and a view of the lobby of trump tower. trump has been holding meetings with his transition team. in a kansas congressman and jeffd the cia sessions is to be the u.s. attorney general. michael flynn was chosen to be national security advisor. trump meet with former massachusetts governor mitt romney.

the president-elect's cabinet continues to take shape. and this live picture from trump tower in new york city will continue on our website. politico reporting the president-elect will make a victory tour of states he has one. 11:15, three speeches from the federal society. nikki haley is first. both to be considered for jobs in the new can -- new administration. all of them live here on c-span. from yesterday's meeting,

lawyers talk about the late supreme court justice antonin scalia a and his view on the separation of powers. >> we are running a little bit over so i am going to get started. i am a judge from the ninth circuit. please don't hold that against me. once famously

compared entering -- compare legislative history to entering a cocktail party. happy to see many old .nd new friends here please join me in welcoming our panel. merrill,ofessor tom professor of the columbia law school. distinguished professor of law at the university of virginia. i waterhouse professor of law. and professor paulsen, distinguished university chair and professor at the university of st. thomas.

we are here to discuss the demise of legislative history. let me start with a simple question, what difference does it make any way whether judges determine statutes based on their original text for meaning, or whether they take into account the laws legislative history. nothing less than the rule of law itself is at stake. the text of the statute is the law. he said we are not banned by the intent of the legislators but by the laws in which they are enacted. the judges are free to pursue and expressed legislative intent. there is an enormous risk that judges will pursue their own

objective and desires. when you were told to decide not of the basis of what the legislator said, but on the basis of what it stands for, surely your best shot of figuring out what the whatlature meant is to ask allies and intelligent person should have meant. conclusionring the that the law means what you ought to think it means. for that reason he argued the use of legislative history has facilitated rather than the turned -- rather than deterred decisions -- this, he concluded, is contrary to our great american ideal, a government of law. was not discouraged by this view from the fact that

congress writes terrible laws. justice scalia explains if you are with an inane statute you are duty bound to produce an inane result. more put it even susceptible play, garbage in, garbage out. as you heard, before justice scalia took his seat at the court in 1986, justices adhered to what has recently been called wherely trinity approach, legislative history is more important than the text itself. just a few months after the circuit, he wrote a concurrence

in the case that would ultimately change the framework for statutory interpretation. for once they had gotten it , but he refused to join the majority opinion. concept that the compelling legislative history could over throw the statute. we are not free to replace it with an enacted legislative hands. continues thern rest of his career. according to a lower review article, during the period from until 1980 nine just a few

years later, justice scalia opinions for relying on legislative history. know -- lawif you review articles noted his approach was a significant change in the way the court writes its decisions. and probably the way the courts and conceptualize its role. justice scalia's strong point of view change the interpretation and a course of history. as a law review article complaint in 2008 in the face of justice scalia's urban liberal justices

have opted not to rely on that in certain types of cases. it article speculated resulted from justices drafting their opinion strategically. can give them anecdotal support for this speculation. remember flooding the library with requests for dictionaries. the chef from legislative -- ory justice kagan announced -- in a way that was not remotely true when justice scalia joins the bench. but is that really true?

for those of you who don't was the case that tax credits were available for health insurance purchased from federally established exchanges. as justice scalia pointed out, who would have ever dreamt that exchange established by the state would mean exchange established by the state or federal government. the court recently held that a fish is not a tangible object. and that a toxic chemical isn't a toxic chemical was used to poison your best friend or mistress.

scalia's legacy and/or as the core changes? a phase his famous remarks in a different context, must we say like some cool in a late-night horror movie, shuffle abroad after being repeatedly legislative history stocks our supreme court jurisprudence once again. look forward to discussing these questions and more. we will have time for questions at the end. this is indeed an honor to speak at this convention, honoring the legacy of justice scalia. i am a great admirer of his and he influenced my thinking in a variety of topics.

