ohio in illinois and michigan were going to go for wallace and they did not.ot. >> i hate to cut off the questions but we do have to give up the room as they say. thank you all. we want to thank the national book festival, the library of congress and c-span. [applause]us >> thank you to c-span for having us on tonight, and thank you, jack farrell. >> the supreme court returns for its fall 201 term this week. booktv has covered several of the justices for their books, and with the new term beginning we thought we'd show you two of the programs. justices sonia sotomayor and

clarence thomas have written biographers now. here's justice sonia sotomayor from 2013, followed by justice thomas from 2007. >> greatings. welcome. [applause] >> greatings, walk, progressive forum. i'm randall morton, founder and president of the progressive forum, america's only civic speaker organization exposely dedicated progressive values and the largest speaker organization in texas. [applause] >> thank you. [cheers and applause] >> we are excited tonight to present supreme court justice sonia sotomayor, who is launching her first book a

memoir called my beloved world. please turn off your cell phones. videotaping is not allowed and if our ushers catch you they can treat you like a supreme court justice at a confirmation hearing. the beautiful flowers on stage are flowers that are grown lovely puerto rico. [applause] >> puerto rico is the roots and justice sotomayor's culture and family, who are regular florists, they found orchids, anthuriums, ginger and animal foliage. thank you c-span-tv. we here at n houston, texas, welcome you and our friends across the country joining us on television. thank you for joining us. produce produce.

>> annise parker is joining us tonight. [applause] >> annise parker is one of my heros and favorite people and a terrific mayor. please stand, annise parker and first lady, kathy howard. [applause] >> you can see past presentations of the progressive forum on our web site, great minds, such as jane goodall.

that's progressiveforum progressiveforum houston.org. >> books are on sale in the grand foyer. after justice sotomayor's presentation, she'll join me for a q & a. should say that supreme court rules don't allow to us discuss court cases of the past, present or future, but we will delve deeply into her fascinating story. justice sotomayor will sign books and greet fans in the grand foyer. i cried when i read my beloved world. and i also laughed. it is a good book. i believe it will be more than a best seller. it will become a classic american success story, and required reading at high schools

and colleges. i i'm amazed at the e-mails we have been get frog houston students fill with exclamation points, young people connect with sonia sotomayor. in her book, i was especially impressed by the scene of sewn sonia and her brother, junior, as kid, doing their homework with their mother who was also doing hers, studying to become a registered nurse. two generations encouraging each other. to me, justice sotomayor's american success story should replace the narrow horatio algier myth of getting rich in america through individual determination. yes, her story is about individual determination, but it is also about community, family, and negotiating cultural boundaries. it's about overcoming poverty and chronic disease.

it's about insecurity, self-discovery, and the joys of growing as an authentic person. it's about deep success. in an american as it really is. sonia sotomayor is the first hispanic and third woman to serve on the u.s. supreme court. she was born in the bronx and raised in a public housing project. her parents moved from puerto rico to new york city during world war ii. he father became a factory worker, her mother joined the women's auxiliary corps. sonia sotomayor was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of seven, and her father died when she was nine. she and her younger brother were raised by a single mother. her brother is now a doctor. sonia sotomayor graduated at valedictorian of her high school

class, graduatedded from princeton, summa cum laude, and while attending yale law school she was editor of yale law journal. she could hey become a highly paid lawyer out of yale. but she went right into public service, becoming an assistant district attorney serving the people of new york. she served in almost all levels of the judicial system, including private legal practice, as well as years on the federal bench. in 2009, president barack obama nominated and the u.s. senate confirmed sonia sotomayor as the 111th justice of the u.s. supreme court. i give you sonia sotomayor. [cheers and applause]

