i can't fool this crowd. with that said, half of the cases that you shouted out are not bill of rights cases. so, before the constitution, madison is original and isn't any great principle of liberty. i will add a few more. gideon versus wainwright, griswold versus connecticut, "new york times" versus sullivan, brown v. board of education, roe v. wade, lawrence v. texas, none of them is a bill of rights case. why not tax because the bill of

rights originally applied only against the federal government. it's about states rights and in between the celebration of the local juries and bill of rights was anti-federalist teen party suspicion of local government. and that's important. but that isn't the power bill of rights today because you believe some of the most fundamental rights need to be protected against states and localities. brown v. topeka and kansas, gideon versus wainwright in florida, roe v. wade and texas, lawrence versus texas, sullivan was an effort by alabama to shut down free speech. miranda v. arizona, griswold versus connecticut.

most of the cases that ordinary people think of as bill of rights cases are not bill of rights cases because the amendments are only about limiting the federal government. so, what kind of cases are gideon versus wainwright and texas when they are not bill of rights cases you now know enough to know the answer was cases are they. they are 14th amendment cases. no state or localities shall make or enforce any that is the second founding. a second bill of rights that is more intuitive for most americans today because the states misbehave because matheson lost. no state shall violate the senate didn't go along so he lost that fight but he wins in

the end thanks to the 14th amendment and we gave madison the credit for the final amendment but it's a little bit ironic because all of this is precipitated this 14th amendment by the slave of crises and the abuse of power and madison and jefferson were charter members of that and found it a political party whose base was basically a southern base that benefited hugely in the electoral college and elsewhere from the presence because of the three fifths law jefferson and madison and their party is going to get extra electoral votes because the southern states are voting for them are getting extra seats in the house of representatives and therefore the existence of

slavery. it's both ironic through the 14th amendment through lincoln. >> you can watch this and other programs on linux booktv.org. >> printers row lit fest continues now with geoffrey stone. ..

geoff, the supreme court has held and it is presently the law in the united states, that the constitution protects most pornography and abortion rights and same-sex marriage. that would have surprised the framers, would have surprised most americans 100 years ago, so how did that happen? >> guest: you have to read the book to answer that. it happened through a

combination of social movements that began to change public opinion and public understanding about these issues. it happened -- it was -- with respect to pornography with technological change in the advent of internet and cable which mad it was much more pervasive and happened as a result of the justices having a fuller understanding of the consequences of some of these laws. so maybe i can start with the example of, say, abortion. one thing most people assume today is that dwayne roe v. wads decided in 1973 -- i was a law clerk to justice brennan -- but roe v. wade people assumed it

was a radical left wing decision that radically changed the law on abortion in terms terms of wt had historically been. in fact that was not the case. abortion was legal throughout western civilization. it was legal at the time that the constitution was adopted. it was legal in fact until in late 19th century when it finally began to change, and abortion was illegal then in the history of the united states for only about 80 or so years between then and sprem court decision in row row. what rowe did was to basically reinstate the law with respect to choice that had been in place at the time that the constitution was adopted. now, one of the requests andy raid, would this have surprised the framers? that is in some sense an unanswerable question. on the one hand the framers themselves lived in a world in

which abortion was commonplace, it was legal, had never been illegal in western history, and they simply took it for granted. never would have occurred to them there was a need to define an express constitutional right to abortion. in the same way that, let's suppose that the state later prohibited marriage. the framers would never have put a provision in the constitution guaranteeing the right to marry because it never would have occurred to them there would be a law that would take away the freedom to marry. we can't know what they would have thought about this particular issue. on the other hand, however, what is clear is the framers knew that the rights they were guaranteeing in the bill of rights under freedom 0 of speech, freedom of rollings, searches and seizures, right to due process, were not exhaustive of all of the rights on