he was always tremendously important in my own development thinking about public law. others may have alluded to this, he was very concerned with questions of legal method. are eclectic when it comes to legal method. it's a question of what fits or what produces the correct result. justice scalia cared about results but he cared about method. wouldncerns about method whatrite his conception of he imagined would be the best results in a case might be. the focus on this panel was on the statutory interpretation so that is what i will focus on as well.

both justice alito and the judge briefly alluded to the fact that justice scalia did not believe in the proposed interpretation. i will dissent from that. i think justice scalia said repeatedly that interpreting the searchf the text, the for the a subjective intention of the legislation, he said you always have to take into account the context in which the words .re used basically you had to take into account the obvious purpose for which the words are being used. as he wrote in his lecture in princeton, which i think is his most the preprepared and saidht-out exposition, he the import of the language andnds on its context enhances the purpose of its utterance.

regard justice scalia with not only disagree with the proposed interpretation for disagreeing with the use of legislative history and trying to ascertain the text and the meaning of the statute. justicers described how scalia joined the court. justice scalia, once he joined the court a relentless criticism had an approach and anonymous effect on reducing the use of legislative history. it appears in apologetics are of way. to have this transformative effect on jurisprudence is truly astonishing.

i think one of them is unsound subject to qualification and third reason is compelling. the unsound reason is using legislative history is unconstitutional. is that snippets of legislative history don't go through the article one process of presenting to the president. it is wrong to elevate the snippets of legislative history. they are not law, they are just chatter in the legislative process. legislative history was not used to override the text. i would agree that if the text was clear and legislative

history is being used to determine that the meaning is legislative history is being used -- it is an interpretive aid, not something that has been used to override congress is legislative actions. the courts use also if interpretive a's to interpret the statutes. justice scalia was very fond of dictionaries. dictionaries had not been approved by congress. neither had the candidates of interpretation or the common law meeting supports. all of these freely used by to interpret ambiguous statute. improved by had congress.

i don't think legislative history, using legislative history violates the constitution. legislative history is subject to manipulation. thatprobably the case madison's notes or the debates of the constitution aren't prone to manipulation because those are generated at a time when no one thought the courts were using legislative history or constitutional history in interpreting a text. there is a recent article at yell that documents this great detail. deliberately building and and then telling the court with the statutes meant. this is a court of blatant manipulation.

justice scalia rightly perceived this was a serious concern. grammar, which congress has no sale over. once they start taking legislative history into account as a temptation to manipulate, by planning little dialogues, which are designed to interpret statutes. is a little bit overstated or subject to rebuttal. one question is what is the sincere attempts by legislators to pursue their colleagues to vote for a particular measure versus blatant attempts to manipulate the courts. if the racial sincerity is very high, then throwing out all

legislative history would be a germanic prophylactic rule that we don't know -- we don't know what the ratio would be. there are some's -- some speculation to the deceit that opposed to severe advocacy of the legislative process. another concern is judges are not idiots. if one side is trying to manipulative record by citing legislative history and another really noting to -- a sincere attempt. there is a built-in way in which this manipulation can be ramped down. i don't think that is completely reassuring. in the 1970's you have a situation where one side was trying to manipulate and other side was trying to counter manipulate.

maybe the concern does have serious consequences. and a." question as to whether or not it is worthwhile to draw out all the legislation based on the concern of some manipulations going on. the last big justice scalia said, and he didn't say this as often as he talked about the constitutional problem or about the manipulation problem, but i think this is a compelling argument for doing away with legislative history. justice scalia thought it was inefficient. as he put in his tenor lectures, the most immediate and tangible exchange, judge's lawyers and clients would have saved and and norma samad of time and expense. i don't know of any studies that have been able to measure, how much time and money is spent in legislative history.

