- Good afternoon and welcome to the University of Wisconsin
and to the 2016 Robert W. Kastenmeier lecture.
I'm Rebecca Blank.
I'm the chancellor here at the University of Wisconsin,
and I am delighted to see all of you here
at today's very special event.
I want to thank the Kastenmeier committee and co-chairs,
Peter Carstensen and Anuj Desai, for organizing
what is going to be a memorable conversation
with the honorable Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
And, of course, thanks to the Justice
for spending her day here in Madison.
The Kastenmeier lecture
reflects our law school's strong commitment to what we call
the law in action approach to teaching.
That assumes that a lawyer's role is not just to know
and apply the law, but to solve complex problems in a way that
improves lives and strengthens communities.
This tradition is one important reason why our law school
consistently attracts internationally and nationally
renowned legal scholars.
Dean Margaret Raymond is one such scholar.
Dean Raymond has a deep understanding of the unique role
of a public institution in educating lawyers to serve an
incredibly diverse mix of clients.
That understanding drives her commitment to helping build
programs that introduce students from disadvantaged backgrounds
to careers in the law.
Programs, like the James E Jones Jr. Pre-Law Scholars Program
that launched this summer, that gave freshmen and sophomores
from traditionally underserved groups from around the nation
and across the UW system a chance to see what law school
is all about.
I want to thank Dean Raymond for her leadership,
thank our moderators and our distinguished guests for what is
going to be a great afternoon.
Thank you all, and please join me in welcoming Dean Raymond.
[applause]
- Good afternoon. Thank you, chancellor.
It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome all of you to this
year's Kastenmeier lecture.
The lecture is supported by the fund established to honor Robert
W Kastenmeier, an outstanding graduate of the University of
Wisconsin Law School, who served with great distinction in the US
Congress from 1958 until 1990.
During his tenure, Representative Kastenmeier made
special contributions to many fields,
including improvement of the judiciary,
which makes our talk today particularly special.
I understand that Dorothy Kastenmeier is here with us,
so I want to make sure that we recognize and welcome Dorothy.
[applause]
Dorothy, thanks so much for being here.
It's great to have you back in Madison.
In honor of Representative Kastenmeier,
the planning committee that the chancellor mentioned organizes a
speaker or event that reflects one of the congressman's rich
array of legislative interests.
I want to make sure to join in thanking the committee
and also our staff, who without whom
a day like this would not have been possible.
[applause]
This year's Kastenmeier lecturer
is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Sotomayor joined the US Supreme Court as an associate
justice in 2009.
Before her appointment to the court,
she attended Princeton University and Yale Law School,
served as an assistant district attorney in the New York County
District Attorney's Office, litigated international
commercial matters in New York City as first an associate and
then a partner at the firm of Pavia & Harcourt,
and served for six years as a judge on the US District Court
for the southern district of New York,
11 years as a judge on the US Court of Appeals from the Second
Circuit until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 2009.
She's a born New Yorker, like me,
and is the author of an extraordinarily beautiful
memoir, "My Beloved World."
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
We are delighted and privileged to have her here today
as our Kastenmeier lecturer.
But our format today differs a bit from a traditional lecture.
The presentation today will be a conversation between the Justice
and two of her former law clerks,
Lindsey Powell and Rob Yablon.
For those of our unfamiliar with the phenomenon of law clerks,
law clerks are relatively recent law graduates who spend often a
year working closely with a judge on the judge's work.
Lindsey Powell, the first of our moderators,
is now an appellate attorney
at the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
And Rob Yablon is an assistant professor of law
here at the Law School.
The relationship between
Supreme Court justices and their law clerks
is formed like metamorphic rock
from a combination of time, pressure, and heat.
[laughter]
For a very intense year, those law clerks have the
extraordinary opportunity at the very beginning of their careers
to serve, support, and learn from justices
at the pinnacle of theirs.
That intense experience forms remarkable and enduring bonds
of appreciation, respect, commitment, and connection.
And I imagine you'll see some of that
as Justice Sotomayor talks with her former clerks.
Please join me in welcoming the Justice, Rob, and Lindsey.
[applause]
- I am delighted to be in Madison.
It's a beautiful, beautiful campus.
And I've had the privilege of meeting your chancellor
and the dean of the Law School
and the dean of the School of Education today.
And I am both tremendously impressed and deeply touched by
the commitment they have to this university and to its
participants, both the faculty and students and administrators.
You're very fortunate students, the ones who are in this room.
I'm more fortunate because I'm getting to have a talk
with two very favorite people of mine, Lindsey and Rob.
When I became a justice, I decided I needed--
We're entitled to four law clerks.
And I decided
since I knew very little about the inner-workings of the court,
other than what I had read in books
and sometimes you're a little dubious about what you read,
the truth only comes out when you experience it,
I thought maybe I should hire two law clerks with experience.
And so a friend reached out to a number of justices and said,
"Do you have somebody to recommend in your current crop
of law clerks who might want to stay on for another year?"
Lindsey worked for Justice John Paul Stevens,
whom I grew to love.
And Rob worked for another justice who's been incredibly
important to me in my life on the court,
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
And without them,
I don't think I would have made it through the year.
[laughter]
And so I am both eternally grateful to them,
but I'm more privileged that I know them.
They're very special human beings who care a lot about the
profession and about others.
And so I'm very, very proud of both of them and so thrilled
that we're doing this today.
Thank you both for being here with me.
- Thank you.
- Justice, thank you so much for joining us in Madison.
It's wonderful to have you here.
It was an incredible privilege for Lindsey and for me
to be able to be your law clerks
during your first year on the Supreme Court.
- I worked you harder than anybody else.
Hard to believe. [laughter]
- You've described that time in your life
as almost an out-of-body experience.
You had just been through
a grueling senate confirmation process,
you'd been thrust into the public spotlight,
you'd been uprooted from New York,
and you were still acclimating to Washington, DC,
and you were starting
this incredibly high pressure, high stakes job.
Many people may not remember this,
but the very first case that you heard,
just a month after being sworn-in
was a case called Citizens United .
[laughter]
- Clarence Thomas called me
before I'd began reading the briefs in that case,
just when I joined the court, and he said to me,
"I feel so sorry for you." [laughter]
"It's going to take you days to read all those things."
He was right. [laughter]
- So, you're now--
We don't like to think that it's been this long,
but you're now about to start your seventh term on the court.