unanimous man. one reservation that it had about adopting a biffle of rights it was be taken as if it was exhaustive and only the rights that would specified would be the rights of individual against the government. to address that dilemma, james madison drafted what became the ninth amendment to the constitution which basically provide that the eenumb racing of the civil rights would not be used to disparage rights of other people. the idea there are other rights not specifically identified that are grounded in the constitution and need to be respected and left open the question of what the rights are. that is a huge challenge that is places upon the future but it was challenge the framers wanted to put there and it was on the basis, i think, of that invitation that the courts over the years recognizees things like the constitution allight to

marry, right not to be sterilized, right to use contraception and right to abortion and so on. >> host: one of the strengths of the books -- it's like a novel with three characters who keep encountering one another. so, when the temperature begins -- you go back to the ancient world. there is no particular stigmaization of sexuality as such and one has to move forward in time to a place where there is concern about pornography, which i think you show is fairly late development in american history. prohibition of abortion is -- both 19th century phenomenon. the concern about same-sex marriage much more modern. and so i think -- and i found the book absolutely convincing on this, that these are issues

that just were not issues for the framers. the idea that the natural rights they understood quite broadly would have had this specific application, i think you're right, it's an unanswerable question. it's like asking what james madison would have thought about "star wars." you have a former colleague who has an answer to that. but in general-not an answerable question. so, then there are a couple of waves of social movement in your story. one is the social movement that put these prohibitions in place, and then there is a reaction against that, which eventually produced the constitutional doctrines that we began by talking about. the one question that i -- constitutional scholars argue about is whether social movements have a legitimate role in interpreting the -- changing

the meaning of the constitution, and one kind of pushback you'll get -- you're generally enthusiastic about the developments. the story you tell in the book is a story that you're very happy about. but the objection is going to be, the constitution means what it meant at the time of the framing and whatever affects our interpretation of the constitution, it certainly should not be social movements. that developed recently. so, how do you respond to that? i can think of colleagues in chicago who would say that. >> guest: yes, so, basically the question turns on a focus on the question of originalism, as a method of constitutional interpretation. one of the challenges that the supreme court faces is what is the proper methodology of giving meaning to these very vague provisions of the constitution. it protects the freedom of speech and government shall not make any law abridging the

freedom of speech. what does that mean? no state school deny any person equal protection of the law? what das that mean and then the ninth talks about unenumerated rights. thank you challenge is how does thecourt give coherent meaning to veining and open-ended provisions. originalism is largely the product of a pushback against the juris prudence of the warren court. so the warren court was seen by conservatives as basically a group of justices who were running amok in the sense that they imposed their own liberal values and ideologies on the nation in the guise of constitutional interpretation without any legitimate basis and when richard nixon ran for president in 1968, one of his platforms was we needed to fling

the supreme court, needed justices who believed in judicial restraint, who are not judicial activists, who would give the benefit of the doubt to the elect branches of the government interest and would not run roughshod over the branches by coming up with completely fantasy interpretations of the constitution. that recognized one person, one vote, for example, or that created miranda rights for criminal suspects or gave interracial marriage constitutional status and protected the right of married couples to use contraceptives. s these were fancy philadelphia in the eyes of political conservatives. so nixon appoint four justices, warren burger, rahrry black mound, rhenquist, all of whom were hoped to be justices committed to judicial restrain.

that it would not enter size any bold interpretation of the constitution. that i would basically defer to the elect brans of government. conservatives like bork and scalia had concerns about judicial restraint. in their view the supreme court the justices and the fed judiciary were planned to have an important role in protecting the right the framers intended to guarantee to citizens and a approach of judicial restraint that gave such deference to the elected branch of government would run the risk of abdicating the responsibility that jurists had to protect against overreaching majorities. so, bork and scalia came up with the idea of originalism, and the idea which had roots in earlier juris prudence was that courts should invalidate laws as

inconsistent with the station the extent they could demonstrate that the framers of a particular provision of the constitution understood that particular law was incompatable with the constitutional provisions they were adopting. if you could demonstrate that was the original understanding of the first amendment or the fourth or fifth amendment or seventh amendment, you should invalidate the laws. other than that if you could not show that laws that were currently enacted were inconsistent with the original understand those framers the job of the courses was to defer to elective branches there are several problems but it was maintain to be mailed ground, way of restraining the courts on the one hand and preventing them from becoming activists and on the other hand avoiding the abdication of responsibility that an across the board judicial restrain approach would imply.

