that has been done, particularly on special, select committees such as watergate where you had council asking questions and conducting examinations. clearly, it council doing that would have more time to prepare. would be more able to ask meaningful followed-up questions. that is something worth thinking about. you could do that and preserve sufficient to be time for members. -- tv time for members. rachel raised the notion that there are questions that nominees simply should not answer. that has become a contentious thing. it was described once by kagan talking about the ginzberg confirmation. if question is too specific on a

legal issue, the nominee will not answer because it might come before them on the court. but, if it is too general and at a high level of obstruction, and it calls for speculation. . .

rule on a case that might come before you is simply that. you would not want to be the party appearing before a judge who has said under oath in his confirmation hearing that they will rule is certain way if a question comes before them. you would legitimately think that judge is not open-minded about the question. when you say something like that, people ask what the difference is between the question in the confirmation hearing and the judge having expanded their of views in a previous opinion. scalia can reverse his decision on a future case. judges are dealing with a particular set of facts, a particular procedural posture, a

particular standard of review, all these things and if they have oral arguments and briefs and a long time to consider and come up with what they think is the right answer based on their judgment. confirmation hearing, you don't have that. -- in a convert -- in a confirmation hearing you don't have that. >> can i follow up on one thing? one of the suggestions that has been put out there is that nominees should be asked to opine on long past decisions, decided cases that will not come back before them. there has been the suggestion that they be given those cases well in the balance. they can look at the briefs and do anything they want and come before the committee and tell the committee how they would approach the case and come out. is that legitimate? >> it may or may not be.

it comes down to a judgment about whether the issue in that case is still potential ally. -- potentiallylive. justice roberts and others said these were cases that were wrong with decided. >> we need to do that with dread scott. [laughter] >> roberts gave a list of several cases. there is no conceivable chance that dread scott will be revisited by the supreme court. you can't say roe vs. wade but what about, i don't know, what about wicker vs. philburn and that just cannot in the last 15 years. it is tricky to realize what will come up again.

>> what about justice khalil's refusal -- justice scalia's refusal to discuss madison. edicine. >> i think that roberts was willing to discuss it. that is not open for revisited some very >> i had a sperry's this of the question that goes to a broader. about whether there's the possibility of change in the senate process. it seems to me from observation but maybe you knows this of the wake of this would happen -- maybe you know specifically how this would happen, one major flaw in the hearings was there is no ability on the senators to engage in follow-up questions as they were not listening to the answers. it seems to me in the last several hearings that there was

a much more effective process up follow-up questions. do you know the explanation for that? did something physically change in the process? >> no, my experience is that members work very hard to prepare for these hearings. as you can imagine, step anticipate every conceivable response -- staff anticipate every conceivable response and draft follow-up. there were have been instances where the nominee gave the answer that was fed into this series of polyps that the senator had. we should not underestimate the energy that the senators put into these hearings. as senator biden said, it is a part-time thing for them. it is top. >> some senators are really good at interrogation. some senators are not as good.

when you help prep a nominee, you know who they are. that is part of the prep. you have to know those things. >> i am having a hard time remembering any question that jill biden ever asked. because he loves to speak to five. reporters used to count the minutes of his statements. sometimes he had 20 minutes of speech and may be time for one question. i think he was the exception. >> maybe we should turn to the audience and see if there are questions. if you have questions, please come down to the microphone. >> [unintelligible] i have a couple of questions.

[unintelligible] >> anybody want tackle those? >> you cannot take away the confirmation process altogether because the constitution requires it. it is the question of whether the hearing itself is necessary. as a matter of american history, the hearings for supreme court is a fairly recent phenomenon. it did not become a standard progress -- process until 50 or 60 years ago. before that there were sporadic and before that they never appeared at all. they did not require the person to show up in person. the question is about the

hearing, not the confirmation battle of the aspects of the hearing, the hearings were not televised until justice o'connor in 1981. you could have been hearing but not have to be on live national television which is another suggestion that people have made. thank you. >> i am from the faculty here. to eliminate life tenure for supreme court justices, i have a feeling that many americans would support doing that. if that were done and 15-20 year terms were substituted, that would eliminate or reduce the incentive to dig in on nominees and reduce the incentive on the president's part two tuesday august nominee so that person could serve forever and be his

legacy on the bench. i was wondering whether you think life tenure is a good thing for the supreme court and whether that proposal would actually help the confirmation process. >> i will start. life tenure is a good thing in protecting judges when they make decisions. that is a given. there are a variety of proposals out there to get around the. the requirements there is one proposal that would empower the president to import a new supreme court justice every two years and the august 9 on the court would actually said on cases, the youngest nine who are available. the older justices would not be deprived of their life tenure. they just not would not get to sit on many cases.

the idea behind a proposal like that is to take some of the pressure off the confirmation process. it would do that to some extent although you still know that person would set on the court for a number of years. the stakes are so high now, i am not so much sure how much difference that would make. it would inject fresh blood into the court. , periodically. >> there is another proposal that after a certain amount of years, the justice would sit on the court of appeals somewhere. i confess i have not spent a lot of time thinking about this because it has no chance of happening. i don't have a strong view about that. >> can this turn on the presumption that you can take sitting justices and make them

senior judges who still hear cases, they have not lost their article 3 status and therefore, they are still within the confines of article 3 and you do not have to amend the constitution. i think i agree that the likelihood of those happening is very slim. >> one thing that has been interesting about the speculation of a potential nominee is the choice between picking an intellectual heavyweight versus a sitting politician. could you comment on how you think the process -- the confirmation process would play out with a sitting politician. ? maple -- some people think if it if it is a sitting senator,

it might not be as harsh. what are your ideas about that? >> that is an interesting question. i think the confirmation process would be slightly different because expectations would be different. you suggested that a politician could not be an intellectual heavyweight. i will not touch that. [laughter] it seems there would be less expected of a politician in terms of being able to describe a fully formed judicial philosophy or dealing with the minutia of the commerce clause or whatever. i don't know how much lower the bar with the. selecting a politician raises a whole other set of issues which is stemming from the fact that the politician has been giving political speeches. in which he or she has no doubt said some things that would be viewed as controversial by the other party.

it would be a political decision up to members of the senate to decide how relevant those statements were. you can foresee lots of problems there. president obama has talked about breaking out of the mold of simply promoting judges and talked about getting people in with understanding of the legislative process and being a chief executive. it is certainly not outside the realm of process -- possibility that what happened. >> during the reagan and bush years, i kept expecting one of those presidents to appoint warren hatch so there be some diversity on the court. i think it is a really good idea. for instance, if you look at just the makeup of the senate judiciary committee now, there is sheldon white house from rhode island. he is one of the star democrats

on that committee right now. amy klobichar is on that committee and she is a lawyer and very smart. i would not put it past the president to be thinking in terms of a senator. there are a bunch of names that you all looked at those names and read about those people. with obama's constant refrain that he does not want to choose someone from the judicial monastery, that might actually drive his decision a little bit more this time than in the past. the fact of the matter is, it is hard for democrats or republicans to really wage war against one of their colleagues. at the end -- it is much easier

to oppose a sitting judge like merrick garland who may be elevated but one of their colleagues that they have spoken with and some legislative work with, i think the culture of that place is such that it might help, actually, with speeding along the process. >> i totally agree with president obama that is great to have someone on the court who is not from the traditional academy, so to speak. when harriet miers was nominated, it annoys me that people said she was not a judge. i found that to be ridiculous. the conventional wisdom is that it would be easier to get somebody confirmed if they were from the sun and. the senate.

taft was on the supreme court after being the president. it certainly happens. as a counterpoint, i would point out john ashcroft for it he was nominated to be attorney general after losing his reelect bit from the senate. he got heck beat out of them in his confirmation hearing anyone by a narrow margin. it could be that president obama picked a democratic senator was popular that it would be an easy confirmation. >> we might all agree that senatorial courtesy is not what it used to be. >> i am with aol news, so i will not ask a substantive question. [laughter] there has been some discussion about the religion of the next

supreme court justice. justice stevens is the only protestant. i would like to have your thoughts about whether president obama will think about that and if he decides that another catholic orjew is on the court, will that be a firestorm? what about hillary clinton? >> anyone? >> i cannot let that john ashcroft, and go. when john ashcroft was in the senate waged war against some of president clinton's judicial nominees. i remember a really wonderful african american judge from missouri who had been on the state supreme court. i cannot remember his name. ronnie white's. had been a state court judge

and had actually voted more times than not in favor of the death penalty for certain defendants but john ashcroft, when he was running for his reelection, seized upon a two or three opinions or statements of ronnie white's where he was arguing against the application of the death penalty. ronnie white had be a door and of aba and the police chief of the state of missouri and john ashcroft, solely for political reasons, challenged him and he was defeated. every other republican, he got every republican in the senate. it was not as if there was a lot of love for ashcroft. it was based in part because, for his own political needs and

desires, he went after a lot of really wonderful nominee is for various positions. now getting to your question. i apologize. thanknina totenberg had a npr whether president obama should be employment by whether there were no protestants on the court. i don't think it is something that a lot of people will talk about. i think a lot of people will think about it. i think there has been an undercurrent of chatter of the fact that both alito and stevens were protestants. it should not be an opposition to any justice but the fact of

the matter is, as a country, americans think a lot about religion. i do think this would and could be a real factor in their minds. totenberg's story indicated, senators will seize upon an issue regarding religion as a way to kind of with opposition to a candid that. -- to a candidate. i don't think it should be a factor. i don't think it is appropriate but i think it will be because americans will think about it, talk about it, and if you look at the blogoshere have promoted that there should be religious diversity on the court.

jeff stone from the university of chicago has written about this that we should have more religions represented. >> i have nothing to add on religion. i think that covers it. on hillary clinton, that was a part two, that is an interesting suggestion. my guess is that the president is happy having her where she is. i will use her to play off to another theme which is the the ofage. me of age. one phenomena we have seen as the desire to appoint younger enjoinder judges and justices. so that they will serve longer on the court. hillary clinton would have a disability in that regard.

what we heard last time around was there was a kind of informal cut off all around the age of 60 which would mean that soon i would have no chance. [laughter] i think that might be a problem. >> if you will indulge me on the religion question. if we presume that president obama may consider the question of whether there is a need for another woman on the court or another african-american on the court or the first asian- american on the court, all of those the relevant factors, why not -- why is not religious equality on the table? >> he may think it is. >> we will leave it at that. [laughter] >> i have a question about

circuit courts. within the last year, there have been three nominations that were stalled and in the end something like 90 votes not in favor of confirming circuit court judges. any thoughts on reform in that area? one position has been open for 17 years. >> is your question how to reform but circuit court process? >> that seems to be a problem to me. >> i think i know which circuit your talking about.

>> there are so many delays in the past year. centre lady spoke on the floor about this one month ago. i'm -- senatorleahy spoke on the floor about this one month ago. >> there are people who are controversial. during the bush administration there was a long time before bush eventually got a judge confirmed to once it because -- confirm to one seat but after a yearlong delay, it could be something like that. sometimes, there are long delays because of disagreements between senators between different states. in the ninth circuit, you have a seat that is vacant because there is a disagreement about whether it belongs to idaho or california. in the fourth sit -- in the

fourth circuit, present obamas with stacy from north carolina and south carolina. some cities have been vacant because the president is waiting for the senators from that state to come up with a recommendation. it depends on the circumstances. >> going back to the other part of your question, the long delay followed by a nearly unanimous confirmation vote, obviously, that is an indication that republicans are trying to slow things down. we have seen across the board whether it is with the department of justice nominees or judges or other executive- branch nominations. sometimes, those delays could be because a center is working out a situation with another senator and as a whole lot of nomination. what we have seen as a concerted strategy which is to slow down the confirmation process if possible. >> everyone focuses on the

supreme court and not enough on the courts of appeal. the fact of the matter is, with the supreme court deciding fewer than half the cases that they used to and -- when warren burger was a supreme court justice they decided 100 of the cases per year and now the number hovers around 75. it is the courts of appeal that are really important. there are only about 200 court of appeal judges of the country. but for 300 million people. these 200 people are really powerful. particularly since the supreme court is not making most of these decisions. some of us would say that is a good thing. but the republicans know exactly how important those judges are

and of those seats are. you are right, we only had three confirmations last year, a whole year of democratic appointees and they were not progressive liberal candidates. they are very coveted judges. >> we will make this the last question. >> you may know that the u.k. has established a freestanding supreme court for the first time. they have been looking at ways of reforming the judicial appointments. there has been some talk of involving parliament. they have been looking at other reforms that you have not addressed today including a supermajority vote requirements, a p morere -nomination, -- morepre-nomination preparation

or simply having an executive session, not getting rid of the hearing but doing something tode-charge of the hearing. the clauses that will come is a post-appointed hearing. >> i have not followed that. to think about how do with process date rigid structure process from scratch is interesting. i have never done that because it has not been something on my plate. i don't know what you would come up with, that is interesting. >> i think those are interesting

ideas. the supermajority requirement we almost have, i think. because of the filibuster. what post-appointment during the? >> a meeting agree [laughter] to. l gort. >> who would appoint the judges? >> as it is now, the chief justice would. >> who appoints them? >> it is a matter of the constitution. they would oversee the appointment process. >> not having a hearing bridg -t

would be are forced to do that even if everybody agrees that the testimony produces nothing useful, it feels like rolling back access to public information and eliminating some measure of public accountability and it is hard for anybody to what to do that even if we think that is not a productive -- not predicted part -- not a productive part of the process. >> there is a panel we were on last year and one of our colleagues gave a really interesting presentation about the history of requiring nominees to appear in person. it was intersected with race relations and brown vs. board of education. it was very interesting. >> thank you to the panel. we appreciate it. [applause] for those of you who are still

here with us, the program on law and government is doing another program one week from now, next wednesday at noon, on the senate filibuster. please come back. [general chatter] c-span3 c-span[captioning perfoy national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> you are watching c-span, created for you as a service by america's cable companies. next, a role that progresses play in the obama administration and at 3:30 eastern, just as ruth bader ginsburg talks about women and the supreme court and later live coverage begins of the southern

gop leadership conference. will he remarkedli fromzs from y -- we will hear a remarkli scrubberz cheney and others. book-tv coverage starts later tonight. one book looks at the 2008 presidential election. after that, a princeton university professor on how caucasians are perceived world. widde. and then the former secretary of education talks about why she feels too much testing has destroyed the american school system. book-tv prime time, tonight beginning at 7:00 p.m. eastern. tomorrow, the financial crisis inquiry commission continues tomorrow with former fannie mae executives.

