one is justice. washington was very keen to, always cite authority for things and chief justice marshall didn't about that so much. you know, opinions, if you read them often have, no citations at all, very few. they're written a little more like an essay, which in some ways them more persuasive because they seem to just the truth. right. i don't even need to cite anything. right. but washington was more concerned about finding authority for things. okay. however, a couple of circuit opinions that he wrote you can find passages that rather well to that others wrote on the marshall court later. actually, martin versus hunter's will see is one example in that there is a part of stories opinion that tracks very closely to one of washington circuit opinions that was also about the fact that state authorities could not defy federal courts. so, you know, suggests a certain input there or there. but yeah, that that that's kind of the most i say about that. comment on whether george washington refused to end

in terms of argument, given the current argument structure, the justice to pay attention to is justice thomas. he often defines the tone and content of what follows. it has been fascinating how often oral argument has developed from whatever question he focuses on at the beginning. >> let's stay on this theme a little bit. justice kagan speaking to the ninth circuit this summer pooh-poohed the over concurring concurs as perhaps a bit of a side-eye to justice gorsuch. we are now seeing more concurrences per opinion than ever before. i believe this past term was just over three concurrences per term. for people like me and you in the media balcony, that is a real treat. you get to hear more, no more, dig in more. if you are a lower court judge, i would think concurrences could be pretty annoying. it muddies the water rather than clearing it up. jonathan, what do you think of this great concurring court? >> trend and sign -- it is a bad trend and do not have enough to work on. [laughter] >> the proliferation of concurrences, are they good for the rule of law? >> it is difficult for judges

justice stephen g. breyer could hear it too. only 2 hours before they and the other seven justices of the supreme court had issued their final decision of the 2020 122 term, justice breyer to a pragmatic consensus builder, was now stepping down from that august body, having been privileged to serve as one of his law clerks more than two decades before, i would be stepping up in his place. i drew a deep breath to steady myself as the door in front of us swung wide and a court officer stepped aside to allow our passage into the room. suddenly blind by bright lights, i took a moment to understand that the source was a bank of video cameras set up to record the ceremony. as my eyes adjusted and i processed into the chamber behind the two justices, i felt heartened by the sight of my loved ones beaming at me from rows of chairs on the right side of the room. chief justice roberts began by warmly welcoming those present. then he turned toward me. now, assume a ceremonial air. are you prepared to take the oath? he asked. his tone more

opposite of formalism embodied by justice like justice neil gorsuch.that sense, holmes was at the center of the debate that continues to this day. host: what was the reaction in 1881 when the common-law was published? jeffrey: i think we could call it respectful to weldment. -- bewilderment. it was delivered as a series of lectures and everyone acknowledged that holmes gave a deep and real contribution to systematizing the common-law and from the beginning, many people found it tough reading and therefore-- host: jeff rosen, is the common-law still taught in law school? >> i had it assigned in law school. i still remember thcopy i had, a brown paperback cover with a gavel on it. i must've tried to make myay through it, but i don't remember a word of it. it wasn't until you gave me the homework assignment of talking about the common-law, that i set out to read read -- reread it. i found it as arduous as many people have before. so therefore deafening took some close reading, but i think it is just an example of the fact that it is a book that is much re

justice. peace: the first meeting of the international court of justice (icj) was held in 1946 after world war ii. the first case that the court was supposed to deal with was the corfuu channel incident. the judges of the court were supposed to issue a fair verdict on the water conflict between albania and britain, a maritime confrontation that damaged british ships by albanian naval mines. britain, the plantif in this case, was very optimistic about the legal processing of the case. attorney generals are hardly showcross, that battle for freedom from fear. in which all men of good will are now engaged, the judicial settlement of disputes on the basis of law and justice is an essential and indispensable. the case was closed. many years past, and probably the residents of the hague palace, or better known as the international court of justice, were not aware that the most important case that was going to be referred to the court was not one of those lawsuits related to blue-eyed europeans. the most important case of the court was dealing with humanitarian disaster between the eastern

and the key vote will be where will chief justice roberts be? because he seems to be not 100% in the immunity after all. trump asked that supreme court decide he has absolute immunity for anything he does as president so long as he's president. when he did it and the supreme court did not accept that as being the basis for their decision and roberts wrote the opinion for the supreme court. so robert gates at least presumptive i would say is in the middle somewhat between the other four justices who probably would have given him absolute immunity. the two he appointed, having and gorsuch and thomas alito, who even further right of those two those four would probably give him immunity. but roberts is going to be in the middle and now, course, if trump wins the election, then the case will be done because he he will as the incoming president direct the department of justice to drop the case and if they refuse for some reason the attorney general he picks will agree. and if he for some reason was trump may even pardon himself if no president is gran