the problem with originalism, it's specially inconsistent. it says we are going to do what the framers of the constitution wanted us to do, but the framers of the constitution would never have intended justices 100 years, 200 years later to interpret these open-ended aspirational provisions as applying only in the ways that they themselves affirmatively understood and intended in their world in the late 18th 18th century. these were men -- they were men -- of the enlightment and understand that knowledge grows, society changes, technology changes, and the mean offering these provisions had to change as well over time. so, originalism, its first flaw is it's internally inconsistent, per puts to do what the framers warrant evident but it doesn't. beyond that it turns out that those who apply originalism tend not be very good at actually sticking to their guns. too often they find themselves tempted in main decisions by the supreme court, by lower courts

to purr fort be applying originalism but basically imposing their own political and ideologyical preferences. justice antonin scalia is a original sad row cat of the principle of originalism and then hold affirmative action unconstitutional, gun regulations unconstitutionality, hold campaign finance regulation unconstitutional. no true originalist could reach that conclusion in a principled way. so, originalism for those reasons have come under serious attack. the question is what is the alternative way of interpreting the constitution? and i think -- >> host: specifically what is the role of social movements. >> guest: right. sorry. >> host: in the interpretation. >> guest: so, i think the alternative way of interpreting the constitution which captures what the warren court did, was basically to ask the question, why do we have judicial review? why do we have judges empowered to interpret the constitution to

invalidate the actions of a political majority? the answer is, of course, that at the framers were anxious about majority. they were not completely confident that majorities would behave well, and the theory is there are particularly two circumstances in which it is imperative for courts to be willing to override the judgments of the elected branches of government. one is when they disadvantage groups that have historically been oppressed and disadvantaged and marlingized and looked political power to protect themselves, that that's a situation where there is a predictable dysfunction in the democrat stroke will not self-curt because majority does what majorities want. and the second is in situations where those in control of the elected branches or government make rules that governor free speech and the electoral process

that are designed to per perpete their own value. courts in the warren court in particular have taken the view it's imperative for courts to be much more aggressive. in terms of social moments, what soldier movements have done is to happen the justices understand when there are circumstances, particularly of the first sort. when there is circumstances where groups in fact have been treated in ways that are historically disadvantaged. they are marlingized, so, examples of this would be the women's rights movement, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement. circumstances where those movements helped to educate the public, society generally and the justices to the fact that laws that disadvantage those groups should not be taken for granted, should not be treated as it's okay, we'll just let the majority do what they want, but here's examples of lawsuits that need be locket at much more square through by the judiciary.

social movements heighten the aware of the justices to problem that in the past might well have been invisible. >> host: while we've talked about the ways regulating sex, the law. the book has religion in the title. what is the role of religion in the story? >> guest: so, one of the things i -- when i started working on this project ten years ago, it was a little bit odd. normally when an academic writes a book, it's at the end of a long process. you have taught about the subject, you have written articles about it, you presented work shops about it, given look fathers and then pull it don't and right a book. in this instance it was curiosity-driven for me. i basically asked myself the question, what would the framers have thought about the last 60 years of supreme court decisions dealing with issues like obscenity and contraception and abortion and sod my -- sodomy

