any regulation is more or less wrong. i am sure that all of you took with you the journal of regulation. i tried to read that. i do not believe in regulation. we lived -- we live in a regulated world. we lived in communism. that is based on the mistrust in the market and the trust in regulation. we have very strong views about that. >> who is organizing? >> mr. president, i would like to ask you to comment more on this debate of communism and

capitalism in the crisis. you're talking about mostly post-communist countries. according to the latest question, i would like to raise a question. in colombia, most of the people voted for socialism. socialism are going through extreme poverty. one of the things that are attractive is health care and education. i would like to ask you as a politician, and an economist, do

you think that health care and education could be free in a market economy? >> was that a question for a statement? it did -- was that a question or statement? [unintelligible] these were both free. the have to pay for them. the more you pay, the real price -- [unintelligible] the more you are aware of the costs that was the preaching you

were trying to bring. . . . >> well, it is better to say that we had the presidency, not exactly of the european union, but of the european council. our task is to organize the

meeting, to forward the agenda, to give the floor to one and another. somehow to demonize that position is in my understanding wrong. but i would say one observation, only one observation. this is that i suppose, before, the presidency, that i already knew what is the european union about. i understood that i was wrong. it is even much worse than i expected. [laughter] >> could morning. -- good morning. i am interning at atlas research

foundation. facing all the things on our continent, growing from hostility against private property, i wondered if you have recommendations for me as a young european what to do to stay in our continent, for a new future. what would you recommend that the current state of our -- >> i do not know, going from our continent to hear. it used to be a solution. i am not sure it is now. it is a little bit more complicated. i do not know. we have to come back to the clearer ideas, messages that we want to achieve. the situation in europe is very difficult, especially because --

has been moving for years and decades from individual member states to the unelected central power in brussels, and this is really the post-democratic world. i am afraid that this will bring us more and more problems, we have short ambitions. one of them would be to stop the lisbon treaty, because this is the wrong way to go. otherwise, it is a permanent fight. markets, freedom, state, government. >> from the voice of america. pleased to meet you, sir. my question is, what do you make of the obama administration's recent decision to reorganize

missile defense and pull the missiles out of your country or the radar system out of poland, and help the uc the relationship developing -- and how do you see the relationship developing between russia and the allies you have referred to in the european union? thank you. >> this is the question for the president. it is wrong for me to make strong political stations -- statements. it is not my ambition here this morning. i do not have troubles and problems to accept. demonize this solution? i did not demonize the previous concept, so it is one relatively smaller, smaller moment in our

current history. so it is not a big issue for me. someone invested too much of his or her political capital into this idea, and this investment is now lost. that is quite understandable. this people who lost invested capital are a little bit more angry than i am. >> question down here. the amount mr. president, i was involved in the political activities in 1989. but recalling your role in 1989, what was your observation or the point at which you realized that czechoslovakia could break free without the soviet union been able to stop it? >> again, this is the question

for writing a book or -- first, and by the way, i am preparing a serious book about the last decades, which hopefully it will be published in november in the czech language. i will try to discuss both. the first part is i call it pre- yesterday. this is the communist era, what we left behind. the second is yesterday, the moment of transition of transformation. the third part is today, and the fourth part is tomorrow. it is moving. so i hope this book will be completed and a month plus time, so for a more detailed answer to that question, i would say on

the one hand, the fall of communism in its moment came definitely unexpectedly on the other side. on the other hand, we have been moving in the second half of the 1980's to such a situation. it was just a question of timing. it was not a shocking experience. we were looking for something like that. the question was, what would be the last drawl that would change the situation. it was not a shocking experience. when i got the austrian question here, i happened to be in austria the last six days before the velvet revolution, before the 17th of november in our country, and it happened on a

friday evening, the student demonstrations in prague, and on thursday evening i was at the university of linz, and quite a well-known university, and i spent two hours talking with the university professors, economic professors, and i asked about -- and they thought me it does not exist here, it does not exist here. since at the university do not have -- on the list of literature. i was in the huge hall with students, and i said, one day before, 24 hours before the break, i said if -- is dead in austria, will make him alive in

