of campaign 2010, the c-span video library is a great resource for voters. hear from the candidates, party officials, strategist, and reporters. the c-span video library is all free online all the time. >> this week on pelosi-reid, our guest is a says it supreme court justice stephen breyer. >> justice stephen breyer, if a young person came to you and said he liked reading your past and i want to be with you become, " would you advise him to do? >> i would like it to pay

attention if you are reading about me, and i was like you to read about why the court is important to the public. for personal abies, i get that question. most of us do. and they are worried about their lives. i can understand that. the good guys and i got from david manning, dean of stanford, had a similar time in my life. he said, i need to tell you. you will not have the information that you would like to have when you make your career choices. we all make choices and we just have to choose. we do not have every information or piece of information we would like. but we make decisions. as long as we stay away from ridiculous decisions, there's no way to save what is better. you make your choice, what your

career you would like to start out in, maybe who your family -- and in your life will build around your choices. you will have some good times and some bad times. and there we are. do not worry quite as much. and the other thing, i say my father gave me this advice. when you have someone job -- you have a job and someone wants you to do something, do it as well as you can. then take into account with other people are thinking and the needs of other people. if you do it well, you pay attention. then maybe someone will notice. if you notice, you might get a better job. but maybe they will not notice. but you have done that job well. i cannot go beyond that.

every member of the court knows that he or she has been that it can just from aloft -- the law, but has been the beneficiary of other things. >> in your book you say that only 29 states require six teaching. >> i got the statistics from justice o'connor. i think that is one of the reasons that i wrote the book. when i was a student in high school in 12th grade civics we would drive off to sacramento and see the legislature in session, we would see the governor, we would learn how the city government worked, and how the national government worked. the document that i work with, the constitution, i work with it every day. it does not tell us how to run the country. it tell us we have a process called the democratic process.

it will help us run the country. but it will not work if the average citizen does not know how it works. it will not work -- that is why i wrote the book. unless they know what the courts by, they cannot really run this country well. ultimately they are the ones left to run it. >> do you remember the first person that got you interested in de law, of what thing got you interested in the law. >> a lawyer for the school board of san francisco. this was his advice. it's as in the back, legal advisor, san francisco, a unified school district, a 1933 to 1973. that was 40 years that he worked there.

in those olden times, perhaps we took a few things as accepted. he is probably the reason. >> "making our democracy work," of want to ask you, where did the separation of power idea come from? >> a good question. when they wrote this, i think the framers had in mind the english system where they had a keen and a parliament and they also had montesquieu in mind who had written about the separation of powers. he had seen the legislature on one side in the executive on the other side. then they worked with that. you might have seen that in the national archives. they have documents written by madison, and he has notes and pictures of governments all over

the ancient world. syracuse, rome, athens. they learn from a lot of different places. they took that experience and they had the british model, the french enlightenment, the scottish enlightenment, and put it together. if it was it your idea for the cover? >> it was actually my publishers, and i thought was a that idea. it was george washington and ben franklin and others. >> who is your favorite founding father? >> i think so i like is for different reasons. franklin is impossible not to like. he was such a lovable person. he opposed slavery at the time. he told them not to make compromises on slavery. he seems to have been a lovely man. he was the ambassador to france

and everyone liked him. would you like a story that he told? when people were being too rigid and puritanical, he would tell his friends from boston this story. people would come to see him in philadelphia. when they were being too puritanical, i would say to them, have you heard the story -- i am sure that you know what -- of abraham and the 10,000 year-old man? here's the story. a 10,000-year-old man came to abraham. abraham said, i like to know, how you feel about my god? the god to the jews were sent. he hated that got in he said these horrible blasphemies. abraham said, i cannot stay here. i do not want someone who hates

god in my house. afterwards a godsend to abraham, why did you do that? god, he was blaspheming your name. he hates god. cott said, abraham, i have put up with this for 10,000 years. you cannot put up with it for one night? it shows a decent tolerant, open-minded person. >> and then hamilton. >> when you read biographies of hamilton, i thought that was an interesting biography. he is a truly brilliant man and he is a very practical man. and george washington used him to get his ideas across. it was washington and his staffers with hamilton much of the time.