i strongly suspect justice scalia was right about this. he supported the proposition that pointing to his time as head of the legal counsel during the ford administration. legislative history was used in practically every case. and justice scalia reported that most of his time was utterly wasted. and this explanation is entirely possible and persuasive, if a statute is on -- is ambiguous it is likely a legislator or the staff -- the ambiguity emerges over the course of time. resolution of the ambiguity, the legislative history is likely to come up with a set. that is a lot of time and energy that is wasted. i think justice scalia was

correct about that. recent trends of the legislative process have probably made this problem considerably worse. a bill would be similar to one house of congress, there would be hearings, there would be a markup by the committee. then the other chamber would follow suit. lookast you know where to to find legislative history that might shed light -- might shed light on the terms. what we see are make a statutes patched together. none of which indicate each other and they make it extremely hard to do any kind of coherent legislative history. frank act of 2010. which i had a -- which i did a

bit of legislative history, there is a conference report but it says nothing about most of the provisions. act was stitched together from 48 separate bills. version emerged after 19 different steps in the legislative process. the house, 55 relevant hearings. anyone condemned to figure for -- figuree history out the legislative history is to be pitied. you can say orderly process will , iteturned to the congress is doubted.

things like the senate filibuster make it very difficult to get the laws through the orderly process. a devotion of time to the fund raising. role interest groups and other factors. the old fashion and orderly process is likely to be resurrected anytime soon. changes in the way congress operates in a time when justice scalia is doing legislative compelling even more , this was a gigantic waste of time. hopefully the little mice that i think judges is -- justices

were using legislative history to often. i think this amplifies judge leventhal's observation that the use of legislative history is the equivalent of entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of guests for one friends. judges were looking for legislative history to confirm the conclusion they have already reached. he demanded that everyone make it more compelling case. i think legislative history can provide context and a support. understand there will be cook statements made up just so they can employ interpretation later on. if we believe that systematically occurs that is a

recent not consulting the legislative results that are in that environment, but it is not a reason to not consult legislative history generated in prior environments. i think we can see this and other areas. with respect to the constitution, he cited the frequentlyers quite involving whether or not the federal government could commandeer. he cites the federalist papers to make the point that congress reject do that and to the argument that it was permissible. papers were never

voted on by the philadelphia convention. they were written after the votes in several state conventions. the same constitutional argument made against legislative history could be made against federalist papers. all the pamphlets written at the time. i think the same can be made with respect to treaty. a case involving whether or not courtsnt bush can order to reopen criminal cases. chief justice robert declared that the court traditionally looked at texts, backgrounds, negotiating history, and posting history, namely the practices of the nations. justice scalia wholly joined this opinion.

because chiefe andice roberts was quoting citing an opinion. and scalia says we have considered it pays to and thetation area post-ratification of the contract. they did not have a categorical aversion to legislative history. i use it now as a tool of statutory interpretation, no more problematic than a theoretical matter or use of as tom pointed

,ut, none of those dictionaries the courts use it nonetheless. we assume the congress understands it. congress could tomorrow -- to understand legislative history. the real question is what is the default? ensuring we aren't as reliant on legislative history as we have been in the past. it was sort of a crazy opinion to start legislative history. senset think it makes that you should not use it at

all. sometimes it is ok to find your friends. [applause] we hear it -- we heard it is ok to use legislative history because all of our friends are using it. >> it is a great pleasure to be here and an honor to be here on this occasion. follow directly from ideas expressed by tom merrill. i want to investigate the relationship between justice constitutionalof interpretation and his views on staff oriented interpretation. professor randy barnett who was in the room and i together run

and a original is him boot camp each summer. and justice scalia was gracious to meet with hardship -- to meet with our students. we asked the question how is it ,ou came to the famous speech that we should move away from our and ash from our original intent. move away from our original intent. he said, i was trying to move away from statutory limitation. that our obvious

approach to constitutional interpretation should mesh with our approach to statutory interpretation. in preparation for this event, i slogged through the 101 opinions when youar on westlaw search for the phrase legislative history and the author judge antonin scalia up. one or two things become apparent. justice scalia almost never relied on legislative history in a decisive way in an opinion he wrote, although he did use in several history opinions. over and over and over again the justice said that the use of isislative history

inappropriate in this case because there is no ambiguity to resolve. that brings us to an interesting question. what we mean by ambiguity? there is a word ambiguity that theects and ambiguity in way in which we can use legislative history. i come back to that question. there are three rival approaches to statutory interpretation.