[cheers and applause] >> hello. hello. [cheers and applause] >> after i got to washington in 2009, i met a whole bunch of texans. from everywhere in this large state, and i've been repeatedly invited to visit, and, you know, when you get a new job you're a

little busy. and so i hadn't been able to come. but it's a tribute to the warmth of the people i met then that has been conformed in the few hours i've been here already. that this is the third city on my tour. i was first in washington, my new home, i went back to the home of my heart, new york, over the weekend, and as you saw on television i was in back and forth a lot between the two. and this is my first trip outside. i'm delighted this is my first trip to texas, and that i'm here in houston. [applause] i wanted to visit more than one city and i am going to austin,

but i can't visit every place i want. to still have a day job and i only have a few days to visit cities and promote my book, but i make a promise, on television, so you can hold me to it, i will be back to visit other cities in texas. >> hear hear. [applause] >> now, randall, where are you and suzanne sitting? i didn't see where you went to. they're right there. you met the -- part of the ron i could come, and is what ran dan and suzanne morton, the founders of the progressive forum, who put this visit together for me. they have extended every warmth and courtesy to me. i even had to -- [speaking spanish]

-- at dinner tonight. and i am surrounded by flowers, some 0 of which i describe in the book, from my beloved -- part of my beloved world, puerto rico. randall, suzanne, thank you. so, i'm here to talk to you about my book, and about what my book is about. and when i started to write it, there was one thing i wanted to accomplish. when you write a memoir -- i've read many of them through hi -- my life -- you sometimes come away asking yourself a question, did i learn anything new about this public person? regretably, often i had read becomes and memoir order auto biographies and thought to myself, didn't learn much i didn't already know from the news. i didn't want to write that kind

of book. ... it is probably my favorite passage. and so i read it to you because it summarizes one of

the very important reasons i'm read this book. it is on page 178 and it reads when a young person even a gifted one grows up without proximate living examples of what she may aspire to become whether the leader in any realm her goals remain abstract. such models that appear however inspiring or revered are ultimately too remote to be true. let alone influential. but a role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration the very existence is confirmation of possibilities that one might have every reason to doubt yes, someone

like me can do this. and so it was my hope that every child in every adult who read this book at the end would say what i said during my confirmation not my confirmation but my nomination feet speech. yes she is an ordinary person just like me. and then if that ordinary person can do it so can i. that's what i tried. to tell you my experiences in my feelings as a perceive them at the time and you will find

me talking and the child of the little sonja and then give you the reflection of the adult sonja it wasn't so easy to do to put myself back in time to tell you what i was feeling but i did it for purpose and that purpose was to tell you what i have learned from those experiences. and in the process to have the hope that every single person in this room who has experienced even one of the difficulties i had faced in life and those difficulties are as diverse as growing up in poverty having a chronic disease and it's surprising how many people suffer from chronic disease.

and live their lives never talking about it. to being a child raised by single-parent to facing discrimination and whether it is about my at the city or my gender or it's about my background we each feel the sting of it in some way to simply being afraid which i think most people experience and we all create bravado about that. were okay. we can do this. it's easy to say, it's hard to do. and so i talk about those things as ordinary as a way as i can. in order to help to give people courage to talk about

and rethink their own experiences. there was a second purpose to this book. the books that i love are the books that i've read and make me think on different levels. the deliver more than one message because there is a beauty i think in reading books in discovering new things and you will learn about how i use books after my father's death to escape the unhappiness in my home. and they became a rocketship out of that unhappiness but one that landed me on far universes of the world when i found science fiction.

to understanding places that i thought i would never get to visit. i now gratefully have the wherewithal to do it but i found india and africa and places that i have heard about on television but never imagined knowing and i learned about them through books. i hope that every child in this audience and any child who is here and here here's me speaking understands that television is wonderful but words paint pictures in a way that nothing else can. i will read one passage of my book that describes a scene in my childhood that will prove my point for everyone in this room. because i think that these passages paint a picture of my

grandmother that you don't need to see in the photographs in the book but it was nice that you have them. that also describes a piece my life in a way that i think paints the picture for you without having a photograph of it. so i am reading from page 16 of my book and it reads, a polito leader was going to cook for a party and she wanted me to come with her to buy the chickens. i was the only one who ever went with her i love her without rebel basin. it was a safe haven for my parents storms at home. since those years i have come to believe that in order to

thrive a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect and confidence. i was determined to grow up just like her. to age with the same exuberant grace not that we looked much alike. she did very dark eyes, darker than mine and a long face with a pointed nose flamed --dash make framed by long straight here. otherwise we recognized in each other a twins. ian enjoyed a bond beyond explanation. a deep notion emotional residence that seemed telepathic we were so much alike in fact that people called me little mercedes.