he saw the need for a strong, efficient federal government. and madison -- madison, what a group, terrific. madison wrote these words. he saw a problem after problem. madison studied nonstop and he translated what he saw the other republics and democracies into the constitution. and then there is a adams. it is worth anyone's time to read the biography of hamilton, of adams, of george washington, of madison. a truly remarkable group of people brought together at a remarkable time. >> this is not quite a connection, but you talk about revisiting a case that he would be involved in, it was either gerrymandering he was one of

the three that did not sign the constitution back in those days. what is the whole gerrymandering thing about? >> the reason i put that in, it was a case which was a closed case. is there anything the court could do when legislatures dramatically and drastically gerrymander the district to be sure that it will be a republican or democrat. the reason i listed that, that is a case where i wish that courts could do something about preventing the extreme circumstances. if courts prevented the extreme circumstances, there might be bipartisan commissions. the reason i thought all that is important is that unless the

basic electoral process works, we will not be able to have a democratic outcome. one of the aspects of that is that people become too cynical because this is going to be a republican for sure, or a democrat for sure. the only possible challenge is from the left if a democrat or write if republican. i think that drives the country across -- apart. >> we will have activity in this area and the next year or so. does any of that, all the way to the court? >> there is one that i was thinking of. the majority of the court said that there is no standard to catch the gerrymandering and prevented. sometimes it is not. >> had you been involved in the constitutional convention, if

you had been there in the beginning, would you have signed it? >> of course i would have signed it. while there may be one person in the country. if you did a poll my question the reason is very simple. we have had our ups and downs, but by and large it works pretty well. >> if you had been in that time -- three did not, many did not show up in the convention in those days -- and based on your own thinking of the law, had been then, give us your own thinking. >> the hardest part was the slavery park. they simply moved the question on to the next generation and met a lot of compromises to get the south to join. but if you do not make the

compromises, you do not get the united states of america. the basic outlines of the document is change over time. not everyone was allowed to load and then. -- to vote then. we've had civil war amendments that have made it more democratic and brought everyone into the country. but still, you read that argument, you have several articles that create institutions that are now - democratic in nature. it is a democracy that protect basic human rights in the bill of rights, it assures a degree of equality now. it divides power horizontal in, three branches, vertically, states and federal.

so no one in the government can become too powerful. and it insists upon the rule of law. those are like pillars of our country that has been able to hold itself together as a group from 4 million to 300 million people and all the time has said that basically democratic government. >> in the bottom right now, they have a proposition -- in nevada right now, they have a proposition to elect judges. one of your former colleagues, retired justice o'connor, she is going around and does not like that. what you think of the idea of electing judges versus appointing. >> there is a problem in that and the problem is there a simple. suppose you are very unpopular person. and then you are innocent. and you're going to have a trial.

you're going to have a trial before i'd judge who will lose their job if they decide in your favor. suppose you are a group of people intensely unpopular and you want to try to protect your rights before a judge who if he decides in your favor will lose his job. hamilton writes in the federalist 56 the reason for the power review to set aside unconstitutional laws is because it should not be made by the political process. why not, to market -- why not? if you want popular decisions, it is a political thing. but there is a lot in this document that says decide for people who are unpopular because they have rights, too. if you want to enforce the document, get the job to someone who is not dependent on the

public for his job. >> would you say that all the states that elect judges are making a mistake? >> we have a complicated system. they're not quite as elected is you think. they have appointments and ratification and confirmations. a lot of people understand the point that i just make. what has changed? campaign contributions. if you have that -- vast campaign contributions by affected groups, it becomes other groups trying to raise the most possible money and bought ads, there's no telling what will happen. that would be very harmful. >> while we're on that note, you

may have had discussions with people who say that this town is broken. the system is broken. because of the very thing you're talking about, the money. >> this might -- might totally personal view, it is what makes me laugh and you laugh a little bit when you think of winston churchill america always does the right thing after every other possible alternative. at bottom, people have since. in the fifth grade, your teacher or my teacher would have told you, we're going to have a project to date. we will break the class down into groups and you have four or five people try to get this job done. if you are in the fifth grade working on a project, you will not get your way if you boss

people around. it is called cooperation. you try to work with other people to achieve an objective. i think we're pretty good bet that. when people see something broken, if they think it is broken, they have a reaction -- fix it. you have the despair instinct and the dixit instant. and it is the fix it instinct that normally works out. >> any sense of how to fix it? >> thereof would be interesting. you're talking about other branches of government. i'm very careful when i straightaway from the confines of my own brands. >> you talk about a judicial review. it was not in the constitution, is set. >> that is a good question. if you look at gordon wood or the historians of the time, it

does not say -- nothing says here that the supreme court will have the power to hold on constitutional a law of congress. but if you read the federalist 56, if you look at the convention, you see hamilton writing that. that is what they probably thought is what happened, the supreme court would have that power. in the federalist papers, hamilton says why should they have the power to strike down a lot of congress as unconstitutional? but somebody should have that power. if nobody has that power, you can take this document and we will put it in the smithsonian and hang it on the wall. and then people can and myra as they might admire a painting.

