elena kagan at the georgetown law center. >> for st. patrick's day, we turn to the video library at c-span.org to see how u.s. presidents marked the holiday. >> despite all this, tip wanted me here. since it was march 17, it was only fitting that someone drop by who actually had known saint patrick. [laughter] [applause] and that's true, tip. i did know saint patrick. we both changed to the same political party at about the same time. you have a glass of guinness with the man in ireland as i have with brian monahan, your friends. -- your friends. you're friends.

♪ [applause] >> more than 35 million americans lame irish ancestry. america is richer for every murphy, kelly, and o'sullivan. i should have said mccain. [laughter] [applause] well, i just did. >> happy st. patrick's day to everybody. tens of millions of americans trace their roots back to the emerald isles. on st. patrick's day, many millions more claim to.

[laughter] >> president obama imposed sanctions on russia and and ukrainian officials leaning russia's military intervention in crimea. including two top aides to russian president vladimir putin. speaking from the white house, the president warned russia could face penalties if it does not pull back from crimea. >> good morning, everybody. citizens of ukraine have made their voices heard. he had been guided by a fundamental principle. the future of ukraine must be decided by the people of ukraine. that means ukraine's sovereignty and integrity must be respected. international law must be upheld. russia's decision to send troops

into crimea has drawn the global condemnation. from the start, the united states has mobilized this in support of ukraine. and to reassure our allies and partners. we solve this international unity again over the weekend when russia stood alone defending its actions and crimea. as i told president putin yesterday, the referendum was a clear violation of ukrainian constitutions and international law. it will not be recognized by the international community. today i'm announcing a series of measures that will continue to increase the cost on russia and those responsible for what is happening in ukraine. first as authorized by the executive order i signed two weeks ago we are imposing

sanctions on individuals responsible for undermining the integrity. we're making it clear that there are consequences for their actions. i have signed a new executive order that expands the scope of our sanctions. as an initial step i'm authorizing sanctions on russian officials. am operating in the arm sector in russia and individuals who provide material support to senior officials of the russian government. if russia continues to interfere in ukraine we stand ready to impose further sanctions. third, we are continuing our close consultations with our european partners who moved ahead with their own sanctions against russia. tonight vice president biden meets with leaders for his allies in lithuania. i will be traveling to europe next week. our message will be clear. we have a solemn commitment to

our defense. we will uphold this commitment. we will continue to make barely these except to further eyes russia and diminishes place in the world. this will continue to stand together. we will continue russian military intervention in ukraine and will only deepen the romantic isolation and exact a greater toll on the russian economy. going forward we can calibrate our response based on what other -- whether they plan to escalator de-escalate the situation. i still believe there is a path to resolve this diplomatically in a way that addresses both russia and ukraine. that includes russia pulling its

forces back to their bases, supporting monitors in ukraine and engaging in dialogue with the ukrainian government which is indicating the openness to pursuing constitutional reform as they move forward toward elections this spring. throughout this process we are going to stand firm with our support. as i told him last week, the united states stands with ukraine to determine their own destiny. we will continue working with our partners to offer ukraine's economic support. as we go forward we will continue to look at a range of ways we can help our ukrainian friends achieve their universal right and the prosperity and dignity they deserve. thank you very much. we'll be available for questioning.

>> on the next washington journal, jeff bennett talks about the investigations into general motors. one point 6 million vehicles recalled due to faulty ignition switches. look at president obama's executive action changing over time payrolls. the american medical association -- washington journal, live every morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> a look at the global energy supply. topics include oil prices, nuclear energy, and renewable energy. earlier from the former director of national intelligence, dennis blair who now cochairs the commission on energy and geopolitics. and the former ceo of bp, john brown.

he council on foreign relations posted this event earlier this month. >> good afternoon. i'm bob lack well, the senior fellow for american foreign-policy here at the council. council,half of the let me welcome you to this with admiralent dennis blair and lord john brown ofthe strategic consequences the american oil boom. proceed is wel will have a conversation among the three of us for half an hour and then we will turn it over to you for comments and questions. we will end promptly at 2:00. on thisu for coming

cold wintry new york afternoon. me start, john, if i could, with you. we all read about tracking -- fracking. not all of us are technologists in the energy industry. can you tell us exactly what it is? >> good afternoon. fracking was invented just after the american civil war by the colonel robert torpedo company. today,'t what we do using explosives to break up rocks. i point this out in a book that i just wrote called "the seven elements." it was later revived by amico. not bp. they invented a way of forcing sand, high pressure, propelled by water, into rocks that needed space to let the oil and gas in

them flow out. for flow.ing pathways the big thing that happened that youged everything was when combine that with horizontal drilling that opened a more of the reservoirs of the earth. so when you fracked it, you opened up even more pathways for the oil and gas to flow. it is really horizontal drilling with a technique called hydraulic fracking. water under pressure with sand in it to force open the rock. it is the state of the art at the moment. perhaps in the future, it will be done with gas and no water. it used to be done with a cocktail of chemicals to make water more slippery.

nowadays it is not made with those chemicals anymore. it is pretty benign stuff. >> thank you, john. cochairedair has just a national commission on the subject. how big a deal is this? this american energy boom? that's a huge deal concerns both gas and oil. oil, for instance, in the last five years, the u.s. has increased oil production using million barrels a day. the largest increase ever. that's big on oil. for natural gas, it has taken an entire set of construction to be able to bring liquid national gas into the united states. we will be running out of gas and it has made that completely

obsolete. this is hundreds of millions of dollars worth of a big deal. >> why didn't the industry see this coming act oh i remember that seven years ago, we were reading about shortages and so forth. we were not reading about this extraordinary boom in u.s. energy. why didn't the industry experts see it coming act o? bp, i wanted to build a terminal for liquefied natural gas on the delaware river. i was delighted about the outcome of that case in retrospect. pundit saysst every that the u.s. had to import a lot of natural gas. the principal was running out

-- therehe new areas was not much gas involved with the oil. oil was doing ok, but there was no gas. day, andlooked at the george mitchell was doing it with hydraulic fracking. said, we willeers believe it when we see it. it is step-by-step because it all looked fairly risky. conservatism set in. people said, we had better ensure the future by importing gas. this is not the first time the energy industry -- i think i'm qualified to say this -- has been a bit of a mess broadcasting -- forecasting the future.

the one just before that was peak oil. thought well, we were going to run out of oil and i don't think we are going to do that either. the quality of forecasting is very poor and probably with the --perhaps we are going in the other direction but who knows? >> with what you just said -- >> i think if we base very important foreign-policy on single point forecasts, we would be making a very bad mistake. >> danny, why did it happen here? i read lots of countries -- and we will get into this in a bit developthe capacity to

shale gas and oil? why did it happen here? >> one of george mitchell's personal assistants, the clear demand in the united states for gas. technicalalso some capabilities. people talk about below the ground and above the ground assets. tight gasuntries have and tight oil. above the ground, you need the right kind of companies and pipelines to be able to get the gas out. if it's gas you're talking about, you need the right regulatory structure and the right legal structure as to who itselfe gas and oil below property owners on the surface.

