of which was 6-3. he probably has one of those monday. but the supreme court says there is a floor under which an individual, where the circumstances suggest that an objective person might think that that jurist could have a hard time holding the balance and might be biased should under the constitution's due process clause be recused in the case. the chief justice wrote a strong dissent. the chief justice's opinion lists 40 different questions that might come up. what about if you finance the losing candidate, and is the winner going to be against you? what about trade associations putting money into elections and so forth? and all of those are legitimate

questions, and they will be ventilated in the years to come. what was concerning the court, obviously the majority of the court, and retired justice o'connor had spoken about this very case quite a bit, was the appearance of justice for sale. and that lots of money going to state judicial races were making people believe that they had to participate in some way in financing judicial elections or they wouldn't get a fair hearing when their case came before the court. i argued this case, and i knew the court was going to be concerned about opening the flood gates, and where we were going from here and what kind of bias would we be demonstrating, or being friends with a justice, or a former clerk of the justice. so i focused a lot on the justice for sale concern that i

think underlay what the justices were concerned about, and i actually went back to the magna carta and i found a provision that said something to the same effect, that justice will not be for sale, justice will not be bought. we found something in both the magna carta and picked up by blackistone. i thought maybe that will calm down the conservatives that are worried about constitutionalizing this thing. it didn't work. four of them voted against us, but it was enough to pick up the fifth vote to support the final outcome. one of the justice during the oral argument, justice stevens said isn't the due process clause a concern for the judiciary? my opponent said no, it is only the right of an individual, it is not a right of the judiciary

to be perceived in the right light. that bothered justice stephens and justice souter as well, that we in the united states supreme court at the end of the day have got to be mindful of the appearance of justice as well as actual justice itself. the facts of this case were so bad that having taken the case, linda has made this point, once they took the case, it was going to be very hard to say oh, well, no problem. >> as we move to our conclusion, it would not be appropriate to end without at least a comment or two on the retiring justice, justice souter, who leaves the court. i had not met him before he was appointed to the bench, but i remember covering his confirmation hearings for the mcneill-lerher news hour.

i have to say that the justice he has been on the bench seems to me to be fairly congruent with the figure i saw before the committee. i was not among those though was terribly surprised, but i not have pricked he would be as liberal a justice as he has turned out to be. he was called the steth -- stellth candidate. there is no justice who appears lesson the social scene than justice souter. he will be very happy to go back to the farm in new hampshire. he will be happy to see washington in the rear view mirror as he heads to new hampshire. what his legacy will be i guess historians will say. there are no great grand doctrines that have been produced. i will tell one story about

him. each year i am asked by the rhodes scholar committee to conduct a goodbye event for the scholars. they meet justice souter at the court, in addition to going to capitol hill and the rest of it. when we did he brief the scholars, every year, year in and year out, justice souter has been at the top of the list. the one person they have met that they would not eliminate for next year's scholars. my impression is they have seen someone who is thoughtful and measured. he talks about how he goes about his work on the court. it seems to me what their impression is his private persona is the same as his public persona. in washington that may be a rare commodity. we have about a minute.

i wanted to be sure that we don't conclude today without a word on the retiring judge. >> i would say one word. that he is a very decent, thoughtful man. he gave a farewell speech to his cirque, the third circuit and a speech at justice o'connor's place. this is someone who is not supposed to like public speaking. he spoke without a note in a passionate way about what a justice is, what a judge is, what it means to be that, what separation of powers meant to him in new hampshire. both of those speeches, i hope there is a record of them some place. >> no. >> neither one? >> he wouldn't allow them to be

recorded, and there is no text. >> it is too bad because everybody should see them. >> thank you. >> this was a most marvelous panel, and i want to thank professor howard and the panel. give them a hand. [applause] >> ted, dick, jan, and john. this discussion has, i am sure you agree has been most enlightening and stimulating. we've learned about fish that only die temporarily and other matters. [laughter] and it is no wonder this panel has become one of the popular highlight features of our conference. we now are going to bring the conference to a close, and i think it has been a wonderful conference. we have had a good time. we have learned a lot. and i would now like to call on