that label is somewhat misleading. withapproach is associated and it itprocess refers to objective purposes. gender -- judge manufactured purposes. that is not a legitimate use of legislative history. -- it is just legislative -- legislation from the bench. sometimes people talk about intent and purpose as if they were one thing. but they are searching for the will of conference, for what it

statuteress wanted the to do an operation. scalia was saying legislative history was inappropriate if used for those purposes. the will of congress was not enacted as a statute. only the text of the statute. not the mental states of the congressman. preferredalia's theory does have an intent and in a textual list approach to statutory

interpretation. that rule is very limited. it is a word that can have more than one meeting. the bank that serves as a financial institution. --is rare you can resolve you can't resolve ambiguity from the text itself. not, then there is nothing inconsistent with textualism in order to resolve ambiguity. history of legislative

is fully consistent with justice .calia's view one last point, and agosta professor merrill's discussion of the argument that some use of legislative history is unconstitutional. i think this argument is correct and provides the primary basis for the exclusion of a certain way of legislative history. we need to distinguish between the activity of discovering the meaning of the constitutional and theterpretation,

act of putting it into legal texts. was used byoponent wigmore, williston, and others in the first half of the 20th century. legislative history can play and role in interpretation if that rule is limited to interpreting the meaning of the text. but when it is used as a tool for adopting instructions that alter override the meaning of , then it is illegitimate. then it is privileging some ring that was not enacted as law over that which was. reasonableerfectly to view that is unconstitutional. thank you.

[applause] we heard it is ok to use legislative history to resolve real ambiguities. they are more than famous for plucking the clot -- >> i am honored to be part of this conference and justice scalia. i have given my own tribute to article, called the supreme greatness of justice antonin scalia up. i think he is one of the greatest supreme court justices in the history of the nation and clearly the most influential justice in the past 50 years. i didn't know justice scalia personally. i shared it two meals with him

30 years apart. the first was when he was one of a panel of judges. great fortune of sitting next to justice scalia in hiser and phasing wit, grace, charm. and the next meal i would share with him would be last fall when he came to minute backless -- came to minneapolis. between those 32 years, i knew scalia the way most of us come to know him, through his writings. i became something of a devotee or disciple. what i am going to do is try to two rotter give you propositions that i think are consistent. the title is the interpretive

of constitutional and statutory legislative history. in my 10 minutes i want to make two quick points. -- the taskhe tax of constitutional interpretation and statutory interpretation are almost exactly the same. corollary that the rightful result of legislative history, the answer should be exactly. level to constitutional and statutory interpretation. basically it is the same enterprise, and scalia thought it was. there is a simple and logical why certain types of constitutional legislative

history, wide early evidence of the original meaning tends to be more reliable and useful than statutory legislative history and why more appropriate to resort to constitutional legislative history than modern statutory legislative history. it is why you can rely on your tatter copy of the federalist papers in a way you cannot rely on committee reports. proposition are essentially the same, they require me to back up a little bit and give you a broad theory of everything you need to know about textual interpretation. i think any three of constitutional interpretation and statutory interpretation addresses for big questions.

the first is what is the meaning of the text. that is the project of ascertaining what should he the objective original textual meaning of the words. what is its meeting, how do we interpret it? whethernd question is you should follow this text, which is a free political decision. that is the question of what you do with the meaning of the text. what you do when the meaning runs out? howdy resolve ambiguity and uncertainty?

who interprets the clause? otheral authority, branches of government have independent power of constitutional interpretation. the question of the use of constitutional legislative history and legislative history is basically a question of his rightful role. interpretatione of the text itself. in constitutional interpretation, if you are a textual list, you do not use in order tohistory

displace or modify what would otherwise be the meaning of the text. look sometimes to legislative history for its usefulness in displaying or clarifying the meanings of the text. you are instead looking to see how they are using the meaning of the words. operatesalist papers and serves a dictionary function as explaining the meanings of the words and concepts in historical context. legislative history with a constitutional interpretation is potentially probative,