as justice holmes said. and that's why learning about the constitution and different perspectives is so important. justice gorsuch, i told you about a great example of civility that happened at the constitution center recently, where we convened three teams of scholars, conservative of progressive and libertarian, to draft constitutional amendments. and to my incredible surprise, in a week, these very divergent scholars were able to agree on five amendments to the constitution. what did you think when you heard about this project? well, jeff, you left out the first part, which was equally amazing. all right. so, mr. rosen. jeff, jeff, my friend, i've known him for 30 years. we were law clerks together. okay, that's so on our toes, right? i mean, there's early 23. we're all now. and nobody cares. so, jeff got three groups, as he said, of very different people together. right. self-proclaimed progressive scholars, libertarian scholars and conservative scholars. and you hear people say, oh, our constitution is

fuller, although he later said it was at justice field, not at justice fuller, because there had been some behind the scenes shenanigans between fuller and shields, too, in this highly contentious case with all kinds of complications, there was a a justice hal jackson, who was deathly ill, and they literally brought him in on his deathbed to try to vote on this. and then behind the scenes at justice changed his vote and all this kind of thing. and then fuller, who clearly wanted to see the income tax go down, you know, rushed to issue the decision before harlan and others even aware that this was happening. and so harlan condemned and was seen as sort of like shaking his fist and all that. and he was then, you know, criticized in all the conservative papers that supported the they had opposed the income tax and support of the wealthy and stuff. and and declared to be intemperate. and he later wrote one of those letters to his sons try to like explain himself. and he said that he felt that justice field in particular had behaved badly during this case and that he was he was trying to c

let us all of us gather here and all those engaged in the service of the law and justice.ith your gifts that are so essential that we are to thrive as a people and be a good and just society. honorable jurors and lawmakers, teachers and students of the law , fellow members of the bar and dear friends, what we pray for today is no mere aspirations, much less is what we do here today a mere social event at the beginning of the judicial year. no, the gifts of the holy spirit to be an efficacious reality in our lives, personal, and professional. the poet, author, educator edward markham said, there is a destiny that makes us family. no one goes through life alone. all that we put into the lives of others comes back into our own. we have received and are in need of now the help of others. today, we call upon the spirit of truth, which can be translated as helper, just like the founders of this nation also appealed to the supreme judge of the world. with a firm reliance on the protections of divine providence in declaring our independence. when we individually or as a people dis

, peace, justice and equality exist for all humankind. this conference grew out of the vision of andrea waters king, and i'm going to present her again, although you've already seen her, the president of the drum major institute and the woman i am blessed to call my partner and wife. perhaps also, and most important, the mother of our 16-year-old daughter. motherhood is something unusual and unique. most of us has been, as we are fathers toward children, there's a special unique bond that the mother has with their child. and especially of the little boy child or local little gir. but in this case always marvel at andrea not just for being a mother to her daughter yolanda, but to being a mother in a real sense to all girls. because that's just who she is. and i would brag on her daughter but i won't do that today. that's for another day. andries leadership of dmi is centered on the ideal that we are all inheritors of the king legacy. we all can embrace the legacy of my father dr. martin luther king, jr. by choosing to honor the ideals of p

i was the idea of justice. we had over 14,000 hotline complaints from from whistleblowers and same at the department of defense. now, not all of them are accurate. many of them are frivolous, but many of them resulted in really important cases. you have to take them very serious. and even if the whistleblower comes with some baggage, they often knowledge in a seat of truth. and so i think it is very important to take whistleblower cases seriously. some of most important cases result from whistleblowers, and we also have to protect them from retaliation retaliation is omnipresent, you know, when somebody gets a complaint against them, the initial reaction is very defensive. who made this complaint? it's not true. we go after that person and you can't do that so. we would investigate retaliation complaints. and sometimes i would actually explain to the officials a department, justice department offense, you're going to get complaints against you. let us do work. do not retaliate against anybody who you think may

so again, the pardon power really was necessary to fill in the blanks for a justice system, justice system that didn't actually function and exist. you know, i, i don't know about kind of the constitutional of it, but i would certainly argue that a judge is a more and probably more neutral than even prosecutors make those recommendations because the judge sat through all the evidence. they're not jury that a jury of the defendant's. but there are there are so many different ways that countries across the globe constrained the pardon power that it really just stands out that at the federal level. the united isn't doing it. we're way behind the and we're also one of the few countries in the world that call itself a democracy that contemplate a death penalty. so we also have extremely harsh, severe penalties without a mechanism at the federal level to really miscarriages of justice. other the pardon power. and as i said, the early days, a lot more pardons by presidents, a lot fewer crimes. i think, you know, 2600 federal prisoners and ten now that's 70% increase. and donald trump issued cleme