our chief judge who calls this conference to adjourn, judge karen williams. >> i, too, want to thank each of our panelists today, and also professor howard for the wonderful job that he did add our moderator. this term included decisions on a great variety of subjects, and i thought you all did a masterful job of exploring those decisions and providing us with important take-aways. first, before adjourning, there are several other people i would like to thank. first, chief justice roberts for his willingness to be botha dressed -- both address the

conference last night and to participate in the question and answer session this morning. and i think this session added a lot to our traditional discussion to the most recent supreme court. my good colleague, paul. i am so indebted to you for all that you have done as a program chair. and judge motz, this has been fabulous. i thought it was most informative and a great success. i just can't thank you enough for all of your dedicated service in making sure the conference was such a success. and to my good colleague, judge jay harvey wilkinson. i might be the chief judge, but he is it is dean of this court.

i also want to thank sam phillips, karen and the staff of the circuit executive's office for all the fine job they did to plan this conference and making sure that everything ran so smoothly. and finally you, the membership, at this conference. all of us judges look so much to be with you, and it gives us the opportunity to get to know you and form lasting friendships. this is our 76th conference, and i hope that you all had a wonderful time. our 77th conference is tentatively scheduled to take place next year at the greenbriar, june 24-26, and we look forward to seeing you all there.

i wish each of you safely travels home, and we now stand adjourned. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> coming up next on c-span, stan kasten talks about his role as president of the washington analysis baseball team. a discussion with chief justice john roberts and a discussion on recent supreme court decisions. >> tomorrow on "washington journal," a look at what the unrest in iran means for the future of the government with jack goldstone of george mason university. then a discussion on the economy, unemployment and world financial markets with peter morici of the university of maryland. and later, liz talks about her film, shouting fire, stories from the edge of free speech. that's live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> sunday on c-span 2's book tv. former reagan analyzers on why

the president believed destroying nuclear weapons would bring and end to the soviet union. >> nicholas talks about his two years in pakistan. he sits down with ralph peters. and next weekend for the holiday, three days of book tv starting friday morning at 8:00. including a historian and author. life, sunday from george washington's mount vernon estate. the entire schedule is on line, including streaming video and easy to search archives. >> and now, washington national's president stan kast en at the national press club. he talks about the team which moved to washington in 2005. >> good afternoon. welcome to the national bless club. i am a reporter with u.s.a. today and the president of the national press club. we are the world's leading professional organization for journalists and are committed

to a future of journalism by providing informative programming, journalism education and fostering a free press worldwide. for more information about the national press club, please visit or website. on behalf of our 3,500 members worldwide, i would like to welcome our speaker and our guest in the audience today. i would also like to welcome those of you who are watching us on c-span. we are looking forward to today's speech, and afterwards i will ask as many questions from the audience as time permits. please hold your applause during the speech so that we have time for as many questions as possible. for our broadcast audience, i would like to explain that if you hear applause, it may be from the guest and the general public who attend our luncheons, and not necessarily from the working press. i would like to introduce our head table guests and ask them to stand when their names are called. from your right, peter, editor

of the kip linger tax letter and former first baseman of the softball team. >> kerry brackets ton. >> lisa, pigano, communication manager for the nationals. john allen a reporter for congressional quarterly and a shortstop for the team. shartise vice president for communication relations for the nationals. stipping over the podium for just a moment, we have jonathan of bloomberg news, the speaker's committee member who organized today's lunch and the coach of the division championship n.p.c. softball team.