which was a source of great pride for me. as well as in my co-conspirator every adventure also have a special connection with abuelita but even nelson never wanted to go without them on saturday morning because of the smell. it wasn't just the chickens that smelled they had baby goats in pens and pigeons and ducks and rabbits stacked up against the longwall the cages were stacked so high that they would climb up a ladder on wheels to see into the top row. they would be flapping and screaming there were feathers in the air and sticking to the

wet floor which was slippery when they's hose it down. and there were chickens with mean eyes watching you. it's one of my favorites. [applause]. at the end of my confirmation process everybody learns about my mother and she is someone worth the of the learned about. sonja, no one has talked about your grandma she really was the most important person in your life and so i use this book in part to tell the story of my grandmother because almost everybody and there are some unfortunate people who

don't ever get to know their grandmothers or their grandfathers but those who do know what a special kind of love it is i hope you will see a piece of yourself in it. because they are special. that brings me to a critically important part of this book. and motive for it. during the confirmation process i was being ask some questions now i'm get a tell you the following i always upset my marshals when i do this i'm going down to the audience i'm sorry i can't go up there. you're too far up there. i was here earlier this afternoon and i looked out here and i thought this is lovely and intimate.

wow, is this big. i can go to you and i will go as far back as i want. many of you can still see me. i find but i find that if i walk among you i prove my family right they used to call me hot temper. because i could never sit still. people asking me about my father and where he came from and what his family was like. i really didn't have much to tell them. they were asking me a lot about that. and there were basic parts of her story that i knew but there was a lot i couldn't answer. and in fact some of the information that came out during the confirmation hearing proved to be wrong in fact, i did not know where my

father was born. i thought it was from the town he left from but it turns out that wasn't true. he was born in a town called mona v. and i will tell you one of the things that surprised me to no end and please me was knowledge of that but when the people that were helping me to do the research on my family in puerto rico went to the local priest to look at our family's birth records the priest greeted them and said to the person who was acting for me. i knew she would end up here. we were just waiting.

he reached behind him and pulled out the book. with the birth certificate of my father and his siblings. it was a very touching moment a very touching moment a separate a second think happened during my confirmation hearing. every morning before i went to the white house or to the senate i would call my mother just to hear her voice. i don't talk to my mother every day. i broker of that habit a long time ago. don't listen to me too much. you're not like me saying that. one night i forgot to call her

after she had been used to me calling every day and she was frantic. i get busy. so now i call her every week. i try to do spontaneously says she doesn't worry as much. but i found myself calling her every moment during that stressful time because hearing her voice gave me comfort and i realized that as much as i knew her as much as we have gone through life together that i really hadn't spent that much time talking to her about her rights and her feelings. we talked a lot about my

feelings. were all self-absorbed. but not enough about her feelings. and one of the things that i started with was to ask her question that i have never asked her before. and it was were you ever in love with dad. to understand the background by that time i came around my father have become such an alcoholic that my life with him was filled with unhappiness and one of the greatest gifts of writing this book was finding out about a father he never knew and the love story that i never knew about between him and my mom. and so i'm going to read you just a piece of my book

because of all of the chapters in this book the one i love the most is chapter seven. as the chapter of the story and learned from my mother by just talking to her. it wasn't until i began to write this book nearly if this 50 years after the events of that sad year. i came to a truer understanding of my mother's grief for most of my life my sense of my father and of my parents relationship was confined by the narrow aperture through which i watch them as a child. that sense it was was frozen in time when my father died my theory of guilt -induced grief was hardly more sophisticated than the psychiatric help.

it was overhanging my father's alcoholism. it silenced any conversation among the adults. as we grew junior, you will learn i will speak more openly to each other. he could add nothing to my analysis he was six when pappy died. and so with the vocabulary of hindsight i came to assume that the intensity of my mother's grief implies some sort of criminal depression that was never treated i've never before in all of these years for the own version of

events. and even grateful as this removes the happier version of my father and my mother than i ever knew. my parents relationship was richer and more complex than a child could imagine in the stories that have come to life are all the more precious than these for having been captured as my mother's memory is fading faster with age. sometimes the people closest to us are those that we know the least where should i begin. begin at the beginning. and the rest of this chapter is that story. i hope you will read it to find the joy i do.

