it. i said i'm a student and part of my job is to learn from the mistakes of please tell me what i did wrong. so after that back and forth, he turned to me and said look, i don't like, i actually hate jewish women from new york. [laughter] and i think i did this and i actually thought for a second

but i'm not jewish. then i sat back within myself and i looked at him and said your right i can't do anything about that and i walked away. one of my friends from high school said why didn't you just punched him and i said what is the purpose of getting into a fight with someone like that? i was never going to change his mind, someone that limited in their view of others you will not talk reason so i was going to get into a scene with no purpose at the end of.

[applause] and i wear it with pride. a third situation had to do this series of questions when i was in law school. i'm sorry. i will just keep coming. an interview where as interviet the table a group of veterans arwere being hosted by the firms applicants to the firm and the classmate that had spent the summer introducing us in a sort

of neutral terms from a puerto rican family in new york and is now at yale. as soon as the introductions were over with this man looks at me and says did you get in only because you are puerto rican and the conversation went on from there. it was insulting especially since he never looked at my resume and as i told you the next day when i confronted him in private i said i don't think so. i think it's because i graduated the way that i did from princeton and if you looked at my resume i doubt that you would have asked me that question. in that situation i thought about was my response should be

and how insulting what he had done was and moreover it wasn't the time or place for him to have affirmative-action. i was an applicant at his firm and he should treat me with respect, not to make assumptions about me but to actually interview me with that level of respect. i went further and filed a complaint with the career division and i learned later that many students like me had been subjected to questions in the interview and i chosen this moment because i understood that it wasn't just for me. it was for the good of others who may not be in the same position i was to deal with that kind of situation.

how do you deal with any kind of bias directed at you? in terms of my personality, i am more likely to engage people and much more likely to do what i did with him for stitches to go and talk to him about it and express my outrage but that's who i am, but it's the nature of my personality generally and sometimes it makes a difference. sometimes you get a genuine apology. sometimes you learn things about your performance you don't like learning that it's important to take him and address because not all things that we recognize our bias, sometimes we understand

the situation or we are not given credit to other things. it's doing something that gets to the situation and acknowledges it may have been the motivation for the other person and take that into account in the approach. i think that it makes the conversation more meaningful. it helps the other person understand what they've done but givingiving him out as well whet you're asking them to do is change their behavior towards you. good luck. [applause]

we will get your picture. don't forget. [applause] >> we are blessed to have you where you are representing us all into to spend a great hour with you this evening. [applause] will as president obama travels to greece, germany and through, president elect former campaign manager is in the united kingdom speaking with itv news, he said if we can work to eradicate

isis, i think that is a win for the american people. are there going to be places there are some disagreements, of course there are but that's the case with everybody. but they have an opportunity to start a relationship with the same mutual respect and understanding that there are places they can work together government reform subcommittee chair mark meadows will be here to talk about the election of donald trump

[inaudible conversations] the committee will come to order without objection the chair is authorized to declare recess to