stipping over our speak forea second, we have jeff of dufor, of the examiner. are you a member? >> no. >> israel negron, community relations director for the nationals. paul dixon, author of the dixon baseball dictionary and other books. and finally, we have amy fi ckling, an original member of the n.p.c. softball team. [applause] >> of the old washington senators it was often said washington, first in war, first in peace and last in the american league. substitute nationals for senators, and national league for american, and you can describe the situation for our local major league team today and today's speaker. in fact, it is hard to think of anyone that has had a worse

season than the washington nationals except for programs the republicans. [laughter] >> they ran off an unpress denied 14 straight division titles. the braves haven't won since he brought his baseball expertise to the nationals. so far, however, success on the ball field has eluded the nation's capital. despite the new stadium, attendance is down, unless you count the red sox fans. so is the nats' won-loss record. by the way, that is the team that mr. kasten rooted for as a kid. when mr. kasten spoke at the club three years ago, he talked

about how he was building a club through the farm system. you can look at ryan zimmerman and jordan zimmerman and see the frouts of those efforts. the nationals are mired in last nice. the manager is rumored to be fired. questions abound. will they be able to sign their first round draft pick, peter strassberg, considered the best prospect in a generation. will the owners open their pocket books wider and bring in better players so they aren't talked about in the same sentence as the 1962 new york mets. he has been the subject of criticism in the "washington post" and the times. then again, the atlanta journal constitution once questioned why he had gotten a contract

extension. that was in 1991, two years before the braves began that unpress denied winning streak. he got his start in baseball by walking up to the braves owner, ted turner and offering to work for nothing. as ted turner once told the paper, that was an offer even i cooperate refuse. besides the behaves, he has also served as president of the turner-owned atlanta hawks basketball team and the atlanta thrashers hockey team, becoming the first person ever to serve as the head of three major league teams simultaneously. the son of holocaust survivors, he graduated from new york university and columbia law school. that law degree problems comes in handledy when he negotiates contracts. today's questions probably won't be as hard as those negotiations. let's welcome stan kasten to

the national press club. [applause] >> thank you, donna. it is always great being here at the press club. i always enjoy it whether i am speaking here or coming for speeches. it is always great fun for me. i see so many friendly faces out here in the audience today. i also see plenty of media. [laughter] when i do speeches, i often start by asking do we have any media in the room today? a do that for a couple of reasons. first of all, when there is no media in the room, i can tell people things that i might not otherwise. but the main reason is you often see people getting in trouble for their quotes and stories, and the routine, the knee-jerk defense is i was misquoted. i have been in this business 30 years, that has never happened to me. every time i have gotten into

trouble, it is because they quoted me exactly correctly. [laughter] so i always have to be careful when i am in a group like this. i am heartened that today we have jonathan salant here. he will be helping decide the questions later and as thers while coach of the national press club softball team, he has promised me softball questions, so i am really looking forward to that. i was here a couple of years ago. i want to talk to but the things i said then. the plan that we enunciated back then, how we proceeded on that, and why the future i think for the franchise continues to be exceptionally rosie, why i continue to be so optimistic about where we are heading and all the things that are falling into place for us. first let me start by saying -- again, i came here three years ago. i cannot tell you how much i love d.c. it is just thrilling being here.

even on a slow boring day here, everything is exciting, the pace and the people. not just international application. the local politics gets quite exciting from time to time. everything about the city has been fun. i live right downtown in what i think is the most beautiful downtown in america. so it has been nothing but a joy, nothing but a pleasure to spend as much time as i get to spend here. that has been a great part of my experience here. when the family bought this franchise, we set a course, i think, to have success across the broad spectrum, across the metrics there are for measures success, for long term or sustained success. we talked about three things that were critically important to us. the first was the product on the field obviously, the team background through a program, long term player development and scouting.