the u.s. government took over fannie mae and freddie mac in 2008. the committee focuses on subprime mortgages and the role of citigroup. that begins at 9:00 a.m. eastern, on c-span 2. this weekend on c-span 2's book- tv, npr and correspondamos debra on what happen sunnis following the fall of saddam hussein. "and "the new york post" column as ralph peters looks at foreign policy and his latest collection of articles. find the entire weekend schedule and.o book-tvrg and follow was on twitter. next, remarks from author barbara ehrenreich.

and others on progressive activists in the obama administration. they spoke earlier this week at georgetown university in washington. this is two hours. >> before i go further, i would like to single out several people whose hard work made tonight's event possible. first, the staff of the kalmanovitz initiative, espe. their help was invaluable. our student workers.

i would also like to thank rachel from the georgetown university office of communications and joanne who helped with the logistics of this event tonight who helped put the panel together. her health was indispensable in many ways to organizing this event. finally, i would like to thank the 3 great journalists who co- sponsored this event tonight. dissent, the nation, and the american prospect. before i introduce the distinguished panel tonight, first a word about the kalmanovitz initiative. for labor and the working poor. in november, 2009, georgetown university formally launched this initiative? to a generous gift from the kalmanovitz charitable foundation. our mission is to bring together scholars, students, and practitioners who are concerned

about the problems that currently confront working people. , a the working poor and the embattled american tradition of collective bargaining and union representation. this initiative was organized in response to a realization that inequality has been on the rise for more than a generation in this nation. the struggle of the nation's poorest workers has become more difficult in many ways. yet workers efforts to improve their lot purcell organization has grown harder in a world complicated by globalization, technological change, and increased employer resistance to unionization. among our goals is to stimulate discussion of these problems which can in turn lead to action that helps address the problems workers face today. we undertake that worked here at

this just with catholic university, mindful of the fact that catholic social teaching has long championed the the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. workers need a strong voice in so many workplaces and that is confirmed by the sad news in today's newspaper about the mind tragedy yesterday in west virginia. that was a mine disaster that appeared to take the lives of at least 25 miners. as we open this discussion, we are mindful of the many working families that are in pain this night. alcan workers best gain a voice -- how can workers best gain a voice? it strikes us that this is an appropriate time for taking stock of what has been done since the arrival of the obama administration almost 50 months ago and what remains to be done. since the new deal, unions have

tended to ally with progressive groups in support of the democratic party and its president. that does not mean that the relationship has been without tension and differences in approach and emphasis. so, too is the situation today. as labor stand now, 15 months into the obama presidency. what are the priorities and how can a work with other progressives and what role can young people play in relation to these questions? these are some of the subject we will discuss tonight. we feel extremely fortunate to have a distinguished panel joining us for this discussion. i would like to introduce them to you. i will start of the other end of the table with my good friend and colleague michael kasin who was a professor of history here at georgetown and one of the nation's foremost historians of american politics. he is the author of many books

including one on william jennings bryant was the founder, one might say of the union does democratic party allies. he is also the co-editor of "dissent"magazine. next to michael, harold meyerson, editor at large of " "the american " magazine. he is one of the most acute observers and reporters on the american labor scene. next to harold, liz schuler , secretary-treasurer of the afl- cio. she is the youngest person to hold this position. she holds a journalism degree from the university of oregon and worked her way up in the international brotherhood of electrical workers after college as an organizer, a lobbyist, and campaign coordinator.

in september, 2009, she was elected to our current office as richard trumka's running mate. next to liz, gerry hudson, executive vice president of the service employees union. he has devoted the past 32 years of his life to the labour movement. he joined iceu in 1978. he has risen for the rights of what is now the nation's largest union and was elected executive vice president of sciu in 2004. next to jerry, we are pleased to have barbara ehrenreich, author, social credit, a public intellectual. she is the author of many books, including a book in which she recounts her own experience

working undercover as a low-wage worker in a variety of american workplaces. i am sure many of you are familiar with that book. she has done more to bring the plight of the working poor to a mass audience than anybody in america. next to barbara, we are pleased to have chris hayes, the washington editor of "the nation "magazine. is journalism has appeared in many places. he is known to many of you for his frequent appearances on television news shows. we are very pleased to have this panel. what we hope for tonight is a very conversational format. mike kasin and i will allstate in praising questions for our panel but we want them to engage our questions and each other and

then, after we have had his chance to do that, we would like them to engage with you. there is a microphone and the center aisle and after we have had a bit of conversation, i will invite you to learn about the microphone and take a chance of passing your own questions. again, we are so pleased to have it for this discussion tonight. i have said enough at this point and i will turn it over to my colleague to get the discussion started. >> thank you. i also want to thank joe and the initiative for helping to sponsor this and putting it all together and joann moosre, whose idea this was. the question is, what is the state of the labor movement today and how is it fair in the political arena?

maybe the way to start this is to move to my right, not necessarily politically, and start with herrell. h arold. >> the state of labor is pretty abysmal. not to put too fine a point on it. in the last year, we have had a truly world-class recession which has been a disaster for certain sectors represented in labor, manufacturing, and construction. i would not be sanguine about public employees and the wave of cutbacks at state and local governments. it has been a disaster because the chief legislative goal of the union movement which was the employee free choice that which essentially would ease the process of unionizing public -- private-sector workers which has

become all but impossible over the last 30 years due to the weaknesses of the national labor relations act in management's ability to exploit those witnesses. it is now clear that the employee free choice act and the compromised version is not going to be enacted. the problem with that is that left to its own devices, the number of workers in private sector unions begin -- continues to decline. it is currently at 7.2%. at the end of world war two, it was about 40%. there becomes an imbalance where a de0unionized \ private sector has more difficulty supporting a unionized public sector politically and economically. one of the two developments contributed to the decline for unions in the past year and that

decline is quite clear. it is evidence in the polling of the few organizations in the gallup organization both of which showed a decline of over 10% in public support sign for unions from minorities the past two years. there's the fact that public sector workers have retained the kind of that that's the private sector workers use to have to do not anymore. also, the broad perception is the decline of the american auto industry because autoworkers were being paid $70 per hour which is utterly untrue but the truth never got out. public opinion in terms of where they go politically, all of those things, unions are in big trouble.

finally, at the employee free choice act or efca as it was called, there were some major plans to do a massive organizing in many of the manynon-union companies around the u.s. today. those plants have necessarily been scrapped and the unions are grappling with what to do now. it is my observation, i do not have any quantitative day here, it is my observation that there is less organizing going on now but of workers than at any time i can remember since i started following this stuff back in the 19th century. my role as the house cassandras so other people will presumably move on from the sock some remarks.

-- from these somber remarks. there's a pro-labor president, the first year of the obama presidency has been something between a disappointment and a disaster for the american labor union movement. >> ok. [laughter] can i say ditto. however, i will it take up section -- i will take exception with a few of the pegs. i think he is dead on as far as the recession, the jobs crisis, certainly labor laws. weak labor law has taken its toll. it would take anything short of a miracle to organize a union in today's climate and there are so many stores out there about workers who sacrificed so much to have their basic rights to form a union.

everything you said is essentially accurate. there are a lot of good organizing stories out there. they relate to the point i wanted to make. the point that i want to make this that the labor movement actually is the only authentic voice poor workers out there today. not only union workers, it is workers in general. i think that is a misperception about the labor movement that we only care about our members. to tack onto that, we are also the cornerstone of a more progressive, broad movement. if anything is in sad shape now, it is that the labor movement has not got a bridge a done a good enough job to open the doors and the way the workplace is changing and the work force is growing in terms of women,

people of color, young people. this is something we are paying much closer attention to now. we know women are 50% of the work force officially. the women in the audience can clap. [applause] ok, thank you. 62% of mothers are breadwinners or co-breadwinners. one in four americans are caring for an elderly adults. and working at the same time. we have challenges in the work force with the new composition of the workforce for the labor movement has not kept up pace without work is changing. the one thing i want to start taking a look at as an officer, we are deeply committed to opening doors wider than ever before to the labor movement and looking at how we can sort of change their structure and our system to make it more flexible

and to start working for the way work is done in terms of contracts, freelance, part-time work. we have many challenges ahead of us. >> i don't essentially disagree gharold has said but i want to suggest that what fascinates me most about the crisis we are presently in is that in order to try to figure out what to do to enact new labor laws, we really need to build a broad movement out there against in equality. instead come up -- instead, we thought we would build a movement against in the quality. that is at stake. it is fast banita mideast and

with which young workers reject is fascinating to me that young workers do not see work as a pledge to fight in equality in society. it is not a place where you go to build a just society to them. the days when you see the labor movement at the cornerstone of the social justice movement have long since passed and so it has been fascinating to get into conversation with young people. and i compliment your award that was a cornerstone of our beliefs. that is no longer the case. it was interesting to me when that stopped being the case. i was also a part of many other movements that in some ways a labor movement was not seen as all that helpful. if you cared about racial justice in this society, if you cared about patriarchy and how to organize and if you care about all those other things,

the labor moment was over here and if you care about the war in vietnam or many other things, the labor move and was over here and you were over there. some of the estimates of labor movement because we believed we needed to build up inside the labor movement a way to deal with all those other issues but that the labor movement had to be relevant to those other issues. that was a challenge for us. 30 years later, i find that is still a challenge. as we went into efca fight, i thought was to go everywhere we can't convince people that essentially is essential for workers to have a voice on the job in and in politics in order for us to achieve the goals of racial equality and all the others. in many ways, i think people were more hospitable than us that we have been to them. i think we really have to see

ourselves in line with a whole set of progressive forces out there where we are speaking for them and they are speaking for us in order to build this new labor movement. i think it is also important for the rest of the progressive movement to see how important the labor movement is to them and fulfilling their goals around a variety of with the other things including what we do about the environment, and a bunch of other things. that is the new paradigm. >> there is so much to comment on. i have one note. maybe i will get a chance to say something else later. i would say that the big

challenge facing labor -- i will not compete with all the challenges but it is to organize the unemployed. and welcome the unemployed as members. this is not a way that our unions are set up to work. you know the model. you have to have a job and then you can be organized and so on. way before this recession, we know that there were no more jobs for a lifetime in america. the experience that so many people have had is maybe nine or 10 jobs before middle age. there is not the choice of one career necessarily any more. it tends to be very volatile3 .

we don't have a structure that acknowledges that people who have been laid off are still working people. with unemployment close to 10%, it becomes painfully ridiculous. i i have heard it from people who were laid off in this recession and they say they did not know that they would not be a member of the union anymore. that's right, buddy, it is all over. from my challenge to the union people will be what are we doing to build a movement? this is not the newest thing in the world. in germany, you could be a union person whether you are working or not. there is some organizing of the unemployed going on in a few spots of america with some help from the afl-cio.

it seems is the biggest shift of consciousness which is that the working class are the same folks. whether they have jobs or not. >> let me make one quick point of the definition of the term special interest. if you were to think of the two groups of people in america that had at least to gain -- what are the three groups of people that had the least to gain from the health reform bill was passed, they would be this -- undocumented workers, super- wealthy people who did any conceivable environment in america will get good medical care, and union members and unions with really good

contracts. in fact, the one thing a union can really do for its members in a universe of tremendous medical uncertainty, the one selling. it has come of the biggest selling. it has in terms of a kitchen table issue is delivering a good benefits package to its members. by creating a system of the is our health care we have created, they have reduced the marginal advantage they had. and yet, when this bill, which for all its flaws is the most significant piece of welfare legislation passed since medicare, when this bill was on its deathbed, the american labor movement rushed thein and we shd all be extremely cognizant of that.

even if in its diminished state, labor was able to revive this effort and help get it passed. the labor movement debts incurred -- does incredible work with pushing that over the finish line. the labor movement remains the single greatest ,ll locus of political movement in the country. there is this notion that labor is a special interest but actually the way that labor comported itself during the health care debate was the precise opposite it comported itself cognizant of the term solidarity wit.

i said this at a weird washington dinner and g as wellasped. [laughter] and i said how one of the more solidaristic country. on the reverse of that, what has labored on for the last, what has the obama administration done for labor? not nothing. . .

sometimes i wish you could hire a right-wing operatives to run the left. there is a structural imbalance. when the right gets in power they wonder how they can reward allies and punish enemies. they generally have no operating plan above that. the bandwidth is not occupied by giving poor people health care. in the midst of progressive governments you're making trade- offs. making the union movers star will help the country generally. we have seen a lot of emphasis put on things, particularly in healthcare, the was a big issue

, and coming at the expense of doing things to empower labor, workers. >> chris is a tough act to follow. what would be good on the heels of his comments is to put what he said to the panel for their comments. these two ideas, one, labor being presented as a special interest as it nearly always this, yet been the foot soldiers to help push through this healthcare bill which has just been passed. i'm curious to the thoughts of the other panelists as to how they read that legislative victory. historic, or some have argued it was a missed opportunity that could have produced more. in any order you would like to take it up.

