To celebrate the 100th anniversaries crautcreathing the Supreme Court. And we just heard a wonderful panel about experiences during the clerkship. And now we will hear one about life after the clerkships. Mag. Anel is joshua he is a very distinguished constitutional lawyer. And the author of important book on impeachment which he came to the National Constitution center to discuss with riveting detail. Recently he clerked for Justice Kennedy. Take it away, josh. Josh thank you very much for coming. m joined today by julia janiskowski. Hes a former general and managing director. I did a stint in private practice. And is now a judge on the u. S. Court of appeals for the third circuit. Shes the author of many bestselling books. If i listed them all she would be here for a while. Shes the creator of a podcast, better. , hes now a partner and a candidate for the mayor of the city of baltimore. So thank you very much for joining. Today,re going to be discussing life after clerking. In some ways this is a strange topic because literally every clerk has had a life after clerking. And their paths are as diverse. They cover every field of practice. Theyve extended far beyond the law. In order, theyre just like you. At the risk of fighting at the premise of this panel, theres something to be said that scow us the clerks are similar. They come into court early in their clears career. They might have had limited exposure. And we too face plenty of hard decisions about what we want to be when we grow up after the our time at the court. Theres no denying that the experience of a Supreme Court clerkship is powerful and transformative. The clerk at the court will be entrusted with an awesome responsibility early in ones career. The cases are hard and they encompass every area of federal law. Mistakes are high not only in blockbuster cases but in every case. These the pressure to get it right and no serve ones justice well is relentless and intense. And thats no to mention the small matter of sleep depravation. Clerking at the Supreme Court is an amazing opportunity for those struck by lightning. T can also be maddening, merciless and at times overwhelming. This. Merge from and on the other side of that furnace, i received the same piece of a advice over and over again. That was the coolest job you will ever have by far. Nothing else that you ever do for the rest of your life will ever compare. And ill be honest that was super depressing advise to get at the end of my Supreme Court clerkship. I guess its all down hill from here. Forge late in, thatted a viceveist was misplaced. The role of the clerk is to serve and advise. O act as their agent and their fiduciary. Acting only within the confines of the court. Thats a drilling experience. The world has a lot more to offer. Ive benefited greatly from lessons and insights from home i worked. Today, i would like to talk about a few of the lessons that i took from my clerkship experience and meditate on how theyve shaped my practice in the cases ive chosen to work on or been luckily enough to engage with. The first lesson of life in his change boeser is that civility. Its both a virtue and a paramount concern in addressing hard questions. Civility can be a challenging virtue to live especially in these polarized times when accusations are ready to hend and in which more and more persons are quick to assume theyre the worst of their fellow country men and women. Work for justice ken dwi a sustained education in living civility and the way he treat us and the way he expected us to treat each other. In the ways that we approach the cases before us and the way we interacted with other chambers. And thats carried through to my own pracktisms i work on issues that raise tough questions about the interception f lgbt rights. In a lawsuit under the clue clucks clan act against the white supremist that attacked you. In which they show respect for our position. It seems like theres a middle ground to be had in which we can find common values and virtues and build out from there. One of the lessons that i bring to all of these cases is that part of the role of a good lawyer is to treat everyone with whom they interact with respect and civility and to try to present issues to court and to judges in ways that if i can figure out how to say that in ways that appropriately reflect the balance of equities in the case and show respect to all sides even when youre advocating for the one. Not every case is and all or nothing adventure. The she said there could be balance in the law and thats something very much haze informed my work. The second lesson they took from Justice Kennedy is that theres more to the world that the federal government. Justice mething that kennedy cared. An many lawyers an commentators unduelly fixed as if its the only thing that meard. And the only place where equities can be resolved. There are 50 state governments in the country not to mention the District Of Columbia in which extraordinary work has been done. Ive taken many cases to aform the rights of Transgender Americans in iowa. And for women to come forward to me to make two statements in the state of virginia. My practice has been and the question is not just what those nine people think of this. Ive also worked hard in areas of Civil Society where justice can be done. Something that hes said its not just the stake. Its you can help build and nurture to try to advance the cause of liberty and human dignity. So in my own practice ive worked hard with roberta caplin on helping and providing a henl fund and the me too movement. And integrity first, encouraging combating america first. These can be done resourting to the federal government or the federal clerks. The third lesson that justice mpart is that lawyers have obligations that transcend winning. Justice kennedy loved the law. He loved doctrine. He said if he could have any job other than the job that he had, it it would be a District Court judge. He was fascinating when the rubber hits if roads and youre in the court making things happen. You know, i have my share of that love of the law. Who doesnt include a good brief . I sure do. But the fact is Justice Kennedy was as much a poet and a professor as he was a legal engineer and how he thought about the law and the role of lawyers. Some cases require a 10,000 foot view. Sometimes the highest calling is not just to litigate but to teach and to serve. Thats what led me. And to teach it towards georgetown lawsuit. And i tried to Carry Forward is his lesson is that