we've had recent allegations against supreme court justices and basically we rely on the justices themselves to respond and to say there's nothing to see here. in my view, thesupreme court would benefit from an inspector general who could investigate the facts, make transparent what happened, would not be able to make a management decision or make decisions, but at least wewould understand what the facts are of the case. and i think that it's in the interest of the judiciary and the supreme court to have one because public trust in the supreme court and the judiciary has diminished dramatically. it's at an all time low. i think part of the reason, controversy about thedecisions. but another part of the reason is unaddressed allegations of ethical misconduct and the fact that there is not an internal oversight body that can credibly investigate those matters. i think the supreme court urgently needs one and the judiciary urgently needs one and would benefit from one, -- >>come back to trump just so we can close it out. did you ever in your time serving in that administration, although a partf

the departme of justice. he has promised and trump's words tostop the federal government including th department of justice and fb with those loyal to him and only him and not to the cotitution which he has separately said could revoked because of it doesn't do what he wants it to do he will carry out his every order without queson. but how to do these threats have been flushed out by individuals loyal to trump and how do weknow that? the vast majority of individuals who worked on his cabinet have stated they look forward to working with him again and inituting project 2025. the former director of th in the policy director for the republican national convention wre the details for the consolidation of executive power and project 2025. stephen miller, a former advisor tohim who crafted the most sweeping immigration agenda has been an advisor through his dark money group american first legal and th architect of dold trump's most inhumane border policies, stephen miller, and a champion of the racist replacement

that was made very clear to me on day one of justice sotomayor, i initially clerked for justice gorsuchn colorado. they never lost sight there were real individuals behind the cases. and never changed how they would rule. would rule according to what the law said what is the right answer. but the never lost sight that there are real people behind the cases. >> it is pretty cool, locked work -- law clerk, i'm not sure everyone knows what that is. well, it's a crazy thing. somebody who has just graduated from law school, you maybe 23 or 24, not much older than you are now, can get hired by a judge to help them to research and writing in chambers with the judge. and i only get four. that is my whole staff. i get four law clerks every year and some assistance. secretarial assistance too. but my whole staff on law is four young people. and they could be you someday. and it's a pretty cool job for young person to get at the highest levels of our government. and they do it for one year so that rotates over. and it's a great gift to that young person to be able to help launch their career. 's w

and if a justice recuses himself or herself, they have an eight judge court, a justice court. and so the court's own ethical guidelines make very clear that justices have a special obligation to sit and not to recuse themselves. but to me, that means justices also have a cochairman is equally strong obligation, not to get themselves into situations where they have to recuse themselves. works both ways. very good. i, i guess i wonder, given the fact that we're past the moment, people have not recused themselves have taken in the case of one justice something like $4 million worth of gifts over time. what what do you see? do you see any way that that chief justice roberts or the court can repair the damage now and one of the things you do write about in the book i think is is that you think maybe in the long term term limits would be good for. four justices of 18 years, i think is what suggested. but do you see any short term as well as long term changes that might really fix the court? no, i never been a fan of the big i've never been a fan of adding more justices. i just don't

you can see justice kagan and justice kavanaugh often whisper and laugh together.little bit of stability on the bench. -- civility on the bench. the cases were quite interesting this first week. there was an interesting death penalty case where the state actually is on the side of the defendant, which you don't see all the time. host: we will talk about that ghost gun case. they heard the oral arguments on tuesday. explain what they are looking at. guest: with the ghost gun case, it is 2022 regulation that the biden administration put out. it's the so-called ghost gun kits. to put a gun together yourself, they don't have serial numbers. that was the concern, that these were used in crimes. requiring these kits to comply with serial numbers, background checks, that kind of thing. it was challenged by the manufacturer of these kits. they say the 1968 gun control act to try to regulate them is running afoul of the ata, statutory rulemaking. it is not necessarily a second amendment case likely think of, but more of an interpretation. the justices seem to be willing to

you've mentioned monica was launching of the justice ai initiative. the goal there is to bring together all stakeholders to really share expertise and perspective on the positives and the negatives of ai. because as i said, humans are, we are conscious of her ignorance, this is a collective process. and if you are trying to regulate a new ecosystem, you don't just try to figure it out yourself. you engage in all the stakeholders and bring it all that knowledge so that the decisions that you're making, affecting people's lives are as well informed and evolve as much light as possible from the public. -- i again. i can use examples but i would like to sort of stop at this point and pass it on to becky. >> great. >> becky, you're the ai person. you're not an ai presbyter the person who is on i guess point the end of the stick and helping to draft these policies and put them together. with that framing and more kind of, you know, concrete terms since your writing fisting or helping write this thing, what are the considerations you were seeing? what are yo