>> i would argue that it is historic. the most significant piece of legislation we have passed. [inaudible] [laughter] >> and some part of what was the best we could do is those trying to organize and support cannot figure out how to organize a broader public. that left us in the place where we are. i agree it is one of the most solid eristic things we have done a long time. -- one of the more solidaristic things you could have done. it would have been better if we could have gotten broader support. the right to act as into a corner. it is a whole lot better than what we have. the only way to get to where we should go is to begin to figure out how to build a broader

progressive movement. >> i will follow that by saying, kudos. i wish that i could bottle what you said and spread it around. labour cannot get any traction. most often they are for theywhole of society, minimum wage, social security. there are so many examples. we still maintain a negative stereotype that we are self interested. this sounds like the culture we live in. with the healthcare bill in particular we need to find a way to communicate that. to compete with the opposition that can distill a healthcare bill into two words -- death panels. it is frustrating that we do not

get the attraction and ability to spread the good news about what we do. >> one quick thing. i do not mean to be a spoiler. i have put my time in on so many union declines, rallies, but there is a reason, chris, why unions have the reputation. that is because some of them did oppose national health insurance in decades past. it would have undercut their ability to present this as a special privilege they were able to give to their members. we're past that. as unions in towards seeing themselves not just as the institutions, but as part of a progressive movement, the must go further to represent the working class. it is many people today who are not working.

>> one comment. there is the reason we're seeing as special interests. sometimes we operate like one. for example, read the beginning of the obama -- just after he won. some of us decided we wanted to go into cities with the labor movement in communities of color and build the entire movement around retrofitting [unintelligible] you would not believe the battle understandably that we got into as to if we create jobs, who should the jobs go to? ultimately we got to the right place with the building trades and everyone in some ways lining up behind creating jobs, and the jobs should be made widely available to all who need them,

including poles who have historically been locked out of the building trade. that is why some people think it is a labor union that only protecting its own who do not look like us. it does not look like them -- we ought to make a labor movement that does. i applaud what you said the beginning. this labor movement ought to take black, yellow, women workers. it will revitalize itself to that extent. if it does not, then as workers begin to see worker centers and all types of others as places where they grow themselves, not the labor movement. we need to change a bit. it is not just the way the rest of the world deals with us. we need to change too. >> there is a striking degree to

which ironically, if you look at labor as a special interests, what a lousy job but has done as a special interests. [laughter] even and the next legislative battle, the financial reform, labor union members are no more are less advantaged by the crap from the banks. the americans for financial reform are those who were there, for all their imperfections. they are the one constituency with some power financially and with people who were there for the struggles of the general class, although they don't do nearly, or hardly any of what barbara described as reaching out institutionally. the labor law has been around at

least since 1965 when there was the first effort that i am aware of to amend the act, repealed provisions that were anti-union. 87 pieces of legislation went up to capitol hill in 1965. 85 past, but that was not one of them. you do this with power of the white house and congress. they tried again. with carter as president and democratic control of capitol hill it did not make it. the first couple of years of bill clinton's presidency, he said we would get to it after midterm elections. newt gingrich won those. and of that. the first year obama's new presidency, maybe there's enough support, but we will do health care first. whoops, lost mass., so forget about it. taking care of its own, labor

does it contractually. politically it is appalling. they do not really go anywhere. in terms of expanding the union movement, there is one interesting program of doing this. it is a political program, the way they try to get swing working-class voters, mostly white, to vote democratic in states like ohio, pennsylvania, wisconsin. it is called the working american program. they knock on your door. would you like to join this union? it does not cost anything. you can voyager grievances and you will get union political material. that is the defacto impact. the organizing is going on with more than a million signed up in ohio. probably over 750,000 in pennsylvania. it is one reason why barack obama carried those states.

it does not really take it to the next level. some are unemployed, but do not think of themselves as organizing the fellow unemployed. they are getting to it around the edges. the relative weight of this is going to expand. it is an idea that needs to be expended in different directions along the lines that barbara and gerry talked about, as well as a political program to have democratic candidates do better at election time. >> if i can just continue in my critical then you a little -- [laughter] one thing, breaking with the consensus here, it carries the

possible impression of self- interest -- the employee free choice act. i said from the beginning, and good, is taking on the issue of people's rights to work. they have no rights over it, no freedom of speech, to assemble, and the privacy rights -- nothing at work. the only right unions will focus on now is the right to join a union and to pay dues. it is not good enough. my idea, let's have a bill of rights for workers. let's have the struggle for workers' rights. let's take on all of those rights. in the end it was hard to fight. you know that. but we did try. i am partly saying these destructive things so that you of you who are here will know

there is lively discussion within the boundaries of people who really feel strongly about the labor movement and the working poor. we're not a cult, all right? >> while i believe labor law reform is a good thing, and i don't know how we get to a robust movement without it, and no was the first thing of the box we should have them. nor do i know the best way to involve people in a conversation about what to do with inequality. i do not know if that is the best way. there are disagreements among us about that. some of us had an illusion, we have been quickly disabused of it, that you could actually win something as monumental as an

employee free choice or health care reform as lobbying behind the scenes, not movement- building. that was a big mistake. you knew the right would come out in big forces. to think that we will stick it through because we have the correct set of politicians and line is a mistake once you decide that is the case, then it becomes how to best do it? you cannot decide to go out and do some piece of legislation like that without understanding it would be opposed in a big way, and you need to have broad public support. this might not be the way to get it around workers' rights. >> on the working american peace, i'm glad you raised. the movement is growing, 3 million strong. these are assessing members.

many are unemployed right now. they are angry, anxious, and what the way to make a difference. one of the most innovative things they're doing, and i have been an advocate of thinking creatively, rather than getting out on the streets rallying, let's do things with technology. something with a little thought. working america is having conference calls countrywide remembers dial in and it is 20,000 at a time. to listen in, hear what is going on with congress. actual members of congress talking about jobs. what these folks can do if they're feeling disenfranchised, incite activism and immobilization. it is really starting to grow.

>> would you like to comment? rather than continue with the doom and gloom, and liz was getting out of that to some degree. let me make a quick comment and then ask a question. in my reading of labor history in this country, at times when labor was growing and capturing the imagination of many people was when it was able to project the image of itself is not as a universal interest, at least one really capturing people's sense of what was wrong in society in giving them some sense of what in general might be needed to correct it. that was true to some degree in the late 19th century, in the 1930's and 1940's. for short time it was also true

in the 1960's and early 1970's. there's a wonderful book being written about the united farmworkers. it gave people a sense of the not rage with farm workers in this country. -- people a sense of an outrage. if people could speculate on how labor not with pr to make itself look better, but how liver can again project a sense of itself as representing what americans need. a moral sense of what the nation stands for. is it a living wage campaign? something about moral capitalism? i do not know. of the like to hear people who are more involved daily talk about it.

>> i feel like -- there are two ways to think about the problem. the public perception, the power. those two things are related. the idea was to run an end around public perception and go towards the power. i say that in a good sense, that we should like power for working people and disenfranchised people. i wonder the degree that -- i guess there is a negative feedback loop. as the labor movement shrinks, fewer people have the occasion to interface with it. as fewer do, the more alien or

parochial it seems to buy into stereotypes. there are also union members who have paid their dues. part of the problem is how to get our head around this broader redistribution of power that needs to happen. i don't think the perception aspect would be in the top three things to worry about. unions are not thought of well. -- are not a well and are not liked. but neither are the banks. everyone hates the banks and i don't think they're losing much sleep over that. [laughter] >> i think the labor movement

needs to stand for justice in society. we were correct to organize around health care. it would have been smarter to do it differently, but we did not. we should still continue to go out and fight around these broad, social issues and try to organize more broadly than we do at the moment. as a part of tried to strengthen progressives, labor law reform is something that ought to happen. we ought to at least convince folks again that we are an instrument of justice. it is hard to get there without us. most people think we are an instrument of try to protect our own jobs and what we do. that is will shift. -- that is [beep] -- i look at trying to organize the plight of

people. that is not what we talk about. we need to do more. we should continue to do some things like we did around healthcare reform, around comprehensive immigration reform. we should continue to do that. let's stop acting like we can lobby this into existence. let's try to organize more broad forces. then say, you know what? workers have been the right to self-advocacy is also a way to continue the fight in ne. >> yes, thank you. i agree with gerry. i would take a step further. i talk about reaching out to more young people. the labor movement has not done a good job of succession planning and its own ranks, as

far as freeing up young union workers, but also showing the young workers out there who desperately need a voice that labor can be that voice. we have seen what has happened in the economy. young people are disenfranchised. they are going into incredible debt tried to give college degrees. then they graduate and have no job, let alone a job with benefits. they have no job with healthcare. it makes the case for itself, but young people are not aware that the labor movement can be an advocate for them. if we reach out to the next generation, particularly younger, students as young as then middle school and high- school -- >> that will end up on glenn

beck, by the way. [laughter] >> but it needs to be a two-way street. there are many young activists who do understand it, but we need to reach beyond that. to those who do not know about the social justice movement and what it can do to help them economically. >> there are some interesting, exciting things going on among college students. last week i was at tulane university in new orleans where the food service workers are organizing, tried to get into the sciu. there is tremendous faculty and student support. i loved the rally. there have been similar activists at georgetown, uva, american university. but a challenge for the union,

for us all is can we find a way to connect the social conscience of so many college students who are moved by the plight of canada's workers with their own self-interest? because it is like a scam -- pay for college and did you get right to enter the job lottery which you will probably lose. it is another reason that i plead with you. thinkable way to include those of us without jobs, who cannot find jobs, including the 22- year-old spring go >> i spent the 1990's and a very good place to watch unions succeed. i was the political editor of " the l.a. weekly" there which is traditionally not a union town.

it was the non-union and alternative to san francisco for most of the chancercentury. with the transition into being a latino city some interesting stuff went on. some very successful campaigns for the fledgling janitors union there. it seized the moral imagination of the larger community. in fact, the justice for janitors campaign of the past 25 years is probably the single most striking example of unions taken the kind of high ground, increasing both their perception with the public and their power. it led to all kinds of things. it became a cadre within the labor union of loss angeles of this militant hamas activist

core of workers -- of los angeles, almost all of them immigrants. they spearheaded what nearly m anyone would have said was impossible. the politics thelos angeles, no one precinct-what before the the transformation. -- no one tried this and the politics of los angeles. much of it had to do with the politicization of the latino people in the city. this coincided with many of the wage movements around the country. many have been guided by some successes there. it is an issue that is not of

labor, but in labor, and vice versa. the labor movement helps an organization which is really advocating the interest of low- wage workers more generally. it is a significant way forward for unions. when i look at the situation today and wonder, is there an organizing effort they can coincide with the broader public interest drive, one thing i have heard from some is banks. we may not think of this, but bank workers and ' the least organized sector is a

f.i.r.e. -- close to 0%. the role of union pension funds and investors, and also low-wage bank tellers -- there are no high-wage bank tellers. it might be a place to go. i'm not sure. i have not tested this. it seems to me that you when these kinds of battles of perception when you are organizing for real people who do not have much on the plates, and who are asking for decency and democracy in the workplace. >> it seemed to me that this never passed, but my union has grown by a million. no other union can claim that. and has grown on the basis of

some very interesting types of campaigns. in this tanagers, home care workers. these faults are of color. we know that we have to organize them, go out in a big way. when you do, you wind up organizing a very different kind of campaign then some of the traditional ones. you have to be willing. we are correct to try to organize bank workers. but that is part of a broad conversation. shouldn't someone took the bell the way these banks are operating in society? should we also talk about what happens to the workers inside of those banks? that combines the two. it is those struggles we ought to push out and move more. we really do need to think about organizing a very different kind of worker then we have historically been interested in

organizing. that would change the way we think about organizing. >> in organizing different workers is worth talking about immigration for a moment. it is center. the relationship between american organized labor and immigration has been quite a fraught one. the afl-cio recognizes it. it understands, barber was talking about the fact you have no right to work. let me talk about something. you know who have no right to work? the 12 million who live in a state of minimal -- non-

citizenship. the slightest impression means not only losing their jobs, but being sent hundreds of miles away. it is an abomination that has continued for so long. if you were to ask me if there were the one thing i could do tomorrow it would be to create citizenship for them. it is not only morally called for, but there are a lot of potential union members in that pool. there is a lot of strength for broader social justice. i will conclude by saying, never in my life have i seen the more inspiring march. the left at its finest, then

the may 1, 2001 market in chicago. i saw literally super big polish dudes marching arm in arm with 15-year-old mexican women for emigration rights. the organizing, enthusiasm, amount of direct effect on people's lives there is something that has been overlooked inexcusably for these past 14 months. >> it is a beautiful thing when they come together. it reminds me of the environmentalists, the teamsters, and turtles. we have a great example with the car wash campaign in los angeles. it is very inspiring.