these things existed in the united states. seen if they be will be developed in other countries if they replicate what has been done here. it that otheris countries will replicate what we are doing in this regard? the interesting things about the u.s. revolution in this area is that it was -- ucted not by dp or shall by bp, shell, or chevron. that most people would not know their names. small companies, indeed. and locallocal skills relationship skills. embodied in a set of people called land men. local negotiators. more of whom were probably laid off by the big companies when the big companies thought that there were better things to do. local is very important.

i also agree that there are tremendous incentives for local owners to assist in development because they take a direct economic interest in the success of the development. rest of the world, there --a lot of shale that is there is a tremendous prospect of it he for the future. the same technology can be applied. all shales are different. andsize does not fit all you have to spend time making it work. secondly, aboveground, all the circumstances are different. crowded island like the u.k. is not the same as the wide-open spaces in north dakota. it has been at development for a very long time.

the technology above ground has to change as well. drilling a forest of wells, you have to draw them from one little space. thinking about belowground, it will make things happen. we need to get incentives in place and history does a different hand depending on where you are. most people realize that you have to spread around the benefits of any development in order to align a constituency. sort of activity is going to happen in a variety of possible motives, but it will take time. there is plenty of potential and plenty of need for that potential. i was talking with my english friends about this that were

quite skeptical that the political will would be present in order to do it in england for the reasons mentioned or in britain as a whole. are you pessimistic about that? i am abecause businessman and i am never pessimistic. think -- look. moment, the u.k. imports a lot of its own gas. it is actually importing the gas on the energy account. that money is going not only to qatar. norway, but it would be good if we could do our own thing. people understand that. where we are concerned, this is the good news and the bad news about the u.s. u.s.ood news is that the has opened up great potential for the world. the bad news is amongst the

people that have done it very well, there are also some bad stories of people doing bad things in the u.s. it is true to say that the good news always stays apparent and bad news travels fast elsewhere. the bad news has traveled. we are at a point in europe, need toy, where they reset the information base in an independent way. believe meoing to because i have a vested interest, but they might believe we can do this safely and securely. that sort of area is not the same as you would see in europe. quite simply, you couldn't do it. a very different approach. a regulatory base -- all great things need good regulation. the regulatory base is very good would say that all the

political parties are behind it. but that may not be as good as it sounds. i have read that ukraine, which is very much in the news these days for other reasons, poland, china, all have a lot of shale. would you expect those countries to proceed along the lines the u.s. has done? what is the timeline? >> obviously, first, in the western hemisphere, places like have annd argentina enormously potential resources. i would expect certainly mexico to spend anning investment for that. it would be good for everybody and would add fervor.

i think in europe, people will pursue it. russia has a lot of shale potential. probably as much as anybody. ukraine does, poland does, they all do. say ukraine will provide a stable source of gas in this area would be the wrong place to focus on. but there are a lot of places in europe which can do this. and, indeed, should do this. for europe as a whole, one more itrce of supply and i think sounds simplistic but as long as they are all economic, the more supply you have, the better off you are. i think that rule should never be forgotten. >> how big a deal is this with the u.s. economy echo you said it is billions. economy?

you said it is billions. it would add to the gdp over the next 10 years and maybe one .5 million jobs added. is that the conventional wisdom now that it will have a big impact on the u.s. economy? >> those figures are about right. it gdp is in the one percent-two percent. -- 1% to 2%. as recently as a couple of years ago, half of the overall balance of payments deficit every year was due to payments from petroleum overseas on the order of $300 billion a year. it comes down rapidly, of course, when you're drilling here. within theobs industry itself of that scale. and the availability of cheaper petrochemical feeds, lowering

-- it makes itng more competitive. and there are spinoff jobs from that. it really is a tremendous benefit to the u.s. economy which we are seeing more and more every year. john, you mentioned bad actors a minute ago. how much should we worry about the environmental effects of this? there are critics of it that worry about those effects. think, first of all, with almost anything that goes with resources and resource development, you should always worry about the environment. whether that is coal, oil, gas, uranium -- they are all bad and they are all good. and that transform from bad to good through good regulation and good practice.

i think the same is good here. it is very much a matter of getting the best practice and the right places. done badly, you know, we could methaennelot of into the atmosphere. operators know how to stop that happening. at bp, we spent the years tightening up valves, thinking about different ways of doing things, taking a lot of money and reducing the amount of methane going into the earth. it is about protecting water tables. when you drill wells through a water table, make sure you insulate the pipe from the water table. it is well known technology. if you don't spend the money, you can make a mistake. it is a few things like that. having good regulation that

stops freeloaders, people taking a free ride on good practice, is important. do thisry clear you can with minimal impact on the environment. and what's more, you're producing gas and sometimes oil. gas is a lighter hydrocarbon and all circumstances. it burns very efficiently. far better than coal as a source of energy or electricity. >> in the armed forces where i spent 35 years, we carry a lot of really dangerous stuff around. we have extraordinary procedures to make sure we can do that safely. are explosions happen, they ones because on other ships rather than ones that happen on our own ships. the keys to it are the independence of regulators, the qualification of your regulators

, and following through on the checklists continually. see anime we environmental damage caused by resource extraction, then you do the investigation and it turns out you weren't following the rules. we have to be hard on it. to put the resources to it but it can be done. >> we do come back to have a proper debate on information and what is made up activity. a lot of stuff about gas coming out of pipes in kitchens nad thisatching fire -- is not on the basis of shale gas. it is basically things watering e- rotting in the wtaeat r system.

it's getting the information right. the industry has to say, again, we agree that we want good regulation and independent supervision. and we want to be held to account. >> the question that i think will affect everyone in the audience in a direct way, what is this oil boom in particular going to do to the price of oil? to can trigger cell phones call your brokers about whatever he has to say? . four basically took different scenarios. when you look at the variables in the scenarios, roll the dice and choose which one will be more important. that welar trend is need more energy, primarily driven by developments in china and india.

and other developing countries. and the balance between that demand and the price of the fuels that produce it, traditional wells are cheap. fracking is much more expensive. a bet on ao make price, i would hedge it heavily. >> but you're not willing to name a number? barrel.to $120 a >> i spend years trying to avoid the answer to this question. i don't think it will change too much. interesting is that every time you think something is going to happen, the unexpected events happen. today, in the world, there is quite a bit of oil which is shut inthrough various countries

the world. members are well aware of those issues. in becauses are shut of issues to do with there was a bit more available which is managed outside the system. it looks like there is a lot around so in theory, it should reduce the price. it has not. there is a limit to the amount the price might drop because it is the immediate need of many countries that just produce hydrocarbons as their primary source of economic activity. the breakeven number -- it is quite high for many countries, including russia who spent a lot of the money that they make by exporting hydrocarbons. is today'srecast

price. are somethere there evenings that change. i do think the world will get better and more efficient at using energy. will bethat efficiency used by -- to reduce the amount the use or simply take efficiency and spend it elsewhere. that remains to be seen. whether there is a moment in a world where there is no conflict, that remains to be seen. whether there are more discoveries to be made which makes oral available -- oil available. that theortant to know most important source of oil in the united states is the deepwater gulf of mexico, not shale oil. that is to be remembered. it looks like that is going to be the case for quite a long

time. everything counts here. we focus on one thing but actually a lot happens. i would always prompt -- look at today's price and say it is not a bad number for the shirt -- for the short-term. >> you see the caution on the here.f our colleagues if you look at the literature, there was a wide spectrum of projections. i would say -- if not the majority, a substantial number of the serious studies write about $70 a barrel. $70 to $80 but there so many potential here. united states is clearly a big winner in this technology. are there losers out in the

world, as john said, if russia has to deal with oil at $70 a barrel this is a different set of russian problems than they had now. one thinks that the saudis, therens -- are losers out there among the oil producers and are there winners as you look forward? >> i don't think the big secular trends are sorting out losers in hydrocarbon producers. political floor on oil for countries that are heavily hydrocarbon dependent certainly does have an effect. the $70 or $80 a barrel injection that you see is pretty optimistic.