prague. which means i did not know -- i could not expect that it could be the next day. but the general feeling in the country, i would say, was really such. >> last question. >> hello, good morning. take your for your comments. i am from temple university in philadelphia, and i am ukranian. i am just as cheerful as you are about the fall of communism and the soviet union. but at the same time i wanted to ask you, there is plenty of evidence, plenty of historical evidence that free market capitalism does not work in every aspect of life. certain areas of life it works better, but there are mythologies of free-market cap elise -- capitalism that is

real, and i'm not trying to say -- in my view, and i think a lot of people, younger people think that way. neither the free market capitalism or socialism are -- work as ideologies, as systems of organizing society is. so they both have their own pathologies. i am asking, there is dangers, which -- there is plenty of evidence, you call it global warming. >> regression is what? >> the question is, how are you planning to protect your society in the czech republic from these pathologies, free market capitalism? >> we understand the question, so i do not want to protect the

check society from free-market system. on the contrary, i want to introduce the free market system as much as possible. so the markets will take care of itself and of the rest of us, including a a few. i am absolutely sure. [applause] >> thank you, president klaus, for a very informative presentation. in 2004, i gave a speech at st. petersburg university to 60 business students, and i asked how many new who ayn rand was. she was a graduate, and one person raised his hand. a similar situation. thank you, very much, mr.

president, and please stay seated. the next panel will be up here immediately. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> we spoke to a capitol hill reporter about the health care bill. >> you write that the german is planning changes to the legislation? >> he is trying to make it more

affordable by increasing subsidies for moderate-income americans who would be purchasing insurance and raising the costs for certain high-and plants. all this is aimed at making that build more affordable for individuals and families. >> you mention the cost for the country. how will that affect the change of the cost for the bill? >> it will go up. the senate proposal came in lower than expected. the chairman max baucus had $28 billion that he was working with off the start. this would keep it -- it would still be a deficit-neutral bill, and obama is insisting on that. the cost could grow by $28

billion and still meet the requirement, and depending on the other adjustments, they may try to give him some more room. the legislative dance that goes on. his proposal came out last week, and then what happens you have that initial chairman's mark, the members of the committee, 23 members, are then given a deadline for submitting add amendments. what happens is that forces lawmakers to show their cards, and mr. baucus gets a chance to see where everybody is and then reworked his proposal right up until the formal committee procedure begins tomorrow morning. that is what he has done. they will try to adjust his proposal to what he hopes will make a smoother process as the committee begins voting. >> how many amendments have been offered to the bill?

>> 564. some of them are very substantial, significant changes to the bill. olympia snowe proposed a public auction on a government-run plan. most republicans oppose that. others are purely political. a senator from nevada wants to take out a word everywhere in the bill. eight senator from wyoming is seen all members of congress should be forced to enroll in medicaid. some of the amendments are pointed political messages. >> give us an idea of the work ahead. >> they have to go through an lot of the amendments. some of those will be rendered moot by the german's changes.

they will begin tomorrow with opening statements. a lot of political posturing at that point. they will walk to the revised chairman's proposal. there will be votes, and slowly but surely the full bill will take ship. >> david herszenhorn of "the new york times." >> up next, remarks from former supreme court justice david souter. after that, and look at how attorneys approach cases involving national security and classified information. we will hear from inspectors general from the cia. then the chairman of the sec, proposes new rules on web traffic for wireless carriers, the so-called net neutrality.

>> tomorrow morning, the conversation on climate change which will be on the agenda at at this week's united nations meetings. the senate finance committee begins debating amendments to its health care legislation. we will talk to to individuals about the health care debate. "washington journal" begins at 7:00 eastern. later on c-span3, a senate panel will look at the potential threat for weapons of mass attraction. former senators will testify. they are the chairs of the commission's wmd's. live it 10:00 eastern.