And so you've been there for some huge cases,
some on the winning side, some not.
You have written a best-selling memoir.
You have traveled every corner of the country it seems like.
You've been on "Sesame Street."
[laughter]
More than once.
[laughter]
- Threw out a first pitch at Yankee Stadium.
- That too.
Does this all still seem surreal,
or has being a Supreme Court Justice
become your normal life now?
- Well, once I accepted
that my old life had completely ended--
You mentioned some of the things that had ended.
My life in New York, which I loved,
my sense of privacy,
and lack of notoriety had ended.
And once I accepted that my new life would just be abnormal...
[laughter]
It's become easier to accept.
But I come out and I see an audience of,
how many people are here?
1500?
It always takes my breath away.
And there are other moments constantly
where I'm reminded that this is not a normal life.
In particular, every year at the State of the Union,
as I'm now in the front row most of the time,
and it feels like I can almost touch the President,
I assure you I can't.
[laughter]
You know, I'm that close.
There's no impediment.
And I'm always marveled at the fact that I'm there.
Shortly after he withdrew from the election,
Govern Kasich was at Reagan Airport,
and I was leaving on a trip,
and as I got to the front of the airport,
my security drivers told me that he was waiting to meet me.
You have to understand
I had just watched him on TV almost every day.
[laughter]
For a number of weeks, and the idea
that he would be waiting for me still seems strange.
It feels strange.
And I'm constantly reminded that in many ways,
lots of ways, I'm really, really blessed.
But in some ways cursed.
There is a burden with this job.
It's not the burden of notoriety;
It is the burden of knowing that the work I'm doing
affects so many people.
And that's something I never forget.
I often tell people, you know,
I'm much, much more conscious today
than I ever was when I was a judge on the lower courts
of how deeply the decisions of the Supreme Court
affect the nation.
And if you agreed with the way I've voted,
you're very happy, right?
[laughter]
But I never forget that in every case
someone wins and there's an opposite,
and that is that someone loses.
And that burden feels very heavy to me quite often.
And so, yes, a blessing and a curse.
- So, different justices take different approaches
in how they engage with the public
and respond to the demands on their time,
and this is true both in terms of thinking about
which events to participate in
and what to say at those events.
I was wondering how you think about your public role
in general and how you make decisions about how to engage,
and particularly in light of the norms
that limit, to some extent, commentary by sitting justices
on matters that might come before the court?
- Everybody would love to ask me how particular cases
of interest to them would come out.
I really can't tell you, okay?
In part because sometimes I don't know,
but in part because it would be inappropriate.
Don't you think that it would be strange if I, as a justice,
answered today a burning question that you have about how
I would vote on a case that I haven't heard or that I've heard
but haven't conferenced with my colleagues?
You would likely believe that I was a little biased,
wouldn't you?
[laughter]
And it's not that we don't go into the process
with some idea or some inclination about the issue.
We're students of legal issues,
and we've been thinking about them.
But the one thing I've learned
through my many, many years of being a judge, which is that
that process of adjudication can change your mind.
And so it's important to try to keep an open mind.
But we're human beings,
and if we announced today what our ruling is going to be,
that kind of locks you into place.
So, knowing that I can't satisfy people--
By the way, that's what happened
during the Senate Confirmation Hearings.
That's why they'll never be a success
because all the senators want to know is how I'll vote
on whatever issue is important to them, right?
And since I got to keep saying, "I can't answer that question,"
they get very frustrated.
But having said that, as I thought about my role,
my sense of what I could do
that would be meaningful to people,
at least in my judgment, okay?
I have-- I realized that the court is a mystery
to a lot of people.
You sort of--
It's not like the other branches of government.
We don't have cameras in the courtroom,
and you can wait until the end
and I'll tell you how my thinking has changed about that.
And we don't often go out and talk publicly
about our internal deliberations.
We shouldn't and so we don't.
It remains a mystery to many people.
And I think that that's a bad idea.
I realized that if people understood we were human beings,
if they understood that we carry with us both backgrounds
and experiences, that they don't inform our decision-making,
but they certainly inform the process and our discussions
among ourselves because our experiences become part
of the conversation of, "Does this happen frequently?"
Now, a lot of people think that happens
in cases involving my gender or my ethnic background.
But you know when it happens most frequently?
When we're talking about whether an issue of discretion
in the lower courts arises often.
And because I'm one of the few justices that
have served on both the district court and the circuit court,
I can actually talk from experience.
And so, for me, the value and the choice I made
when I got on the court was, look,
can't talk about the internal deliberations,
but if I can talk to the general public about
who I am, how important and passionate I am about the law,
how important and passionate my colleagues are about it,
even when we disagree,
then maybe we can change people's perception of the court
as a distant and unknowable institution.
But I also realize there was another role for me
and one that I embrace openly,
which is I believe in being a citizen lawyer,
first and foremost.
And it's a praise that I took from one of my colleagues,
Justice Scalia, many, many years back.
I won't say how many because he'd be shocked too,
if he were with us.
I introduced him at a law school function,
and his speech was entitled "Citizen Lawyers.
And he talked about the fact that our founding fathers
were all lawyers, businessmen, they had to make a living,
they had to support their families,
but they made sacrifices
for a nation that they wanted to grow and help create.
And he talked about the importance of both law
but the participation of lawyers in our community,
and in stimulating and bettering our lives.
And that talk has always stayed with me.
And so, in most of my conversations with people,
that's a really big part of what I'm trying to instill in you.
If I can make you walk out of this courtroom--
Out of this courtroom? Out of this auditorium.
[laughter]
But the courtroom too.
If I can make you walk out of this auditorium
more invigorated about participating,
about becoming more civically involved in the way you choose
because I don't have a particular format.
Work in your local schools.
Work through your churches.
Work in your block associations.
Work to make us a better place for everyone.
Then I've accomplished my goals.
And I set those goals from a sense of
there was a place that I could leave an important legacy
inspiring people to do more
because if we work at it together,we can actually improve
some of the bigger problems that our society faces.
- And now a very high bar has been set for this event.
- Yes. [laughter]
Now, some of you may know that when I was a child,
my mother made up a name for me.
It was called Aji, which is hot pepper.
[laughter]
And what she meant about it
was that I never seemed to sit still.
I was always bouncing up and down and running and playing.
Never paying much attention to her or to anything else
but what interested me.