it will mean nothing because everyone looks upon it his own way. someone has to review it. who should be? the president? the president refuses, he has too much power. congress? congress is an expert at who is popular. if -- they would not be doing their jobs if they did not know what was popular. what should we do with me, cross protections for people's liberty. they are not needed when you are popular. they are needed when you are unpopular. congress will not do that, not very often. they will not pass a law that is not very popular and then turn around and say that it is unconstitutional. the judges to not have the power of the sword.

there week. perfect. we will give them this because there -- they are professionals and will not go too far. that his reasoning in my paraphrase. that is a question that you can only ask of history, these people are so weak and if they do what is unpopular, why would anyone do what they say? a good question. in green iv -- henry iv spoke will welshman who said that he could summon powers from the deep. but will you come -- but will they come when you call for them? that is a important one to me

and i give examples to show people that it is no -- by no means certain that the public would come. dred scott, where the court just about caused the civil war, a terrible thing. little rock, a wonderful case where president eisenhower sent troops to little rock to enforce the segregation. we can remember that. and gradually over time, the court has earned its right -- making many mistakes and deciding many cases that were not mistakes -- only over time had people come to accept the need for court that will make decisions that they will not like sometimes. i do not think it is a secret. some of those decisions will not be right. there are some very close questions where people are divided. that is what i want people to see.

>> go back to the beginning -- this is so hypothetical -- but if you had been asked to be on the supreme court before john marshall or after john marshall, and that is why i get to judicial review, how that was established. >> what a difference. it was a very weak institution. john j. preferred to be governor of new york. he had to ride long hours on roads to sit in very distant places and live and a boarding house and not have very much to do for the first few years. there were hardly any cases. but they went and sat in lower courts. it was not a particularly important job. then marshall created -- which i think was implicit in the

constitution -- the basic condition for the country that became the united states in the united center -- in the 19th century. and one of them was that the supreme court does have the authority to declare acts of congress contrary to the constitution of the united states. >> how did he do it? >> he was like houdini, it was magic. mr. murray had been appointed a judge by president at a bridging m -- mr. marbury had been appointed a judge by president. he did not get that piece of commission -- a piece of paper called a commission. when president jefferson came into office, he said that he did not want him as a judge.

marbury sued jefferson, or rather, madison who was the secretary of state. it was a practical worry. if the supreme court said marb ury, you are not entitled to that piece of paper, it would be weak. the law was clear that he was entitled to that piece of paper. everything was done. it the is not, it looks like they're not doing their job. but if they say you are entitled to the piece of paper, jefferson would not give it to him anyway. that was the fear. and there was plenty of good concern for that. so the president of the united states just ignores the court,

what is it worth? the court looks powerful. -- powerless. do you want to know what houdini did? chief justice marshall writes the following -- we live in a country of law and everyone has to obey the law, even the president of the united states. then he says, but law says -- a minor ministerial duties like the delivery of this piece of paper, like you go to the land office and ask for a copy of your deed, the person who has that piece of paper has to give it to him. there is no doubt about that. and courts have the in power -- the power to enforce that. of course they did. but we the supreme court can only hear cases of a kind listed

in the constitution. the constitution does not say anything about writs of mandamus. does that sound tactical enough? the supreme court could give relief and it does not save mandamus. the statute did say mandamus. here is the statute, it says that weaken issue the writ and make the president give you the piece of paper. the constitution does not say that we can do that. and so we do not have the power to do it. and the statute is unconstitutional. we have this great principle, in the supreme court, that says whether a statute is constitutional or night. we have agreed action and that

action is, we said it was unconstitutional. and jefferson cannot do anything about it. because he won. and it is so technical that only four lawyers understand it and the only way the country understands it is that the supreme court has the power to declare a law unconstitutional. and it did not go unnoticed at the time. they have a copy of the letter that jefferson wrote to his lawyer referring to this case. he was literally sputtering. do not pay attention to this case. john marshall to scrap this power. it was a terrible thing. but he could not do anything because he won. >> do you remember what the vote was?