-- a lot at 10:00 eastern. >> david souter on the u.s. constitution. this event was a harvard law school during its annual four commemorating the signing of the constitution. it is almost an hour. >> we're grateful to the hon. david souter to return to his all modern. he served as associate justice of denied the state supreme court from 1990 until 2009. prior to his tenure on the court, he was attorney general for new hampshire, assisted justice for the court of new hampshire, and a judge of the united states court of appeals. he has offered over three

decisions during his time on the supreme court. i will name just a few of the ones you may recognize. he has written for the court in landmark cases. he has written celebrated concurrences and certain cases and issued dissents in bush v. gore. he is jointly -- has jointly authored the plurality opinion along with justices sandra day o'connor and anthony kennedy. he is working with the new hampshire task force seeking to improve civic education in schools across the state. his interlocutor is noah feldman. professor feldman served as adviser to the coalition provisional authority in iraq and advised members of the iraqi

government counts on the drafting of the interim constitution. he is the author of four books, "/divided by god." in 1998, professor feldman served as a law clerk to justice souter. >> best year of my life. now that i have you softened up, i thought we should start with constitution day itself. as we heard earlier, federally mandated obligation on universities. i thought i would ask you, do we need a day to celebrate the constitution? where did you come down on the concept -- on the question of generation of our constitution?

>> i am somewhat to the left of a generation, although i am not sure there are really venerationists. i'd take a somewhat more pragmatic approach than they do, and it is the approach of if it ain't broke don't fix it. i do not think you have to venerate in order to appreciate the question -- or pri sheet position -- or appreciate the position that is wise to come up with replacement before you start replacing it. i think the tenor of the discussion here at the table are earlier provides the context for this approach, because i think we heard emanations of two levels of criticism of the

constitution. one of them i would take exception with, and i suppose you might call me a venerationist in that respect. the at the other level, i think we are in to political questions and i would probably now out before i started getting into substantive positions. the first level of criticism is the criticism that i think is summed up in one of the phrases from robert frost's poem. i think i remember the phrase. he said weast is the essence of the scheme. -- waste is the essence of this country part of the essential nature of the constitution is internal conflict. it was intended d.

intended to be. we want it both ways. we want both order and liberty. we want effective law enforcement and some degree of privacy and so on. the same thing is true with respect to the efficiency of government. the very point of the structural elements of the constitution is to make some things difficult. they were made difficult in part to sort of illuminate too much efficiency of power at the highest level, and they were made it difficult for the very reason that we tend not to make very good decisions in times of great difficulty. it is well for our cells not to

let ourselves go too far too fast. that kind of waste, if you will, that kind of inefficiency was the essence of this scheme, and to the extent there is criticism of the constitution, i am not suggesting this was the essence of any one's criticism today, but to the extent that there is criticism of the constitution on the grounds that inefficiency or waste the answer, the answer to that is yeah. to the extent that you get down to the for the level of regulatory college, the son of, and so on, those are basically political questions, and the only thing i think i would try to contribute to the debate on those points is to the voice -- is to devoice what i started with, and i tell a story to

school groups, and this is more than a school group, but i can resist telling it, because there's a great lesson in it. there is a teacher at dartmouth years ago by the name of f oley, and one of his concerns was regional english was disappearing. he used to travel around in the countryside in new hampshire and vermont, collecting examples of local speech patterns. i do not think he had a tape recorder, but he had a notebook. one of the stories that he tells is of stopping at some farm where he knew the people, he had talked with them before, and he met the husband of the family, a farmer, and a professor politely said, how is your wife? and the answer was, compared to what? [laughter]

that, it seems to me, is the decision question raised when one gets to that second level of consent -- of constitutional criticism. when are we going to replace it with and what are the odds that is going to be better, and what are the odds that in fact it is going to function with less production of crgrief than we have got. miti a pragmatist. -- it makes me a pragmatist. make very sure you can fix it better because -- before you start trying to do that. james madison would not have answered in exactly those terms, i am sure. neither would thomas jefferson. >> a conflict in the system demands resolution, and the

interpretation of the constitution is one of the leading ways to do so. i would like asking about the leading schools of constitutional schools, one of them is our regionalism. -- originalism. i am wondering, what you think of that as an approach to constitutional decision making. >> you have to answer that question with reference to specific questions. maybe the only answer i could give it is cordiaoriginalism is,