and gay rights and same-sex marriage. was curious. my assumption basically, which was very naive i now understand, was that the basic approach throughout history was kind of like the attitudes in the united states that i grew up with in the 1950s, that is, basically a high level of prudishness about sexual justice all of these areas would have been recorded as inappropriate and subject to considerable regulation. i was curious to see what the framers would have thought and i discovered the framers lived in a world that is much lower like the world we live in today than the world of the 1950s. and that led me to want to go back in time even further and get a better understanding where that came from and their attitudes die arrived. -- derived, so i wounded going back to greeks and romans to see what their attitudes about sex was and see they, too had very

libber teen at tattoo about sexuality and the primary driving force -- not the only one -- the primary driving force that constrained sexual freedom walk religion, -- was coming frm religion. religion was the primary impetus for restrictions on all of these areas, whether it be homosexuality or abortion or contraception or obscenity, and that the interaction between religion and the aspirations of the rights of the people in the constitution was often a conflict. that it shifted over time. and so by the time the framers existed, the members of the enlightment generation tend to be skeptical about the dogmas of traditional christianity and lived in a society that was very much dead okayedded to the pursuit of happiness. 0 no laws against obscenity or

now laws against abortion, and that began to change the 19th 19th century, largely due to evangelical movements, beginning with the second great awakening, that began to enact laws that first prohibited on sent for the first time -- obscenity for the first time and then later prohibited contraception as part of the antion sent movement. anything related to sex at all was deemed prohittable and that including anything relating to contraception and then the laws outlawing abortion for their first time. and then that remained the law. there will movements and individuals who fought back against that. people like margaret sanger who champions the right of contraception. and led to the creation of planned parenthood, and individuals individuals who fought back against the will you of obscenity, talking about free speech. this was a conflict between

individuals who thought that sexual freedom and tree doom in matters relating to sex were individuals individuals should decide for themselves on the one hander and largely religious movements like the moral majority today, that took the view very strongly they know what morality is, that it deeply emed in their religious faiths and beliefs and sew it should require people to live their lives in accordance with those beliefs. >> host: does religion play a role in the constitutional analysis? if i'm a judge being presented with these cases, the whole story about -- for reasons you just said, if ambition of the book is to describe where these laws came from, religion plays a large role in development of these laws, but then the book ends with description of what happened in the supreme court, each of these three areas,

again, the pornography and gay rights and abortion. if you're a judge deciding the case, does the religious origins of the law have any relevance to the legal analysis you bring to it? i'm asking here, not about the -- the story of what the court did is told in the book, but if justice stone is on the court, does it play any role in justice stone's analysis? >> guest: the first amendment forbids any law respecting and establishment of religion and like most of the guarantees of the constitution that's pretty vague. what does the law, respecting to the establishment of religious? the flamers who were men of the enlightenment were troubled about the past in which religion had taken in some circumstances a quite dominant role in framing of secular law, including, for example, the puritans, and they wanted to give -- jefferson and

madison and others want today draw a sharp line between religion and government. so, the -- no law respecting establishment of religion was meant to be a way of doing that. over time the supreme court has articulated the principle that the government may not constitutionally adopt law that restricts individuals' behavior if the purpose of the law is to impose upon them the religious beliefs of a particular faith. however, enforcing that is extraordinarily difficult because the justices have learned over time that inquiries into the actual subjective motivations of legislators is extremely difficult because legislators, knowing that would be -- it would be unstatisticcal to say that we are adopting this law because it is our religious faith -- don't say that.

instead they put forth a whole range of other justifications that are secular and are said to justify the various laws. so, laws, for example, against contraception were defended not on the ground that contraception would be inconsistent with a particular fought but if they were available, then women would be promiscuous and that would undermine the stability of marriages. and therefore was important not to let women engage in sexual behavior with the protection of contraception, and that, therefore no contraception would stabilize marriages. they would put forth the secular justification for laws and this was commandplace and tries with laws against same-sex marriage and that the same-sex couples could not raise children well and so on. so the courts have tended not to invoke the establishment clause as a justification for invalidating laws precisely because they don't want to be in