and so i passed on the greatest lesson of this book to every person in this auditorium who has a living parent, grandparent aunt or uncle anyone who was alive that has a memory of your family's history do it it took me 55 years to get to. sit down talk to them re- listen to their stories with an open mind. and learn about yourself. do you know what happens i know because i did it. or when you are visiting and christmas the idea of you is

very famous. it is the formation point of here we go again. and we all do it. how often had you heard the story and you think you know it. you think, that you understand the reasons behind it. the why. do you really stop to ask why. and so, i'm giving you a free lesson don't do what i did. don't wait until they are not here any longer do it whenever you have the chance. and i have to tell you i took the time during the busiest part of my life that i've had becoming a supreme court

justice in i did it for personal reasons. the personal reason was because i wanted to hold on to sonja. i had been thrust on the world stage in my life was moving and has been moving at incredible pace. what happens to all of us is that we forget how we got places. we think that it is sometimes happens or we forget to be grateful. and i did not want to forget. this book is my memory this book is here so that the day i get conceited my family and friends will pick up the book and hit me over the have with it and tell me to remember.

but it is also a tribute to that moment i took the very hectic life that i create times but also i have not had vacation in three years. i've taken a week off here and there he even went to the beach for a week last summer but every day of my last three summers i treated this book like a job i got up early in the morning by 9:00 i was at my desk my kitchen table. i was writing or editing and i worked every day from that time early in the morning until six or 630 at night five days a week.

if you don't treat the task at as a job you don't get it done. but the benefit was that i learned about my family. learn about years take the time no matter how busy you are make the time and talk to those you love you will find out the most incredible things i assure you. so where are we on time. i wanted to give you some for questions. >> we're so good. i will go into something else. i'm really good at that. we a long talk before when i ask you the question tell me the truth.

i did not realize all of those people were going to be up there. i want the people down here to see me a little bit one of the things that i have lost in this job is all privacy. once you get nominated to the supreme court every eye in the world is on you. i'm not exaggerating. people from around the world have come to the united states to tell me that they watched my nomination on tv and they tell me that they read our cases and follow the issues that the court is looking at. and because of it everything you do is under constant scrutiny. to hold on to people sometimes when i'm walking down places

that i write a book and a show you the inside of my heart and my soul. i think i've lost everything. i hope it has been worthwhile. i started by talking to you about how we all keep things secret and i started my book i've been asked by many why did you start with the chapter about a chapter about the diagnosis of your disease. have your juvenile diabetes. i started by saying to all of you that i know that many of us we hide the sad things in our life.

to talk about the terror i felt. it was not easy to talk to people about how it is an ever present part of my life but so is asthma for many people. so our family members who are drug addicts. in you learned in this book about a relative of mine who was my soulmate, my cousin. and it was nelson. we were inseparable as children you will see pictures in this book that will show you that almost every picture as a child that i'm in nelson is right next to me.

i was with him many of the weeks after and i read to you a passage and i read it to you because his sister summing this past weekend and an event in new york and said to me thank you. very few people remember who nelson was in now, you brought him back to life. and in the story he might even teach kids some good. so i reviewed chapter 26 a few

paragraphs from it. if i try to understand in my heart how it could happen that two children so closely matched could meet such different fates i enter a sub training world of nightmares the sudden panic when nelson passed was in the press of the crowd. the moment i have eight and he cannot. he was a better defense against the pain. what made the diff prints between two children who began almost as twins inseparable in in our own eyes virtually identical almost but not quite. he was smarter he have the father i wished for the week shared our grandma special blessing why did i endure even

thrive when he failed consumed by the same dangers that have surrounded me. some of it can be delayed. one pushes boys out into the street while protecting girls. but there is more. nelson has mentioned that that day at the hospital the one thing i have that he lacked call it what you like discipline, determination, perseverance the force of will even apart from him saying so i knew that he have made all of the difference in my life if only i could bottle it i would share with every kid in america did what that's about it's not being stubborn.