but did not expect too much from it. it is unlikely to provide you with very specific answers to the kinds of questions that you are likely to ask. to begin with, and maybe i should step back, the reason i say it is fine is one of the conditions for a legitimate constitutional interpretation by a court, by an elected court, as frequently is reminded us, is that we look to sources of meeaning and two guides of how to make practical sense of what the constitution says. they have more authority than the preference of the judge who is talking. there are sources of legitimacy. one source of legitimacy, which we recognize, not only

constitutionally, but elsewhere pintle all, is respect for the intentions of the people who use the language that you are trying to interpret. that is what our originalism ultimately looks to. in terms of what it can and cannot do, usually cannot give you very specific answers, even if you have a very -- have made a very careful canvass of debate at conventions, at ratifying conventions or state legislatures that ratified, commentary by people who might be thought to have spoken with a common understanding at the time. usually you do not get specific answers. sometimes he did. or sometimes i think it is possible. i think all this thing that i ever wrote from the bench was a dissent in the seminole tribe case back in the 1990's on the

scope of the 11th amendment immunity from federal court jurisdiction. i fought in that case cor originalism, the reference to original sources, and destroy the the time, provided a strong argument that the 11th amendment was intended to limit federal court citizen state jurisdictional but not federal court churr session. but i think that was a relatively uncommon example in which or originalism can give you a clear and specific answer. you have an either-or question, and that helped to answer it. or would cavs. most of the time or original --

most of the time or originorigi does not give you a clear answers. those that did not think answers are always possible are people who tend to do what when i was a lin law school, it was drawn on the blackboard, a magician's hat and to rabbit ears on the hat. his point was that pulled up rabbit out of that, yet the first put the rabbit into that. or originriginalism does not pre any specific rabbits. there is a tendency on the part of heart or primitive royalists to think there are more rabbits there then can be fanned.

what a softer or broader originalism can do is inform one of the conceptual thinking at the time this language was adopted. a constitutional provision, an amendment, and this kind of broader philosophical background i think can provide good reasons, legitimate reasons for going one way rather than another. what it cannot do is give, and what after all virtually all constitutional interpretation is incapable of giving, is something that can be called the right answer instead of the wrong answer. one thing to bear in mind, whether we are talking about the role of originalism in the interpretation, is to bear in mind, when we have to bear in

mind is that we are by and large answering questions for which there is not a clearly right or clearly wrong answer. the questions are capable of having a better cancer or a worst answer -- a better answer or a worse answer. soft originalism is one way of doing that. >> the question is better or worse for what? you mention yourself as a pragmatist. i wonder if you talk about pragmatism as a self-conscious way of going about constitutional problems. i noticed a profit -- a professor here earlier -- >> if he is still here, i want to shake his hand. >> you have been interested in justice holmes.

you wrote a senior at say about him. -- a senior essay about him. what does pragmatism mean to you in a constitutional progress, and if it is an approach to deciding constitutional questions. >> there are two broad choices for a chromatic role -- for a prank magic world. -- a pragmatic role. one way is to say i have all sorts of constitutional reasons for thinking the answer should be a instead of b. i will answer on a functional ground that gets me to what ever that better answer is. that is that kind of pragmatism, antithetical to what

we like call principled judicial decision making. there is another kind of pragmatism, and i guess it has two parts through the first is that pragmatism that recognizes all the principles we hold -- i'm talking about normative principles, propositions about what ought to be -- and the constitution is a set of principles about what ought to be, which the government ought to be, what ought to be done in situations indicating various litigation's -- all normative propositions, constitutional and others, in my judgment are essentials pragmatic in origin. no one appears to set a principales --

eight years ago when my teachers, and my senior tutor, wrote a wonderful book that summarized the approach to this kind of pragmatism. it was called "the philosophy of culture." that is essentially was his point. we do have long or a broad series of value and subsidiary principles that produce results that are thought to be horrendous by those values. these are principles that ultimately will be discarded. all constitutional principles have a pragmatic basis. that is one sense of pragmatism,

