why was this part of the voting right act unconstitutional? usually, you point to some provision in the constitution. john roberts made a vague reference to the 10th amendment. there is the 15th amendment that says the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race. congress shall have the power to force this to appropriate legislation. congress decided, how could that be unconstitutional? i thought the john roberts opinion may do very good political science commonsense argument. this is all based on data from the 1970's. it is outdated, it does not make any sense today. i thought it was very hard to say as a legal matter, why was that provision unconstitutional?

>> the case that not all five of the conservatives subscribed to. the truth is that was part of it. they did not articulate for the five justice majority exactly what the standard was. that will be complicated going forward. >> in several of the cases last week, particularly in the doma case, justice scalia delivered quite an impassioned oral dissent. joan, you recently published a piece about justice scalia's oral dissent.

have they become even more impassioned over the years? >> it is hard to know when he is more revved up than not. he is always revved up about something. this time when he dissented in doma, he dissented for about 13 minutes. anthony kennedy only went on for eight minutes. the earlier one, scalia was on center stage for 11 years dissenting in the dna case, where the majority said it was ok if you were arrested to take a dna swab. he was very much against that. this is a genre of his. ruth bader ginsburg showed that it was one of first, too.

it is the way for the dissent to call attention to his or her opinion. justice scalia told me in 1988, when he did his major dissent in the independent counsel case and he had that wonderful line, sometimes the wolf comes to us in sheep's clothing, this wolf comes as a wolf. the reason he decided justin byron white had said, we have a practice that if we feel passionately about a dissent, we should do that. scalia went on for nine minutes back in 1988. each year, he does at least one. the doma one, if he could've pounded his fist on the mahogany bench him and he probably would have. >> the great thing from being in the courtroom, he has this great storyteller voice. he was going on and telling the story and he can be very sarcastic. he is really rolling along and

then he finishes and he has written the majority opinion of the next case. the chief justice says, justice scalia will give the opinion and he had to recalibrate. sorry about that. he was still using his sarcastic voice. [laughter] he had to, like, shake it off and start over. >> i wonder what my colleagues think about whether the justice who wrote the majority knows an oral dissent is coming. >> you know the answer, don't you? >> i am not sure i do. >> they know now that somebody will be dissenting. we have learned over time that they think it is good manners to let the majority justice know that a dissent is coming. they do not know what is in it.

justices ginsberg and scalia make their press statements available to the press, but that is something -- if tony read the majority. scalia saying, how dumb you are. that is the tone. >> these are people who live a life in which everybody thinks they are hilarious and wise. >> when justices read their opinions and their dissents, they are not reading the whole thing. they are reading a summary they have written or their clerks have written. it is about as close to spin as the justices can get. they are able to tell the public which parts they think are important and the nuances.

there has been some discussion, senator durbin toward the end of the term asked the court to allow the broadcast of opinion announcements. a very unsuccessful campaign has gone on for decades to allow camera coverage of the arguments. he was focusing on the opinion announcements as a foot in the door. that is an interesting idea, and i think it would get rid of some of the objections that justices have about cameras, the dynamics of justices interacting. the problem is the court does not like the idea of opinion announcements being featured. they do not want lawyers citing

the words of the opinion announcement instead of the opinion itself -- it is a summary and it oversimplifies things. there is something interesting about the separate entity of opinion announcements as far as the public access to that. i wish it was greater. >> the audio of that does become available at the end of the term. there is a real sense of drama, the chief justice gradually let you know where he is going. >> i thought there was something odd that justice scalia -- on tuesday, john roberts delivered the opinion striking down part of the voting rights act. ruth ginsburg says this is arrogance on the part of this court to strike down a law that has been passed overwhelmingly

by congress. the four liberal justices dissent. the very next day, they strike down the defense of marriage act. justice scalia calls it job dropping arrogance that we are overturning the decision of the congress and the executive in the defense of marriage act, a very popular law. who would vote against the defense of marriage act? pretty easy in the middle of the 1990's to vote for that. justice scalia is talking, if anyone was there, they say, wait a minute. weren't you on that exact opposite side of that issue the day before? >> i like the form of reasoning that there is something you should be skeptical about because the voting rights act was passed 98-0 in the senate.