the workers were talking about being exploited there. that is the theme here. labor needs to advocate for those who have no voice. it was in a panic movement that came from the committee very clear that wage stuff was going on, safety violations. there were no minimum workplace standards. the committee relative run these workers. it began a legal strategy to start selling the companies. taking them to court to get back lost wages. there would go through long, involved process, and sometimes subtle, settle for pennies on the dollar. it became clear this was not a long-term strategy. forming a union was. collective bargaining became the answer.

it is a good example of what the labor union is doing to obtain a voice for those without one. the steelworkers are now working hand-in-hand with the community on the campaign to bring justice for these carwash workers in los angeles. >> you need to realize the car wash is martin institution in that city than in other cities. [laughter] -- that the car wash is a more important institution. >> if we do not build a broad public support for comprehensive immigration reform which is way beyond just the mobilization of immigrants, we will lose that too. the first thing i would say about us in the movement is the leadership has gotten to the

point where it is in support of comprehensive immigration reform. however, we need to go real deep in our own ranks to build it. there is an ugly battle about to happen. it pits black and brown workers in an ugly way. some of those who live across the divide will have to deal with it quickly. some of us have gone to the naacp and said, look, if we don't figure out how to empower immigrant workers and bring them as part of the moment, then we cannot move for we want to go. right? the political incorporation of emigrants is essential to building a progressive movement in the country to allow what is happening to emigrate workers to happen. we need to figure that out. go deep. if we do not, and it is just emigrant's the dipitted against

what is out there, the right wing will blows apart. -- if it is just immigrants. >> after this, if you want to come share your questions, please line up at the microphone. to gerry's point, the tea party movement that arose to fight the healthcare bill, i'm sure there'll be a moment at least as large and more aggressive when it comes to comprehensive immigration. indeed. what those labor do to ally with emigrant communities? to wage the fight in ways that aligns the polish worker in the mexican woman coming together, rather than dividing?

in a way that reform cannot only be accomplished, but we can avoid divisions which many will try to foment? >> i hope not to be the only answer here, but a few months ago i saw some of that kind of thing in action. it was in the context of organizing unemployed people in fort wayne, indiana. it was initiated by the central labor council there. that is basically 1.5 people. there was a get together which i attended. it was overwhelmed with people in this recession. unemployed people. it was amazing to me -- we were eating too, at a mexican

restaurant, that here were foundry workers, your stereotypical white, blue-collar guys. there were mexican workers whose legality would have been routed to enquire about. -- would have been rude to ask about. it was beautiful. here i am pushing the unemployed again. it began in the context of getting together. the word of solidarity was being used repeatedly by people of different colors. this is a fort wayne, indiana -- the unemployed and anxiously employed workers organization.

[laughter] >> i think also what you were saying about member to member contact is crucial in this context. i am of two minds about the opposition to immigration reform. i sometimes think the opposition is overstated. it is a perception on capitol hill. here is my argument. the anti-immigration forces are incredibly well-organized. the base of that group tend to be retirees, people with time on their hands, people very plugged in.

they will overwhelm the offices with calls and it scares people on capitol hill. i'm not sure -- the public opinion did it is murky. there's a little bit of a psych job at the anti-immigration job has worked on washington. if you look at your calls in any congressional office around the corner, you get baraged with calls. but i think there's a perception of strength that is greater than it is on top of. >> i hope that you are correct, but there is anecdotal evidence. i have organized huge numbers of conversations about this among workers. there is significant worker

opposition. to a comprehensive immigration reform. and appallingly among african americans people have gone over time in trying to organize a battle royale in the country between african-americans and latinos on the entire issue. i have a feeling that's it has some legs. it is interesting to me that it does not take all lot to argue african-american workers to another place. i have not spent much time doing it, but it has had some success. i think we can get the work done. on white workers, we have some real problems. i have spent a lot of time in the wisconsin and places like that where i've the some of

the most anti-immigrants and the men around. -- anti-emigraimmigrant sentimet around. it is very racist. black people get scared. you can organize them were quickly. on the other hand, i think even have some success on that as well. >> we are in for long haul on this. i do not think this will be the kind of thing that happens when the economy is as bad as it is today. the starkin history when the imn laws have happened in the mid- 60s and in 1986 with the bill between recessions, it will not happen when there are 5.5 americans for every job opening -- that is the latest figure

from the american policy institute. we will fight this for a while. gerry is right, it will be a hell of a fight. >> we have to find a way to neutralize the threat. coming from a union, the ibw where i have experienced some of what gerry is talking about -- and it is in different geographic areas that the perception changes. but with this job market, people feel very threatened by the notion of bringing in more workers. the bottom line is, and during for my job. why divided the whole new poll pool of labor to take it away from me? we need to neutralize the threat. >> i like to turn to the first question for the audience, from the audience.

>> is this on? there. i have been shocked at how the perceptions of unions have changed. i grew up in the people's republic of massachusetts in the 1950's where we learned in junior high that the chief accomplishments of the new deal or social security, the progressive income tax, and labor unions. i was horrified as a gm was going under that what most people felt about the unions was that they had too much. that they should have been like toyota workers. these people during another day and time would have been union workers. instead of saying we won benefits like the four cells, they said these benefits destroy the company. that made gm not competitive.

somehow i think the unions need to reintroduce themselves. most people know nothing about them. their range for good benefits and health care, and they resent that to because they're paying for it and we're not giving anything to them. somehow, you have to bring in the old history. their idea of a union worker is someone on an assembly line, a white guy and his 50s. you must make it relevant to young people from a lot of different places. you need to be on facebook, with twitter. the need to make the democrats look like they are respecting neyou.

if you listen to the johnson tapes, is always speaking with someone -- he does not do anything without checking with the unions. when was the last time barack obama spoke to union? have not front? he has to appear at union functions and they have to appear like they're not embarrassed about supporting them. >> tank. -- thank you. comments? >> the discussion about the gm bailout was interesting. it was a moment i think the left missed. there was always very intense messaging and cutting going on.

-- coding going on. if you talk to conservatives, people are pissed off about the bank bailout, but will get even angrier -- is remarkable, even angrier about the gm bailout. in some ways it was a bailout and name only. -- in name only. but crystallized with a national conversation is, and how far from where it needs to be. we have had an effort by many powerful interests and house intellectuals to shift american, the center of america's conception of itself -- from these notions of rights and solidarity to notions of efficiency.

the efficiency language is a cruel master in can be used to slice apart everything all the time. because that efficiency language has been so wholesale adopted by the entire governing class of the country, it becomes difficult to make arguments within the language for unions. you can. but you are operating in a cramped rhetorical space. this discourse of efficiency so dominates the way we talk about the economy, workers, firms, that it makes it difficult to make the argument for unions in their own terms. so much ground has already been conceded before the conversation begins. by the time the gm issue comes up, it is they make too much money and that is why the firm

is going bankrupt. >> i'm not sure how it happened, but americans who are not in unions -- those not in them associate the union workers with the companies they work for. they thought gm cars were no good. i remember the strike were the teachers one. for a short time -- it was very popular because people liked ups. they could see these men and women working really hard with the packages. [laughter] after that, some not so good things happen with the teamsters union, but you could see for a moment -- and this is good and bad -- if americans don't like

the government, where they think the schools are not good enough and is too the problems with the teachers -- workers get blamed for stuff that is not really their fall. they work really hard to help the company their work for succeed. >> let's go to the next question. >> i'm intrigued given that emigration has come to the forefront. we have more competition internationally than ever before. the playing field is not home. the reason the immigration cousin to the is that people come here because they cannot live at home. given your testing specialties,

have you from the werke do to change international realities, competition? >> we live in a world in which capital is incredibly [unintelligible] it goes where to make the greatest profits, and that is usually where there is the wea kest would ever. that is part of building international solidarity. you cannot build a domestic movement and really protect the interests of workers. you need to think about what happens to workers everywhere in the world. how to new constraints on capitol does? that is hard. it is hard enough getting people who do not think about how to do with all kinds of workers in southern country to think beyond

it, but the gold lust economies we're dealing with require we do so. in my own union we have spent the better part of the last seven years really thinking about this contract to build platforms and other parts of the world. know the company we want to constrain your comes from elsewhere in the world. i need the help of french, japanese workers -- would ever. i've spent lots of time moving around the world turned to build relationships. that also commits us to growing labor movement somewhere else. you cannot ask the british labor movement to help you, and then not help them in return. it is interesting that it is a mobile capital that we need to

constrain, and it means building religious beyond our borders. it might help to build them with then, then helped to build them outside. >> his union and the steelworkers have been notably of their in terms of pushing the envelope. there are workers that afu is try to organize and a french- based company. the increasing work of the labor union is to give global framework agreement with these multi-national companies. two of the biggest private- sector employes in the world are security guard and janitorial companies. old ones like pinkerton and others which are owned by some european conglomerate. much of the work of the movement and his union in particular have been to get

agreements locally with these companies. the steelworkers are part of a global works council, the world's largest steel-maker, arcelor. they have language that affects the rights of workers in west africa as well as here. they are running behind business. business went from being multinational in this country and the late 19th century. arguably, unions did not catch up until a third of the way through the 20th century. business has gone global now for a number of tickets. labor is finally playing catch- up. >> can i comment? we really need to talk about trade laws. the strengthening in enforcing trade laws is key. it has always been a party. my own experience, we have some

interaction havemittal as luck, but it is interesting how differently the same company treated its work force overseas then here in the u.s. and the things they would try to get away with. when we collaborated overseas it was an outrage. our numbers are shrinking here. we're not a strong and the labor union. let me touch on the question about re-branding. we need to so that people would be aware of who we are and represent, and also internationally. let me give one quick example. the perception out there that you touched on earlier was that with gm many people thought the union workers are lazy, just want to punch a clock, get paid for not working. the perceptions take on a life

of their own. in the ibw we have our own perceptions. we developed a cut of excellence. let's get back to reclaiming our reputation for being the best- trained, most productive electricians on the face of the planet. how? our train programs of the best. but also with attitude, performance. even the simplest things like not using your cell phones while working, not wearing an offeive to should. customers look at this. yes, they want to bring thuse tn worker again because they bring the best to the table. >> this is to the point about read-brandi-branding. every time you rebellion you

hear about corruption, mob ties. how ronald reagan fired air- trafc controllers and then unions fall. how do you combat the perception whether fair or not? suddenly, do you think solidarity movement can be up and running and times to combat the tea party move that by 2010? >> thank you. comments? [laughter] >> the notion of combating perception has mystified me. i'm sure that everyone here on the panel would agree that for whatever reason there is the thought that unions are stuck back in the industrial age. we represent, miners and steelworkers, and that is it. we represent professionals, engineers, scientists,

professional athletes and actors. for whatever reason, the negative perception and stereotyped still exists with corruption, the mob. i'm here to tell you that is ginger mcgill it is not your father's labor union. we are opening our doors to more young people, women, professionals, the unemployed workers, people of color. this is a new day. >> we have to get much better at putting out a different kind of image. at having a real conversation about the plight of working people. at we still need to do to improve the increasingly ugly plight of workers. that is one thing. the other thing, guess what?

lots of workers want unions anyway. know that. we have managed to organize huge numbers of workers. workers won unions. their and employers to not want them to have it. -- workers want unions. how do we stop the appalling movement of businesses trying to block unions. the other side is to know that one of the things we should really publicize is what all of the things that businesses themselves and their cohorts in politics do to stop workers from getting what they want, which is the unions. >> it is the only place you can be discriminated against -- if

you want to be unionized. >> let's ask people to speak to that if they want to. >> i wanted to continue with this discussion, but by taking the theme of voice in a slightly different version. i agree that unions can serve as an authentic voice. . .

>> do you see a future -- what to do you think the future is for labor journalism? is there a future? >> what is nothing + nothing? >> i gave a talk to something called the international labor communicators association, which is the people who added union newspapers before the convention last year in pittsburgh. i thought, well, i can talk about the state of working america or can talk about the state of journalism, and which would depress you more? when they come together, it is the state of labor journalism. [laughter] you know, when i started out writing about unions, and have never actually been a union beat reporter, but i will show up at certain things that would be of national significance and there

would be 25 to 30 people from different parts of the press. you know, now when something happens of national significance, i call my buddy at the "new york times" to ask if he is going. he says if i do not go, that is like 80% of the press corps that is not going to be there. it is interesting how the recession will affect newspapers. and it may be the sins of endangerment. barbara and i were talking about this before the panel started. generally, labor reporters who are in the 1930's had working- class backgrounds, you know, as journalism itself became more of a professional track, a lot of the people who edit newspapers and who write for newspapers share this perception of, well, that was my grandfather's generation did and it is a blue- collar thing that is dying. i have no interest to there. why should we cover this? and so on. maybe the fact that journalists

now find themself as in danger as any autoworker are still worker or you name it, could have some kind of effect on increasing this kind of coverage, not necessarily -- nor should it at this point, the institutional coverage of unions, but generally the plight of american workers. i would think this would be a beat and should be a beat that american papers are on the now all the time. because, i mean, as i understand or this economy is headed, the plight of unemployed, semi- employed american workers is not going to get a lot better any time soon. so i think those of us who have some voice in this question of what gets covered, you know, need to raise it long and loud on the question of reviving that kind of coverage. >> on the tea party, a quick observation. that they caught us as aware as

they did still sort of embarrasses me. in the summer where you started to see the tea party folks arrive at these hearings, and they would come, you would think that they overwhelmed these hearings, that there were huge numbers of them. the truth of the matter is there was not. and the truth of the matter is after a while when some of us, on and started organizing a response to them, we overwhelmed them. but it was too stupid to get our own coverage out. so this thing, which was not that big, got a huge amount of coverage. i thought it was brilliantly orchestrated. they took a page out of our own book. we used to do that ourselves. we used to go to these hearings. we stop doing some of it. they grabbed it. they in some was connected themselves to a bigger

conversation. and they amplified it. we started to stop them and did nothing to amplify what we did. because we're not acting like a movement anymore. we are acting like we're lobbying somewhere, behind the scenes, and we will get somewhere on it. the truth of the matter is we're not, so we will have to go out and organize. and then figure out how to present ourselves to the larger public for a conversation about our existence. >> i strongly believe that there is an inflection point in recent american politics, and it is not the election of barack obama, and it is not the inauguration of barack obama or the passage of health care. it is the bank bailout. i basically think that you had a rising crest of progressivism that was hacked to pieces by the bank bailout. and i think we have not wrestled with the legacy but the bank bailout is.

because it is so fundamentally and existential leave vitiated the foundational premise of the entire societies order. which is that success is rewarded and failure is punished and merit wins out. and the psychological trauma -- as a using hyperbolic language, but i believe it. psychological trauma of the bailout continues to just ripples through the society. i think the two-party is one manifestation of that, and i do not have anything sort of programmatic to say about how to deal with that. but i do think that it's sort of potency can be overstated. >> the fascinating part is that the banker class in some ways bankrolled the two-party. we are not smart enough to do something about it.