although that does not help decide particular cases, because it is a kind of pragmatism that is engaged in by society more so than by judges. the second subset of pragmatism is one kind of pragmatism that was most magnificent demonstrated by a judge. hand exemplified may be as well as anyone in my lifetime on the bench one prong of the distinction between judges who judge appellate -- the public judges who start from the bottom up and from the top down. judges who adjudicated from the top down start with principles usually at great breadth and they look for cases in which

they can express his opinions and embody those judgments. the other school says -- have great respect for fact, because you're first job is to decide the case, not to embody principles. you may not be able to decide the case without accepting some principal. it is a normative proposition. make sure you are being honest in your assessment and in respect for the facts first. i think this latter kind of pragmatism is at least essential to my kind of judgment. i think we should start from the bottom up. it is is essentially the common -law method. one consequence of that, and it was a consequence that judge

hand and body in his great judicial court was a great many of the legal problems that we are asked to face our problems that in fact that can be given answers, depending on the actual differences from prior cases, on factual classifications, rather than answers that require fast departures of new principale. that kind of pragmatism is the pragmatism that i espouse. holmes talked a pragmatic game, a good deal of the time. certainly hand was, stone, but

it is the pragmatism i think accepts the fact which i attributed to to the debt -- the demonstration that i entered the did to morton white a little bit ago, about the pragmatic verify ability or disprove the ability -- disprovability of our normative principles. and worries about the case before deciding just grant -- just how grand a principal business is there. >> it is accretionary. a lot of people think that on top of that, mall judging is direction, moving incrementally in a certain direction. even burke thought about this

and a lot of people think the direction should be in no direction of liberty or the quality. and sometimes the name of the school of interpretation goes under is living constitutionalism. that is very controversial, but i worry about the underlying picture in which the decision making goes somewhere and where it goes is in the expansion of liberties. some of those are commenting favorably on your years on the court have depicted you as somebody who moves slowly and cautiously, but i directionally. >> fair enough. there has got to be a direction. at the end of the day you have to say something. bear in mind two different context of, lot judging. one is that historical context

of the judge who was there, whether it be civil or criminal cases, and places where there is a total absence of statutory law. you got to start from scratch. the value propositions, whether it be propositions of constitutional law or criminal responsibility, are propositions you have got to derive from whatever method you do it. they are yours. the second sense of common law judges is the judging of common- law method, and that is what you were principally referring to, and what i think is appropriate in a constitutional context. it is concretionary -- accretionary, it starts with a respect for fact, and it goes slow. but as you say, one -- when one

gets to the fore in the road, one has to go one way or the other. that is the point i suppose at which it is important to remember some of the encomiums we have heard today for the preamble to the constitution, the founding documents, which suggest a direction. however, one cannot just look at the founding documents for the direction for the very reason that i -- and get a clear answer, for the very reason i went into earlier. the founding documents are documents, whether they be preambles, declarations, they are documents in a system that that wants it both ways.

one cannot, for example, in interpreting the fourth amendment, answering specific questions about its applications, saying the fourth amendment is dedicated to a reasonable respect for privacy and one's -- in one's houses, personal effects, papers, what ever. it uses a criteria of resemble asonableness, and assuming there is a libertarian kind of direction there is to a degree, if not a zero-sum game, at least a game in which one side wins and another side loses, because it is a legitimate

constitutional value of to promote the even-handed enforcement of athe law and the detection of punishment -- and punishment of people who break it. there is no way at the end of the day, except to say i have a couple of sets of values which are in play here, and one is a value that would generally be classified under liberty, another is a value that would be classified under authority. we want some of both. i do not think there is a any a priori formula and how to resolve that conflict in any given case. it is after all the enduring lesson of the enlightenment that one reasons on specific and

empirical bases. i do not know any formula in advance that says liberty always went off hardy always wins. i espouse the common-long method that gets down to mid-gritty kind of factual issues to provide a promise for deciding which of the competing principles as the better argument in a given case. >> may i pressed back a little bit. by your own account, the previous cases do not fully decide the case that is before you, and you are trying to figure out the better of the different directions to go. you are at the fork, and you are wanting to choose one of the directions.