every time your parents tell you not to be stubborn look at them and say that it was a good thing. we are not dealt easy hands in life none of us are. is not easy even for people with money. plenty of friends i have proven this to me in life. it is a very true adage. life throws each of us a lot of bad hands and if you let them knock you down then life is really unhappy. and for me besides all of the people in the world who had

supported me. i talked about that support in this group. the community that organizes themselves to help me be nominated to the supreme court something i will be eternally grateful to. any of those were from here in texas. people help in saying that. nothing so proud and arrogant that you know it all that is one of the hardest things to do in the world. to say i don't know help me please. i hope i can encourage people to do that more frequently. in the end it's not giving up. it's about trying and retrying and train again not letting the pain of failure and i described my failures in this book because i have my fair share of them.

not to let them knock you down but to get up and try again. and understand that even if you don't reach the moon when you aim for it you can land on an asteroid that goes by that could be very happy. but unless you try you can't can achieve anything. you can't succeed in life without trying. in the very end this is a book about trying. and the book with this. a life in which i can say i am truly less. thank you for sharing

[applause]. when we handed over to the audience so that i can have a drink of water. while done. when you tell people where the questions came from. some of these belong to people in the audience.

to puerto rico i return. what were your reflections and turn in cheesy nut title. there is a line that talks about returning to my beloved world in my world is not puerto rico alone but puerto rico is an important slice of this. i thought it was still sitting -- so fitting to call this my beloved world. despite descriptions of some very difficult times in some challenges.

the book is about love. a love of life a lot of people i love of experiences that had strengthened me. even in their challenge. and so the title just seems right. in you know something, if you've never visited puerto rico it's a great place to go visit. when september 11 came the entire world was riveted to the views. in one of the journalist was interviewing a the woman from the midwest that said to the reporter i had been watching the events in new york and this people are just like us.

i bet some of you has said that about new yorkers. that moment they realized many things. and all of the unhappiness of september 11 there was one sliver of sunshine. and it was in the way that americans came together. and it did not matter what background we have or where we were from. we stood together as a nation. and that was a really important lesson. it also has made me realize when i was writing this book that i wanted people to see the slice of my life that was different than theirs i doubt that my experiences is exempt identical to the experience of mexicans in texas the

different parts of the nine states of the world. but we share so many commonalities. so much more than we are different. i thought in describing my beloved world in the descriptive ways that i tried to accomplish the people would appreciate those commonalities. that they would come away with their own lives even though the details might be different. you are famous for a phrase that came up in your confirmation hearing. i felt like there was more to the story i thought there was

more behind. what can you share with us. there had been many misunderstandings about that phrase in my use of it in the article i wrote. and what people didn't appreciate is where i came from. and where i came from was being a person who sometimes felt looked down upon by the larger society. people talk about latinos generally in terms like this. and i use that term some are undocumented but illegal aliens sounds like we are all drug addicts. yes it is breaking the law to

be undocumented but there are different kinds of crimes and some are worse than others. and white-collar crime is different than the negative images that people portray. i have always wanted to convey to latino kids that we should take we could be what i am. with a heart and soul. and then i didn't have to apologize to anybody for being the for anything [applause].

it was not intended when i use the phrase to suggest superiority. to convey equality. someone has reminded at sometime that you are. it is a phrase that have offended some. but i wish i have convened it in better terms. but it's message was born i come from a very rich background and culture.

[applause]. that's what i hope will come out of people reading this book. going from the bronx to princeton university from one world to another in a series of culture shocks you describe is becoming a stranger in strange lands. but you discovered ways of adapting to new cultural words what is your advice to others negotiating the same kinds of passages. >> what i have done and i described this in my book at every juncture in my life is i have stayed connected to people from the latino community i have joined latino groups i had advocated for some of the needs of latinos and i have done it because it has given me a sense of comfort and security in my

life we all gravitate towards that. it is the familiar. in the security and confidence building. but i'm very careful to give a more broader lesson in my book to talk about the need not to insulate yourself within your community to use it as a springboard into the larger world. know your culture have your friends feel their warmth but then go out and explore. that's what they are there for. to pick you up and push you out again. and let you try new things. i talk about building bridges in that building walls in my book. and i talk in those terms

because i don't believe in isolation i believe that every community should try and go out to the world and embrace it all. whether it is going to a place like reston which was completely alien to me. they were not latinas. it's too convenient not to reach out and make friends that are different than you. but convenience doesn't help you grow. you have to take the risk of meeting new people to learn new things. and importantly, in taking the time to embrace who you are but at the same time embrace others. it's not that easy for a lot of people. i really wanted that message to come through in the book. there was a theme in your book.