they are based on been able to produce a lot of that conventional, relatively inexpensive oil that is almost all middle east, north africa producers. onlinends on iraq coming in a pretty big way and somebody who forecasts a peaceful iraq in the future has taken quite a chance. that the losers -- i think they are a self-regulating system as the price goes down, the companies -- the countries that are the swing producers will do what they have done in the past which is to try to ratchet down on their variable ability to produce it in order to keep the price at where they needed in order to make their federal audits. -- budgets.

it is hard to see a scenario with tremendous supply, restrained demand, price going down with this sort of political floors on oral we see by the national oil companies and the countries. >> what about opec? is it affected overall in the long-term by these developments? to me, the most important thing is natural gas. if you think about the u.s. situation with natural gas -- natural gas for unit of energy is 75% cheaper than the energy that comes out of oil. 75% discount. this is dramatic. onone who is dependent expensive gas that is priced on the same basis as oil is actually spending three times as

much as they could do as the u.s. does for gas. since gas is the fundamental forer for electricity and chemicals in these sorts of things, it is a very biggest advantage not to have domestic supplies of that are big enough to compete to allow gas to compete with itself. know that because i don't how that will work out in the long-term. right now, it is getting huge advantages to gas that gives the manufacturing base in advantage that is affecting europe's future at the moment. by theeing disadvantaged cost of its energy. as to opec, opec is one of those things -- everyone has written

the obituary of opec more often than i can remember. wishful thinking says we would like it to go away. indeed, one of the founding members is about to decouple its industry from control. is for the main point machinenot a well oiled but it certainly responds when things get tough for people whose livelihood is based on oil. from time to time, it comes into the frame to say enough is enough. that is very much in the hands of saudi arabia barely -- primarily. i think it would be wrong to say it is dead. it has actually been in use for some time.

>> let me ask you a final question and then we will ask our colleagues to chime in. i have read some commentary that suggests that with less or no american independence on energy from the middle east, retrenchment is possible, advisable even from there. what is your feeling about that? >> the study that we conducted addressed that exact question. thoughwer is even american production of oil gives us more options, does not give us that option. the oil market is still an international market. united states transportation 90%or is still dependent on that. spike, its a price

could affect the u.s. economy. we saw in 2011 when libya's will production -- oil production went down. it's stalled the u.s. recovery from the recession that was going on. we plateaued until there was an agreement to release petroleum reserves in the resumption of production in other areas. the price went down and we got back on track. the united states has opportunities but until we can change the basis of the transportation sector from oil to natural gas and electricity which is based on a variety of sources including natural gas, we will be subject to the international will market -- oil market and the swing producers will be in the middle east. we will have to pay attention to

what is there. it is good news but it does not enable us to walk away from that area of the world. we canre lots of things do to make our economy less susceptible in the medium-term and over the long term we should change the basis of our transportation sector away from oil. then we are truly secure. think about we all the other issues having to do with the middle east. which emanates from there. nuclear weapons, the state of israel and other regions. i want to turn to you all and to invite members to join our conversation. thisto remind you, meeting is on the record.

speaker the microphone, directly into it, please stand, and affiliation and it you could actually ask a question, we would be grateful and perhaps only one. we will start here with this gentleman and that we will go back and forth around the room. sir. the deeply integrated nature of the north american energy industry, shouldn't we really begin looking at these issues that you have raised in a north american perspective? >> yes. market is energy interconnected worldwide much less within this country where we can run pipelines back and forth. canadianthe u.s. and

hydrocarbon resources are quite interconnected. whether they will be more see.connected, we will i think the bigger change would be with mexico and whether the changes in the governance of mexican national oil company will make a difference in terms of accepting other north american partners in order to do mechanical fracturing or the other techniques. whether the financial and technical cooperation there can in fact bring mexico into a bigger role in north america. >> over here. john go ahead. it is a question almost every government in the world is being asked and no one is being able to answer it which is what energy policy and strategy do

you have? the answer is we really want lots of choice. i think that probably is about the beginning and end of it. we want lots of choice and we reducingnt to do it carbon dioxide emissions or we don't care about them. other than that, there are very few things. cheaply as me that possible and secure as possible, you need as much interconnection as possible around the world. the u.s. is still heavily dependent on imports of products that are not made here and exports of products that are made here that are not needed -- diesel. u.s. is very dependent on electricity which comes from canada and india oil and gas from canada -- indeed oil and gas from canada.

i think we need to understand that these interconnections will get more competent at, not simpler. -- more complicated, not simpler. i want to pick up on something that mark brown raised which is all the fracturing, the issue of water. you indicated there may be some opportunities in the future to use gas to propel as opposed to water. i understand their resume -- there is enormous work going on on technology for recycling that water. i am wondering if that is going to be one of the good a fax -- affects of this technological breakthrough which will apply to other areas like agricultural irrigation as the oil and gas industry is better to able -- better to reuse in clean water.

>> the amount of water used is large. i think it is rivaled i the amount of water that is used to water golf courses. i think that is a rather large user of water. we need to get things into perspective year. --her here. you may all have a different view. nonetheless, i think that is the case. recycling is critical. cleaning up and recycling and then substitution. i think the other area is the use of water by technologies which allow it to target the fracking into places more accurately. over time, that is possible as well. i think it is an important consideration we should be dealt with responsibly. i don't believe it is a constraint if handled properly.

>> right back here. >> thank you. you mentioned, mr. brown, the content of natural gas is 25% of that of oil. how does that persist? what are the costs and what is the long-term outlook for that? to -- i thinkave everyone has to believe will the -- will iticing last? people are always very uncertain about that. they are not prepared to commit to this lasting for a very long time. if they are, a lot has to happen to infrastructure. you can wish to have natural gas but the time it takes to get that to happen is very long.

people will always worry about the capital expenditure required to make these changes. some of that is happening. some of it is happening over the long distance, but i think the arbitrage exist for quite a long time because the market for the use of the different products are so separated. that is what has happened. i think it will last for some time. in the rest of the world, why are the markets failing that oil and gas are priced on the same formula? they used to be used in the same market. they used to be put under the boiler to make electricity but that does not happen anymore. that is a question people are

asking in places like europe and japan. gas on thewe price same basis as oil? here.ht >> thank you. i am with rockwood holdings. it is obviously the stated policy of the u.s. government that they are not going to allow iran to have a nuclear weapon. in case the current negotiations fail, it seems that the only option would be a military option. can you educate us that in such an event, what should be preferred? what do you think will happen? what should be -- what should we expect? can we keep this open?