there are justices, some of you may have served with, he seemed that that is the average to follow. that is not what emerges from the method you are describing. it seems when you are figuring out which method to go, he did not look at the immediate cases, but a broader, directional suite. if that direction since be pushing in this line of cases, in the direction of greater liberty, relative to authority, not limiting of the arctic, then that seems to me that that is an important force in your jurisprudence and those who espouse living constitutionalism say it openly. an area at this arises is an area you have thought about is substantive due process. history alone will not get you

an answer. there are many who believe and many will say you yourself have written to decisions -- through the decisions that there is a directional expansion of liberty because that is the direction of what has come before. that seems different than your formulation that speaks of reasoning from empirical fact. >> my formulation and minute ago when i did not speak of the significant of precedent, and of course it is one of those principles of decision were the a great respect. regionalism is something different. -- originalism is something different. the force of president is something great. one has to remember in every case in which there is a genuine

issue is that maybe we are at the point at which to line up president has been developed as far as it should be developed and there should be in effect a counter-line, that a line should be drawn. if an appellate judge will not accept that as a possibility, then the fix is in when he goes on the bench. no line of precedent is, as it were, the embodiment of an absolute value. the notion of a constitution in which we want it both ways is sensible by accepting the proposition that we cannot have it both ways all away, but we can have it both ways partially on each side. >> the david souter of 2009, and

the david souter of 1991. i am struck by the formulation here as the one you used when been confirmed. the argument would be -- one would want ask here, is it that you're jurisprudence applies the same principle you spoke of at the outset, and it was fairly infrequent that you found it to be the case that the line a president -- relative to your colleagues -- that the line of president expanding liberty had gone thus far and should go no further, just the way things have played themselves out? or whether directional pressures in trending toward liberty actually exercise some

gravitational pull on your decision making. there are those critics who would say that they are mutually exclusive. >> no one can see himself as others see him. >> they say that is a great gift. >> i am sure i do not have its. -- have it. i have two thoughts in response to that. number one, one of the upper- level dahlias of the legal system -- values of a legal system, which is one that you cannot take absolutely, is the foul you her -- is the value

of developing a coherent system. if there is a significant value in developing a coherent system, albeit not an absolute one, there is going to be a gravitational pull from depressant -- from any precedent. i am a subject of that gravitational pull. the second thing that i would say is that on a purely individual basis, on the basis of one judge's output, we do not invent the wheel again every time the possibility of invention or non invention comes up. we tend to follow our own president. i have not always done that. i did a 180 on nude dancing.

but by and large -- >> the metaphor calls out for such a response, but not on c- span. >> we hope that we work out the problems we are working on in a sufficiently reasonable way that what appeared us five years ago as sensible or legitimate in its conclusion is going to seem pretty much the same five years later and one would build on it. there is no question that except in cases in which one really says i do with the first time around, there is going to be coherence, there is in fact going to be a progression and a consistency and ultimately a coherence to the broader body all. -- body of law.

what we cannot forget is that we do not have, we are not intended to have a system in which as it were the coherence of values allows for the development of any one of value necessarily as far as it can logically go because there is usually a legitimate competitor somewhere, and we cannot lose sight of that. and the value of coherence in a system or coherence in a given body of doctrinal development is going to admit that the door is open or we would not have a serious case to the consideration of some competing value, which may bring a line of precedent to the end. >> that observation leads directly to another school of interpretation that everybody says he or she embraces and

outsiders says nobody embraces any longer, and that is judicial restraint. to listen to other justices, all the judges apply the law and the reason they did that is because we have a tripartite system of government, but it is not the job of the judiciary to make the law, but merely to decide all. that seems to be an orthodoxy that one now recites in confirmation hearings to some extent. how does judicial restraint as a theory of interpretation square with the challenge of resolving competing principles? >> let me give to answers to that. number one, i will not use the word judicial restraint in my answer. that is a term unfortunately

like having the appendix out it does not -- one does not have the through it again. judicial restraint was just tice frankfort's favorite term. i will leave that aside. that's good to the proposition that judges interpret law, did not make law. there is a legitimate sense in which that is absolutely true, and in the judge can sensibly and should legitimately a firm that. there is also a sense in which judges are forced to make some wall, and that has to be recognized, too. in the political ring that, those distinctions are not drawn. in the polal