the second was the customer experience and what they go through night in and night out. and the third was community relations. those three elements in the business setting you translate those as product, customer, brand. in our setting, it is the team on the field, the customer experience and our community relations effort. i want to talk about all three today and talk to you about some things that maybe haven't been covered well enough by all of the media outlets. i am here to share with you things you may not have heard about before. let's start with what everyone follows the most, and that is the team. i don't need to go through the history of where we were when we got this franchise and what the long-term condition was. it was clear, though, that we needed to spend a lots of time and effort on our scouting and player development apparatus. we set about to do that right away. we put a lot of money into that. we hired a lot of people, the

best people that we could find to do that job. we said at the time, and you can go back and check, that our emphasis would be not just young players, but young pitchers. the reason for that is, it has been true for the century and a half they have played baseball. it has been about your pitchers and always going to be about your pippers. it is the hardest thing to get and after that, everything else gets much easier. so we have spent time and attention on finding young pitchers. i have a firm believe that of the ways to acquire talent, the least efficient is free agency. first you scout and develop on your own, second you acquire through trades. and finally when you are ready to take advantage of a jump, then you go after free agency. we have followed a course that has us very close, much closer than you would think by just looking at the standsings to doing that. i also feel strongly, and i

think i have about 150 years of evidence to back me up, you can't buy a pitching staff or rotation. you have to grow them. you can buy one pitcher. but you can't buy a rotation. that was our challenge when we got here. how do we develop a young staff? how do we get there? well, as i said, we hired a lot more scouts. we hired the best player development people that we could, and we knew it was going to take time. when i went through this in atlanta, i told you all this story before. when i went there this in atlanta with my last owner, i explained how i thought we had to go forward to producing a good team. i told him. for the next three or four years on the talk shows and in the newspaper, before there was internet, back in the good old days, i said while we are growing, for the next three or four years, every night i am going to be the village idiot. for those of you keeping score at home, i am currently in my

village idiot phase in washington. that is where we are as we develop until we see the record on the field. it is easy to be critical. it is easy to be impatient. i totally understand that. but i think those of you who aren't limited to just looking at the standings, who are really looking at the pieces of a franchise and the things you need to be successful can start to see what those of us on the inside have long spected and now we are -- specked, and now we are -- suspected and now we are seeing. we now have a rotation with four rookies, three of them are 22. this is what we set out to do three years ago. you can't snap your fingers and make it happen over night. it takes time to develop the scout, the sign and then develop the kids. between that crop and the crop that is right behind them in syracuse, and then the dozen,

15, 20 names that you don't yet know behind them, better building a franchise that is defined by young pitching, by pitching coming forward. i had a great conversation yesterday with a pitcher you probably all know named john smolets, played for me once upon a time. he and i went through this. we had great fun talking about this, because i reminded him of what his record was at the age of 21. i also know the following statistics, three pretty good pitchers, glavine, maddox and smotlz, when they were 2 1 and 22 years old, though threes pitchers in the major leagues had a record of 19-46. i am not comparing anyone we have today to any of them. that is not my point. my point is even the best

pitchers have to go through the crucible of learning how to pitch of here. they need 20, 30 or 40 starts before they can learn how to maximize the talent they have. that is what we are going through right now with the 22-year-olds. we have been encouraged by what we have seen so far. there will be ups and downs until they turn the corner until we decide the five final guys who comprise our rotation going forward. that is what it is all about. getting a solid rotation. i said this wirnt did not winter for me, we were concentrating on finding starters. let me tell you now, it is clear to me now and most fans would agree. not only are we going to find three solid starters out of this group, we are going to find more than three starters. you probably know the kid in

syracuse, ballister, and mock. you don't know about the other ones because that is what we are focused on, having kids who are ready to pitch up here, stay with us a long time, home-grown kids. no fan enjoys anything more than home-grown talent, kids that we brought and developed on our own. i often say when we won a world championship in 1995 in atlanta, the most thrilling aspect of that was that the pitcher standing on the mound who threw a one-hitter for the final game of the world series, the hitter who hit the home run for the only run of the night, and the pitcher standing on the mound closing out the night, all three of them were scouted by us, drafted by us and signed by us. that is what we are building. so yes,