I call it curiosity, okay?
[laughter]
She called it other things.
But I still am like that,
and I don't like sitting down talking to people.
I like walking around.
So that's what I'm about to do.
[laughter]
Now, you'll see gentlemen and women in suits.
Most of them have these little things in their ears.
They're a--
They're the U.S. Marshals or your local police,
and they're here to protect me from myself, not from you.
[laughter]
They don't like that I do this.
I do it anyway.
[laughter]
But you will create a problem if you jump up unexpectedly.
[laughter]
All right?
Then they get really nervous. [laughter]
So I'll walk around, I'll shake your hand.
I might touch your shoulder.
If I recognize somebody in the audience, I might hug them.
And I even give some other people hugs.
[laughter]
But don't jump up, don't scare them, okay?
All right, so I'm going to continue.
I hope it's not disconcerting to the two of you.
- No, we'll shout after you.
- We'll stay here though.
[laughter]
Unless anyone wants a hug.
- They both have children under the age of three.
They're not running after me.
- Should I let you get down the stairs first?
- Yeah, you can ask a question and I'll bear it in mind.
[laughter]
- So, as you just mentioned,
you've worked on the district court,
and the Court of Appeals,
as well as the Supreme Court,
and you've noted in previous talks and writings
that the experience on each has been strikingly different.
And I'm wondering if there's something that stood out to you
when you got to the Supreme Court that particularly
surprised you about it, either the work or the community there
or whether there's something that you think would
come as a surprise to people less familiar with the court?
- Well, maybe I should go to the background and describe
what I think the differences are among the three levels.
And there are differences.
When you're on the district court,
I've often said this is the trial court.
It's the first court the parties are coming before.
And there, the facts of the case are being developed.
The district court judge
is a singular judge looking and developing those facts
and looking at the law that the parties are arguing about
and rendering a decision in the case.
But a large part of the work of a district court judge
is resolving the issue between the parties.
That's why there are so many settlement agreements
in trial level because what you're trying to do
is do justice for the two parties in front of you.
That's your focus.
They have a problem.
You're trying to help them come to a resolution.
And sometimes they can do it voluntarily
and consent to settlement,
and other times they want you to fix it for them and you do.
But that is really the idea, the focus that you're on.
You're the first court, so you're going to get some
interesting novel questions.
But the vast majority of your caseload is not those really,
you know, Supreme Court cases.
They are the general work of a judge.
They are the individual disputes between parties
that are largely controlled by existing precedent.
And so, for those parties, you're not a referee
but you're the person attempting to do what's right for them
under the law.
When you get to the appellate court,
it means somebody lost below, right?
You're not going to appeal a win. [laughter]
Although, surprisingly enough, there are people who do. [laughter]
Because they don't like how they won, all right?
And there's a lot of rules about that,
about when you can do that and when you can't.
But on the appeals court, typically,
at least in the federal system,
less so in the state system by the way, in many,
many state systems, and I can't speak about Wisconsin
because I didn't practice here and am less familiar with it,
but in the state systems
appeals courts can sometimes review the facts.
And they can actually determine whether the trial court
or the jury made an error in the facts.
And so in state courts, more frequently,
the courts will overturn a jury finding or even a judge finding
on the basis of facts.
But that's not true in the federal system.
In the federal system, you can only appeal an error in the law.
And there's always a "but" in everything in life.
Some facts, but they're more narrowly confined, okay?
Did a judge say that a witness said the light was green,
but in fact the record shows the witness said the light was red?
So there are some factual disputes
that can be answered or looked at.
But because you're looking at the law,
errors of law in the main, you're really looking at
how do I decide this question,
both guided by Supreme Court precedent,
but often there's a whole lot
of that the appellate courts below the Supreme Court rule on
that never get to the Supreme Court.
There's tons and tons of issues that circuit court judges
across the country are dealing with every day
that will never appear before the Supreme Court.
I'll explain why in a moment, okay?
So you're trying, as a circuit court judge,
to get the law right for your circuit.
And your circuit-- we're 13 in the United States--
and the states and the territories
are divided up among the 13 circuit courts,
not in equal numbers, by the way.
It's all historical.
The circuits have been created
both from the foundation of the creation of the federal system
where the first circuit was Boston and the states under it.
The second, where I served, only had three states:
New York, Connecticut, and Vermont,
and that was because New York had the most cases.
And so, they tried to tag us
with states that had lesser number of cases.
The 9th circuit is the biggest today,
and there's been talks about breaking it up,
but under the 9th circuit there are nine states
and one territory.
And it is burgeoning with cases.
But that's because when the 9th circuit was created,
those states were under populated.
That changed.
All right?
So, anyway, the circuit court, I described what we're trying to
do on a circuit court is to do justice for the circuit court
and go to, for the law, justice
for whatever the Supreme Court has said the law is.
But in all of those other areas
that are not likely to get before the court
our focus is ensuring on consistency
with the jurisprudence that the court is involved in.
Now, go to the Supreme Court, okay?
And what do you have?
You have a court who's responsible for making sure
that there's consistency across the nation.
So when do we take cases?
We take cases only when there's been a circuit split,
generally.
A few exceptions but they're rare.
Most of the time we're waiting to see whether the courts below
can agree on the right answer.
So, you've got 13 circuits, 50 odd state Supreme Courts,
and a bunch of territorial high courts
often ruling on the same question
and, with some frequency, disagreeing.
And that's when we take the case.
It is impossible for me to tell you what makes a difference
between two circuits disagreeing or three or four or five or six.
Generally, when we're on the court,
we're looking at
what the arguments have been in the courts below,
and if we can identify a part of the problem
that hasn't been fully aired in the courts below, we wait.
There are some cases where the split is not likely
to air much new because of the nature of the question.
And we answered on a one-to-one split.
So it really depends on that percolation.
The reason for the percolation is, you know,
two lawyers go into court,
the lawyers make the best arguments they can,
a judge knocks down some of those arguments,
finds one compelling, and the next person in another circuit,
comes in and says, "I got a better argument,
I've got a better approach."
And they go in and they find a different approach.
And that circuit court takes that into consideration,
and that process happens for a while.
And then, after awhile, you start seeing
that the arguments are repetitive and that
they're all centering around the nucleus of a legal issue.
And that's when the court will step in, more often than not.
So, what does the Supreme Court do?
We're establishing the law for the whole country.