>> justice alito wrote a very interesting dissent on the doma case, but did not announce it from the bench. did that have room for coverage in your stories? did you think it was worth writing about? >> i certainly mentioned it. he stated clearly that he read the majority's opinion that the states should decide for themselves the definition of marriage. if that is what the majority was holding, he agreed with that. he said in a very nice and quotable way. >> speaking of justice alito, bob, you wrote about his behavior while justice ginsburg

was reading her dissent in the title vii cases. did you get any feedback on that? what made you decide to put that in the story? >> i got a little bit of feedback on that, yeah. [laughter] >> anybody roll their eyes? >> he has a hard time keeping a poker face. he squints and moves his head. you can tell during arguments that he thinks someone is making a point that he thinks is silly. he has a hard time looking ahead. i think the reason that it seemed relevant was that is sort of recalled moments from the state of the union address in which president obama criticized the citizens united ruling and justice alito thought he was

mischaracterized. this is a guy who doesn't have a poker face. >> speaking of poker face, justice o'connor was in the court last week for some of the decisions. i was able to see her face across the room. she had a complete poker face. joan, you wrote a biography of her. how is she doing? >> she has on occasion used a cane. she is 83. she keeps a busy travel schedule. she is involved in her work and talks about alzheimer's, which her husband died of. published a little book earlier this year. during the reading of the texas affirmative action case were picked up where her michigan ruling left a decade ago, she

sat with her hands clasped and not showing her feelings at all. that was a 7-1 ruling that did not dismantle or hurt her majority opinion. a lot has yet to play out and how they would interpret it. i tried to get an interview with her afterwards. she said, no. [laughter] she is the kind of person who will eventually say what she thinks about it. some of us remember after the 2007-2008 term when several of her majority opinions were undercut, she said two months later it that they have dismantled the opinions. how would you feel about that? i think eventually she will not be able to keep a lid on it. it is a matter of when.

>> sometimes when you're justice o'connor speak, we really hear joan. [laughter] >> are you picking up a different accent writing a book on justice sotomayor? >> it is more of a political history than a biography the way this is as were. political history how we got the first latina on the court. tracing how she maneuvered herself to get on the district court in new york and her elevation to the second circuit and watching this ambitious woman. she came out with her own book earlier this year. it has been very helpful. it has been helpful to follow her around because she can draw a crowd like no other justice can.

>> as long as we're talking about books, adam, here is your chance to talk about yours. >> my journal is philosophies. i thought what the world needed was a nice 15,000 word narrative that looks at the personalities that led to the decision made a i finished it, i think, on sunday. it is being edited now. you can download on your kindle or ipad or other device on july 9. it costs $1.99. >> this is a bit longer than a brief. >> and a ton more fun. [laughter]

>> anybody else working on a book at the moment? no. justice ginsburg turned 80 in march of this year. she seems frail, but there was a story in the "post" a few months ago about her personal trainer that some people in the audience may not have seen. >> she works i think about twice a week with a personal trainer. someone who works at the d.c. circuit and trains a lot of the judges. i think justice kagan works with him as well. justice ginsburg seems extremely dedicated to it. a real regular. i believe that he said that she can do 20 perfect push-ups. whether that is true or an advertisement for himself, we do

not know. [laughter] there was no documentation of it. she takes care of herself after the health scares she has had. the question is always when she will be ready to leave the court and she doesn't give any of us an indication that the time has come. >> she is very sharp on the bench. when i started there, justice brennan and justice marshall -- they sort of sat quietly and rarely said anything. ruth ginsburg, almost every argument she would ask the first question and is really sharp with the question. if there are any fudges or misstatements, she will correct them and say it. she is always well prepared an extremely sharp in the questions.