second-best evidence of objective textual meaning. they provide you with dictionary help in understanding what is the objective meaning of the words. and he would do this in a constitutional context and legislative history context. in preparation for this talk i went through some of his law review articles. it was sort of a co-op with a friend of mine. scalia said this, you forget that i don't care what the legislatures intended, i care with a fair meaning of this word is. then he goes on to say i don't

object to all uses of legislative history. if you wanted to use it to show a word could bear particular meaning, if you want to show that a word is used sometimes in a certain sense, that is ok. legislative using history to show that a word can mean a certain thing. we are trying to ascertain how a reasonable person uses language and there is some evidence of that, but perhaps not as persuasive as the dictionary. we use it to exit the meaning of words. that is the core problem, reliability. problem to a certain

extent with constitutional legislative history. but they are problems of varying degrees in circumstances. the huge problem with the modern use is that it is massively unreliable. and scalia was adamant about this. he says my objection goes beyond that. it is increasingly likely for a trading phony purpose. the more you use legislative history, the phony or it becomes. downtown washington law firms make it their business to create legislative history. they send of statements that can be read on the floor so the more we use it, unless genuine it is.

it's not that we use it because it's there, it's there because call sinceor you law, or pulses paradox, that is the more you know legislative history, even in a constitutional or statutory set , and thetutional sense more sophisticated a gamer you greater the incentives will be to make a manufactured and the lessistory reliable that history will be. the more a legal interpretive system tends to rely on legislative history, the less

reliable such evidence is likely to become. the less aware that the liberators or debaters or drafters of legal language are, they are by their discussions furnishing evidence of original meaning. the less self-conscious they are that they are making legislative history. the more reliable such evidence tends to be. i have said in an article that the secret drafting history of the records of the constitutional convention, they were confidential and not meant to be published. actually for that very reason a fairly reliable source

of evidence for what the meaning actually was. there were some problems with documentary. talking about the revisions james madison made. to the extent he is faithfully recording the debates, the debaters are not intentionally spinning because they are not thinking they are making legislative history. reason to thehat extent the debates reveal something about what they thought of the concepts in the meetings of the terms actually work. it is for that reason more andable legislative history staff legislative history could ever be. [applause]

>> now we know legislative history can be mildly informative.

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was republicans continuing to .lame democrats about a year ago i was given the opportunity to speak to the country following president obama's state of the union. i do not make a habit of quoting

myself, but i want to repeat a part of my speech because i believe it is even more important today than it was in january. this,e outset i will say you have paid attention to what has been happening in washington in recent times, and you are not naive, neither am i to i see what you see, and many of your frustrations are my frustrations . a frustration with a government that has grown day after day, year after year, yet never serves us any better. a frustration with the same endless conversations we hear over and over again, a frustration with promises made and not kept. we need to be honest with each .ther and with ourselves while democrats in washington bear much responsibility for the problems facing america today, they do not bear it alone. there is more than enough blame to go around.

we as republicans need to own that truth. we need to recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in america's elected leadership. we need to accept that we played a role in how and why our government is broken, and then we need to fix it. " that is what i said last january. now, with a unified republican government in washington, with 34 republican governors, more republican-controlled state legislatures than ever before, we have the chance to do that. it is an exciting time in our history, a time to look in the mirror, remember who we are, and what we believe in, a time to stop the talk and start the action. the opportunity is there. we now have a chance to work on meaningful solutions to change the way we communicate, to

remind people that the gop is the party that will deliver freedom and possibility to all citizens, regardless of their race, gender, or where they were born and raised. all, is what makes the republican party in what drew my parents to america. i am the proud daughter of indian immigrants who reminded my brothers and sisters and me every day how blessed we were to live in this country. they left a wealthy lifestyle in india with just eight dollars in their pockets to come to america and start completely over. why would they do that? because even in 1969, they understood that no amount of money, no lifestyle can compare with the opportunities we have in america. only here can you be anything you want to be if you are willing to work hard for it.