>> is this a price of oil question? is that what you have in mind? >> i am talking about the price of oil supply and the duration. is this something that can be contained in a month or six month event? >> the military situation is that enable coalition led by the united states could handle whatever iran would do to took close that strait and physically keep it open. if you look at the history of thets like that, as political temperature heats up, there is a spike in oil because people fear what might happen. late 1980's.n the it is clear that the rest of the

cominghat depends on oil can keep it safe, insurance rates go down. i think we would see that again. thatnk that the scenarios come out of the middle east that keep the price high are the series of events, reactions, and other events which give an uncertainty to the whole situation which is interconnected what happens in iran. an iraq, it is the frequency and size of these individual military and political events in that part of the country to keep the price high and spiking. it would be of most concern over the long-term. if you look at an individual

event, there are forces that take care of it pretty quickly. think -- those are almost impossible to predict. wordss where 50% of the -- the world's oil comes from in all of its backup supply. >> over here. >> could we come back to ukraine for a minute? ukraine supposedly has huge reserves of shale gas. poland was supposed to have had huge reserves but it seems they didn't pan out. i think the estimates went from 44 down to 9 trillion cubic feet in one year. ukraine any hope that can gain some kind of energy independence from russia in the near future?

how do you see the whole ukraine dynamic playing out with europe? if we are talking about sanctions against russia, is there any prayer that europe could wean itself off russian gas in the near future? >> i think we should take this together. let me start. potentialearly has shale gas. it has not been tested but it seems on most analysis that it has got a significant resource. poland has a resource. it is unclear quite what size it is and i think it would be a off therong to write scale of poland on the basis of 10 wells in the entire country.

it is too much of a reaction. right now it is saying to keep an open mind. ukraine today, the worry about ukraine is that it takes a lot of gas from russia. russia can change the price of that easily. it is discounting it to ukraine. ukraine also is the conduit for gas in europe. that is much less than it used to be because of other pipelines which has taken away the dependence of one bottleneck. that is the fact. i think the other factor is for ,he principal part of europe

europe as we know it has not had a gas interruption resulting from russian action. laces like georgia and the ukraine. as to the rest of europe, i think since 1975, i am not trying to be an apologist. i think there has been no interruption in gas supply. the question we have to ask ourselves is will there be one given this long track record over many different types of regimes? thirdly, europe has to open up its shale gas resources. they could be very significant. they will take time. we are dealing with decades of time. whether you delay another year to starve toave

get to the end. i think developing european shale gas is very important. europe has also developed a large number of import terminals which is -- which has diversified its sources and have inot of domestic natural gas norway, for example. the diversification is taking place in one way or another. i think it must not stop. we should continue to diversify sources because it will add to retention of currency. it potentially, if there is enough gas, can help the price. >> i think that is quite comprehensive. there is one other aspect of

diversity which is important, not just where you get the different types of gas or oil. it is the diversity of how you can use energy sources for different purposes within the country. right now, the u.s. transportation sector is 90% dependent on oil. diversity within that mix of the transportation sector would be good in the united states as it would be good in any other industrialized country. if there is -- we cannot predict the future. tight inhings may get one sector or in one type, you want to have as many different ways to work around that as you can. europe has been working to reduce its dependence on russian gas for a long time. look at other ways to reduce its dependence on gas

for heating in houses which is where it has the greatest effect. this internal diversity of energy use an external diversity of energy sources is the only key for region to be able to be proof against one of these political or economic events that tends to cause big problems. it is unlikely that shale gas and ukraine is going to have any effect on the current crisis or the one that follows that or the one that follows that. as john andterm, danny have said, it might substantially added to ukraine's capacity to defend itself over time. let me go back. the furthest one back. yes, sir. do either of you see any meaningful role for any of the green alternatives like solar or

wind generation to play a major role in providing energy? would it be sufficient without the major subsidization which it is currently receiving? -- it isk most people worth looking at the global data. as far as the world is concerned, more electricity is produced from a noble energy right -- from renewable energy right now that it is nuclear energy. it is very important. sustainable production of electricity from renewable energy retires at to get cheaper -- requires it to get cheaper and that is what has to happen. the the last five years, price of electricity from solar has gone down by about 60% and from wind between 10% and 20%.

there is a reason why that wouldn't happen again. it would be amazing if it did trends --the mobile the trends in engineering. you expect renewable energy to get cheaper over time. we have to invest in the technology and you would expect the country's to have different levels of subsidy or not subsidy depending on its cost and their sense of security and so forth. example,for alternative cost of energy is importing from what across the pacific ocean. they have a lot of wind and solar so it is obviously very beneficial. putting wind turbines with the wind hardly ever blows are you put solar panels where andsun hardly ever shines you rely on subsidies to make up the difference is not a good

idea. you have to get the resources right in the end. behink subsidies will really taken not to what they should be. i think it is here to stay and i think it will become a bigger proportion of the world's energy use. i think it can be done. since in experience, ran a very large renewal energy -- renewable energy, you can do it and make it possible. when youd add that, think about the role of sector,nt in the energy we talk about regulation which is extremely important. we just talked about the renewable energies in terms of security and in terms of the environment. i think there is a stronger government role available for

security and ensuring this diversity of supplies that we have talked about. to simply say the market will handle it will lead to that results. it has to be smart action by the government. farou allow the market, as as we can see it, to determine your gas and petroleum import picture him a you a nature -- he will leave vulnerabilities. i think we need to look at the whole picture not just whether we can increase renewables at an affordable cost. >> right here, sir. >> my question concerns the transportation sector. in the future that you see for the all electric car, i see that mercedes and bmw is now producing electric car. nissan has one also and there is also the tesla. you see that this has a bright

future? is it going to make much difference in the energy balance considering that electricity has to be generated in some fashion? think they could make a tremendous difference. at price of energy has basically gone down. unlike the price of oil which fuels our sector. with natural gas in abundant supply, united states will continue to be down. there is an economic argument. the problems with electric vehicles are well known. the price and range. both of those have to do with batteries. the batteries now are limited in their range. range depends on theystructure, how fast can recharge the car, and you can get back on the road. all of these are manageable

problems. we are not talking about going to the moon here. we're talking about setting up the structures right in order to get it there. the benefits are just tremendous. until look from 2001 2012, the money that was returned to the american taxpayer in terms of tax rebates, payroll taxes and so on, was exactly matched by the amount of money the same american family had to pay for the gas overseas. the price spikes in oil has kicked our economy. the benefits are tremendous if we can get off of oil. i would add that in addition to electrical vehicles which are the ansell for light trucks and cars -- which are the answer for light trucks and cars.

either liquid natural gas or compressed natural gas itself could be a good fuel. we can do this. to the country both from a national security point of view and from an economic point of view are very compelling. may, i have been involved in several ventures in this area. i think the problem is this -- most people don't buy mercedes or bmw or a tesla. smartcard cardap -- small car that is not too small that will work under all circumstances at all places. you basically buy it and turn it on and it works. cheap, to that point -- affordable, reliable, always

ready is going to take some time. it is unclear to me whether we will actually get there with electric cars or one with gas cars or whether the internal combustion engine will get so efficient that we will use only a fraction of the gasoline that we use today to drive a car. i think it will be a mix but right now, i am not sure what tesla is doing which is great is an indicator of the future. >> i am afraid we are near the end so perhaps one more question and then -- way in the back. we have not heard from this quadrant over here so way in the back. >> thank you. can talk a you all little bit more about the social and environmental risks.