>> greater thanad is the sistine chapel of that phrase. ok. this is one of the most remarkable texts in american politics. it is paid for by some shadowy group, but it is clearly the bankers. if people ad is about why you have to stand up and kill financial reform, because it will institutionalized bailouts. so it is this super, like, hard- core populist message about killing financial reform, a big world by the banks. >> i think the problem is more serious and more long-lasting. with the tea parties to the reason why i was able to come up from nothing, you know, in the last 40 years we have been a conservative country, right? and the assumption is the government cannot do anything right. that is why i think passing health care reform is so

important. of course, most people know -- we hope it will help them. >> government could do something but in seven years. >> in the 1930's, as you know, there were movements kind of like a tea party. not the labor movement. but they wanted the government to be stronger. they wanted the government to bail out the people in the ministry of income. they told a lot of lies. they did not like black bee people. >> huey long was not so bad, as a southerner. >> as a southerner. >> the problem is, and this goes to what was said at the beginning of the conversation, that labor as part of the progressive movement has to change the city a logical construct in this country that says, not the government is good, but the government pushed by people can do good things to them. and bush's failure, of course,

had ascending to do it barack obama being elected. the conservatives think that is fine because bush was not one of us anyway. we will not claim him. we do claim barack obama and should. that is both positive for us and also a problem, because people did not want to identify with the government as an abstraction. >> we will give you the first shot at speaking to what we have just been talking about, but let's take a question. >> it is about immigration reform. i think the focus has been on the 12 million undocumented workers where it is significant, but i think it is also polarizing. have you considered redefining the problems to have a focus more on the employer's exploit of practices and the impact on wages? i think that would probably result in more meaningful comprehensive immigration reform. >> that is one of the messages

du jour. look, the people that are organized and run immigration reform are very smart and strategic, and they do a lot of polling. i have been at a briefing speed of the the focus groups. they know they are rolling a big boulder up a very steep hill. you know, they're not going to say, you know, come out and run ads about coming in, fundamentally, you just want a lottery to get into the u.s. -- so exactly which moral right to do have to this? they are developing a battery of messages that i think are effective, and one of them is focusing on the employers, focusing on the way that having a pool of people that are outside the law ends up hurting workers broadly. >> let's go to another question.

>> this is on the cultural problems that labor and the left have been facing the last 30 years. i think what has been missing is an emphasis on the importance of providing direct services to individuals as creating a cultural underpinnings for the left more generally. i think we do ourselves a disservice and forgetting that the democratic machines in the cities. you could go there, get a lawyer, echoed it services with city agencies are whatever you need, and the cp was doing it in the 1930's with foreclosures. we forget all this stuff. i really think it is an important thing we have to think about on the left. if we're claiming we cannot really bring people in, there is a reason. day today, we're not there. we are there for the campaign. we're there for the picket line, but we're not there to help someone when they cannot deal with the welfare office. is there anything going on in the labor movement or with the

democratic party or the other part is like the working families party in new york that is trying to deal with this? a lot of people are doing this work, but we have a national organization, and that is the difference. do you see this going on anywhere, and is a the way forward for us? >> yes, i do see it going on someplace, and i was a part of creating the working family party in new york. so obviously, i believe workers and other community should figure out ways to sort of deal with the issues of those communities. we fought 1199 in new york to start dealing with mortgages and all kinds of other stuff. child care o, everything. we tried to build a movement that brought about the whole worker and went out to try to advocate on its behalf. i think that needs to happen more broadly than just i speedup but some of us have thought that for a long while and have tried to figure it out.

we also but the two judges organize workers at the point of production, as they used to sick you organize them in the community. you organize them around things that they care about. and also at the point of production. those two things go hand in hand, rather than, let's just do organizing and check off and do collective bargaining and that is the end of the story. if that is all you do nowadays, you'll not revitalize the labor movement. i can only agree that we should engage them in politics, use them into their own communities to figure out everything from co-ops to whatever. as a way to strengthen the lives of working people, because that is what the labor movement is. it is about that. >> we can to start with laid-off people, unemployed people. [laughter] i am trying to get some commitments from you here tonight. when a person is laid off, the

union should not say goodbye. it should say here is what we do and here's how we help you now. here the services. i think working americans is a step forward, but it is only a step. is this my last chance to say something. >> go ahead and say what you want. >> ok. i want to follow up on michael's's comments. i think we have to be prepared to be a lot more critical of our president then we have been. i am sorry. we have been feeling a little better since health reform. something happened. but one thing that is absolutely cobbling whatever progressives are is that they do not want to undermine the man. i do not either. i like him. i would like to be a family member in some remote away. [laughter]

but on the other hand, i am not going to get into an argument with some of the folks ini know in this country. you talked about arguing this. it is part of this right wing populism. if i also have to defend barack obama and the bank bailout. i think, no, that is not progressive. he owes a lot more to the unions then you are ever collecting from that man. you know that. that is what you put into his campaign. and working america went door- to-door to get white people to talk about race. i think it is amazing what you did. now you're just going to sit back and take it? no. then even the ridicule of the health plan was a little bit servile. after not really challenging him around single payer or the fallback position of the public

option, saying, ok, now we will come to the rescue of this piece of crap legislation. you said it, do not feel so bad saying it. so i think you have any kind of self-definition of progressive or labor movement, sometimes we're going to have to cut the man at loose. right? >> and i think we may be willing to do it at some time. except i am not sure this is the time. and i am not sure that the reason why we have -- >> i will do it first. [laughter] >> the reason why we got into the pickle about all of those things is not about barack obama. i think it is about what we can organize out there and what we cannot, and we did not. some of the barack obama is not what i like him to be as a president. on the other hand, i think there's more willingness on his part to be that then we can organize on the grounds to support it. >> but the best thing you could do for the man is to give him

some left opposition. that is what he needs two that is the best thing we could do for him. >> i think the best thing we can do for the man is organize a progressive movement around the issues that we care about. i suspect if we do it, we will get a much more interesting barack obama then we have had up till now. >> and just to jump off the point that barbara just made about the bank bailout and right-wing populism, the key difference, also in terms of the degree to which people trust government, the key difference between the train, the iraq war, and the series of debacles seriesenron the marched forward in unfolded under the course of the last generation, those could be used to discredit the republican party and to a certain extent the conservative movement. the bank bailout, everybody owned a piece of that. barack obama owned a piece of

it. paulsen. so to the degree that that discrediting happened, i think it was very different than what happened at other moments because it moved from discrediting the republican party to sort of discrediting the state. >> i would like to take another question. >> thank you. in terms of representation and to organize a movement and specifically the juncker movement in the student movement, how do you propose to remind people if not teach them that labor is a social reality and not just a myth man and a lobby? and it is something that began to sense from the second they begin to earn their own pages and support themselves. and do not feel there is that sentiment in the public, not even in terms of public purse,

but just in terms of solidarity. and the second question. it is about broader solidarity of other movements, specifically the environmental movement. once it hits the fan with oil and resource management, what will you tell the workers from those movements -- [inaudible] and going head-to-head with the tree huggers. it's not the best summer worst time to ask the question of those unemployed are anxiously employed people under oil refineries and mining, is this the time to talk about how to change how they are employed or to organize to change what will happen when they're definitely unemployed at the end of the resources? >> well, without reaching out to young people, i think one of the mistakes we have made in the past and the labor movement is not to actually talk to young

people. and listen to what their issues are. and to use messaging that really is compatible with their own voice. so i think we're just now starting to do that. one of the things that the afl- cio is working on is we have organize the regional forums across the country to hear from not only young unionists but also are partners in the progressive movement, student groups and coalition partners, allied groups in our communities. so we have young people coming together for the first time for us to really listen to them. and their issues are altogether different than what we're traditionally used to in the union movement. i mentioned that work has changed. a lot of these young people are not working the same job in one place unlike the traditional model of 30 years with one employer. this idea that we need to start to become more flexible to appeal to a younger audience is absolutely at the top -- i hate

using the term radar screen because it is so overused, but it is at the top of our priority list i think this is building up to a national summit. we have scheduled in june here in washington to really kick off a long-term program because we do not wanted to be a flash in the pan or we talk about it and people feel good and that is it. as we do often in the elections or we come together, work together, and did spikes and then sort of falls off. so this is going to be a lasting, long-term, sustained effort on the part of the afl- cio to really figure out what it is that we can do to become relevant to young workers. it is the young workers bill of rights. maybe it is producing some tangibles. we want the young workers telling us what that is. so that is going to be the point of our summit. >> we are coming down to our final minutes now. and i wanted to offer the panelists a chance to give us a final thought. i would also like to ask a

question that may help to get that started. that is, i think this is a remarkable conversation tonight and the kind of conversation we need to have more of. what often happens within the labor movement in conversations like this and with labor and its allies, but not so often do we get to have those conversations openly in the kind of generous with that has happened tonight. i would like to ask for your final thoughts from each of the panelists tonight and also to ask you how we can do more of this and have conversations like this can help us get where we need to go. anybody. >> well, mostly i have come away convinced that we should organize the unemployed,

actually. [laughter] so i learned that. [laughter] i think -- i guess to sort of quote upon this question that was raised by the last person. it is really to the people do not have identity as workers or that is not something that just happens. in fact, that is a huge part of what a union does. how many people here have a job? right. and how many people can remember the last time they refer to themselves out loud as a worker? right. the people in the union movement all raised their hands. so i think that that identity has vastly diminished, and partly i think that is because the climate of labor. but i think it is something to reclaim.

i claim myself -- i would be like the worst person to organize ever. because i do not like conflict and i always think that my employer is acting in good faith. they are. whatever. we still have a union. there's still a managing. there is still management. this set of identity and this sets of thinking about the world does not emerge out of nowhere. and i think it is a big challenge to think about how we indicate that. >> ok. [laughter] hawaii just wanted to briefly say this not just a matter of thinking of yourself as a worker. it is really the concept of solidarity. however you think of yourself, you realize that we have power collectively that we do not have individually, and the only manifestation of that is not in the afl-cio.

many workers of their own independent associations like the american airlines flight attendants. that, too, is another tradition of workers binding solidarity among themselves. that is our secret for the progressive and the union side. it is this solidarity. it is interesting that quebec has been out of his right to puncture even the idea of community. -- it is interesting that glenn beck has gone out of his right to puncture even the idea of community. it is trying in saying that there are ways that human beings can solve their problems in the past. but it always involves coming together in some sort of cooperative fashion. >> and guess i believe that there's no way to deep in a democracy or to when social justice without the labor

movement, and it is my job and everybody else's job to go out and help lead that. i cannot of a movement that really was about the wrath of social change. it was not really about the labor union, but i wound up in the labor union. about the way to get to racial justice and other things was by building workers' movement to inside of another movement. i still believe that to be the case. but a lot of people did not exactly believe that with me. in which case it is my job to got to persuade people that building a social justice movement requires building a labor movement and then all together figuring out how to get it accomplished. i still accept the job. >> well, i joined the labor movement because i realized that us acting as individuals, we have -- our voices are not as strong until we come together collectively. that is what the union movement is about. i hope we can appeal to more young people to start to realize

that. it certainly is a big problem that many of you in this audience know, but probably friends or relatives do not. so that is the big challenge we have ahead of us. as their numbers have gone smaller, we needed to reach out and build community alliances. that is where our strength comes in. if we do not get our own act together internally in the progressive movement and start eating our young, you raise the public option, we were fighting to the death for the public option, but we cannot attraction. if we could actually organize ourselves within the progressive movement more effectively, i think we would be in good stead. i would like to say, since there are a lot of young people in the audience, have established an e- mail address and want to hear from you. that is the most important thing on my angina tonight, to listen to what is on the minds of young people and students herel at the university studentsiz@aflcio.org. let me hear from you.