only here to the circumstances of your birth not defined your future. only here is anything truly possible. and that is the promise of america. that is the promise of my republican party. and that is the promise we have tried to deliver in south carolina. ofn i took office in january 2011, south carolina was struggling. like many other states, the great recession was hanging over us like a dark cloud. jobs were scarce, economic anxiety were real. the american dream felt out of reach for way too many. our state government was in stables. we had short-term deficits and long-term debt. our public schools were failing to many of our students. faith in our system had bottomed out. it was dawning the collection of challenges we faced. i remember not knowing quite

where to start. then i came across a quotation from one of my favorite predecessors, governor carroll campbell who used to say that if you can find a person a job, you can take care of a family. i have always believed in controlling what i can control, and while governors do not create jobs, there is a lot we can do, and that starts with taking care of the businesses we already have. we got to work. cut business taxes, we passed tort reform which cap dams is on lawsuits. we invested in infrastructure without raising taxes. we stripped all of our regulatory boards and replaced the chairman of our largest and most bureaucratic permitting board with the president of a construction company. we knew that if you are costing a person or business time, then you are costing them money, and

that was no longer acceptable in the state of south carolina. we cut our debt in half and we doubled our reserves. look at us now. we build planes with boeing. we build cars with bmw, mercedes-benz, and now volvo. we now have five international tire companies. first american flatscreen television, you will find them in world winnsboro, south carolina with element electronics. for those who said bicycles would never again be made in the united states, look no further than kent international, a new jersey bike manufacturer we brought back from china to rural manning, south carolina. they now are for to us as the beast of the southeast. [laughter] [applause] more than 80,000 new jobs and

$20 billion invested has been announced in south carolina over in everyfive years single one of our 46 counties. we had moved 40,000 people from welfare to work. we have now started an inmate to work program which allows us to team up with our inmates, match them up with the skills they tod, and they are now able leave with a job and not just a bus ticket. unemployment has been cut by ine than half from 11.1% .011 to 4.9% today more south carolina and are working today than ever before in our state's history. and you have one of your members here that i have to thank for that, my director of employment and workforce, cheryl stanton. if you would please stand.

[applause] rockstar, just saying. over the last few years, i have been asked often about what has taken place in south carolina, as if there is a secret formula that spurred our transformation from a state crushed by the collapse of the american textile companies to the fastest-growing economy on east coast. my answer is that most things in government, it is not as complicated as it's made out to be. what we accomplish in south carolina was not rocket science, it was always about common sense and about a willingness to get creative, challenging norms, and a believe that all things were possible. look at education, for instance. south carolina has lagged behind in education for a very long time, and yes, we are still

behind, but we will not be for much longer. my first year in office i received a letter from an eighth-grade girl who was being bullied at school. she was contemplating suicide and didn't know where to turn. i am grateful i got her letter. i was able to talk to this young lady. potential and we struck up a friendship. but i realized she was not alone. so i started going to schools and around the state talking about bullying. it was a wake-up call. but not for the reasons you might think. my daughter recently graduated from a brand-new public high school in lexington where every classroom has a flatscreen tv and every child has a tablet. it would be easy to mistake the high school for a small college. yet, when i went back to my hometown to give an anti-bullying speech, they did not even have the equipment to play a video.

that is wrong. it is immoral. and it is changing. more than four years ago, i started a conversation about education in south carolina. i met with principals and teachers, superintendents and university deans, business leaders and legislators, republicans and democrats. i listened, i learned, and i realized the biggest challenge facing south carolina's education system was our failure to a knowledge that it simply costs more to educate a child who lives in poverty. weeding knowledge it now. we changed our funding formula to send additional state dollars to children on medicaid or free and reduced lunch. we now provide reading coaches for every elementary school in south carolina, and we have ended social promotions because we know if a child cannot read by the end of the third grade, they are four times less likely to graduate from high school on

time. ,e are investing in technology internet to the schools, internet inside the schools, and the tools, computers, tablet, instructional materials, to get every south carolina child up to speed with the world as it is today, not as it was three decades ago. we are aggressively recruiting teachers to rural areas and challenging districts, and just as aggressively incentivizing teachers to stay there. we are doing all of this with accountability. we are doing all of this without raising taxes. and we are already seeing that work. we have made immense changes to the way we teach our kids in south carolina, changes that will be as impactful as they are on complicated -- on complicated. these changes are happening because of two simple things, both of which are quite uncommon in cop -- politics today. a willingness to acknowledge a