we have mentioned smart regulation. we have mentioned hiring locally, getting good information out there. can we talk about what the smart regulation look like and from the corporate perspective, what do companies need to do to better integrate some of those considerations into how they go about their business? >> big question. two minutes. whoever wants to take that -- >> it seems to me the best regulation is one that is not written by industry, but one that is informed by industry practice. it takes time to get right. all has to be around economic trade-offs as well. there are no absolutes. since you mentioned your book, i will mention mine. elementsout the seven which is a very simple viewpoint in my experience across the

mining and petroleum space. everything is bad and everything is good. what stacks the deck is the ability to contain it through great relations. -- regulation. >> i would add that based on mike's. it's -- based on my experience, we spent too much time on the regulation. the key to good regulation is good regulators. that means that these cannot be the castoffs from the industry who cannot get a job on the rig so they are hired to inse pect. you have to have -- you have to may be allgulators for social service scale to get really good ones. you have to have a continual retraining capability. if they walked into a mine and

find something is bad, they bring it to a halt and say they will be back next week to see if they have it back up to snuff. thecan screw around with $50,000 penalty and think you will get a response. i think the quality of the inspectors which means training and compensation and high teeth and the tools that are given to make sure best practices are being followed. >> we have reached the end. some of you are struck by the fact that we sit in this room often and walk away hearing disturbing, troubling, and worse news. we actually had a session today where we heard a lot of optimistic news. john brown'smend e's book. it is elegantly written. a very creative, interesting

read. blair's commission report which will tell you a lot more about the subject. and thank youhem all for coming. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] elena kagance is coming up. a discussion about climate change. later, president obama announces sanctions against russia. congressional budget office andctor, chris van hollen,

others talk about the state of the u.s. economy. we would join this event in progress tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. eastern here on c-span. federalc-span2, the commission will talk about u.s. telecom policy. the free state foundation hosted the conference. live coverage starts at 9 a.m. eastern. >> i have concluded -- i would be glad. yes, i was on the floor. to both sides in the only gentleman on that side that even made a movement, he did not stand. he did not rise. i resent the statement. >> i apologize. >> either everybody stands, i would've recognized him. >> i didn't mean to suggest you

weren't acting with fairness. i was suggesting that we do have work with the president. >> that is not what you said. with the normal procedure of this house, i would never do with things like that. there is an opportunity for the vote on the roles and there was a man on either side of the aisle that will do it. >> i did not mean to offend you. >> you have. i will accept your apology. >> i am sorry for that. >> find more highlights on her facebook page. c-span created by america's people company -- cable company 35 years ago and brought to you today by a local service by your cable or satellite provider. >> supreme court justice elena kagan talk to students about her

life, career, and the u.s. constitution. she sat down with the dean of the georgetown university law center. >> good afternoon. this is our first dean's lecture to the graduating class. what we are going to do is in the years moving forward have a leading member of the bench and the bar talk to the graduating class about their insights based on their careers about things that you should know as you are starting out and graduating from law school. we could not have a better inaugural lecture than justice elena kagan. welcome to georgetown. [applause]

>> thank you. it is a pleasure to be here. i thought today was going to be a snow day. i guess i am glad you did not cancel. day.day is a snow i want to thank the justice for coming here. the federal government is closed today. >> i was in my office. i was ready. we thought the law school is actually close until 1:00. i have to say i was a little concerned that the school was going to be close for most of the day that we might not be able to do you justice in terms of the crowd. as i look around and see every seat here is filled, you are clearly. expectations are high.

behind these lectures is to reflect on your career and offer people advice as they are starting. if you are supposed to be wise today. a lot of pressure. it is really unnecessary to run through your biography but this really is a requirement for me. kagan, she is from new york city. a graduate of hunter high school. princeton, oxford, harvard. she was with two legends in the court. -- worked regally with briefly with williams and connolly. in thet teaching to work

clinton administration as a deputy assistant to the president. you then went to harvard and became dean from 2003 until 2009. one of the reasons why i thought that it was perfect that you would be our inaugural speaker was in addition to having a really great career in academia and public service, you are also academic wass an really famous for being focused on helping students. ranging from revising the curriculum at harvard to free coffee which i would love to emulate. if there are any donors out there. after being one of the great deans of any law school, in 2009, you were nominated for solicitor general.

in 2010, you were named to the supreme court succeeding injustice stevens's chair. >> you are very kind. when people used to go through my resume like that when they were introducing me for something, i used to get up to the podium and say, well, now you know my secret. i cannot keep a job. [laughter] but i think my new job has solved that. [laughter] so, no longer. >> [laughter] very good. i'm relieved to hear that. >> [laughter] >> so let's start again. when you were a kid, what were your first thoughts about what job you wanted to have when you grew up? >> i'm not sure i remember all that well. i had my years when i was going to be a famous tennis player and

stuff like that. i was a voracious reader, so i definitely thought i wanted -- being a writer seemed a good thing to me. being a lawyer, honestly, did not. my father was a lawyer. when i think about the kind of law that he practiced now, i very much understand why he had fun in the profession and why it was so meaningful to him, but i have to say that as a kid it did not seem that exciting to me. my colleague, justice soto mayor, talks about how when she was a kid she watched perry mason. this was before anyone in this room's time, but mason was this great trial lawyer and there

all of these a-ha moments when he solves these great cases and it was all very exciting. and she said that made her want to be a lawyer. and when she told me that, i said oh, i knew that our kissing law was never like that. my father went to work and he never had those kinds of moments. he thought it was a terrible failure when he went to court. he had a small practice and just helped ordinary people solve their problems. and i look now and see what he did and think, what a meaningful way to spend your time in the profession. but as a kid, it did not seem very exciting. >> when did you think that you wanted to become a lawyer? >> well, i never really did. [laughter] i'm sure you were a dean. i was a dean.

i spent so much time talking to prospective students and said, don't just go to law school because you cannot think of anything else to do. there are all of the students who get out of college and they don't know what else to do and they think, well, i will go to law school because it will keep my options open, right? and for several years i said this to my students. and then i realized, that is why i went to law school, you know. where does this advice come from exactly? i went to law school and major in history in college. i thought about being an academic. by the time i got to the end of my academic experience and got through a year of the senior thesis, which was a very big project at the college i went to, i thought there was no way i'm going to be a historian. and i did not know what i wanted to do. i thought, i will go to law school and something will turn up.

