starting from my left, john payton, a longtime litigator in the civil rights field and now director and counsel of the naacp legal defense fund. there is nobody who knows more about civil-rights and the consequences of the supreme court's civil-rights decisions than he does. next, we have ronald cass, former dean of a law school, former member of the administrative conference of united states and many other public bodies. that is his expertise. congressman jerrold nadler, who i have known for many years, a democrat from the upper west side of manhattan. he is chair of the constitution subcommittee of the house judiciary committee and a very active player in constitutional issues. to my right, judge clemon, now retired chief judge of the u.s. district court of the northern district of alabama. he is now practicing law in birmingham. john hiatt -- jonathan hiatt is the executive director of the afl-cio, so there is nobody who is more aware of labor law issues. the supreme court has had quite a lot to say, for better or worse, about the state of labor laws in the united states. pamela karl

starting from my left, john payton, a longtime litigator and the civil-rights field. there is no one in the country who knows more about the bucket of the supreme court and consequences of the decisions than john does. next, ron kass, former dean of the law school, especially of administrative law. congressman gerald nadler who might have known for many years. he is currently chairman of the constitution subcommittee of the house judiciary committee and an active player in the constitutional issues. to my right, judge clemens, now retired chief judge of the u.s. district court in alabama. now practicing law in birmingham. john hyatt is executive director of the aflcio. no one is more on labor laws then john. the supreme court has had a lot to say for better or worse. pam who everyone in the acs nose and is indebted to. she is a professor at stanford where she hopes to direct the supreme court clinic. she is a very astute and wonderful observer of the u.s. supreme court. i thought we would start by talking about an iconic case. [unintelligible] concerning the disconnect

emmy turned to jonathan dayton -- let me turn to john payton and the issue of discrimination cases, both statutory and constitutional, and ask you, what kind of concerns keep you up at ninth these days when you think about the supreme court? -- at nighthese days when you think about the supreme court? what about that decision in the section 5 of voting rights case -- section 5 voting rights case? that sll has me scratching my head. >> there are two different kinds of tensions here that have been mentioned. what does the court do with respect to wha statute -- what congress has said in a statute? does it give proper deference to what congress has said ought to be the law? what is their role in interpreting that? does it give appropriate gravitas to congress's role? who is the final say, asudge clemon said. in the ledbetter case, it is clear that congress can have the final say. in some title vii cases, one issue can be that the court says it has the final say. in a disparate impact claim, justice scalia's concurrence is read as saying, we can choose to have the final say here and overrule