it started in high school. and you sought out the smartest kid in class and ask her how to study. and you have sought mentors all the way through. they are the most important thing in one's life. the first passage i wrote about in being a role model it was an introduction to one of the most important mentors in my life. and that was josé. he is a federal judge of the u.s. district court of the second circuit in new york. we later became colleagues. but josé was the first successful latino that i had encountered when i was in law school. and i was talking about how important he was to me because he was a role model of what i might be able to do and

achieve i think intuitively understood the story about seeking out that friend was from grammar school. i have a fifth-grade teacher and i describe this in the book who gave out gold stars when you got good grades. and i wanted some gold stars. but i could not figure how to do it. i knew there was one girl and i had been in school there for four years. and she always got all of the gold stars i wanted some. so i went to her and i just said how do you study i learned in writing this book because i saw her again and believe it or not i do not remember that story. she reminded me of that story. it was nice to be able to include that in the book.

she explained to me how she studied how to underline the important facts in what she was reading how to go back through the next day so that she began to commit them to memory and how before each of them she would go through the passages again read looking at those important points and she said that is how she went about remembering everything that she have to remember and answering questions in the quiz. up until then i read it once and that was it. she taught me that memorizing things was not photographic memory you read it and remember. after repeated often until it actually sinks in. what a life lesson. i tell law students when you have to go to court stand in

front of a mirror and say your opening statement a dozen times. do the same thing with your closing statement. and then pick a friend who's not a lawyer and practice before them. then they can take what they don't understand. nothing i do do i do without practice. it was a lesson from her that really led me to learning about being a good student. the supreme court it is a mysterious and secretive world to most of us. how about sharing what your typical day at the court looks like. >> when i say it sent most of you won't want the job. you know, we spent most of our

days reading. we read briefs, we read the record that has been created below we read the decisions of ports across the country who had faced depression. we then research and we write and we write and then we edit. and almost every day we are reading, researching and writing and editing. then our opinion gets published in all that thinking gets shown to the world. it's what people look at but they don't really realize how much we have to do to get there.

and it's work to get there. it's hard work. and remembering as a judge that every decision you make there is a winner, and there is a loser. people forget about the losers. because if they like the decision and they won they think were smart they don't like what we have done they don't think were smart they think we're lazy how to get this wrong. they think we should do this based on politics. it is a scale you are trained to look at issues in the legal way. to think about the questions

not based on your personal likes or dislikes but on the tuesday --dash tools of interpretation. the process can seem morning --dash but boring --dash and boring to an outsider. it is completely engaging. and the other half of the day we are interacting with the public. they get visitors from around the world. to be businessmen.

they have conversations about what they do. we get visitors from around the world, judges from around the world. people around the world read our cases and study our legal system and they come to us with the courts looking to meet with us and talk to us. and for each of us to learn from each other. and i travel to law schools and bar associations i travel to other kinds of groups as well. because i want to reach out and teach people about the law and how it makes me so passionate about what i do. in one meeting from people i can get them to understand our legal system a little bit better i hope that they will become better citizens and improving it for everyone. so we are busy on lots of

different levels not just been in the courtroom the hours that they have to argue cases before the most popular question submitted how do the justices get along. what are the conference rituals. it starts with respect. if you come into this appreciating that every single justice on the court has a passion in a love for the

constitution and our country that's equal to mine than you know that if you accept that as an operating truth which it has you understand that you can disagree you can understand that you can disagree respectfully and sometimes you have passionate words if you read that. that is because we really have a commitment to the answer that we think is right. as you all know from your personal relationships when people think their rate they can get really agitated. but we do that in writing. and in person we treat each other with affection and love

because we understand that commitment. and so we borrow that phrase in the help and i hope i did not use too many of those in my book. we are family. we spend more time with each other than any of us spends with our spouses or friends. they are constantly when you spend much time with each other you figure out a way of how to love each other and still a disagree. that's what family does every single day try figuring out what movie are going to go to on a friday or saturday.