And we're setting the boundaries of law
on the facts of that particular case.
And so we're foreclosing an approach, that to some people,
was a winning argument in the courts below.
And we're setting the discussion on a different course,
on a different trajectory.
And what we're looking to do is to do justice for law
as it's developing.
That's a really different approach.
That's why, if you listen to Supreme Court arguments,
you will often hear hypotheticals from the justices.
If we rule this way,
what's the stopping point of your principle of law?
Will it mean that we will have to undo the development of law
in this other field?
Does it mean that we're going to reach an absurd result?
Because if we carry your argument
to its logical conclusion--
I'll give one from the Obamacare case,
does it mean that the government can force you to eat broccoli?
[laughter] All right?
Those are the kinds of questions we're asking
because we understand
that our rulings have a long term effect.
And so we are looking
not at consistency necessarily within the law of a circuit,
nor the individual justice issues of a case,
but of the development of the law
as a cohesive whole in a particular area.
And so, that's a lot of different views
that are being considered and talked about.
And so Lindsey's question was:
"How is being on the Supreme Court different?"
We can sometimes lose sight
of the individuals involved in a case
because many of our questions are questions of law.
It's an evil that most justices are aware of.
To remind yourself every day
that there are actually human lives at issue,
not just a cold record that we're reading.
You know, sometimes I go out into the courtroom,
and particularly in some important cases,
and look around and try to guess who the litigant is.
[laughter]
I actually don't go on the Internet
because I think that's fair-- That's unfair.
So I just go in and watch people watching us.
[laughter]
And try to guess who's the person
for whom it seems really personal.
And sometimes when we rule,
occasionally, the people are in the courtroom.
And when you see people cry, it does move you.
Sometimes they're tears of joy,
but sometimes they're tears of deep sorrow.
I personally had not anticipated how hard decision-making
is on the court because of that big,
that win and lose part of the court
and the fact that we are affecting lives
throughout the country
and sometimes across the world in our rulings.
I'm always conscious that what I do
will always affect someone negatively.
Judging brings me less joy in this situation because of it.
Mind you, I only vote in the way I think is right under the law,
but justice has a price
and it's one that I think all of us should remember.
It's part of the civic engagement and should be.
So whenever you're happy about one of our outcomes,
think about the other side
because there will be always another side.
So I think that's the biggest difference.
It's also harder to negotiate with nine people
than it was with three.
[laughter]
No, no, no, seriously.
You know, when I was on the court of appeals,
every court of appeals judge knows how to count to two.
One, two. [laughter]
Majority, you win, okay?
You're on the Supreme Court, you've got to count longer.
You gotta count to four. [laughter]
Because you need five to win, okay?
And that tells you that it's already harder
to convince four other people
than to convince one other person.
There's also group dynamics involved.
There's certainly pressure
when a larger group of justices think the answer is one way
and you think the answer should be another way.
You know?
It's harder to resist.
It's like a jury of 12.
Those holdouts have a lot of courage,
and they really have to question themselves very carefully
before they author a dissenting opinion or hold out
because you really have to check if you're right.
As one of my colleagues has often said,
when eight other people are disagreeing with you,
you better open your mind to the possibility you're wrong.
[laughter]
And that is true.
That's why you will rarely see a solo dissenting opinion.
It happens,
but it doesn't happen as frequently as one would expect
because of the group dynamics.
And, finally, I never understood
how comforting it was to be on the lower court
and have someone above me fix my mistakes. [laughter]
I don't have that luxury now. It's really hard.
I'm not turning my back.
That poor camera guy is following me around.
[laughter]
And I really don't--
It's not from a lack of humility, believe me.
But there are people watching this,
and I want them to see me answering questions.
It's easier to do that than to watch a screen
with the back of my head.
- So, Justice, maybe I'll try to build on Lindsey's question
and make it a little bit more difficult.
- Okay. Oh, go ahead.
- So your--
- That's what they did to me the entire year, you know that?
[laughter]
- Your career path has given you a very unique vantage point
on our system of justice.
You have-- You know,
you tried hundreds of cases as a local prosecutor in New York,
you probably participated in hundreds more
when you were in private practice
as a district and appellate court judge,
you decided thousands of cases,
you see thousands of petitions for review every year
at the Supreme Court, in your estimation,
what is it that our judicial system does well
and not so well,
and how might we be able to make it better?
- Well, our judicial system really does very well
in trying to teach judges to be fair and impartial.
I think most judges really aspire to uphold that standard.
And having traveled around the world
and talked to judges from all over the world,
I have learned that the little corruption we have
is a standard of hope for the rest of the world.
That's not to say we don't have some.
There are judges who have been prosecuted and convicted.
But our numbers is infinitesimally small
compared to the corruption other nations face.
And we have an ethics about fairness
that is hard to teach to people.
It is imbued in our culture in a way that, for me,
drives who I am and my work as a judge,
and I think it drives the work of almost every other judge.
That passion, that sense of decency,
that sense of impartiality being the starting point for judging
I think is the best thing our system has.
It doesn't mean
that we're perfect at meeting that standard.
But if you don't value it, you're never even going to try.
And I think we try really hard.
Imperfect as it may be, as incomplete as it may be
sometimes, we work at it, and I'm very proud of that.
It also means that we're really good, most judicial systems,
at trying to ensure that all parties, rich or poor,
represented or not, are given a fair shake in court.
All of the courts that I've been part of
have been very dutiful in attempting to ensure that
the submissions of unrepresented parties, pro se parties,
that someone in the court is trying to read
sometimes unintelligible papers and make sense of them
and present the best arguments that can be presented
for the unrepresented client.
But...
We really have a difficult time in explaining to people
why we don't provide lawyers.
You know, in other parts of the world,
some issues are so important to people in the rest of the world
that issues like family law are not state law questions,
they're federal questions.
They're federal questions because there is a belief that
if you believe in family values, that that is a country issue.
That's not an individual state issue.
That that is part of your identity as a country.
And in many, many parts of the world,
if you're going to deprive a parent
of custody of their child,
you better give them a lawyer.
And we don't.
We have an unequal representation of people
in our court system.
And that does, I think, provide an injustice
that we don't pay enough attention to.
Look, the court has recognized a right to counsel in trials.
The Constitution does not recognize a right to counsel
in appellate work, by the way.
That's been created out of the due process clause.