the business of saying, you're telling us the reason for the law is this but we know you're lying. and we're going to invalidate the law walls be know the real reason. and then they have the problem, well, the legislature then re-enacts the law, creating a record that purports to show that the recent for the law is legitimate secularly. so thecourts have not only the religion area and other areas have stayed away from the reason for invalidating laws. on the other hand i think it's fair to say that the justices aren't naive. they do understand the central role that religion plays in supporting many of these laws, and even though they are reluctant to invalidate the law precisely on the accusation that we know what you're, trying to impose your religious faith through the secular law. my guess is that when the state does putting for secular justifications for laws, justices tend to be a bit more

skeptical about the strength and seriousness about the justifications. so in the same-sex marriage example where the states argue the robe woe wrote rib same-sex marriage is because they're not very good at raising children and that we be very bad and the justice didn't accept that as a compelling argument and part of the reason is they knew there was a different real reason that they didn't want to talk about but that probably was the underlying reason for having these laws. >> host: play this out with abortion, the state is going to say, we have a secular reason. we think that fetus is a human being, it's human, it's not any other species, it's alive and not dead, entirely secular argue. , and the court is not persuaded by it. that's the appropriate necessary there? an entirely second lag argument. >> guest: what the court did in roe v. wade was basically first to conclude that the right of a

woman to decide for herself whether to bear or beget a child, whether to carry a pregnancy to term, was a fundmental right of the woman, having made that conclusion, the state then would have to demonstrate a compelling government interest to justify taking away that right, which is more or less standard constitutional analysis once the court finds there's a fundmental right at issue, and the state argues in roe v. wade that it had a compelling interest in the preserving the life of the fetus, and what the court said was basically that first of all to the extent the underlying rationale for that was a religious belief, they could not address that as an appropriate justification because of the establishment clause. to the extent the arguement was a secular judgment that the fetus is a person from the time of conception, what the justices

said is, that's just a matter of opinion. different scientists disagree about this. different individuals disagree about it. it's not a compelling justification that could be demonstrated with a degree of certainty that has to be proved in order to take away what otherwise would be an individual's constitutional right, and it's simply too speculative to be compelling. that was the argue. they made and i think that was perfectly rome arguement. you ant objectively dental when a fetus becomes a person in any meaningful sense. >> host: sounds like in the constitutional analysis that you endorse, religion doesn't play any role explicitly in the analysis beyond the burden on -- it's clearly a heavy burden on the woman to bear a child against her will. you don't need any religious basis for that. we only come in, has the state justified the burden, and either the state has it hasn't and if the state hasn't, religion

doesn't explicitly play a role in that judgment either. >> guest: yeah. think that's true. the focus in the book on religion is less the reason why these laws are unconstitutional than trying to explain where the laws came from just in terms of the history of the laws, but it does play a role, think, in the sense that the judges do understand that there is a very strong religious motivation for these laws and that adopting laws that are designed to enforce a particular sectarian view about religion been nonbeliever is problematic. don't invoke it but it comes into play. >> host: if people got persuade bid an article in a philosophy journal about the personhood of fetus and the supporter north motivated by religion at all that's correct court would have handled it differently? sunny think the compelling interest test is a high burden

and an article in a philosophy journal wouldn't cover it. >> host: that's your arguement. >> guest: if you have medical doctors who universally came to the conclusion that the fetus from the time of conception should be understand to be human, here's why we all agree with that and there was a widespread endorsement of that position, think the accurate would take that into account as a possibling a arguement. >> step back and maybe we should open it up to questions. so, very different subject matter than your earlier book "perilous times" about free speech in wartime, and trailingsed what -- the way in which free speech claims were treated from the time of the framing to the present. how does the author of that book come to be writing this snook? the similarity is that in both of the works i was trying to take a historical perspective on how law and policies evolve over

time, and how we learned from experience and don't learn from experience so perilous times is a book i wrote about ten, 12 years ago, the story of free speech and other individual liberties in time of war. so it begins with the sedition act of 1798 and run throws the civil war and world war i and world war ii and vietnam war and war on terror and looked how the government dealt with the problem of speech and other behavior that was seen to be undermining the ability of the government successfully to wage war and how the society responded to that and how the courts responded to that and how the courts learned over time. and so that also is a kind of happy ending story. >> host: learned and forgot.

