do you remember back in may of 2009, when supreme court justice, david souter, announced his retirement's what president obama said that he would look for in a replacement. >> i will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families. whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. i view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying what people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes. >> so this wasn't a new idea. the president had spoken about the importance of empathy in his book, on the campaign trail, and as a senator, when voting against two of president bush's nominees to the high court. president obama pointed to the brown versus board of education case, as an example of when empathy played the right role, leading the court to strike down the idea of separate but equal, as fundamentally unjust. and he