And in an indirect way, the Supreme Court has said,
"We're not going to recognize the judgments of state courts
who don't provide lawyers
to accused defendants or convicted defendants
in their appeals process.
So most states have done that
because they want their judgments to stand up
in subsequent federal litigation.
But it's not an automatic right.
But we do very little to control the quality of those lawyers.
And we're very easy as a society to cut their pay.
Some of the worst paid lawyers in our criminal justice system
are criminal defense lawyers, both as federal defenders
or legal aid defenders in the state system
or as criminal justice attorneys who are taking on these cases.
In the last few years, when this federal system had a budget cut,
do you know whose pay they held up?
They held up the federal criminal justice attorneys.
Many of them were working for free.
They're entitled to a living too, you know.
They ultimately got paid,
but they have overhead and they have families like you and I.
And they're the worst paid of any lawyer that we pay.
So we have to, as a society,
be thinking more clearly, I think,
about the principles that are important to us as a nation.
To speak the word justice
means that with it comes responsibilities.
Responsibilities as citizens and as participants in our society
to ensure that people accessing the courts
are given a fair and equal opportunity to do that.
And so, for me, the lack of legal representation
in some critical areas
is one of the things we don't do well.
- I'm going to shift gears a little bit
with the next question.
You've talked and written about your experiences
coming into new context
and the effects that being a person of color has had
on those experiences for you.
And I was wondering what you've taken away from that
with respect to the value of diversity,
whether it's in social settings, educational one,
or professional ones.
And, as a corollary to that,
whether those experiences have shaped your views of the law?
[laughter]
- How old are you?
- Eight.
- Anybody under eight gets a picture, okay?
[laughter]
Got to limit it somewhere, you know?
[applause]
Do you have me covered over there?
Can I turn around?
Can I? Great.
Then I don't have to walk backwards. [laughter]
Hello. Hello.
You know, I was speaking to
a group of high school students today, and one of them asked me
slightly different version of your question, which is:
How has being Latina affected my judgment?
She was-- I shouldn't say obviously--
but she was of Latina background.
And I said to her, I don't know--
Thank you.
I saw the Wisconsin chair. [laughter]
Look.
We were just talking about the Terrace chair.
Thank you. [laughter]
Thank you very much.
That is pretty.
I'm going to see the Terrace after this finishes, okay?
Anyhow-- [applause]
And I said to her, I started with:
"I'm a judge, but what am I first?"
- [inaudible response] - No.
- [inaudible response] - A person.
A human being.
First and foremost.
And every human being has strengths, has weaknesses,
but we learn from what?
From experience.
From study, from thinking, from developing,
from babies to adults to more senior people.
But every experience makes us a piece of who we are.
Sonia's not just a Latina.
She's not just a women.
She's a person who had a Catholic school education
that brings with it some sense of experiences
that are going to be different from some other people.
I was a prosecutor, not a defense attorney.
I've been a commercial practitioner
representing big companies.
I've been a district, a circuit court judge,
and now a Supreme Court judge.
Yes, and I am a Latina.
But in all of that mix, there's just one me.
And there isn't one piece of me
that takes control in judicial decision-making.
It is the experience of learning about the law
and how to interpret the law, of how to be a judge
that I've picked up in all of the experiences I've had,
both educational and life and professional.
And each one contributes to creating a person
who thinks about life from their various perspectives.
And each one of them makes me-- Can I hand this to somebody?
[laughter]
And each one of them makes it possible
for me to hear things or understand things
that others might not find so easy to hear or understand.
So, let me give you a prime example.
Other justice, okay?
This first justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Many years ago, there was a case.
I wasn't a part of it, okay?
So, I'm not talking about anything confidential.
Called Stafford, involving, I think,
it was a 13- or 14-year-old girl in public school,
who, a person said to another person said to another person,
was seen taking an aspirin.
This was a no drug policy school.
She was called into the principal's office.
She said, "No."
The principal said, "I'm going to search you."
And they undressed her and searched her.
Her parents brought a Fourth Amendment claim about whether
the school was entitled to do this without probable cause.
It's a technical term.
Did they have compelling evidence
that she actually took the aspirin?
In a court of law, more likely than not, a court would say no,
hearsay on hearsay.
This person, who we don't know who it is, told that person,
who we don't know who it was, told this person,
who we don't know who it was,
and finally, it got to the school.
We would say before you search somebody,
you better have a little bit more than that, okay?
So her mother came into court.
During oral argument,
and this is all part of the public record,
some of, or one or more of my colleagues
analogized this search
as being similar to getting undressed in a gym locker.
My colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg
was heard to say some time after
that she believed
that her other male colleagues
did not understand how sensitive 13-year-old girls are
about the privacy of their bodies
and may not respect
how hard parents work
at ensuring that both
their male and female children
treasure their own bodies and access to it.
There was a lot of criticism of Justice Ginsburg's observation.
She shouldn't have said it.
Blah, blah, blah.
We could go on and on, okay?
Now, why was that important?
Did it change any votes? I doubt it.
I wasn't there. I can't tell you.
But what it avoided was a justice writing about that
experience in the way the question was asked and saying,
what's wrong with this girl?
Why was she traumatized by having her body searched?
I don't believe it.
That would have been so painful to so many girls
and it would have been painful to so many women,
but it wasn't said.
And so life experiences can sometimes avoid
things like that happening.
It does happen that justices pick out the use of a word
that evokes images in others
that a justice with that life experience might say,
"That's really not a good word;
Let's find another one."
You know, it's going to distract people from the opinion
because they're going to jump to the wrong conclusion.
It makes a difference.
It makes a difference in how you talk about things
and how arguments are articulated and considered.
And so, yes, diversity, to me,
not just of gender or ethnic background or religion,
but diversity of life experiences
I believe are the most important part
of what you want to look at in judges.
And often on my interviewing with 90-odd senators
during my confirmation hearing,
some of them would ask me,
what do I look for when I'm picking a judge?
And I would say to them, look at the bench you have and find out
what parts of the professional practice of law are not
represented because the more diversity in professional
experience and life experience that people have
the more wholesome the conversation will be
about the law.
You can imagine that with nine people on the Supreme Court,
and you say, well, how can you do that with three?
And what difference does it make
with an individual district court judge?
But that misunderstands the talk that judges do
in their opinion writing.
You know, every time I had a question come before me,
I would read the opinions of judges in my district,
district court judges across the country, circuit court judges.