>> guest: it goes both bays. that's true about the book. want to emphasize i think we have made, from the perspective, at least, great progress in our society over the last 60 years in terms of recognizing rights with respect to sexual expression and contraception and abortion and gay rights, but those are not written in stone, and particularly given the current state of the nation, and particularly the potential changes in the makeup of the supreme court, i think that we face a situation in the which we may see another one of these swings in which what seemed like a movement in one direction, suddenly now moves back in the other direction. so, it would be easy, think to imagine if president trump, were to get another appointment to

the supreme court, if one of the three senior justices on the court, right bader ginsburg, anthony kennedyy 0 steven breyer would leave the court because of health or otherwise, would leave support of gay rights and of women's choice, and that justice were dere place bid another neil gorsuch, then i would not be surprised to see condition roe v. wade be downted quickly. what to be a tragedy and throw is bach into a world in which women would once again be forced to address the terrible realities of self-abortion and back-alley boringses, especially in those states would which not legalizeabortion. the stories north always true in one direction.

there are moments of enlightenment and moments of oppression and we may be headed into at moment of oppression. >> host: on that happy note let's take questions from the audience. and raise your hand so they can give you the microphone. >> thank you very much. professor stone, linking your first amendment and sex interests here, what about the problem of nonstate actors controlling the discourse over sexualate? i'm talking about flat forms like google and facebook, twitter, where the images of sex, discussion of sex, sexual policies, the whole discourse on that can be controlled without any state intervention. any constitutional protection or how do you see a way out of that? >> one of the interesting realities we face in the world

today is that there are means of communication that have massive power over our access to ideas and information. far greater, perhaps, than ever before in history. and if these media, like google or facebook or whatever, decide to censor certain types of material, images, ideas, that does have a real impact upon the ease with which individuals can access those ideas and cannot only that, can distort what we hear from different perspectives. and the reality is that, as private entities, they have traditional by been understood to be free to do whatever they please.

the constitution only restrains the government. so the government cannot censor speech but "the new york times" can choose to publish or not publish whatever it wishes, and it's under no constitutional obligation to present thing is doesn't want to present. also true for facebook and google and so on. the added complexity is that platforms like facebook and google are international, and they are faced with the laws not only of the united states but of the laws of basically all the countries around the world, and so if they put on, let's say, facebook, material that violates the law in india, they could be prosecuted in india. if you put something on facebook here that is legal in the united states, and so institutions like facebook are struggling right now with how to preserve free

speech in our country while at the same time not violating the laws in the other countries. in a world in which it's very hard to have different facebooks for different countries. so, government could regulate this ins' way but that would be problematic. in general, the court -- supreme court has held the government cannot regulate newspapers, for example, and tell them what they can and can't publish. except in circumstances where what they want to publish is illegal, but by and large the court has said the government cannot compel "the new york times" to publish thing is doesn't want to publish, and presumably the starting point would be a similar position with respect to things like facebook. so, poses a really complicated question for the future and i don't think we have simple answer now but one we have to struggle with over the next five, ten, 20 years. >> another question. >> you talked about the court not looking into the subjective intent of legislators. how do you think it will or

should play out when the court examines the subjective intent of the president when the immigration ban comes there, and the second question is, on the religious grounds, corporations have been claiming exemptions from other secular laws on the grounds of the corporate religious belief. how do you think that will or should play out when those cases reach the supreme court? >> so on the immigration executive order, one of the justifications courts happen relied upon is that this was designed in a way that violated the free exercise clause of the first amendment. that is, it was designed to discriminate against people of a particular faith, and a central part of the evidence supporting that conclusion were statemented made by donald trump, particularly as president-elect, and a question there is to what extent the expressed, clear