>> you look that up. i don't know that anyone dissented. there were only six or seven at that time. >> how did everyone go along with that? >> they thought that it was right. -- gordon wood on this. i am not the expert. but by and large, not everybody, but by and large the founders had thought the courts should have this power. >> specifically define with of mandamus. -- writ of mandamus. >> that is an order to an official that tells them, you'd do this. i am saying that you do this. it tells him to do something. in the case of marbury v.

madison, he boarded a piece of paper signed by the court issued to madison saying hand over the commission to marbury. >> do you know what happened to him? >> i do not know. maybe he gave up. >> do you remember when you were growing up where you went to learn all this? the whole process of understanding the law. >> in law school, but for a was growing up, my high school. >> did you really debate jerry brown? >> yes, i did. and i did good. i was on the debate team and it was jerry brown and pete simpson, they were the st.

ignatius debate team. we used to debate. did what did the debate experience do for you? >> i liked it. we had a great debate coach who had been the debate coach for my father. and he went to high school with jerry brown's father. he chose topics of the day and we have a little bit of time. we had to make up arguments. and the judges decided to produce the better argument. >> you remember what kind of argument you had? >> we had topics -- whether there should be universal conscription, the draft continuing even in peacetime. that is something that people still debate. you had to do both sides. you did not know what side you

get. >> was jerry brown any good? >> no, yes, he was fine. talkn your book, you also about another term used often. habeas corpus. >> of very important term. you go back into history, one of the documents most important for america and the rest of the free world was the magnet card -- magna carta. king john said that he would not use -- run the country while fleet. there would be legal process. we keep in mind that one of the things people worried about is someone in the government, like the king, doing what everyone

did not according to law. over time there developed a mandamus, ofke habeas corpus. a person goes to a jailer and says you have a body. corpus, a body. you have the body and you bring that body to me. i want to know why you are holding this person. it gives the judge the power to ask of any man of woman who is being held in confinement what is the law that permits you, mr. jailer, to hold this person in confinement. if there is no law that allows the person to be held, the judge can lead him out. i had a case once when i was a judge on the 1st circuit that really was a classical case.

there was a man who came from the dominican republican who tried to enter the country and for some reason he was arrested and put up in some places of confinement, where he could not get out. no one was doing anything about his plight. he got an note out the window and attached to a rock, did this to my wife. she went into the court and said, judge, this is the note. they are holding the has been somewhere. the judge said to the immigration service, what is going on? bring him here. what is the authority of the law? that is what that is there for and why it is terribly important, so that the people cannot hold other people in prison without the authority a law -- of the law. >> you win over a lot of that courses -- cases from guantanamo.

hamdi -- i cannot remember the rest of them. >> their work four cases that came out of guantanamo. i did describe them. i was careful to describe the two sides and i have not made too much editorial comment. but i want people to see something. and i put those cases in the book juxtaposing them with a different case. i don't know if you remember the other case. amachi was the case where american citizens of japanese or -- origin were taken from their homes and moved to camps in the mountain region. the military did that because the military viewed them as a threat at a time when the japanese might have invaded.

i can remember that from my childhood driving with my mother down, my mother saying, that is where they held the japanese in world war ii. i don't think that from her tone of voice she approve that. they were american citizens. >> for the born here or to market and yes, yes. that is right. >> for those the nissai? >> they had rights but you're thinking of the special battalion that formed on our side made up of americans of japanese origin. and they were very courageous and were decorated. they fought in europe and were decorated. been it is in one of those movies of world war ii. the son who got all the

decorations goes to visit his parents. they are being held in a camp with barbwire all over. he says to the commander, this odd. why do you hold an them here when i'm out fighting for the country. the commander says, well, sometimes it gets mixed up. he cannot tell them the law by which they were holding them. by 1944, it was pretty apparent there was not a risk of any invasion. and that courts -- by 1944, one of the most interesting parts, it was also apparent to the department of justice that there had never been the basis for holding these people, never. and at that time, the man in charge knew that there was no basis. he had been told that by j. edgar hoover. j. edgar hoover told him that

the fbi did not want those people move. they knew that in the department of justice. they basically told the court that. the court upheld this imprisonment. i want to ask this question -- black, douglas, frankfurter, they started to do -- undo the damage of segregated schools. their natural inclination would have been an instant. why did they allow this injustice? i think the answer is that they talked -- the law, we cannot get involved in this. the military is trying to protect us from invasion. rooseveltthe war or runs it. we have to let roosevelt to what he wants. to go back to your guantanamo

question, the very difficult and important question in this area is, is there a middle way? is there a role for the court to protect basic individual human rights guaranteed in the constitution in the time of war without turning the constitution into a suicide pact? because it is not a suicide pact. and the president and the congress have to have and they too have adequate power to protect the country. when these things conflict, does the court it out of the way or does the court make some effort to reconcile these two competing and opposite necessities? in guantanamo, the chart the latter. and i want people to understand what is the court did and i firmly believe it will not be