We educate each other in opinion writing,
and the greater variety of people you have serving,
the more likely that every side of every issue will be engaged
and will be thought about.
Doesn't mean we're going to rule the right way,
but we got a better shot at it, don't we?
If we have more information.
And so that, to me,
is the critical importance of diversity.
It gives us an opportunity
to think outside our own perspective
and to think about how other people are experiencing
what you think is one way and they feel it's another.
It's really important to do that.
What do you all think the conversation
about the killings is about now?
Of police and defendants?
It's all about learning to listen to one another.
And so, for me,
that is the most critical part of picking a judge.
What diversity of experience do they bring
that will enhance the conversation?
- Justice, as the audience is getting to see for itself,
you are someone who is passionate in everything you do.
- I'm sorry I can't get up there.
You're too far away. [laughter]
I really am. Sorry. [laughter]
I hope coming closer helped it a little bit. [laughter]
But go ahead, Rob. I'm sorry.
- So, passionate person.
I think there's no one in this room
who would disagree with that.
An area where you seem to be particularly passionate
is criminal law.
And it's an area where you have written opinions
that have garnered a lot of public attention.
I'm thinking, for example, of your concurring opinion
a few years ago in the United States v. Jones ,
which was a case involving GPS surveillance.
There was a dissent you wrote earlier this year
in Utah v. Strieff ,
which involved stops by police officers
when the person they stopped
is found to have an outstanding warrant.
And I'm wondering what it is about criminal law cases
that excites you, and how has your experience,
whether as a prosecutor, a district court judge,
or someone who grew up in the environment you did,
influence your thinking about those cases?
- You know, when I left being a prosecutor in New York,
I didn't want to practice criminal law anymore.
I purposely decided to leave the criminal law area
and go into commercial law.
It was that I had sat in the DA's office one morning,
taking new complaints,
and I read a set of facts and I said to myself,
this is identical to a case that I prosecuted three years ago.
And I looked up and it was the same defendant
having committed the identical crime.
[laughter]
And I thought to myself, I'm on the wrong end of this.
By the time defendants get to the criminal justice system,
it's so much harder to turn their lives around.
I don't give up the hope that there is rehabilitation possible
for a lot of people, but it's harder.
It's much more-- It's much easier, a better investment,
both of my time and our resources, I think, as a nation,
to invest in kids when they're young.
To keep them away from the temptations of the streets
than to undo the bad that the streets create.
I've often been asked, for those of you who've read my book,
I'm a Supreme Court Justice, my 28-year-old cousin, Nelson,
who was smarter than I was by a lot,
more talented than I've ever been, he died at 28 of AIDS.
And as I wrote my book, I was trying to think what were the
differences between us.
And it turned out that the biggest difference
was that he was male and less protected on the streets.
Me, I was never left alone
to walk the streets of the South Bronx.
There was always someone accompanying me.
Either my mom, my grandmother, my aunt,
but there was always an adult to protect the girl.
And I was kept busy with after-school activities
and engaged in ways that kept me from
the temptations that existed around me.
He wasn't.
And I really think that that made a huge, huge difference
in the paths we took.
I had the justices ask me, not so long ago,
we were sitting at lunch one day, and one justice said to me,
"Sonia, how do we make more of you?"
[laughter]
It was a strange question, okay?
[laughter]
It is a strange question.
But I said to him, I spend a lot of time right now
at after-school supplemental activities programs.
Everywhere across the country--
There's a Renaissance center in the Bronx that I have visited,
and I think it's marvelous.
It's called the STEM plus center.
They teach STEM studies,
but they also teach what my cousin loved: music and arts
to engage those students who are involved in those activities.
Those kids go there every day after school.
From there they go home pretty late, and they're going home.
They're not going to play out on the streets.
I think those kids have a better shot at success
than the kids who are latchkey kids like me
and whose parents can't or don't have a mechanism
to have their children watched.
And so, I work with one of those programs in DC.
It mentors kids in high school
by giving them an adult mentor.
I have a few--
I didn't participate in this when you guys were around.
But I have a few former law clerks
who are now part of the program.
And they meet with a tutor once a week
to help them in the subjects they're having difficulty with.
The tutor is like a Big Sister or a Big Brother and introduces
them to activities they might not otherwise be familiar with
and encourages them to go to college.
This program has 100% success rate of getting their kids into
college with scholarships, and I'm convinced it's because
someone who knows is paying attention to those kids.
And now they started, and I was very proud
of being a part of this movement in the program--
They're doing Skyping once a week with the kids in college
to keep them in college.
And the two years that they've run the Skyping,
none of the kids have left college.
So, we have to pay more attention
to activities of these natures to keep our kids off.
Now, that hasn't answered your question, Rob.
I'm getting there. [laughter]
I'm getting there. All right?
Linda Greenhouse, who was a reporter on the court
for many, many years, and she's with the New York Times .
She's now teaching at Yale Law School.
Linda and I had a conversation at my alma mater, Yale,
a number of years back.
And she asked me
what was the difference between me and Justice Alito?
We were both district court judges.
I was a district court judge.
We were both circuit court judges.
We both come from Ivy League schools.
Why am I willing to be more pro-defendant than he is?
Our voting records show that he almost inevitably
votes in favor of the government in criminal law cases.
And I don't always vote against the government, by the way.
[laughter]
There's a lot of cases where I vote in favor of the government.
But there are some that are more noteworthy than others
where I have not agreed with the government.
And I said to him, I thought about it, not to him, to Linda,
I thought about the question and I said
I think it's the nature of the prosecutorial work we do.
If you're a federal prosecutor, you have a lot of resources,
you have a standard of prosecution
that has been set in generations of high integrity and real care,
and I think most people in the federal system
come away with a great respect for the safeguards
that are built in to the federal system,
the federal criminal system.
In the state system,
you try your cases by the seat of your pants.
[laughter]
There are so many cases, so little resources.
Often prosecutors are meeting their witnesses in the hallway
before the jury comes in.
Many times you haven't had time to do the background checks
that you should be doing.
You rely on a good defense attorney coming to you
and telling you you've got this weakness, look at it.
And sometimes when they do that, you actually stop a moment,
take a deep breath, and go out and look at it and find out,
ah-ha, he's right, okay?
Or she's right.
But you can't do that when you're overwhelmed
with so many cases, and there's only so many hours in a day.
Most state prosecutors are working long hours.