>> sometimes the sense of solidarity on the left broadly defined takes on the kind of ethnic taft that we are accustomed to on the right. one thing that is clear in los angeles in the 1990's as labor gained a latino face was that there was more and more support for and some kind of investment in the labor movement from the latino community there. there was a ballot measure is sometime in the late 1990's, an initiative on whether unions would have to get everyone to sign off for political contributions, but basically you like unions are you do not. what the exit polling showed was a huge level of union support within the latino community. we're talking about southern california. largely because the labor

movement, i think, meant something because of the janitor struggles and other campaigns. it meant something to this community that was not the case outside of that community. getting back to the question of journalism, also because the spanish-language press get a great deal more coverage to labor struggles than the english language stress in southern california. it was almost kind of a way in for this broader community that did not seem to exist for white workers and two series -- and to a certain extent, black workers. that suggests -- a lot of the discussion is really a chicken and egg discussion. what comes first, do we improve the movement? do we build the coalition? do we organize? there's no right or wrong answer to that. it is clear to me that the effect of certain signal organizing campaigns such as justice for janitors was the

thing that got things rolling, whether that was the chicken or the egg, i do not know. but it was the first mover. and we need to find some first movers somewhere. >> i do not want people to forget that not so long ago, we had a wonderful example of solidarity. >> we're losing the last few minutes of this recorded program to go live to a given was supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg in a panel of women who have argued cases before the high occurred. justice ginsburg argued in number of cases before the supreme court before becoming a judge. ages starred in moments ago. live coverage on c-span. >> until last year, she was partner and accountant where she was a member of the supreme court and appellate practice group. she has also worked at the office of legal counsel in the department of justice and has taught at harvard and the university of pennsylvania law school.

she worked for justice john paul stevens and judge harry edwards and a in the court of appeals of the d.c. circuit. i will turn it over to pam. [no audio] [inaudible] we're honored to have to assist ruth bader ginsburg with us. [inaudible] -- working with the aclu

women's rights group. she did truly groundbreaking women's rights cases before the supreme court in the 1970's. during that time, she won a will read it -- well-deserved low reputation as a first-rate advocate and legal strategist. she really is among the small handful of the supreme court litigators, for whom it can be said, change the law. we were very privileged to have them with us today. because she can speak about women in the supreme court from both sides of the bench, bring a perspective from both sides. we're also joined today by professor pamela karlan of stanford law school mercia's and the grief professor of public interest law and a founding director of the stanford supreme court litigation clinic. she is a leading example of the supreme brith of a supreme court

litigator, that can combine a successful academic career with a very active supreme court practice. indeed, just this morning, she was with the supreme court institute, doing a case she will argue this session before the supreme court. next we have patricia millett. she's a partner and co-head of the supreme court practice where she works. before joining the firm, shows that the department of justice for many years two most recently and the solicitor general's office. it represents the u.s. before the supreme court, before that, and the civil appellate division. she has argued a remarkable number of cases. 28 cases before the supreme court, including two cases just this term which makes him one of the most experienced advocates practicing today and certainly one of the most experienced women or advocate practicing before the supreme court.

finally, we have virginia seitz, a senior member of what was the private bars first real supreme court and appellate practice. va has been a leading member of the supreme court bar for over 20 years. callus accomplishments to her name. i will mention only one. she's the offer of the famous military brief in the affirmative action cases. it is a brief filed on behalf of military officers, arguing for the importance of diversity in the military. it was discussed extensively by the court as oral arguments cited in the court's opinion and widely thought to be one of, if not the most, influential person in recent years. our camera -- they have different backgrounds. with the have in common is that they are all members of the supreme court bar. i am using that turn out as the formal designation but to describe these small group of supreme court experts in that dominate supreme court practice. lawyers who specialize in supreme court advocacy and

practice regularly before the court. the emergence of this specialized supreme court bar is a relatively new development. for many years, we do not have repeat players before the supreme court with the exception of the solicitor general's office and some public interest groups. it was usually just lawyers who had a case brinded and found themselves in front of the supreme court for one time. over the last 20 years or so, there has been a real change in the way supreme court practice is structured. we have seen a small group of experts, many in private firms, again starting with sidley austin, turning supreme court advocacy into a much more specialized in the league practice, with the same group of supreme court veterans, many of them former supreme court clerks or former solicitor general lawyers, both the same group of lawyers briefing in arguing more and more of the supreme court cases. this specialization of supreme court practice i think raises a

number of very interesting questions. many of which are being addressed by georgetown's own richard lazarus says the leading academic in this area. but what we want to focus on today is the question of gender diversity and the supreme court bar. some notable exceptions, it is fair to say that this procedure is bar has been mostly comprised of men and that women, along with people of color, as you note, have been underrepresented. you can see this in the numbers. there is a recent study of showing that the percentage of women advocates before the court has been hovering in the 12% to 15% range for most of this decade. i was not going to cite this study, but it did not sound right to me. lot of those numbers were too low. so went this afternoon to count up the advocates to appeared before the court made term. so far this term, we have seen -- [inaudible]

right at around 16%. these numbers seem to be holding up. if you prefer your evidence anecdotal, i went. you to washingtonian magazine article that came out earlier this year with a promise supreme court advocate here and now she would be stepping back her practice some what. the article wondered what this would mean for women before the supreme court because there are so few of them. i think we can assume that this he was going to cut back on his practice, the article not wonder whether there was a future of men arguing before the supreme court but there is an issue. i think it is fair to say there's an issue. that is with our panelists will be talking about today. where women are today in the supreme court bar and why, and talk about optimism in the future, and now people are interested in the supreme court or appellate practice and how they should be thinking about and preparing for that year.

with that introduction, i will get out of the way internist over to our panelists. we will reserve time at the end of today's program for questions from the audience would very much like for you to produce that in the conversation as well. i will start by asking our panelists to talk for the first units of their own work as supreme her advocates and how their careers brought them to a place where they're arguing before the supreme court. as i think you will see, there have been some different paths taken. justice ginsberg, would you like to start? >> [inaudible] he wanted to be a minister of his estate her former husband

applied for the same position. [inaudible] equally -- [inaudible] within one of the general counsel, and marvelous lawyer. he noticed this case. he said, that is going to be the turning point gender discrimination case because until then, the supreme court had never seen it differential between men and women that it did not like. [laughter] and so i was in those days,

mostly a teacher. i was at law school, and they agreed and said i would love to write this brief. the then legal director said we will write the breach, wit -- the brief, which we did. and that was the beginning of my decade of gearing cases before the supreme court. one does not get their automatically. the case has to start someplace else. one thing it would be curious to hear is that i do not know anyone who has exclusively an appellate practice before the u.s. supreme court. i think most of them appear before other appellate courts.

but for me, they are exhilarating. women simply were not there. who was the first woman hired at your office? >> i do not know the year. [inaudible] >> and her husband was also in that office. she was the only one. women came, and that all, at times of curiosity. i am pleased to say the the last place where women were not there in the supreme court has ended. the supreme court last year appointed its first woman special master in the case between two states. so now there are no more closed positions.

and i think it is time for me to ask my neighbor for her response. >> well, i went to moscow because i wanted to be a civil rights lawyer, and i think i'm like anybody else on the panel, the first two cases that argue that the supreme court were both cases where i actually filed the complaint. because i was a civil rights order at the naacp legal defense fund. i filed one of them as a voting rights case. the other one came after i had gone to teaching. when a student raised his hand in cousin had a problem and came to me after the class and discuss the problem. he said, what can i do about it. i said you can file a lawsuit. and he said, will you file it for me? and i said sure. then i said i needed local counsel because i was i made it in virginia. so we filed the complaint on his behalf, and that went to the

supreme court. [laughter] it is sort of like, how do get on top of a coat tree incident a cornyn wafer to grow? that was how my practice started. it started as a civil rights practices in which some of the work was appellate work. i think we will get into this letter. i found i liked appellate work much better than i like trial work because i dislike intensely the interpersonal conflict of the pretrial phase. one of the great things about appellate work is everything comes to you in a box. there few opportunities for the real interpersonal conflict and tension relative to litigating in the trial court. that was the start of my practice. when i was not cheap -- when i was teaching, i did a number of bricks on a variety of different issues, mostly civil rights related. they friend of mine, who is sitting in the audience, is sort of like one of those old judy garland movies and said, i have a supreme court practice.

let's build a clinic. so we started a clinic. and we now run a supreme court clinic, and i think this year we had eight arguments of the supreme court by lawyers affiliated with the clinic. we have kind of had a steady state of about the number. it turns out if you're willing to work for fleree, there many more clients to be had. luckily, we have day jobs to be able to do it. that is kind of how i started my practice. after you have done a couple cases, more cases come to you. the cases are going to be arguing later this month came to us. somebody who had seen our work in the past and had a case that thought we might be able to help in getting it granted an arguing the case. >> thank you for putting the panel together and for inviting me. my career is probably more typical of the road women have

taken without having got a significant opportunities before the supreme court, although it is still in more recent innovation, and that is through the government. i started my appellate carrier in the justice department in the civil division the palace staff. so i started arguing around courts of appeals around the country and started working on some other cases. then i became solicitor china. -- then there was a new solicitor general. he actually diversified the course of the hiring within the solicitor general's office. it is not uniform but predominately prior to that, they had been hiring from appellate practices and law firms in washington, d.c., people who were recommended by former members of the solicitor general's office. well, notwithstanding the hiring of harry shapiro, statistically

the number of people in law firms practicing in the appellate practices, recommended people was from dominant ly former males. still males. [laughter] that as a whole other panel. they have become quite an established pipeline. there was president clinton's first solicitor general who give enormous credit. i am very biased in this. and starting to look for other sources including within the justice department will you have people who are very experienced arguing appeals cases and then writing appellate briefs. so he hired me and properly left the building. it is kind of a sad story. he did not actually work for me. he left. then i was in the solicitor

general's office for 11 years, which gave me an enormous opportunity to argue cases before the supreme court. and i think if you look at the statistics said professor harris was talking about, you will see that even to the extent that there are less hearings in the supreme court, predominantly, not next clue assembly, a predominantly they are there because they are representing the government or governmental entity. so the question is, i think for a feast -- future gestation on this panel, is how often statistically women are part of a case where they're not representing a government or they're not arguing for free? >> this would now at the law firm and try to make a living by bringing cases to the supreme court. and yes, justice ginsburg in the courts of appeals. [unintelligible] [laughter]

>> i think my appellate career began when i came out of the birth canal because my father was third circuit judge of the time. and for many years, the chief judge of the third circuit court of appeals, and i grew up in a household where the poker game was third circuit judges, and around the dinner table, there was one judge after the other from either delaware or the third circuit. and law clerks the law clerks were my baby sitters. [laughter] and my brother's baby sitters because i always felt i wanted to grow up and be a law clerk for judge. and i was proud of my father who was then the judge to the segregated the delaware schools and was the only judge of held in brown versus board of education. so i aspired to be a lawyer and to be an appellate lawyer early on. i then went to law school because i was teaching in buffalo, so went to buffalo law school. and the good fortune to have a professor connected with harry edwards. he recommended me to harry

edwards, and that the clerk ship and went on to clerk for justice brennan. one ingredient of an appellate practice that you want to have one as clerking for a judge. i am the typical example of that. then i went to a small union said it labor firm. the virtue of doing that instead of going immediately to a large firm is when you have a case, it is your case. so within three months after i was there, i was arguing a case in the maryland supreme court. and if you file the complaint, you worked on the case all the way through, even up to the supreme court. we represented a good piece of the labor movement and were an outside counsel to the afl-cio and steel workers. we had a lot of supreme court cases. until this year, however, the permanent woman partner at the firm i do not think that argue the supreme court case. she and argued a lot of appellate cases. those cases tended to be predominantly argued by the males.

i was about to be a colleague of patti's at the solicitor general's office when my infant son came down with meningitis pittas i cannot afford to change my life too much for that next year and a half two instead, i became a partner at sidley austin. it is much harder without the government experience to have the supreme court practice. i am fortunate that sidley austin has a significant number of cases in the supreme court over the years to work on. but i will use my career as a good illustration of if you really want to do it and do the typical way, you should get that government experience instead of what i did and stay in public practice. >> i cannot resist saying was super lawyers we have on this panel. because every time pamela karlan or patricia millett is up

at bat, i know we're going to get a super brief and excellent appellate argument. if there was a brief the made a real difference, that brief, on behalf of the military leaders, the leaders of the military academy, a grab everyone's attention, and it should be given as a model for how library should be written. it was not very long. [laughter] but it was powerful. >> i have one question about people's careers and how they ended up doing the kind of practice they do. virginia, you mentioned you had the good fortune of a professor who talked to you about it. i felt that my career was largely shaped by the good fortune that i had a professor when i was wandering around law school. i would say here is what you do.