and that is why i went. but then instead, i went to law school and i fell into the lucky group where, really, from the first day, i loved every moment of it. i thought, my gosh, what a lucky thing that i ended up here. >> what did you like at law school? >> i liked the combination of two things, i think. i liked that it was -- i liked just thinking about it intellectually. i liked the puzzle aspects of law. i was like one of these law students who always liked the technical classes. i liked thinking through really complicated problems. but i also liked the fact that it wasn't purely a puzzle and purely abstract. that there were ways that people could use the law to actually make a difference in the world. it seemed very practical and

grounded to me, at the same time as it seemed intellectually fascinating. that is what i liked about it. >> as you were going through law school, did you have a sense of what you wanted to do next? >> i think i played with a lot of different possibilities. i thought about being an academic, and that was definitely something that i contemplated. but i also had a professor who said, you know, you've never really known anything but school. you should go out and get some -- do some other things. get some other experiences before you decide you want to spend your life in an academic environment. so i tried to do that. i think i thought about academia. i thought about private practice. i suppose, i knew that at some point in life, professional life, i would go into public

service in some form. and i was lucky enough to have this actually happen to me. i think i had hoped to have a career where i could experience a lot of different things, do a lot of different things, and during the course of my career. maybe because i have a short attention span, or maybe because i thought a lot of different things would probably be interesting. i had hoped to be a person who bopped back and forth among a different number of areas. >> how do you think about your career? do you focus on just your first job? do you focus on, this is where i want to be in 30 years? what advice do you have for people just starting out as they think about their career arc? >> definitely don't just think about your first job. try to be more holistic when you are thinking about the kinds of

experiences you want to have and the kind of work you want to do during the whole course of your career. but then also understand -- sometimes i think just saying that you should plan every step of the way, and i really don't think that. i actually think that law students tend to planned -- to plan too much. or at least, i don't want this to be like an anti-plan, that you should never she -- never plan anything. because you should. you should think about the different types of experiences that you want to have, but realize it will not all happen in the order you think or the order you want. different things are going on randomly, and will serendipitously present themselves. people who have the most fun legal careers are the people who are very open to serendipity in their lives. and who will be doing one thing and sort of thinking that is

what they are going to do for a number of years, but then we'll see an opportunity and will seize that opportunity rather than say, oh, i'm sorry, this does not exactly fit into the plan i have and i'm going to wait for that for another x number of years. i think a lot of life is sort of luck and opportunities presenting themselves in ways that you might not think that they would. and the people who end up, i think, with the great legal careers, they are the people who grabbed the things when they come. >> is that what happened with your career? is that how it was structured? >> i think i was lucky enough to do that. if you said to me, what was planned? almost nothing was, actually. different things presented themselves at different points in time. i was lucky enough, or maybe i knew enough to grab good things when they came up.

>> you started by clerking. >> yes. that was a great experience. i hope the clerks that i have love it. it is just a wonderful place to think about law for a little longer, but also to see it in action. a judge can be a great mentor, of course, if you are lucky enough to get the right one. and i was, i was lucky enough to get two great mentors and two miraculous human beings. it was a great experience for a young person. for me, it was a great opportunity. >> what did you learn from them? >> all kinds of different things. first, i think i probably learned something just about the

various kinds of nonlegal qualities and attributes that people have. judge was one of the world's most generous men. and going through a year with somebody who had that sort of deep in his bones generosity and love for people was a great experience for me. justice marshall, of course, is an iconic figure. and that was one of the great experiences of my life. he was justice marshall by the time i clerked for him. he was relatively elderly. he had turned 80, but he was a little bit of an old 80 and he was looking back on his life at that point. and the clerks were lucky enough to be there with him at a time when he was really thinking about his life and what he had accomplished.

he was the world's greatest storyteller and raconteur. you would walk into his office and, first, you would talk about the cases and do all of your work, and then at a certain time he would just flip over and start telling stories. they were unbelievable stories, because they were stories about some of the most important aspects of 20th century american history. and there you were. you are there, listening to this man who i believe was the finest lawyer of the 20th century, you know, tell about his cases and the way he approached his cases and the decisions he made, and the difficulties he confronted, the dangers he faced, including the physical dangers. it was an unbelievable experience. >> it must have been incredibly inspiring working for him. >> it was incredibly inspiring. if you are not inspired after a year of clerking for thurgood

marshall, you are the dead to the world, honestly. [laughter] but it was a lesson in what the law can accomplish. i think he is the greatest 20th-century american lawyer. he had all of these incredible skills, and i don't think there was anybody who combined what he did in appellate courts with what he did in trial courts and all of that. but look, if you are going to measure a person by the degree to which they promote justice in the world, which is one way, one important way to measure lives in law, i don't think there is anyone who approaches him in that. >> i think that is right. having the privilege of working for justice marshall, did that shape your career at all? did it affect the decisions you made? >> i think both he and judge mixa were good lessons

about the way in which you could help people and make a difference in the world. and for every individual, that will mean a different thing. but i think there are very few people who have really deep, fulfilling, meaningful legal careers without finding some way to make a difference to things a little bit bigger than themselves. >> how important our mentors for a lawyer? >> they have been really important in my life, and i've been lucky enough to have them every place i went. i mean, i had them in law school and i had them in these two men that i clerks for. and i had them as a young academic, and when i was a young lawyer in practice.

just each step of the way, people to learn from, and also people who make the next step and the next step and the next step a little bit easier. one of the things i did a few years after clerking, i went to the university of chicago to teach. why did i get a job at the university of chicago? partly it was my resume and transcript and all of that stuff, but partly it was judge mcglynn knew everybody in chicago. he had gone to the university of chicago and had very deep and close connections there. he picked up the phone and he talked to some people about me. i could say that about everything i've gotten in my life. honestly, i think most people can. it is partly because of the hard work that you have put in and because of what you have accomplished. but it is partly because there are other people who you have

run into along the way, who are there to do a good turn for you, and you hope that you will be there to do a good turn for somebody else. said that way, it can seem very self-serving, like, go find mentor so they can help you. but in truth, we all help each other. and in thinking about as you go through, especially the early years of a legal career, the people you are connecting with and how you can learn from them. but also, thinking a little bit about how you can make your way is a valuable thing. >> i think that is a very important point, particularly when people start law school. the reason why everybody gets admitted to georgetown, they are incredibly smart, and did very well academically.

there is a tendency to focus on pure intelligence as the key to success in a career. but finding mentors, people you can learn from -- >> and you can find them, by the way, in your peers. i used to think about this when i was dean at the law school. as you just said, adding a lot of people come to law school and they are very good students and they continue to focus on that part. and of course, you should. you should work hard. i always felt that when you look at the law school and everybody is just sort of putting their heads in a book. and then you look at a business school where everybody is focused on making connections. there is something a little bit icky about all of this focus on just making connections. [laughter] you know, so you can help this person and that person can help you. but there is something that is

great about it. it sort of acknowledges that you will not just be an individual in your legal career. you are part of teams and collectives. and the connections you've made with all the people that you work with, all the people that you study with when you are a student, are of really deep significance in somebody's career. >> and also, they are also personally very affirming. >> absolutely. >> one of the things that you have done also in your career that i find really striking is promoting collegiality and encouraging people to work together. i think, when i look back at what you did at harvard law school, what you did was you really made the faculty, at least from the outside, feel like a community in a way that it had not before. and certainly, a lot of the

press accounts indicate that the trajectory you were on in the court is similarly about teambuilding. you know, when i think about justices across history who have been about getting people to think together, chief justice warren, justice brennan. that is something we don't normally teach in law school. how do you learn to get people to work together and how do you build teams? >> i make no claims for anything on the court. i'm still pretty young there and i'm still pretty new. i'm still finding my way, i'm sure. but i did take some degree of pride in this after law school.