motivations, stated openly, by the president, for an executive order, can be disregarded in deciding on what are the actual motivations. so, the problem with the typical situation of a legislator is you have 535 legislators who have all different motivations, and they say all different kinds of things, and trying to figure out what this motivation of the entire legislature is a mess but the cop text of the executive branchy you have a president and he tells you what his motivation is, it then becomes difficult to blink that reality in the face of the statements made. doesn't mean that a court has to do that. a court could say, he was president-elect, and there are other possible motivations and never means what he says anyway. so, we just should disregard it

as -- it's the equivalent of his tweets. the courts have been inclined not to be so forgiving about and it it will be interesting to see what at the supreme court does an that question. the second question was about corporations, and their free exercise rights. the question is to what extent a., individuals, and, b., corporations, have right to act in accord with their religious beliefs when those religious beliefs would require them to act in violation of what otherwise would be the law. with respect to individuals, the supreme court once held in a days called sherber vs. werner the state cannot compel individuals to income a matter that is incompatable with their sincerely held religiousfight without having a compelling justification for doing that. that was then overruled in a

decision by justice scalia involving the native american church which was using peyote as a sacrament saying they do not get a constitutional exemption from the laws against peyote, and that they shouldn't have these exemptions. with respect to the law -- the law currently constitutional law does not really give individuals that exemption but federal law and many state laws have given them. as for corporations, it's complicated. corporations have rights. the "new york times" is a corporation. right? facebook is a corporation. they have first amendment rights. on the other hand, insofar as corporations are corporations, religious rights are a little harder to figure out. organizations like "the new york times" and facebook are about speech. that's why they exist. the reason for being. corporations that aren't about religion but have religious beliefs are harder to sort

through and the court has held that a privately held corporation can that he will first amendment free exercise rights and rights natural the religious freedom restoration act. it's not clear whether gm would be seen as having those rights. >> of course, the question in that case, that's hobby lobby case, once you decide that the corporation has rights, then there's the question again about whether there's a compelling interest in requiring the corporation to provide the same health benefits that corporations are required to provide. so you could hold that a corporation got rights under the statutes but the rights are defeated by compelling interest in this case. >> exactly. >> i see some -- need to go to the microphone. >> we're on tv. that won't be able to hear you if you don't talk into the microphone.

>> are you kind of danced around the issue of net neutrality a couple questions ago as soon ins the government's role in regulating free speech on the internet. i'm curious what more there is on that. >> i don't have strong view, a well-informed view on net neutrality. >> the arguments turn on whether requiring net knew neutrality will create or not create a level playing field or give private intenses the power to censor. spouse you thought that not

having net neutrality would give private entitieses the power to censor speech, there is a constitutional dimension to that or does free speech telephone us something about that -- tell us something about that. >> a question hat has to be resolved going forward. >> are you can go writing an addendum to your previous become about the perils of free speech and what do you think about our fearless leader seeing the press as enemy of the people? >> well, i do think that it is a serious danger to democracy for the president of the united states to be attacking the press. there are obviously instances in which presidents in the past have been upset with particular elements of the media for specific things they've said or story they reported and

challenged that. but an effort to undermine with the american people the confidence they should have in the mainstream media i think is a danger to democracy. democracy flourishes when there is a free and open discourse and when people know the difference between facts and not facts, when they know the difference between responsible commentary and reckless commentary, and i think that for a president to be encouraging our citizens to move into the category of giving weigh to ideas and sources that are not credible is a real effort to undermine the key cornerstones of a well-functioning democracy and

is a support of real concern. >> thank you, geoff. more kenly, one of the things that democracy needs in order to function is people who understand how democracy in fact functions and has functioned and this book is quite valuable in that undertaking. a terrific book. >> thank you. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> thank you for attending if you can purchase the book and wait outside the odder auditorim for signing. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