i understand in an official con test and you can't speak again until he comes around to you. it's a way of making sure that no one hops up all the time. on wednesdays we vote on the cases we heard in a particular week. on friday we discuss and vote on the cases that we heard on tuesday. we break it up a little bit. because it can take time to talk about a case. i think it is to ensure we are all on the same page. but sometimes not very often they will say the issue is this. they will come around with someone else. i think it should be this one. you got to start there.

he did not think the other side's arguments make sense. he says i either agree with the chief and if i do i think we should mention this. i don't think one of those reasons is really a reason. he expresses what his thinking is and why. and it goes down the line until it reaches the most junior and just as he goes last. somewhere in there. someone might say i disagree altogether. and i'm going to just sit. they are dissenting.

in my the other side is wrong. they will come and say yes but we should say this and by the time the conference ends when the writer is ultimately aside if he is not in the majority the most senior judge in this dissent you have a very clear outline of what your colleagues are thinking.

but they need five votes to win there is a joke among judges if you are on the trial court you count to one. on the appeals court there's three you have to write so people will join your opinion. is the same with the dissent. you want to write c get everybody to say you are right about that. that is how the process begins. clearly after the drafts come and sometimes people say i have to write differently in the conclusion might be the

same and that is called a concurrence. i'm dissenting but i will say i'm not dissenting for that reason i will dissent for that other reason. we try to come together as groups as often as we can. >> yesterday's inauguration. .. ..

the two views the terms and concepts that each generation could interpret to meet their needs and so one of the biggest issuissues that the court is constantly grappling with is in this age of new technology what does and unreasonable search and seizure. so can the government fly over your home and use technology

that takes the air that emanate from your home. we have had questions about wiretaps and gps tracking of people in cars and we will have many more. for sure the forefathers had no idea that the computer and computer chips would come into existence. even benjamin franklin i doubt very much that he in his wildest fantasy imagined things we could do today. if we have terms that are more specific, we wouldn't have been given the opportunity to define it with experience and so they

did a mixture of some very clear things. you can't do this. one thing we forget about today you can't corner the militia into people's homes except during times of war but there were many other things the left generally and i think it gives us a constant and we are guided by that concept but we are not wedded to a fixed time. >> what worries you about the constitution are there any issues you might have your eye on? [laughter] >> are you a lawyer, i didn't think you were.

i will talk about one thing that the recent elections had gratification about. our forefathers were citizen statesman so that's why i used the word statesman. they were people that were of the community they were in. they were the delete of that society and businessman, very successful followers, people that have high educations and they traveled the world and learned from other cultures.

it's discouraging the things they thought it didn't work and coming up with creative solutions for the issues they thought patterns can be solved by other systems. so, what i am gratified by is that more people are voting now than they have in past years because it worries me when citizens forget that it is their obligation to create the country they want. that's why i tell people when they ask me how do you feel about the immigration law.

how do you feel about the debate of the second environment? and i get all these questions i can't answer because i generally am still considering and i don't want people to believe that i made up my mind because they haven't but if i express an opinion that is what they will believe. but having said that, what i often say to them is why are you asking me. why aren't you asking your self? what do you think and what are you doing about it if what you think is that you don't like something? because that is what this country was founded on, on people actually getting up and starting a war to change the

country and create a new one. your thoughts on that please? i am just encouraging civic responsibility. we should all be citizen steeps people out there lobbying for the things that are important to us. we change and you take charge of that change, not the court. >> last question. going back to your nomination te nomination in the period from your nomination to your swearing-in to the supreme court, was there a moment that stands out for you that was particularly meaningful facts >> i think i spoke about earlier. at the moment when i realized how extraordinarily special my mother was.

we take the people we love often for granted and we sometimes don't know how important they are to us. the most special momen moment of folder in the nomination process was that a friend broke my rule. they were not showing any of the nomination process but one of my closest friends said you have to watch this and i watched my brother be interviewed on television and he was describing me and he started to cry and in that moment, like never before, i kne knew how to play my brothr loved the. most of us don't get the chance to see that or feel it except id accept the moments of tragedy.

i got to feel it in a joyful moments that we have been the greatest gift. >> thank you for a beautiful evening. here is a gift from us .-full-stop we are at the capitol hill home of armstrong will again that the partattend theparty for clarencs about to begin. what kind of logistics go into hosting a book party for a vice presidents attending? >> we have been plannings