my pessimistic first answer is based on a feeling that, with a few exceptions, such as judge koontz, many jurists have a truncated view of the history of reconstruction, a limited view of all those amendments were intended to accomplish and as i briefly mentioned last night, we are trapped in a jurisprudence which is beholden to the old school of reconstruction, which saw it as a big mistake fundamentally. i think a narrow vision of what was attempted, what was tried to be accomplished in the reconstruction era is still dominant in much of the jurisprudence we have, including recent decisions we have heard about about voting rights and 15th amendment implementation. i hope a more up-to-date view of history comes to dominate the supreme court thinking. so far, there's not much evidence that has been happening. >> i would just add a word. there is one limited sense in which history is relevant to constitutional interpretation. there are occasional supreme court cases where somebody will be able to challenge a current uncoveringased on an of the history behind that practice. the supreme