>> she was the second woman on the court. after a while, she was the only one. now there are three. are they a voting block? >> there are 36 possible combinations of pairs of nine justices. the three pairs most likely to vote together are the three women on the court. they are in that sense a block. they're not about because they're female, but they are appointees of liberal democrats. in the term or the right is splintered in little bit, you saw the three of them very cohesive. any pair of those three women you put together they vote together a percentage of the time. >> he is the fourth the democratic appointee of that crowd.

>> in a series of fourth amendment cases, he flipped with scalia. scalia becomes the great proponent of the fourth amendment econin takingood om '. and frankie the dog sniff around your house. in all of those cases, breyer takes a conservative side. >> he had been original member of the sentencing commission and always had an interest for the law. he helped write a lot of criminal law. this is the term where we saw that background emerge much more than usual. >> do you think there is anything in his personal life that might have driven that? [laughter] >> i will let someone else answer that. somebody answer that.

>> i'm sure it has nothing to do although there is that adage that a-- conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. justice breyer had the misfortune to have his home burglarized. >> we have talked a little bit about the other two women, but not yet about justice kagan. she finished her term on the court.is there anything more to say about her after several years? is she gaining her stride? did that happen two years ago? does she have more influence in the court? >> i think all of us who watch the court and she is terrific. she is a real talent on the law from the very beginning. she asks good questions and has a great sense of timing as to when to ask a question.

she is a terrific writer. she is as good as it gets on writing. whether a dissent or majority, she writes clearly and strongly. she is quotable. we are always anxious for anyone who is quotable. [laughter] she is terrific. >> she's a very good shot. she has been hunting in wyoming. took down a white-tailed doe with a single shot. >> i like that justice scalia said she could've done that in his driveway. >> she is an amazing speaker. she likes the dramatic form. i saw her and chief justice roberts recently in indianapolis. the chief was going to be the keynote speaker and she was there to introduce him. he is a superb speaker. he went up after her and said, i have to follow that?

she isas really revealing. something. >> one example with justin kagan's terrific writing, there was a case that did not get much attention on the 24th of june. it was the day camp versus the united states and how to categorize prior convictions for sentencing. she was talking about the subcategories of crime. she resorted to the include -- think of colonel mustard with the candlestick in the conservatory. this is not what you usually get in the supreme court decision. [laughter] justice alito in dissent put in

the footnote where he disagreed with her interpretation of clue. the board game clue does not provide sound or legal guidance. [laughter] in that game, it matters whether colonel mustard did it. in real life, the colonel would almost certainly not escape conviction simply because the jury could not agree on the blunt instrument he used to commit the murder. a humorless response to a funny >> he was going along. >> that was the written equivalent of an eye roll. >> she slipped another one into an opinion. i wonder if any of you caught it? it was a case about preemption of local los angeles court

regulations. one of the regulations was a truck has to have a placquered with a phone number for reporting environmental safety concerns. she put "you have seen it. how am i driving? 867-5309 " i see some smiles in the audience. i watched it on youtube. there is a song i am told is a power band called 867-5309. >> two different things. >> who thinks justice kagan knew this? who thinks one of the law clerks slipped it in? >> i think one of the law clerks slipped it in.

she pointed out how she brought up mortal kombat for an oral argument on video games. she disclosed that she asked one of her clerks that she was going for in oral argument. i need a violent videogame. one of them volunteered that to her. i'm not sure how much a clerk helped her out on that. >> she is the youngest justice. >> do any of you think these kinds of things would have gotten that into an opinion 30 or 50 years ago at all? >> not totally different. >> 50 years ago you would have to have asked -- [laughter] >> thanks.