Weekends and nights. I was.
But with that kind of lack of resources impressed a business,
which affects not just your office, but the police force
who's investigating their cases, you're more willing
when you've been a state prosecutor
to understand that the system can fail sometimes.
That the checks that we put in against police excess,
against unfair treatments of defendants
are necessary to perfect our criminal law system.
They're not evils that have to
unshackle the police from doing their work.
They are measures that exist
because we're trying to make our system fair.
We're trying to ensure that as few innocent people
are convicted as we can manage in an imperfect life situation.
You know, my colleague Justice Scalia used to say every system
is fallible Some innocent people are going to go to jail.
He's right.
But you have to try to ensure that you minimize that
as much as you humanly can
without completely hobbling the process.
And so, I'm getting to my answer, Rob.
[laughter]
And so, for me, I've been a judge,
both on the district court but even as a prosecutor,
who really believes in the process that through the ages
the Supreme Court has created the protections in place,
I know, I feel deeply,
that we have recognized and passed,
not passed as a court, but recognized as a court,
have been important safeguards to the system.
And so I'm a great, great believer in the courts
precedents, both as a district court, court of appeals,
and now as a Supreme Court justice,
I let those precedents guide me in my decision-making.
And if you read those dissents that Rob's talking about,
most people are talking about the last part of the dissents,
of my dissents, where I'm talking from my personal
professional experiences.
Many of them miss the point of the first two-thirds part.
The first two-thirds part
are explaining what the law has actually been.
It's what I did in my affirmative action dissent,
what I've done in this dissent he's talking about.
I show what the court has said.
I show what the court has done.
I point to what I think are misstatements by the majority,
or mischaracterizations of precedence.
I am not ruling from some personal feeling
that this is the right thing to do.
I'm using our precedence and saying this is what we've done.
This is what we have said.
This is not the time to change it.
And I haven't been successful.
[laughter]
But it does guide me in deciding when I should speak out
and point out
the negative practical consequences
of decisions the courts are rendering.
I do believe that law serves people.
And to the extent it does, there are moments where I have written
and said I don't like the decision I'm rendering,
I think it's a bad policy choice,
but it's not a choice for me to make.
And so I'm writing for Congress or for the public
in the hope that they will galvanize themselves to change
what I think is a bad policy or a bad term.
But when the court is taking one, then I can say something.
And I really do think that, as a judge,
I have an obligation in every ruling I make.
It's that question of the burden I feel,
to understand the impact of the decisions I make.
And don't ever doubt that I understand the good and the bad.
But I decide I must because that's what judges do.
But in criminal law,
we are taking away people's freedom,
and that has a big consequence.
I think more than a monetary loss.
There's some people who would disagree with that balance, but,
for me, the loss of your freedom is perhaps the most valuable
treasure we each own.
And so, that's an area where I'm more likely-- Not more likely,
but where articulating the other side seems important to me.
I answered your question, right?
- You did. - Okay.
[laughter]
- So you've referenced a couple of times your former colleague
Justice Scalia, and his passing was one of the biggest events of
the previous term at the court.
He was--
- It may still be a big event this coming year too.
[laughter]
- He was one of the courts most prominent and outspoken members,
he was a fellow New Yorker and fellow Yankees fan.
- Ah, I feel so guilty.
He was so upset that I was embraced as a Yankees fan
because he was one too, but people didn't recognize it
as much, and I kept saying to him,
"I was born in the Bronx; You were born in Queens,
What do you think people are going to think, you know?"
[laughter]
But I had promised him that I would go to a baseball,
a Yankee baseball game with him, and we never got it organized.
And I'm really sorry about that.
I did take Maureen, his wife, and one of his granddaughters
and her mom, who loved the Nationals,
to a Nationals game this past year.
So, it doesn't make up for what I didn't do.
It reminded me that
if there are special things you want to do in life,
don't put them off.
And that's a lesson we all have to keep in mind all the time.
- Well, you've already begun answering my question with that
without me even having to ask it. [laughter]
But I wonder if you could reflect just a little bit more
on your relationship with him
and maybe on how his loss has been felt within the court.
- Deeply.
Deeply.
I told the story earlier to the law school faculty,
and so some of them will hear it again.
We had a public service at the court for Justice Scalia.
And in the Great Hall,
which is the hall in front of the courtroom doors--
And it's a long hallway.
On each side of the hallway
there are pillars holding up the upper floors.
But in between the pillars are marble casts
of all the chief justices of the court.
It's a very moving space.
You walk into it and you're sort of struck with the serenity
and the sense of importance of this historical building.
His law clerks,
of which there were over a hundred because
he had served, I think, 25 years on the court, 26.
So four times is about a hundred or more.
He had some in the courts below.
They lined the staircases and his casket was carried up
the stairs by an honor guard of Supreme Court police officers.
The justices entered the hall before his body came rolling in,
or walked in, and there was a portrait of him at the front.
As we walked out, I heard justices gasping and choking.
When I got to the front, because I was one of the--
We senior justices,
I could look behind as my colleagues followed me.
And I saw tears in just about everybody's eyes.
He was obviously closer to some people than to others
because you can't have eight equal friends, okay?
It's hard. [laughter]
But what was unusual about him
is that his friends
weren't of one similar judicial philosophy to him.
Him and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who hardly, if ever,
voted together... [laughter]
Were best of friends.
Her husband and his wife, Maureen and Marty,
they traveled together.
There's a famous picture of them sitting on camels. [laughter]
You ever imagined Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Nina Scalia on camels? [laughter]
They loved the opera, and they would go together.
They often sat in the chorus behind.
I don't know what that's called.
Shows you how least interested I am, or lesser interested I am. [laughter]
But they get people from the normal walks of life
to play sort of spectators on the stage in the opera.
And they loved doing that.
Nino led Christmas carols at our Christmas parties.
He'd break into ditties when someone would say something that
would bring up an old song he had heard decades ago.
I said to the faculty this morning that at first I really
thought I was very ignorant because a lot of these songs
I had never heard.
And then Elena Kagan came and I would say,
"Have you heard that song?" And she'd say, "No." [laughter]
Made me feel better, okay?
But Ruth and Steve Breyer, who were closer in age to Nino,
often had heard the songs.
You could see the comradery they shared.
It's a big hole in the court.
The court is quieter. [laughter]
It's not as lively as it was with his presence.
We feel his absence.