>> that was geoffry stone discussing his book, "sex and the constitution." we'll be back in just a few minutes with the next author, former congressman trey radel. [inaudible conversations]

>> who shy make it to? cynthia. >> as a government attorney i appreciated -- >> whoa do you work for. >> a private firm and i represent -- [inaudible] >> where did grew to law school? >> depaul. >> thank you for coming. >> thank you. >> i thought it was -- >> good.

how is everything. >> fine. you look fine. >> still working hard? >> yes. >> got another book? >> two, actually. >> i want to say hello. from illinois, speaking at a conference for judges. >> right. >> you wrote me back a very nice reply, and -- [inaudible] -- >> great. >> who -- >> sour i -- sorry i couldn't do it. >> you said you would be watching but i enjoyed hearing your talk. >> thank you for coming. maybe next year. >> yes. >> hi. >> hi. ask about twitter, google, made me think where the comparison would be when -- [inaudible] --

that shook up the churches. >> the government insist everything had to be licensed so the press didn't publish anything without getting a license. >> be kind of interesting to do a study on that to see where some of the similarities come in and some of the things that may impact news the future. >> that's interesting. who should make it out to. >> to mary and carl with a c. this is a good book to have a share with to encourage everyone to look at it. i have some friends in the d.c. area that it think would be fascinated. >> i've done a bunch of events in d.c. nice meeting you. thank you so much. >> hi. i have a question. considering that the supreme

court now has said that there's basically no limits on funding for elections and that corporations are -- have the right to do whatever they want to do, even if they're secret, and i guess that being true, how does that ever change? i mean, it's almost like -- >> could have changed had merritt garland been confirmed to the supreme court. >> yes, but now what is going on now, how it would ever cheng. >> not going to change for a long time. constitutional amendment is next to impossible, and that's the only way it would change. these justices aren't going to change that. >> thank you. >> yes sorry to have to be -- >> hi. >> who should i make it out to.

>> geoff with a g like you. >> really? >> and mary. >> i'm the only one who knows who peles it with one f which is ed idio -- idiosyncratic. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> i want to give this to my

son-in-law because he is an attorney here in chicago. >> who? >> don gibbons is his name,. >> first and last name? >> john. >> john, john or john gibbons. >> i think john gibbons. >> where does he work? >> gibbons. >> drawing a blank right now. very interesting talk. >> thank you. >> enjoyedded. >> thank you for coming. >> here's a look at the authors recently featured on book tv's "after words." our weekly author interview program: block

>> it's the countries that have the most diversity internally and are most connected then to opportunities and ideas abroad that will flourish the most. now, again, this is not all good or all bad because some people would hear that and say, yeah you mean like being connected to countries where there are criminals, like drug runners or,

again, arm traffickers 0, or terrorist, we don't want to be open to those countries. those contacts, those networks bring danger. fair enough. you have to protect against that but those connections also bring us exports and talents and the diversity that brings you new ideas, all the people who study innovation say, look, innovation and creativity comes from the collision of unexpected things. so if we're all the same people and grew up in the same place and think about the same stuff, we are much less likely to come up with something new than when you reach out to the people you don't know so well and you expose yourself to new experiences and new ideas and you put those together with your older ideas, that is the magic of the spark of creativity and when you look at this from the perspective of a country, the united states, country.

immigrants, a country that has connections all around the world, through our culture, through business, through our people, through our educational system, in the world of the web, that openness is our greatest asset. >> "after words" airs every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous programs on our web site, book of the.org. >> this is probably the most famous image of the holocaust. this is the little boy in the cloth cap during the suppression of the warsaw get to the and this is part of a document called the report maimed after the german commandant of the operation that put down the warsaw uprising. almost everybody has seen this photograph that takes in the interest in the holocaust. it appears in book after book.