>> we talked about good questions justice kagan and we passedinsburg asked. another term with no questions from justice thomas. but he did say something one morning. it created quite a firestorm in the press. tony, are you up to date on that? >> i remember we were in a press gallery. we looked at each other. did he really say something? it was quick in passing. he leaned toward the microphone. it seemed he intended for it to be heard. this was a case that ended up getting dismissed. it was about the appointment of

counsel in a capital case. there were some discussion about the quality of the council. justice scalia said something like i see the defendant had a lawyer who graduated from harvard and yale. as if that is great. thomas said he did not provide good counsel. in context, this was read as a his almajab at yale. mater, and he has a, located relationship with yellow law school. -- with yale law school.

that gave it even more interest. we all kind of went crazy trying to report this and figure out what he actually said. >> pathetic, but true. [laughter] >> this is supreme court reporters do for fun. he didn't provide good council, that is like the third iteration of the court reconstructing transcript. in the original transcript, it was incomprehensible. >> i think there is still a dispute to this day whether it was harvard or yale on the end of that joke. i think some say it was harvard. >> i think it was a general ivy

league slam. >> this is what passes for humor at the courts. they are all harvard or yale. scalia went to harvard law school. justice thomas has this complicated i hate yale, his alma mater. justice kagan was speaking at a synagogue and she happened to make some jokes about all of the ivy's and referred to the joke that justice ginsburg started at harvard and transferred to and then she says there was justice ginsburg just slumming at columbia. she worries that some people took offense.

it was a joke, obviously. this is what we are talking about. if anyone is going to take a step over the harvard and yale >>th, it would be columbia. one of the reasons the justices say they would rather not have cameras in the court is because the focus on trivial incidents that will get played up on jon stewart. take the most trivial thing. this is a good example. it was the most trivial thing that became the story of the day. did he try to speak? did he say anything? did any words come out? [laughter] it seem like a modern matter. >> you talk about questioning something that has happened that they all sort of talk about, but there are a lot more questions asked and rapid-fire lawyers who come up before the court that have a hard time getting anything out before another question comes.

all of us have seen a number of times when the lawyers can say anything before there is a question asked. the justices are starting to take notice of that a little bit. the other thing i would say since you're trying to get me in trouble with justice alito is that when you talk to lawyers who practice at the court and ask them which questions were they worried about, i find that those who are arguing from the conservative point of view say that they are worried about justice kagan's questions being the hardest and those arguing the liberal side talk about justice alito's questions that goes for the soft spot in their argument. it is interesting. the two of them sit next to each other.

that is what lawyers worry about. >> do you think this court is starting to take notice of the fact that they dominate the argument with their questions? will they do anything about that? >> not really. the chief has said it is an issue. he knows what it is like to be cut off so quickly. especially in a rebuttal. there is a last chance to save the core of the case. some justice jumps in and it is inevitably justice sotomayor jumping in at those moments. the chief justice tends to have a face that does not reveal

much, but you can tell that irks him when the advocate is cut off. i know that has been an issue for him many times. >> one thing that he tries to do is a band-aid. in that situation where someone is eating into the rebuttal time, he will let the argument run longer. there was a fourth circuit conversation with judge wilkinson -- this is not a chief justice and an internal workings of the court. the justices are aware of this. but there are eight of them that ask a lot of questions. the number of questions is quite high. justice sotomayor averages 21 questions. that is a lot of questions. >> does that kind of style make it more important to have experience in the supreme court? many of you have written about increasing specialization of the supreme court bar. there was a funny story written about a guy who had his case

excepted. webe -- case accepted.maybe should start with that. would you like to tell us the story gecko -- story? >> i think all of us have written one way or another and --w the elite bar is tracking. is contracting. there are more and more clients turning to this core group of private practitioners. it has become more pronounced because the courts calendar has been shrinking over the years and they are taking fewer cases. they have very prestigious lawyers taking up these cases and looking to pick up more cases. they volunteered to do cases for free once the supreme court has taken it. there was a man named stephen levin, a pro se litigant. he was living in guam in u.s.

territory. he had gotten his case accepted. it was a claim for medical battery for a botched cataract surgery. his case got accepted. no fewer than a dozen law firms jumped on it and said, please pick me. we will argue your case in front of the supreme court. which i thought was a byproduct of the competition for cases. there is some debate over how helpful it is to have a seasoned lawyer. the justices seem to appreciate it. they like the fact that they can get high-quality advocacy. that is a pitch that many of the advocates make. i can speak the language of these justices. it is a very active bench we have here. we know how to get in there and make that point.