and you are extraordinary at it, dean shrader. part of it is listening to people and getting them to focus on the institution as a whole and how they can contribute to the institution as a whole and work together with other people, rather than just go their separate way, or even worse, fight with everybody, which was often the case at harvard in some parts of its history. i love thinking, actually, about institutions and how they operate, how they work. how you can get people to work together in them and make them succeed in ways that you didn't think you could. it is a little bit trial and error, and i don't think it came very naturally to me. it was something that i had to learn and think hard about. i think it involves really listening to other people and doing a lot more listening than

talking often. in order to exercise leadership and in order to move an institution. if there was anything that i was proud of at harvard, other than the free coffee -- [laughter] you know, i recommend you get that donor for. it was probably that. >> it really was remarkable. at harvard, it seemed like there was a time in which the faculty was really deadlocked. there was very little new faculty hiring, and then you came in and transform the law school in a very short timeframe. there was curricular reform, a tremendous wave of faculty hiring. is there anything specific that people can think about listening, trying to get people to see across differences? >> listening, trying to get

people to see across differences, picking out people who will help you, because you cannot do it on your own. you need people who are going to join into this endeavor with you and help you achieve it. i was lucky enough to have a bunch of great people doing that. and just trying to figure out -- you know, some people -- you know, just trying to figure out what makes an institution work, the personal dynamics within an institution, and using that knowledge to figure out how you can move and change and shift the place. >> it is a little bit different, but one of the things that you did that i find very striking is the concern that the senate had about the fact that you had no knowledge of hunting and guns. >> [laughter] >> and the way that you responded to that i think is reflective --

>> do you want me to tell the story? it is a great story. [laughter] >> talking to people before hand about what they wanted to hear, a number of them wanted to hear the hunting story. >> ok, they have not heard the hunting story? >> a couple of them have. >> one thing you have to understand when you go through senate confirmation, at least for me, as someone who was nominated by a democratic president, as someone who had worked in the domestic policy council under another democratic president some initiatives that involve gun control. i grew up in new york city. we did not go hunting on the weekends there. >> it was discouraged. [laughter] >> we went to the ballet, you know. but everybody is very concerned in the senate, democrats and republicans alike, about

second amendment issues. everybody thinks, oh, the hot issues, the ones that you are going to be asked about by every buddy are like, abortion. i would say, second amendment, guns totally eclipsed everything else combined. i did not have that much to say. you cannot talk about it substantively. you cannot say i'm going to rule this way or that way. and as people asked me, well, have you ever hunted? do you know anybody that wants -- hunts? have you ever touched a gun? have you ever seen a gun? [laughter] my answers were actually pretty poor on this front. it was late in the day and i had been through a lot of these interviews. i was a bit tired of them, to tell you the truth. i was sitting with a senator from idaho and he started asking me these questions, and telling me, as is appropriate, how for many of his constituents, hunting was an extraordinarily

important activity, part of the culture, and how he did not have any confidence that i would understand this in the way i thought about these issues. and i said to him, you know, senator, i've never had an opportunity to go hunting. it's not where i grew up. but i said, senator, if you would like to invite me hunting -- because he had been talking about his ranch and what he hunted on his ranch. i said, if you would like to invite me hunting, i would really be glad to go. and this look of abject horror passed across his face. [laughter] and i realize, ok, i probably went a little too far. and i said, i'm sorry, i didn't really mean to go that far, but i tell you what, senator, i will make you this promise. if i am lucky enough to get confirmed, i will asked justice scalia to take me hunting, because i knew that justice scalia is a great lover of hunting.

and when i got to the court, really, in the first summer, i went to justice scalia and i told him this story. i said, this is the only promise that i made in 82 courtesy visits. [laughter] so, are you going to help me fulfill this promise? he loved it. he thought it was hilarious. he was laughing and laughing. he said, all right. he is a member of a gun club out in virginia. first, he took me to his gun club. one of his sons-in-law, who is a great shooter, he taught me to shoot. then we shot some birds. he had this group of buddies. he goes quail shooting and pheasant shooting with. we did that a few times. and at the end of the year, he said, all right, it's time to do big game. [laughter] we each got ourselves a deer

license and an antelope license. we went out to wyoming together. >> oh, my god. >> yeah. i shot a deer. we could not find any antelope. and according to him, we found the wrong kind of deer. he says that the deer that i shot, i could have gotten in his backyard. [laughter] but it seemed like a deer to me. [laughter] next year, he's taking me turkey shooting, which he says is the best kind of hunting. it turns out, it sort of fun, actually. you know? [laughter] but i don't know, was that story supposed to show anything? [laughter] >> it's such a good story, it doesn't really matter. >> [laughter] >> i think it reflects the idea of getting to understand where other people are. you know, some senators

questions about guns -- you know, i'm from the new york metropolitan area. that is not what we did. i have to say, we had a family vacation last year and we were driving through the southwest [indiscernible] >> i hope so. i mean, because everybody has different experiences, and the ability to learn from everybody else's experiences, as well as from your -- i just can't take you anywhere, can i? [laughter] [applause] >> that is one of the take away points. >> [laughter] >> [laughter]

another question. you are such a terrific writer. >> i'm going to come back. you keep telling me all the things i'm good at. >> your opinions are really a joy to read. they are different from anyone else's on the court. one of the things that graduates are going to be doing is that they will be writing in a range of different contexts. i wanted to see if you had any advice for them as writers. >> mostly, to work hard at your writing and to try to find your voice. for me, it took many, many years. thank you for saying the nice things about my writing.

i'm sure i can get to be a better writer, and the reason for saying that is because i have gotten to be a better writer. what i look back at the writing i did when i was in law school, i did not write the same way that i do now. partly, i have just gotten to be a better writer. and partly, i found a kind of distinctive and individual voice, which actually, i think, if i had tried at the age of 27, i probably shouldn't have tried at the age of 27. but i do think that writing well for most people takes enormous amounts of hard work. i think that the number of people who can sit down and produce perfect paragraphs in an instant are like -- i've never met them. [laughter] i mean, maybe there are one or two. including maybe one or two of the people that i work with now. but i think, for most people and even most really great writers, they are great because they spend the time that it takes to produce great writing, which is a lot of time. which is, you know, staring at a paragraph and asking yourself over and over how to make that paragraph better.

so i think writing matters. i think writing matters a terrific amount in the law. certainly, if you're going to be an appellate lawyer. that is mostly the way we decide our cases. we do all of this argument stuff, but it is a little bit for show. really, the most important thing is to write us a good brief. some people are better at it than others, and i do think that the part of the reason that some are better at it than others is that they understand that you have to work and work and work at it, and there is no such thing as turning in the first draft. >> but you also have a really distinctive voice. your opinions -- if you read your opinion you're not saying, oh, this is justice scalia's. it is distinctively yours. how did you come up with that voice?

and again, it's not that you were a judge before and you found the voice while you were an appellate court judge. how did you come up with the voice that you have on the core? -- on the court? in some sense, justice scalia has a distinctive voice. going through history, justice holmes, justice jackson. but it is really unusual to have such a distinctive voice. >> i'm not sure exactly how unusual it is. i suspect that if you gave me a whole pile of opinions, but with the names crossed off of them, but knowing that they were all produced by members of the court now, i suspect i could do pretty well in saying which was whose. i don't think that is quite as unusual as you are saying. but i don't know. i will tell you the way i write an opinion, which has a lot to do with my being a teacher.