for many years before people will know where that the court was right or wrong. what it did basically is in each of those cases, they decided in favor of the guantanamo prisoners. the court held looking at the statutes that someone who is in guantanamo has a right under the statute to the to a federal district court and say he has been held illegally. in the second case, what about persons who says he is not an enemy combatant? the armed forces said that gentleman over there is an enemy combatants in afghanistan. he says, i am a shepherd. quite you have a machine gun? we all have machine guns, he said. it was a conflict on the facts. we said, by the time they are over here or in guantanamo in the united states, you have to

have some kind of hearing. not too specific to the time, but it has to have evidence. third case -- a person probably in the united states bin laden driver, he is saying that the military cannot have a special tribunal made up of military people to try me. that was because of the statute and he was suing one of the most powerful people in the world, george bush, the president of the united states. and he won because the court agreed with him. these ruled 5-4, 6-3, or pretty close. the statute did not give the army the authority have a special kind of trouble. the fourth case, perhaps the most significant and congress

passed a new law that gave this authority to the president and basically said there will not be any more tedious corpus. it did not quite say that, because they did give certain people certain rights. did that deprived them of habeas corpus. and we thought that it did. it was not quite good enough. we said that congress cannot under the constitution to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. it says in the document that the congress will have the power to suspend habeas corpus and the time of insurrection or rebellion. this is not either. congress is not have the power to suspend. those of the four cases. those of the decisions. the court was divided. some members gave very good reason for saying we should stay out of it entirely. we can carefully go into this matter and make an effort to protect human rights without

unduly in treating a on the executive's power. one of the most interesting things i found in these cases, after that case, the presence of united states said, i do not agree but that but i am going to follow it. just like vice-president gore after bush v. gore, he ab ided by it. after the charity cases, the rock, the court has grown in the exceptions of the american public. that is what i see every day. i see people of every race, every religion, every point of view, 300 million people in this country, and those people resolve their differences under law. i thought that the court was wrong in bush v. gore.

i heard harry reid say this. the most remarkable thing about the case is something not. often remarked. that followed it. they politics and accepted it because the alternative is fighting in the streets. if you look around, violence, battles among people of a single nation is being resolved in a court. even if the court is wrong. >> i'm going to ask you about this. some conservative talk-show over the last month said justice breyer -- i have to be careful -- the essence was that you are in favor of incorporating sharia law.

>> i do not know where that came from. >> i was going to ask you. >> i cannot remember saying that. maybe they are mixing that up with england. >> is there any reason for the public -- >> i cannot imagine what it would be. i don't remember exactly what the issue in england was. >> we have a separation of church and state. i do not know what the context is that they are talking about. i'm always hesitant. someone comes to me with an issue, and i don't know quite what the issue is, sometimes an issue can come up and i to know know what the basis for that one would be. i do not know where it came from.

>> a lot of people in this country would gladly incorporate sharia law into the judicial system. when data set, there's no one to respond to it. -- when that is said, there is no one to respond to it. >> i have not heard that. i do not know how it would happen. -- why am seem like a i not absolutely categorical? i took a course called conflicts of law. there's a picture of the post office of tobacco. can the island of tobacco make a law that rules the whole world? the answer was, two people can write a contract and i want this contract to be ruled by the law of tobago.

i have never said sharia law can be incorporated. i do not know what the issue would be. i do not know where that is coming from. >> in your book, you write a lot about dred scott. who was he? >> dred scott was a brave man born in virginia, a slave. he was taken by his owner to ourri. they went up to the territory of minnesota and he married, came back, and he sued -- his wife. got him to do that -- you have been living for several years in a free territory. i have married in a free territory. by law the free territory, you

are a free man. the lower courts held against him. then you went to the supreme court. the shocking thing about the opinion written by roger taney, he wrote for a majority, 7-2 he said this man, even if he is entitled to his freedom, cannot sue because he is not really a citizen of the united states. he was descended from slaves. and he used very strong and unattractive language to describe that. and that was a shocking thing. and he also in that case held that congress did not have the constitutional power to ban slavery in the territories. the issue of the day. and justice curtis, refuted the