The hardest thing, I think, for every one of us
was walking into that courtroom
that first week of arguments
when his chair was draped in black.
I sat at one end at the time and often during arguments,
you know-- Maybe you don't know.
The bench is bowed because for many decades it was straight
and justices could not see each other from end to end.
So at a certain point, they changed the shape so that we can
actually look down the line and see each other.
And my favorite view was looking at Nino making faces. [laughter]
I try not to emulate him, but I must say it was fun to watch,
okay? [laughter]
And I could always know what he was thinking by...
[laughter]
I'm making a face, for those who can't see it, okay?
Or the big smile that would come
before he was going to lay into a lawyer.
[laughter]
You know, you're laughing, but this makes for engagement.
It made for excitement.
In one event, I said he was like a brother.
There were many, many annoying things he did. [laughter]
Sometimes he said some things
where I wanted to jump up with a baseball bat
and hit him over the heard.
[laughter]
But he was always interesting.
And that holds a lot for a court
that by nature is going to have disagreement.
It's hard to get unanimity among nine people,
and it shouldn't be easy.
If you understand that the cases we take have created a circuit
split, then you have to understand that by nature the
questions we're facing are hard.
If they were easy, all of the courts below would agree.
A circuit split means that there's arguments on both sides
and that reasonable judges on each side have been convinced by
a different set of arguments.
And so it shouldn't be an expectation that the Supreme
Court is more reasonable than all of those other judges below.
Or that we possess some magical power
that can tell us what Congress was thinking.
[laughter]
No, we're playing sort of detective.
We're trying to figure out
what the Congress meant in laws it passed.
And that requires a set of interpretory rules, tools,
that we're all using.
But, you know, if you start building a house with a saw,
you're going to get one kind of house,
then if you start building a house without nails
or that you've cut in a different way,
it's going to have a different look.
And so the tools-- We all use the same toolbox,
but in what order we use those tools of interpretation,
how we approach that construction or deconstruction
project will often lead to different results.
I think it's more surprising
when we agree than when we disagree.
- I think we have time for just one more question,
and I'm going to go ahead and sneak two in there.
[laughter]
You've said before that no one succeeds by themselves,
and you've been generous
both in talking about those who have mentored you
and in mentoring others who have come across your path.
And so my first question is: can you tell us a little bit about
one mentorship experience with one of your mentors that's been
particularly important to you and stands out among the others.
And, second, what, putting on your own mentor hat,
what advice would you give to those in the audience,
particularly the aspiring and new lawyers among us.
- Remember who Lindsey clerked for before me, okay?
Because I think she's heard me say this story before.
I think I have been mentored by many extraordinary judges
in my career, but there's one in particular that probably changed
the course of my life on the court.
And that's Justice John Paul Stevens
and the one year we overlapped.
One of the things I did that first year
was to keep track
as I read the cert petition memos
that came from our law clerks about all the petitions
to review cases that passed through the court,
and I would make a list of the ones that were troubling me.
Each justice can add to the discussed,
the chief's discussed list.
He lists all the cases he thinks we should talk about.
And then, the next day or the day after,
each justice can list those cases
he or she thinks should be talked about.
So the list grows.
If you're a new justice, sometimes it's pretty hard
to figure out what you should talk about or not, okay?
You haven't been there.
You haven't had the experience.
And that first year, the person I chose to be my barometer
was John Paul Stevens.
And the reason was that very often the cases that he listed
on the discuss list were cases that had given me pause,
but I hadn't been brave enough to list.
And then, occasionally, I would have a case
that I didn't see him list, and I would call him up and say,
"John, what's important about this case?
It didn't seem that unusual to me."
And he would explain it to me, and most often than not I would
say to him, "You know, John, I understand why you think it's
important, but I don't think the others are going to agree.
It doesn't have this or that."
And he would say to me, "Sonia, I know when I list cases
that I won't often get people to agree with me.
Often, it's really unpopular cases that I'm listing
just because we should talk about them.
There are issues that we should think about
even if we're not going to vote to grant them at this time.
And, Sonia, it's okay to be a solo voice.
Sometimes people have to speak as judges,
issues that need to be articulated,
even if other people don't agree."
That advice probably led and leads
to the many dissents I write
where I don't get a lot of people to join me.
He gave me the courage to understand
that some things just have to be thought about.
That some things have to be discussed,
considered, accepted or rejected,
but that the views have to be thought about.
And so, he changed the course of what I became as a justice.
And, for me, I think it was
the most valuable freedom he could have given me.
So, what do I look for in?
When I was a mentee,
what did I look for in mentors?
I looked for them to be more skilled than I was.
Doing things that I didn't know how to do.
Teaching me things
I wanted to learn more about and become better at.
I also understood that most mentors,
because they're good at things, you got to look for people that
are good at something, right?
They're really busy.
And the only way to get the attention of mentors,
particularly at busy law firms, busy government jobs, etc,
is by helping them.
Volunteering.
Helping them research an issue that's important to them.
Helping them think about a new problem and giving them a
different perspective.
Cite checking their articles.
When I was in private practice, I was working with a lawyer I
greatly admired, but I didn't really like his work,
and I wanted to work for someone else
who was doing work I wanted.
So for about a year, I was working two jobs.
It then took that second year
for the partner who I wanted to work with
to say to the other partner, "I'm taking her."
That happens a lot.
You end up working for someone who's not your ideal match.
Well, you may have to volunteer and work a little bit harder
at nights and weekends with the person you want to work,
with the professor you want to work for,
so that you can become their mentee.
Being a mentee requires you to work.
You have to be want to take advantage of the situation,
and you have to show your mentor that you're willing to work as
hard as they are.
That you're going to go every mile necessary to learn,
to grow, to appreciate the time they're spending with you,
and to make that time valuable for yourself and for them.
And so, I have never forgotten to be grateful to my mentors.
They spent time on me.
They gave me their attention.
Most importantly, they taught me how to be better at what I do.
That's the greatest gift any of us can ever receive.
Improving ourselves,
both as professionals and as human beings,
because I often found mentors,
and that was a big necessity for me, whose integrity I respected.
And so, I hope that that advice will be useful to you.
I know that looking for those people
who did things in a better way than I could
was always a really good qualification
for finding a mentor.
Are you through,
or are you going to ask another question, you guys?
- We would love to keep going, but...
- I'm thrilled...
[cheers and applause]