the first thing you do is get some good credentials in law school, and then you clerk. this is what happens, and i will work with you to make this happen because i think you're great. it was a male professor. if we have not said that to me, none of them would ever occur to me. so i think it is a great good fortune which is a big part of my career. i wonder if any of the others of you have that kind of mentor as some early stage of your crew to help to make this happen? are held to make you think that it could happen? >> it was certainly true in my case. i was at columbia law school for my third year. i was at harvard for the first two. transferred to columbia and apply for law firm jobs, clerkship jobs, and i got zero responses. so it's great teacher of constitutional law, butjerry

gunther, was in charge of getting corrections for columbia students, and took me on. he called every judge in the second circuit on the appeals court and the district court. finally, he came to one who always to clockworks from columbia and said i have an excellent candidate for you. the judge responded the less professor, she has a 4-year-old child. not only was i a woman, but i was a mother. that was -- put me just add of the box. the deal was that the judge would take a chance on me but if i failed, there was a young man in my class who was going to work for a downtown firm who would be ready to take over. [laughter] the professor never told me that so. [laughter]

i thought that the judge hired me because he had three children, two girls, and he wanted these girls to have an opportunity to make their way in the world without encountering discrimination. [laughter] but where would i have been without that first job? justice o'connor has a similar story. she was a very high in her class at law school. she cannot get any job, so she volunteered to work, i think for the l.a. county attorney, work for free for four months. she said at the end of the time, if you think is worth it, you and me on paid staff. so progress comes slowly, and i know the people of your age tend to be impatient. if things do not change fast enough, but what an enormous

change that has occurred in my lifetime. >> i think mine was more the product of endurance. i had the good fortune of having trill players -- trailblazers like justice ginsberg. i am from a family that does not have the lawyer in it. so i had no idea what i was doing when i went to law school. and i really discovered appellate litigation because i worked one summer in a firm that had a fellow who used to be and the solicitor general's office, a wonderful man, and he brought someone to talk to us from the solicitor general over the summer. i thought, what a cool job. i want that job. it actually had not occurred to me that one cannot or should not do it because of gender, i guess because what was going up, we had justice o'connor on the

supreme court at that time. so i just would have kept trying and applying to get into it and appellate career at the justice department. no one actually told me i was supposed to apply at the solicitor's office coming from the law firm. i did. and help that i had worked in the solicitor's office, had some gracious enough to recommend me. but i look back now and think of someone told me there were all these barriers, i wonder what would have happened. so cover your ears. they're no barriers to do what you want to do and fight for it. that has to be a big part of the solution. >> i had a professor in moscow, two professors, one female and one male, who took ms. had an adopted me. i worked for one of them and over the summer she left the house -- the law school and went to work for brooklyn and the d.a. office. so i spent the rest of my

summers there. at the legal defense fund, it was one of the few places when i went into practice where the staff was half male and half female. it was also half black and about half white. they had 80 that if young lawyers work on a case, they should get to have them. when i filed the complaint, the was never in question that i would get to argue the case and the person whose second-seeded me have worked on 3235 supreme court cases during his career there. but he was not going to take over the case as long as i wanted to do it. i feel very lucky about that. >> i think we're giving it to a point where we may be self- defeating. >> it is smarter to be lucky than likely to be smart. >> a lot of the attendees have been for people who went to places where they had the opportunity to get the case, and they kept it all the way through. that is how the got the opportunity to argue in the

courts of appeals or a state supreme court or u.s. supreme court. in the last 10 years, we have seen that the element of a specialized supreme court bar where people actually do not have that opportunity as often because they're not people saying you need to have a specialist handle your case for the supreme court. unfortunately, yes we one of those people, and now i wonder if i will be defeating one of the very purposes i would hope to promote in life if that is one of the channels for people to get their cases. we have to be particularly and acutely conscious of this and ensuring that those opportunities remain and to let people pick specialists from a diverse group of specialists. >> maybe we can move it to talking about sort of where we are now. we do have this specialized bar. it is a phenomenon. it is changing the nature of supreme court practice in all kinds of ways. maybe can follow up on this. where are we today?

justice ginsberg. so that wherever we are, we have made a huge amount of progress in what is relatively speaking a short amount of time. so where we are now is better than where we were before. but how is this shaping up for women? are women able to make these practices work? is it happening for women? >> i certainly think that would then the solicitors general office, we now have our first the milk's solicitor general who was appointed by president obama a little over a year ago. that is an enormous strides. because not only is it another woman appearing before the supreme court, but it is in such a high profile leadership position for the supreme court and lawyers generally. i hope that will have a profound influence on inspiring women to look at this potential career path an opportunity.

i think that is something to be celebrated. and we have a lot more women in the solicitor general's office. it still has never gone anywhere near the half a percentage point. but it has gotten between a quarter and a third, and it has been there for a while. .

there are some states with women as attorneys general. in public offices, in the municipalities, particularly in chicago, she is excellent. >> government presumably will

still be a distant source for this. we need to keep an eye on that. all the big question is what happens with private industry and business cases. maureen mahoney had done a fantastic job in developing a private supreme court practice. she has now announced her semiretirement. i think she is practicing here in georgetown. obviously, the hope is that, generally, we will be able@f to expand opportunities for women to be hired by business clients or business cases in the supreme court. that this the lowest percentage of women appearing before the supreme court.

again, maureen mahoney is to be congratulated. >> as you increase the number of women in the office, there are a number of women from that office to go on into private practice and get cases and argued them. i think that the sdi office credentials and experience gives you the confidence. as more women go to that office and get that credential, there will be more in private practice. we are filling up the pipeline. i know someone who had a private supreme court practice for a while. the credential that you get as a state sg can be the start of

building a private practice. it is a little late for me. i am optimistic that we will get our share. that can be helpful factor in having something that women can handle as they face big decision making i know that these statistics on that are not where we want them to be. they are better than the word 10 years ago or 20 years ago. they have been putting pressure on law firms to diversify all of their practices. appellate litigation practices are no exception. >> can you talk about the supreme court clinics?

stanford and a lot of other law schools are creating supreme court clinics. how does a look in terms of participation for women? >> some have supreme court instructors. amy wax will be one of those instructors. a number of the clinics to not have been no instructors. if they do not have them, then they will now have women arguing the case. i am sure that many of our students [unintelligible] patti alluded to this a little bit. how difficult it is for some of the women to do business development stuff that men do it

is not that all men had this quality. but most of the people who have this call it our mail. it is this feeling -- have this quality are male. men are just better at it. not all men are better at it. but most of the people who are very good at it on mail. it could be with starting in june high-school and having to go up to people and say, "will you dance with me? but that is the hardest part of the practice. i have every confidence that if somebody asked me right -- ask me to write a brief on, i will do a good job. there have been a number of these beauty contests where the

supreme court takes a case and then the lawyers think we ought to go out there and look for a new lawyer to argue our case. i have been in a couple of them i find myself saying that, when a lawyer says, tell me about it, here is my approach. then they say that we are also talking to x and y and i wonder whether they say, you could pick me or you could pick her. one story from quite a few years ago, in the early 1990's, there was a civil rights case in the supreme court. there were two respondents. they cannot agree on who would argue the case. at that point, the supreme court would still flip a coin. the two parties said, and " let's see who can argue the case."

they agreed that i might be a good compromise. so i said to the lawyer at a leading new york law firm who was doing the case pro bono, we kind of agreed on pam carlin to do this. he said, "huh? i am not stepping aside for a junior woman." i don't think there's a woman who would say that i am not letting some guy are you my case. i do think there's a difference with women's comfort with self- promotion and in their comfort with cold calling types of self- promotion. i don't know if you find it easy to call people and say, "you do

not know me, but give me your case." i cannot do it. >> i declined to change my personality to do it. the one case that i did two years ago, i had the state call me and say, "we want you because you have not been bugging yes." [laughter] so i like to think that my personality can also get what i want without being the person. >> if the whole point of getting here is that we turn into men, what is the point? [laughter] i am sure that my partner is covering his ears because his business development is going down the drain, but is there another way to get cases without screaming, " the best. they are all trash."

not that men are saying that. regina had told me her story -- virginia had told me her story and i said to them that i have a friend who got the case because she was nicer than other people. how do we walk that fine line between doing just enough to get the credibility to get the experience to make the practice is live and to make it a viable career for women without crossing the line of turning into the man? i think that is the hardest problem and one that i struggle with all the time. i am hoping someone on this panel will give me an answer. >> your willingness to write a brief and your willingness to do

the argument, what i find hard to do is that' last little -- there is this precious little finger left, the argument, give it to me. [laughter] i feel like going out and remaking on a mikas work. you are asking to do something completely for somebody else. when you are asking for their argument, i think that this a weird -- i think that is where we're currency comes into the process. >> i remember my father once came to talk to the summer lawyers at the legal action program where i was working and they ask them for 90 minutes about oral arguments. and he said, " i cannot believe none of you ask me about the brief. 90% of the cases are decided on

the brief. if you want to be the real contributor, it is in the brief." but it is not sexy. the person giving the argument is the person in the spotlight. but you can do as much to move the law by crafting persuasive brees. i am not willing to go out and say, " give me your argument." >> the oral argument is the show. it is a nice show. [laughter] what stays with the court is that the the court starts with the brief and the brief will be there in chambers when the argument is over. it is the written part of the appellate process. it is ever so much more important than the power side in

court. if you have been the architect of the brave, i think you have an advantage over someone who is just coming in to make a big moral argument. so there is an advantage to having the brief writer present the case to the court. i hope that private -- i hope that kind of -- that what really counts is a brief period >> when clients have to choose the case ask, how many arguments have you done and have the supreme court briefs have a written, i don't know whether it is the public face of the case or what the press tends to cover or the meeting point, it is the first interaction of them in the

decision process. it is not entirely unfair. but it is ironic that the focus is so much on the arguments. >> for those of us to litigate at the supreme court, virginia has been a major figure in terms of the brief says she has written you just heard a discussion of the amazing brief she did for major general beckham and the like. if you read in the oral argument, you will see it repeatedly referred to as the carter phillips brief. it is the convention that law firms have that, when they file a brief, you miss the people who are connected to the brief in order of seniority or hierarchy within the firm. >> i want to give carter credit.

[unintelligible] >> every time i have dealt with him, he is wonderful. but the justices themselves, who know that the brief counts more, [unintelligible] >> i wonder if we can focus for a minute on -- we agree that the brief is the most important. i am very invested in believing that. but there's something about the public role played by women lawyers that i do think it is a shame that they are still underrepresented in that role, if only because of the message it can be what is this role

about and what is this profession about. the numbers are low. even justice -- just the narrow sense of the best lawyers i know, less than 50% of them are women. why do we think this is? what are some of the obstacles to fuller but dissipation by women? >> do you have the statistics for women law clerks in the court? >> i do not. alice went to rescue your impression of that. >> i don't think it is much different. >> some people thought that we had a women's luncheon group and that too was exclusive. -- and that it was exclusive. i just felt that if we could go

to a restaurant without a reservation, that was a big deal. [laughter] >> i pulled up a training i do and i looked through the list of 10 things which have brought with me and none of them are things that you would say to male associates. you do not have to tell them, " do not start your answer by saying, i am not sure this is right, but here's what i think the answer is." do not ever start your answers that way. it is just covering yourself. to make sure no one gets matted you -- it is a very common female defense mechanism. do not use it. if you have to say that to women

as of tuesday, which you do, does that i give you a hint as to why women have a hard time breaking into an becoming equal representatives in this very public process of the supreme court. there are 10 selected that you give better gender specific. i do not want to over- generalized. but there is a general difference, i think, on the way women approach their work. >> jeff fischer who works on the stamford clinic with pam, and whenever started working with tom, there was a hard time getting female students to enroll inappropriate numbers in the clinics. even at the law school level, there seems to be a lot of self selection out of this practice stream. i do know how the statistics correlate with law review.

but how much of it is itself selection? so selection -- self selection is free choice, which is fine. but if it is self selection because they do not think that it is a career path, that is a problem. women still have the babies. the difficulties of juggling working parents and working motherhood and raising children -- i brought my daughter here with me. this is how i do motherhood -- this is an enormous challenge. it is a hard one. people have to make their own choices. i am a big believer in finding the balance that is right for you. how much of that changes people's career paths as they go

forward? >> that cannot be the answer in appellate law. my mother used to say, "stop whining. your the dermatologist of the law." [laughter] i do not have a full appellate practice. i have clients who have normal problems. [laughter] but the appellate practice is something that you can manage. for 19 years, i have been working 60%. it is easier in appellate practice than in regular practice to balance parenting and working. >> in a lot of it depends on the environment. maybe they will get to the point where they will have a better developed opportunity for part- time opportunities there. when i went there, there were no

part-time options. that is a job that is a 90-hour per week job. i used to think, thank goodness, that no one had told me and that i was too stupid to know that, when i had my first child, that there was an issue. but when i had my second child, someone came to my office and said that no one stays here with two children. no one does that. thankfully, i just said, "i am going to," and did. there were still messages and there are places where, if you really want to have the high- profile arguments, fight for the arguments, fight for the business, and have the family,

that is not easy. i think that is part of the issue. >> i was surprised to find that the number in clinics were lower for women. in ancient days, when i was at columbia, i was running a gender discrimination clinic. there was a disproportionate number of women signing of for those clinics. one day -- one exercise in particular, the school had a simulated constitutional litigation seminar. i had a seminar that was working on whenever i was working nine. at that time, the aclu was bringing cases to establish that women have the same obligation as well as right to serve on

juries as men. the constitutional litigation clinic did a moot court on that question. my students who were working on a case that went to the supreme court, they were so much better than the simulated group because this was a light case. it really mattered. some huge cases, against at&t come up against "the new york times," women were very enthusiastic about joining those. >> that is true. if you look at clinical enrollment at stanford, there are a number that are disproportionately female. there are direct services clinics. community law is very heavily

with men. the youth and education clinic is almost completely female. if you are thinking about an appellate practice generally, there is no better kind of practice to balance the other things in your life. i do not have kids. so it is not about that for me. but it is about teaching and scholarship and my life and other stuff more generally. you can work on appellate briefs. first of all, you almost know when they will be due ahead of time. you can work in them at night or at home. with the internet revolution, you can work so many places and at any time of day on a brief. it is a fantastic practice. if you look at government offices that look at appeals, like the brooklyn district

attorney's office, or the legal defense fund, with a manner quite well represented in that practice. in the practice, the cases come to you. it does not require you to do business better, but could be a business do work. -- a business doer. if you like writing and research, there's nothing better. but the supreme court practice has this additional problem because of the scarcity of the argument opportunities and the fact that the supreme court bar has become ever increasingly all of the allies -- increasingly oligarch allieopolized.