problem and a willingness to move outside of our comfort zone .n order to find a solution it was out of the ordinary for a republican governor to go to the teachers and principals and superintendents to talk about education reform. that was the democrats territory . so it remains unexplored in a state dominated by republicans. but those conversations helped me understand where they were coming from and how and why actions government took made things worse rather than making them better. and it helped them into trust me and my intentions, helped us build a relationship that comes in the end, enabled us to together push these changes through our legislature. everyone wants to feel heard, and in this nation, everyone deserves to be heard. for too long, leadership of both political parties have written off large groups of our fellow

americans. the asked, the unrest, the distrust of our institutions, these are all very real. very honest responses to a system that has not worked for so many different people in so many different ways. but just as our political leadership's will put ignorance of the public's desire for government that at the very least a thames to serve them has brought us to a time of distrust and stagnation, outreach, and honest communication can have the opposite effect. it can lead to policy successes as it did with education in my state, and it can lead to even ,ore expansive heartfelt change as also has happened in south carolina just 18 months ago. i speak of the mother emmanuel tragedy that happened in trust and and the removal of the confederate flag. when i first got word of the

shootings, i knew this was going to be unbearably painful for our state. churchooting deaths in a on a wednesday night at bible study. a state senator and a leading figure in the local black ministry shot to death. we never imagined anything this horrifying. each new piece of information was another kick in the gut. the next morning, we capture the killer, and it immediately became clear that this was the act of a racist motivated not by mental illness but by pure hate. our state stuff or a devastating wound, the first thing we need to do was lift up those families and celebrate the lives of the victims. i decided to attend each funeral. i met the families. i heard the stories, and through

it all, i had the privilege of meeting nine amazing souls. after each funeral, i would take the program with a person's ,icture on it to my two kids and i would introduce them to the person that i met that day. i introduced them to ethel lantz , who despite losing her daughter to cancer two years prior, was a woman of love and joy who constantly saying her , "one day at a time, sweet jesus, that's all i'm asking of you. give me the strength to do every day what i have to do." i introduced them to our youngest victim, a 26-year-old budding entrepreneur, anxious to open his own part of shop -- barbershop, who on that night, stood in front of his and spoked and susie, his last words to the murderer.

you don't have to do this. we mean no harm to you. i introduced them to cynthia heard, whose life motto was to be kinder than necessary. that is now my life motto. every opportunity i have i mentioned the nine we lost and the three survivors, the emmanuel 12. i do not want to be just their families who knows of the love and compassion, the greatness of those people. i want the whole world to know them, as my children do, and as i do. the second thing that needed to happen was removing the confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. there are many wonderful, decent, honorable people in our state who revere the flag. they are not racist. they are the same people who twice elected an african-american u.s. senator and twice selected and indian-american governor. as i said what i announced my

intention to bring down the flag , this was a debate that did not need to have winners and losers. those who revere the flag for reasons of ancestry or heritage retain every right to do so, but what happened in charleston shed a different light on an issue in a state that we had long struggled with. what we saw in that extraordinary action in charleston was people of all races coming together. we did not have riots. we had vigils. we did not have protests peewee had hugs. the statehouse belongs to all people. and it needed to be welcoming to all people. that was not possible with the flag flying. when it came to the removal debate, we had legislators who truly listened to each other. they walked in each other's shoes, and that made all the difference. that willingness to listen allowed all of us to see each

other in a way that does not always happen, with love and grace and compassion. it is a love that we learn from the emmanuel 12 who took in someone that fateful night who did not look like them, did not sound like them, did not act like them, and instead of calling the cops, or instead of throwing him out, they pulled up a chair and prayed with him for an hour. the grace we learn from their families who incredibly stood in front of the murderer just two days later and offered him forgiveness. it is the compassion we learn from the people of south carolina who wrapped in their arms around those families, that community, and eachex