we will not be thrown by the fact that justice sotomayor will be asking as many questions while justice alito will be trying to jump in as well. >> i think it has become a much more difficult task to argue than it was when i started covering the court. it used to be the matterhorn and now it is mount everest. you need the best sherpa, and i think that is what is happening. you need a lawyer who could be hit with three questions almost simultaneously and keep them in his or her head and respond to them in the order of seniority. it is not easy. i'm amazed at how well they do. there used to be stories of lawyers fainting during oral argument. i think stanley reed when he was solicitor general did that.

i can fully understand. it is a blood sport. >> the specialists are good and how to get a provision granted. the fact that you have a brand- name appellate superstar -- they are better at talking to the court in terms of the way he wants to be talk to. it does not want to know that you are a guy who should have won. they want to know why this is an issue that is worth their time to give rise to some legal principle. that is not the terms in which most lawyers think. >> there are several institutions to help the nonessentials. do you have any sense of whether those things are really worth while? do they really help?

do they give a non-specialist a fighting chance against a regular? >> i guess the thing i would point to is the georgetown project where they had the supreme court institute where they had a part of every single case. there are places in town that want to help practitioners get better. >> it is sort of one and the same that those groups have experienced practitioners who run the programs. >> let's move from inside the courtroom to the outside front of the court. probably everyone saw photos of

the enormous demonstration out on the sidewalk during some of the arguments and decision days. the rule there was that you can have signs and demonstrations on the sidewalk, but you couldn't have any on the marble plaza which is up on the steps and most of the real estate there in front of the court. on june 12, just in time for the end-of-term hoo-haw, a fairly young judge on the district court struck down banning demonstrations on the plaza. >> just to set it up a little bit, it has always seemed

bizarre that the supreme court, the guardian of the first amendment, you cannot demonstrate on the grounds of the court, but you can cross the street at the capitol, not at the supreme court. one of the rationales behind this law that was passed by congress in 1949 was that the court did not want to be seen by the public as susceptible to being swayed by demonstrations. it seems like a far-fetched rationale for a first amendment restriction. the law has been upheld numerous times. there are lots of cases and demonstrations every year. it could be the death penalty or a minister dropping to knees and praying on the plaza court, they get arrested.

they usually challenge this law. usually a superior court and then it goes to the d.c. court of appeals and the law is upheld. this case that was mentioned, instead went to the federal district court. finally at long last the law was declared unconstitutional. it is a law that prohibits and banners and processions on the property of the court. if the judge said if you read this literally, it can cover a group of three preschoolers huddled together and going up to the plaza for their first visit to the supreme court.

i cannot imagine preschoolers visiting the supreme court. not sure they would get much out of it. the law was overly broad. it was struck down. but the court had a quick response. they invoked a different federal law that allows government buildings to set up rules for order and to quorum. under this different law that has not been challenged. they basically promulgated a rule that says the same thing. we cannot demonstrate on the property of the supreme court. that will be challenged, no doubt. the litigation process has given the court some cause to reflect that maybe there is some middle way, some other way of allowing for the demonstration on the court plaza. there's a lot of other activity.

press conferences with lawyers. it seems like there is a lot to go on. some kind of demonstrations on the plaza in front of the court. >> i think it would be hard for anyone to think that you cannot demonstrate at the supreme court because there's constantly footage of people on the sidewalks and after the prop 8, i mean the doma decision, you saw a huge turnout in front of the court.