one difference is the case that justice ginsburg was instrumental in could she give somebody an important oral argument at the supreme court in the case recently. occasionally, [unintelligible] the justice from the circuit is responsible for picking somebody to argue the case. but there are not a lot of other opportunities to pick up your first case. without your first case, it is very hard to have a second case. there would not be a second case without a first case. [laughter] >> right before her argument, there was a former stephens clerk, a case from the seventh circuit. this was a case where the parties agreed upon whatever was

the threshold procedural point. the court needed to have someone defend the court of appeals. i think i wrote the opinion in our case. i said something in the text about how well she had performed, even though it was an impossible case and that there were both parties agreeing that the appeals were wrong. >> the family-balance-work issue is interesting. appellate law really ought to lend itself to that. although, there are more emergencies than you would think.

we had a summer associate in my practice who came to me at the end of the summer and said, "you know, it has been a tough summer. it turns out that i am very bad deadlines. so i want to be in appellate practice." [laughter] 1 should not exaggerate just how easy it is. but i do worry that, although it function we should be easy, when you get to the supreme court point, there are still people out there who think, "she works part-time. she is not really a star lawyer. she is not committed to her career. i do not want somebody who is not a curve it -- is not a star lawyer." theeven though it may be functionally very durable,

there's still a bit of a problem in the way that people conceptualize the person you send up to argue that the supreme court and whether that matches up with someone who is working part-time or seems very engaged, whether working part- time or not, with family matters. >> i think that becomes an important part of the dynamic. it has been so many -- and has been so vital for many lawyers and law students. most companies, that is the and of the road for them. we need to see more diversity on the bench.

there's the issue of racial diversity and ethnic diversity, which is another problem to deal with. it is enormous change from justice ginsberg paz met this point. there is -- justice ginsburg's vantage point. we ask ourselves why is there any barrier left? >> i have the major league baseball players association as my client. they do not think of using anybody else. they deny care that i only work part-time. -- they do not care that i only work part-time. i have been there for them.

in most appellate cases, you don't have a relationship. you're going in to get a short- term event with someone. it does not play to a strength for myself and for many women, the ability to build a relationship where somebody has confidence in you and know that you will be there for them as a part-time lawyer. you have to take into account that appellate relationships are flings. [laughter] >> one of the things that makes me optimistic is to look outside of the united states and see how the law practice and the people who are sitting on the bench are changing. we had an exchange last week with a supreme court of canada. that supreme court sent a

delegation, their chief, who is a woman, and three associate justices. only one of the associate justices was a man. you would think that people would say, " my goodness, is that not strange?" nobody even noticed. as the numbers grow -- right now, we are two. then we will be three and four and maybe more. i think that does make a difference. in that regard, of putting women on the bench, the president who deserves enormous credit was jimmy carter. when he became president, there were ninnone.

there was one woman on the u.s. court of appeals in the entire country. carter made her the first-ever secretary of education. he was determined, as he put it, change the complexion of the u.s. judiciary by selecting members of minority groups and women in numbers. although he was only our president for four years, by the end of that presidency, there was an enormous change in the complexion of the u.s. judiciary. no president ever went back to the way it once was. that was a person who was determined to make a change and looked for people in places where the president had not looked before. >> i want to make sure that we

have time for questions from the audience. with the panelists be ready for any last words of it buys for students who would be interested in supreme court or appellate practices. >> certainly. clerk, take federal courts -- to have crossed areas of law it is important. if you can link different areas of law and think creatively, and you are likely to be a better appellate lawyer. in terms of finding a great professor and take the great federal courts class, that is critical. if you have a great mentor in law school, talk to that person.

when you have summer jobs, talked to people who are in practice areas of the hell they got where they did and forming friendships and relationships. clerking and working for the government, i think those of the best ways to appellate practice. >> i agree with a lot of that. born out of my ignorance, if you decide that it is something that you want, put your head down and go for it. do not let people tell you that is not the rules or the right way. i did not work on the supreme court. i went to the government. added nine know you were supposed to go to the solicitors office. -- i did not know you were supposed to go to the solicitor's office. look for mentors. both female and male -- thank

goodness there are plenty of males who were very supportive of women. do not think that you just have to have a female mentor. get as many mentors as you can do will back u.s. push to. -- as you can who will back you and push you. >> if you want to be an appellate lawyer, the thing you should do in law school is spend as much time as you can on persuasive legal writing. that is what briefing is. learn how to do the persuasive legal writing. 6'[work for an organization when you graduate that may well turn out to be the government, state or local governments for a bit of this, or nonprofit that will let you -- or local governments who are great for this, for a

nonprofit that will let you practices. if you take a case out of their pro bono project, you will get oral argument, the case. start building a track record. a lot of how you will get clients and get referrals is from the people you already know end of the people you are working with now. the reputation you get early on in your career for doing a good job on cases will follow you through your cases. if you're lucky enough and the supreme court case comes along, you will get that. even if you do not, it has been great in my career to do supreme court cases, but i would have

been perfectly satisfied with appellate court cases. >> i think we should pick up on a point that patti introduced and we did not talking about. there are no closed doors for women. but what happens when the baby comes? i must say, in my own life, the luckiest thing i ever did was to pick my life's partner. one of my classmates in college said to me, "you know, marty, is so -- marty is so confident in his ability. he would never regarded as an

kind of threat. on the contrary, he will be your best booster because he decided we would share our lives together." at times, the balance has been different ways when marty was a young lawyer climbing up the ladder to make partner. i remember saying to him about my son, "this child is 4 years old and you have not yet taken him to the park." then i got my first good job in d.c. when jimmy carter appointed me to the court of appeals for the d.c. circuit. everyone assumed that i was commuting between new york and a d.c. marty transferred from colombia to georgetown and there was not any question about the way we would live. he has become a super chef.

i have not made a meal in 30 years. [laughter] [applause] because he believed in my work, that it was as important, but now more important than it is. it takes that kind of strongman, whoever your partner is, someone who never regards u.s. threatening -- regards to you as threatening, someone who recognizes that you should be helped along the way. >> i certainly cannot improve on that. if you have any questions, come to the microphones and we can expand this conversation a little. wh>> i was -- i was wondering wy

aggressiveness has to be the domain of men could in this society, to get to the type of any career, you have to be aggressive. the law is very competitive. it requires a certain amount of aggressiveness. [unintelligible] there were up here with a similar amount of people arguing before justices. there is a debate about whether

or not being aggressive was either required or whether or not women should be or could be aggressive. >> in my academic career, did not feel that i needed to be interpersonally aggressive at all. obviously, i have to write in a certain way. but i did not have to call the places to give me offers. i put the thing in the mail and some law review takes it. it does require the same kind of selling of myself in which i feel like i am personally making a comparative claims that business development does. maybe that is one reason that i was attracted to the academy.

i could do their work but without having to say, "me, me, me." >> your work could speak for itself. >> yes. >> i wanted to add to things. i want to second justice ginsburg's last point. it is important to have a husband who is totally supportive. that proof for us when we both had supreme court arguments in the same week and we survived it. [laughter] the other thing i wanted to emphasize is that, ii certainly agree that the solicitor's office is the place to go with you are interested in supreme

court practice. but i also want to add that i hated oral arguments. i really hated them. [laughter] briefing was great fun. the scope of the issues to get, the variety, they are all cutting edge. brief writing is lots of fun. did you do not think that you will like oral arguments, do not let that stop you. the solicitors general office is a great place to be. [applause] >> i completely agree with this. i want to point out that, if this were a male panel, people would say that the most important thing for their successful practice would be their spouse? >> for me, i love or argument,

except for the first two days beforehand and the day after. [laughter] i like the pre friday, which is where i tell my -- i do know with "aggressiveness" is the word. but that is where our channel it. that is where i put my fight and my bigger and my passion for defending my client. i channel it into their. the question is not whether you have to be aggressive or a zealous advocate in that sense. you would think that is where it should be. that is the job. it is a challenge frofor women n that it is the interpersonal

aspect. will the world come to accept women as channeling where they do this is zealous performance and still be able to have a nice conversation with a client who then wants to hire you because you are not doing the pushy aggressive selling that other people are? >> i do not have a problem being aggressive on behalf of my clients. i have a problem being aggressive on behalf of myself. you do not want one of those self-help books, "i am my own best friend." that would be sad. [laughter] cold calling someone to say that you should hire patti is easy.

it is not because she is better at it. >> there is a generational difference in this regard. i am far from an aggressive person. but i went to law school with nine women in in entering class of 500. if we were called on in class, we had to get it right. if we did not, we would not only be feeling for ourselves, but the professor would say that that is what women law students are like. we were accustomed to being in the limelight. we took it as our responsibility to teach our male

classmates and teachers that women have everything it takes to be successful in the law business. people you would not describe as aggressive, in our law school class is, we got that allegation to put ourselves forward and show how good we were. >> first of all, i want to thank you so much for coming here and speaking with us. i appreciate your time. i know that you had addressed the issue of dealing with masculine traits and feeling that you have to adopt them for yourself to be successful in this field. you feel that there are any feminine traits that have a did you in this? are there any benefits that you

have found from just being a woman in this field? >> yes. i have that only had benefits. i have had a long-term relationship with my favorite clients that 20 years. i built that relationship personally, with sharing about children and a variety of family things. >> you put more personal things in a cover letter that i would say to my best friend. [laughter] i am willing to get to know the person that i am working with. appellate work can be kind of a one-night stand. it does not necessarily carry over as well. sure, i want to be who i am. >> i think i have benefited in many ways from working part-time at a law firm. 'yfñit forced me to be an excelt delegator. it forced me to make an investment in junior lawyers,

spending a lot of time teaching them on the front end because i was going to need them because i was not to be there all the time ther. there were amazing associates who were incredibly loyal to me. that was forced on me by the fact that i worked part time. it was easy for my colleagues who worked full-time to not be bothered with the front and because they thought they would be there to do the work themselves. the support from junior associates anit has been a rewarding mentoring relationship. i have always thought that, working part-time, different from working as a woman, but it has a close correlation, it has been the rewarding relationships.

>> women in the workplace, generational late, it is not -- generationally, it is not just the women who want to take time off after a child is born. we have a change in this rule and recognition in the balancing of work and family, whatever your family unit, which is not just eight female issue anymore. maybe that will slowly -- which is not just a female issue anymore. maybe that will slowly work through. as the changes, i think that

well, hopefully, and,ññ put -- [unintelligible] >> sweden put in parental leave in view of maternity leave. only 10% of all the time is taken by men. 10%, that is a good beginning. [laughter] one of the most attractive law clerk applications i got was from a georgetown graduate. he was going to georgetown in the evening program. he was the primary caretaker of two young children he said that the reason why he elected the nighttime program was that his wife had a good job at the world bank as an economist and he was

the one who was picking up the children at school and going to soccer practice and the like. he was an excellent law clerk for me twice, once in the court of appeals and once in the supreme court. i think more and more, you're going to get women on the bench with people like that. a number of us have now had law clerks with two small children. the justices who have made that choice have never felt shortchanged because these people are super efficient and they have a life that gives the

person a great deal of satisfaction. -- that gives them personally a great deal of satisfaction. >> [unintelligible] you talked about president carter looking for new places to find new lawyers on the d.c. circuit. on a related issue, do you think that the supreme court and courts would benefit from that happening with regard to religion as it happened regards to the court. with the court benefit from more religious diversity, looking in new places that it has not looked before -- would the court benefit from more religious

diversity, looking in new places than it has not looked before. >> [unintelligible] i do not think that any of us would like to be identified as the jewish justice or the catholic justice. we have a certain religious heritage. we should not be chosen for the court on that basis. >> beforjustice ginsberg, you ad to some of the old days when you were in your law school class and the extra level of pressure you fell to represent, to some extent, the capabilities of any or all law students at the time.

does the panel feel a similar type of pressure or proprietorship or that extra level of representation? if that is true, to what extent do you of parts that two other women who may be coming through the pipeline? are we so successful at this point that you don't think about it at all? >> i think about it all the time, particularly in respect for part-time. i am aware of the stigma for part-time. i always like to say, yes, it some wants me to do something extra. i try not to use my kids as an excuse to not take on a project. so, yes, it has not been so much my gender -- there is a mass of women that i do not feel that i have to prove that women can do it. but i have hafelt pressure ramp

to prove that part-time can do it. it has made my life possible as a mother and a lawyer. >> i think we probably all feel that way. these women have done it so successfully and developed such tremendous reputations, i think you have more than succeeded in doing that and that will make it easier for other people. i know that i feel conscious of the time. in part, it is my own personality. i and the insecure one that wants to begin with an apology when asking a question. thank goodness that justice

stevens does the same thing. he is my hero in that regard. but it comes across better when he does it. [laughter] in part, my nature is that i feel that i have to work eight times as hard to get it right and and a perfectionist by nature. but i do worry that people will say that, if you do not do it as right, they will be wondering. i had a case where i was chosen over a meal to handle a case on the supreme court -- over a male to handle the case on the supreme court. i felt acutely conscious of that, if i do not come across at my highest level, you are killing yourself. that is hard to have family balance an.

that is the challenge that i face, trying to be your absolute best. it will not just affect you, but others. >> the hardest thing, in a way, is that you were never better than the last thing you did. it is night even as it -- the pressure is always there that can make you screw up this time, no one will ever remember that you did anything good before this time. i think that fear and the fear that people will think you have done a terrible job, it must have been a terrible job but then up to this point, that never goes away. you never have time to do everything and to do everything well. weather is