majority point but point. very interesting to read. one of the people who read it was abraham lincoln. and abraham lincoln describes the case after reading curtis's to send has a legal astonishment. the legislature of new york says this is the most terrible decision. you realize that the slave owner becomes with his manacled slave game and he will sit at the foot of that monument of freedom, but for hill, and we cannot do a thing about it. abraham lincoln used the dissent of the basis for his cooper union speech. and the debate he was engaged in at the time. he became a prominent leader of the republican party, the party against slavery, and they then

got him elected. all to let all these things led to the civil war. and the no. 1. and slavery was abolished. it is a remarkable case for many reasons. if you're ever going to accuse the court of doing too much for political reasons, that would be a good case. the strongest thing in favor of what he did was you hope to that he would avoid a civil war by deciding this issue. if that is what he thought, he was surely wrong. he did the opposite. one good reason for judges not to decide things on a political basis is that they're terrible politician. if you want something decided on a political basis, the congress. they are good at it. >> isn't hard to avoid that? >> it is sometimes hard to

avoid your basic values, how you see the country, how you see the relationship between law and the average person in the country. would you think law is about. the basic, fundamental, legal, and political values are part of you and they will sometimes influence an approach for the question is very open and where it admits to that kind of thing. what is the word liberty mean in the 14th amendment? what does "the freedom of speech" extend to? how far extends is open. sometimes in these fairy open questions, it is very difficult to find answers. i do not think you can find them in history. i think you have to look to the values that the framers meant to put into those words, and then you have to work at how those values which do not change much

apply today. i can see the different judges who have different views will sometimes come to different answers on that. i have tried to explain in this book have like i to them. judy had u.s. situation where a principal what was here in your personal feelings were here and you had to make a choice between mcorp >> and you have to choose law. speeches, andany when i was on the sentencing commission the sentences are much too long. you can have a definite but not life sentences for about it. mandatory minimum sentences are particularly undesirable because they do not let the judge exercise his discretion at all. have made it fairly clear that when i was on the sentencing commission, i would be against

that. but you have to uphold it. the law is that this is up to the legislature. it is not up to the judge. >> you've been on the court for 15 years. another issue that came up of the last couple months is that you now have six catholics and three jewish members of the court. first time in history you had this kind of balance. should the public be worried crush margin i should not things up. -- should the public be worried? >> i should not think so. i went back and senator kennedy, we got out at the airport, and a young reporter from a jewish newspaper asked, how you feel about two jews been on the

court? and our reaction together was, fine, fine. of course you are aware of that. someday i think that is a good goal, regardless of what race or religion or nationality that people have, you recognize that is a fact. so? >> what is the difference now with three women on the court? is there any sense of change? >> justice white said with each new court, it is a whole new world. they're different personalities there. i enjoy having three women on the court. it is fine. i will leave it up to others in the future to see how it changes or if it does not change it. i do not know. i did not think too much about

whether someone is a manner a woman makes a difference -- a man or woman makes a difference. >> in this book, and you have another book about five years ago, i have noticed you have made the rounds. you have been on many shows, did an interview on npr, and you are here. most justices do not do that. >> i am doing that purposely. spending four years writing this thing, you get a little tired of doing that. paul point of it is to try to explain to men and women who are not judges and might be willing -- they are not necessarily

judges, i want to explain to them a little of the history of the court at certain times and some of the things you do and i want them to understand. and the reason i want them to understand is because i believe it is an important institution for the country. what we're asking of them, what i think the document asks of them, is that they will provide support for an institution that must from time to time to cite things they do not like. in other words, if judges will do everything that is popular, why not give the job to congress? we had to ask the public's to support an institution that they do things that they do not like. sometimes in particular cases they will live in the courts

will not. that is a very complicated thing to ask the people. and here is an effort on my part to try to get across getting beyond people to see everything is political, because i did not, and saying this is how the court works. we're not junior league politicians. sayn't say that you can zero politics, never. i want people to understand how misleading that type of characterization is. i want you to understand the institution. of course i have going to four years of effort. , to break through and hope this message, which i think is important, will get through. >> our guest is been justice stephen breyer. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national

cable satellite corp. 2010] >> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> tonight on prime minister's question, david cameron answers questions about budget cuts and the death of an aid worker in afghanistan. the more political coverage with president obama at a campaign rally in ohio. live at 10:00 eastern, of washington senate debate

between the democratic incumbents patty murray and republican challenger. in the final weeks of campaign 2010, the c-span video library is a great resource for voters. hear from the candidates, party officials, strategist, and officials. all free online anytime. >> no defense of this policy. he cannot explain why they are going to sustain this loss. the chancellor sets there. this policy has been a shambles from day one. from day one. the