>> considering for about 355 days a year, the general public does not know for a majority time of the year that the building is even there. very rarely do see anyone who wants to protest outside the supreme court on a regular basis. >> my impression that it has gotten more and more over the past few years. i cannot remember demonstrations in the 1990's. maybe one or two. now every controversial argument and decision day, you have both the press and hundreds of people for abortion cases and gay rights cases. those are the two biggest draws. do you think the whole plaza anduld be a public forum? people can demonstrate up to the doors. >> i do not see why not. there could be regulations. i think that would be an

it isssion of the court. made of sturdy enough stuff that it can welcome it. >> and member of justice would take a walk around the block before arguments in the morning. i have not seen a justice outside the building since then. we have got 15 minutes left to go in the program. if there are any of you who have been thinking about questions you may want to ask, let me give you a five minute warning. we'll have questions begin in about five minutes. in the meantime, let me ask a general question. were there any big surprises this term?

>> i thought there was big ones and small ones. the biggest surprise was that theyrmative action case. heard the case in october. it seemed very set up for the conservatives to pull back on a big way on affirmative action. there were five on the right that were skeptical of any sort of race-based admission program. and then they held it all year long up until the last week, and it turns out to be 7-1 decision. i do not know what to make of it. that is something you would not have expected that several of the liberal justices or the >> itrvative justices -- was a big clue when they took the michigan case for next year that they weren't going to throw it out completely. >> i do not know.

>> what to make the fact that they took yet another case? i thought more likely they would have struck down a particular program in texas.which had a race neutral component. and then you would still need to do that second step. i agree with david that for seven of them to get together on such contentious issues is interesting. >> how about a general question? some of the panelists have identified sleepers, decisions that did not seem terribly important at the time, but contained the seeds of major changes down the road. the most successful prediction i itmember was back in 2000. was a case of us in the thing.

somebody said just watch, that is going to be a big deal. it turned out to be an enormous deal. does anyone have anything they think might've occurred this year? >> there was a piece in the arizona voting case.it looked like the liberal victory saying that the law preempted the state law that required evidence of citizenship to vote. it is beyond my capacity to make sense of this, but it was a clue that justice scalia wrote, and there was a discussion in the case about the qualifications clause in the constitution and that states are allowed to decide for themselves who is qualified to vote as opposed to the manner of voting. there are people in the election law community who thought that was a sleeper timebomb compromise. >> i agree with that. it is the case that divided people who should know the answer. a lot of election lawyers

thought it meant one thing and others thought it meant something else. i think that is one to think about. the other is not a sleeper, but certainly the doma decision laid out a lot of language that i think will be analyzed by a lot of courts in the future. >> prop 8, the kind of standing it went off on is to make it much harder for citizens in the state to put a ballot initiative into the constitution and allow state officials if they do not like it to effectively veto it by not defending it. ihat would trigger the process. do not think that they -- that that was in a race mind, that they were looking for an exit ramp, and this was the one available. >> i was going to say that the

arizona election case, but a sleeper for a different reason. justice scalia said election clause gives congress very broad power to regulate federal after the voting rights case, i think very few people think that congress would pass a new formula to a special situation where the south is under federal oversight. on the other hand, if congress can agree on some national standard on elections, early voting hours, things like this opens the door for congress to say there needs to be a basic minimal standard to protect the right to vote nationwide. that case seems to invite that sort of law. >> i think that is right. it also seem to foster some agreement on the court that states decided who gets to vote which it would seem to have a lot of importance for voter id laws or other things that the

states can decide. >> we have got about 10 minutes left. i invite your questions. they can include comments as long as there is a question at the end. we have a traveling microphone. >> in the texas affirmative action case, is there another case or other cases that are working their way up through the courts? that the supreme court might have an effect on? in order to have a combined result with the others? >> if there is, i'm not aware of it. we talked about the michigan one for next year and the texas case. the texas case will get decided.

if it turns out the standard requires the texas program to be struck down, that case might rebound to the court later. >> anyone else? >> some people have pointed out that these affirmative action cases are difficult to mount, it is a solo plaintiff especially with a heightened standard, a lot of discovery and witnesses so that some of these cases will be harder to bring unless they're well-funded by some organization like the fisher case was. >> the sleeper case discussion, clearly the voting rights race