i sort of think about writing opinions in the way i used to think about teaching classes. i sit down at my computer, and i used to say, how am i going to explain this really complicated body of law to a bunch of people, a bunch of first years, or even third years, who don't know all of that much. and law is complicated and it is difficult to explain its distinctly and well in ways that mattered to people at the moment and in ways that stick with people. it is one of the great challenges of teaching. i used to sit down and think about, ok, first, i say this, and then i say this, you know, how to order all of the different points to get people to see the logic of something, and how to use analogies and

examples to give people a sense of why the reasoning goes the way it does. and that is what i do now, too. i basically do the same thing that i used to do what i was preparing to teach a class, trying to figure out how to explain something to a group of people who did not know about it , and trying to explain it in a way that would be sticky, in a way that would really sit in their heads. i kind of do the same thing now when i plot out an opinion. >> how do you use the clerks? >> the clerks are really important. honestly, it is a little bit frustrating for the clerks. the way this frustrating is i asked them to write first drafts. if you judges just say, look, it's going to be my stuff, and i'm just going to sit down and write my stuff.

i asked the clerks to write a first draft. the reason it's a little bit frustrating is because i'm going to ask you to write a first draft, and then you are not going to see a single word of it in the opinion i produce. but for me, it's helpful. it's helpful for me to see the way somebody else thinks through a topic. even if it's, ok, i see what they did, but what is the point? [laughter] it is helpful for me to use it as a launching pad. i look at a draft and see what ideas work and what ideas don't work. i think about the organization and the progression of arguments that they have used, the things that they have picked to talk about and to respond to. for me, it gives me a kind of launchpad to think through a case on my own. but then for me, and i think that there are two reasons for this -- the first is, i'm one of these people that don't know

what they think until i see what they say. for me, writing through a problem is the way i learn a problem. countless times, pretty much every time, in the writing i discover all kinds of things i didn't know and would never have learned about an issue unless i had really started from scratch. and the second thing is, i do want -- if you say my opinion, -- if you say my opinion sound like me that is a good thing. i want my opinions to sound like me. is important for me to have my own voice. that is another reason i start from scratch. the drafts help me to think about something. they sort of provide a launchpad for me. they obviously, give me a lot of the citations and things like that, that i can use. and then what i do, and this is where my clerks are unbelievably important.

i give it back to them. i say, ok, here is my take. and i encourage them to edit me really super hard. clerks, sometimes they start out and they are really a bit nervous about doing this. you are a supreme court justice, they are not. [laughter] but really, to me, the value of a clerk is how hard she edits me. because nobody writes perfectly the first time out. i write slowly and deliberately and i think about everything, but even then, by the end there are so many things that can be improved on. i give it to my clerks, and the first one to give me a draft and she will do an edit, i turn around and do it again. and then i give it to my other three as well. and those people probably do not know the subject matter quite as well. they come at it a little bit

fresh eyes and the way a normal reader would come at it. and then all three of them will edit it. and i asked the sort of principal clerk on the case to essentially compile all of the other edits and give me her take on which things to do and which things not to do. but from very small things -- a change of word -- to big things. you know, this argument really does not work. go re-think it. that is the most important part of the process. >> on the other end you talked , about the significance of the briefs. what is the key to the briefs? >> clarity, for sure. the worst kind of brief is a brief that you have to struggle with. you want something that is crystal clear. and then, i think my the ability to speak in commonsensical terms.

here is what is at issue. here is why you should care about this. here is why this has got to be the right answer. and the ability to sort of put it all together, to speak thematically. there will obviously be a lot of micro points you make along the way, but to have a theory of the case, and to have that theory appeal to somebody's base common sense about how the law will interpret this. >> it is not just about saying this is the with the precedents lined up. >> it is partly that, and i'm sure it is more that in lower courts. but one of the things about the supreme court is that, as people often learn when they stand at the podium, they would say, well, the sixth circuit said. and somebody will say, what do we care about what the sixth circuit said? you know, we only care about what we said. [laughter]

and sometimes we don't even care about that all that much. [laughter] >> what makes something appealing in terms of common sense? >> that is too hard to do. it is very case specific. >> what about oral arguments? what makes a good oral arguments? >> well, you know, somebody who -- i think some of it is the same, the ability to know that three points you really want the court to get, to be able to have picked those three points. and to leave the court with that sense, like, i'm not leaving the podium until you absolutely know these three things about my case, which is going to make you think that of course i have to win. but you have to be able to do that, and at the same time have a conversation with the court about whatever the court wants to have a conversation about. the person who is just hammering

home his three points is not nearly as effective as someone who manages to convey them, but also completely engages with the justices on what their questions are. and the most effective people are people who do that in a very natural and relaxed kind of way. we are really having a kind of conversation. who are very good listeners, who completely understand what a justice is getting at in his or her question, and respond to it very quickly. and you have to be quick at the supreme court, because most of us asked a lot of questions. somebody will get up there at the podium and it will be sort of ratatatat. you basically have two or three sentences to answer any question. you cannot be the person who stands there clearing your throat before you get to the main point.

you've got to have the main point on the tip of your tongue. and that involves an extraordinary amount of preparation. if i sound like i talk a lot, whether it is about writing or oral advocacy or whatever, about , you know, you have to work at it. and it is the same thing here. the people who are great, who come to the court, are people you know have spent hours and hours thinking about every single question that is going to be thrown at them and thinking about what the two sentence way to answer each of those questions is. >> thinking through kind of every angle of the case, every possible question -- >> every possible question and the answer you are going to make to that question. and we are lucky. we have an extraordinary number of great lawyers who appear before us. and they all have different styles. there is no single style. i was once on a plane with two of the greats, the now judgment judge the boston, and paul

clement. we were all together at the sixth circuit conference and our plane was delayed and we were in each other's company for many hours at the airport. we were talking about different styles. and paul clement said that sri navasin said that there are people who heat up the podium and those that cool it down and paul said that he is a heater upper. there is a tremendous energy when he steps to the podium. he is a very mesmerizing speaker and there is energy in the room. and judge srinivasin, he calms it down. he is everybody's reasonable man. how could you possibly disagree with what i'm saying in such a calm and cool way. [laughter] and they are both just tremendous, but very different

in style. and probably, those styles reflect their personalities. you cannot turn yourself into a person you are not. but you don't have to, because there are lots of different ways to be great. >> and how important is oral argument? >> it's not all that important. [laughter] sometimes it is. it's not that it never decides a case. sometimes it does. sometimes i go in and i really will be on a knife's edge. and sometimes i will have a lien, but you can get me off that lien. i'll walk out of my arguments and go back to my clerks and i will say, well, i was thinking x, but now i'm thinking y, because y sure sounded better than x. but for most people, the real work of thinking through a case

happens when you read the briefs, not when you hear the oral argument. and the oral argument partly has an entirely different function, which is that it gives us an opportunity to talk with each other. we don't talk with each other about a case before arguments. arguments are our first opportunity to convey to your colleagues what you are thinking about something and that can be quite important, actually. when we go to conference, we go around the room in seniority order. and that means i always speak ninth. and everybody else will have spoken and have cast a preliminary vote by the time i get to speak. and there are some there are good things about speaking ninth. it's definitely a lot better than eight or seven. but one bad thing is that there are a lot of votes cast before you ever get to say anything, right? for me, if there is a distinctive take i have on a case or something that i really