-- voting rights act case is a follow on to the 2009 decision that was a warning shot about the concern about relying on four-year-old data.-- on 40 oldear-old data -- 40-year- data. anything from this term that might be a warning shot to other terms? if so, what are those issues? >> what we have been talking about such as an affirmative action one, might be on universities to justify these programs. there was a case that involved the utilities in northwest austin that challenge section five of the voting rights act. an eight-member court led by chief justice roberts said that the water had an exemption. qualified for the bailout would not go forward.

we not see so richly what was laid there with the help of the liberal justices. that is why the question has come up so much in the texas affirmative action case. did the justice sign off on the opinion that could lead down the road to a complete undercutting of affirmative action because of the suggested changes in the fisher case. it is interesting how everything is built on precedent there, for better or for worse. it is not just a matter of the law, but how justices will do look at in the future. >> it is not a warning shot exactly, but citizens united having laid waste to the expenditure side campaign finance regulation is now a first step in chipping away at the contribution side. >> anyone else? we wait for your potential questions. joe? >> hi.

i hope this is not a semantic quibble. we use the terms conservative and liberal as if they make sense for the voting block on the court. left and right might be a little more accurate. but for conservatives who ruled for corporations over an individual, is a classic conservative position. i want to ask about the terms liberal and conservative. >> who wants to reflect? >> i think it's the shorthand that makes sense to people. when you say conservative or liberal, they know which justices you are talking about. it is a shorthand that doesn't require a degree in moral philosophy. they do array themselves across the political science data supports it. you can call it (you can call it liberal, but you know which justices we are talking about. >> can you suggest a better term to use?

>> left and right. [inaudible] >> it is your suggestion that conservatives are not pro- business? >> [inaudible] it is a semantic question, but it is political science question and general question. it is confusing the public to call people conservative when their views are all over the place and not conservative consistently. and for a liberal, the same thing. >> people are pondering, yeah. >> i think it is one of those things that is hard for journalists to decide what is the right way. i think it makes more sense to

the general reader to describe the court that way than it does in other ways. maybe left and right would work. i think sometimes we use those somewhat interchangeably when we talk about the justices. >> maybe we should refer to them by the party of the president who appointed them. [laughter] >> that drives justices crazy because they say who appointed us doesn't dictate how we vote. >> sometimes you think pro- government antigovernment might work. anybody else? well, we have got a couple of minutes. let me ask one more question.

william suter is retiring as clerk of the court after many years. the court has announced that scott harris will take over. does the person who is the clerk of the court make any difference to the jobs that you guys do? or to anything else the public should care about? >> i think in a general way the online docket is extremely helpful and well done. a lot of policies that bill suter instituted have been and weustomer friendly. are customers along with lawyers. i think it does make a difference. the clerk of the court is the face of the court to the legal profession in many ways.

i think it is a very important, public position. >> does anyone know scott harris? i don't. no? >> seems like a nice guy. [laughter] >> don't want to get on his wrong side. >> the clerk is much more important for the lawyers than us. the lawyer sit in the front and the press right next to them. the cartoon we did for them at the end sums it up -- he is advising that they hold onto their wallets.because the press is right next to you there. so he is good for all of jokes at our expense. >> thank you for coming. i hope to see you next year. thank you to the panel. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

have more about recent u.s. supreme court rulings tonight. involvingsus texas admissions diversity at the university of texas at argument. here on c-span. " begins in journal the moment. we will take your phone calls, e-mails, and tweets. plus today's news. and later this morning, a discussion on samantha pallor, president obama's picked to be u.s. ambassador to the u.n. live at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on c- span. and in 45 minutes, we will talk dewayne matthews about higher education. then james o'keefe on his book "breakthrough."

later, and our spotlight on magazine series, fred kaplan of the m.i.t. technology review discusses the capability of u.s. drones. late tuesday the white house announced it would delay for one year part of its affordable health care act, the so-called employer mandate that requires businesses with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a fine. good morning on this wednesday, july 3, 2013. we will begin with your thoughts on the president's decision to postpone that mandate until 2015. the phones --