its not just make the law. To expound on the lessons of the constitution and of the framers decision. The final point that Justice Kennedy would often emphasize in our. Is that the structure of our overnment exists to protect. He cared deeply about individual cases. But few cases woke him up and inspired him the same way about the structure within our constitutional system. The rules that mark out the plan of our government are the rules within which all over freedom and equality and dignity is protected and preserved or not. Tcheeze are. I think we can agree difficult times for american demock sit. We may not agree on why theyre difficult. We may not grow on whos to blame on the difficulties. Many would agree that these are challenges time for our democratic system. Its in no small part to focus on mini cases. It was in my own word in practice. It helped me bring the first cases urn against the president under the emolument clauses. I represent clients in new york and it helped me work on cases whereit helped me work on cases involving efforts to enforce congressional subpoenas against the executive branch and represented and helped advise the house judiciary commitee. Last but not least, it led me to write a book with the one just mentioned to end the presidency and power of impeachment in which the question we fundamentally sought to answer was how the impeachment can work and should in a society that is as polarized as ours. In many ways one of the highest calling of a lawyer is to uphold not the rights of any litigant of the cases in front of them but to defend the rule of law and institutions on which the rule of law is based. That was one of the guiding commitments of Justice Kennedys career and hope it will remain one of them of my own. We will turn to julius, who will talk about his background in the fcc and Carlyle Group and many other exciting forums. Got to the point where i said, he will cover it. Julius i clerked for Justice Brennan, got loaned to justice souter. Listening to the panel, reminded me when i clerked for Justice Brennan it was at the tail end of his career. I was the 100th clerk i think. I dont know if it was annual but i remember one reunion of brennan clerks, and i remember thinking, those former clerks are so old. [laughter] julius although they have had really interesting careers. In ae not done this mahth really long time, but i think it has been 27 years since i clerked and i am now in that category. It is a little bit strange. I will tell the story of my career since clerking. As you will see, it is about 10 strategy and 90 serendipity. But it has been great fun and i as lucky and privileged at the career i have as i did when i was at the Supreme Court getting those clerkships. I am not the only one with a story similar to this but my parents are immigrants, Holocaust Survivors, and the chance in this country to go to a law school like harvard and clerk at the Supreme Court was really an amazing thing. Actually at the Supreme Court, one of the most pleasurable moments was bringing my parents to the court and explaining to them why nazi germany could never happen in the United States because of the Supreme Court, which i assume is still true. I have had that chance with my parents over the course of my career. I loved clerking. I loved every minute, the intellectual challenge, subject matter, i loved the people. It was all great. It was not my first job like some other people. This was a topic in the prior panel. I worked for three years between college and law school, worked for Chuck Schumer on the hill, i worked for the irancontra committee which people dont remember it but i worked for that. That was fun. Over the course of my Supreme Court clerkship, i had begun to realize i was not sure i wanted to have a conventional legal career. While i loved it, i had begun to believe that for me it would be more enjoyable and rewarding to commit not to expertise in and around the law and legal practice, but to commit to expertise around a subject matter. And then have a lot of option ality around that, what i do for the rest of my career. The area that i picked was technology media, telecommunications. There was a few reasons for that. My dad immigrated here and became an engineer. I inherited some of that, the love of tech. I had always been an early adopter of Different Technology and kind of in a happy coincidence, when i was clerking, it was just at the very early days of the internet. The internet was up and running. If you could find a computer in the basement of a school like gw or georgetown. It was before browsers. When i was clerking, a fellow ben, who is still around and writing interesting stuff now, early to the internet, he said come with me after clerking and i will show you something really interesting. He showed me the internet in 1992. When i clerked on the d. C. Circuit, i had some interesting fcc and other technology, telecom related cases. When a fellow named chris wright who was in the solicitor generals office, he sent a note clerks my year saying i took a odd job as deputy counsel of the fcc. Does anyone want to work in the federal Communications Commission . At that time, not a lot of Supreme Court clerks wanted to work at the fcc. It was a backwater agency. [laughter] you know that part of the story. But it fit into something i had been thinking about and talked to chris. One thing led to another and i got hired as and to the general counsels office. Pretty quickly the chairman at the time said you have to come work for me. I did that and worked as chief counsel for the chairman of the federal Communications Commission for three years in the late 1990s, a really interesting time. It was the First Options of spectrum, Telecommunications Act of 1996, digital came out in the world of communications. I worked with terrific people. It was great. Then i had to figure out what to do next. I decided i wanted to move into the Business World and get away from what i had done in washington and try something different. I decided i wanted to find a job which i was too young to realize did not exist but looked for it anyway. I wanted to do something where i atld be general counsel something, a company, but also businessr possibilities. I talked to various folks and got lucky and got an offer to do that. It came from barry diller who at that point was just starting a company that became icy interactive core. It was known for being at abc, reinvented, movie of the week, miniseries area created fox news. Now he was starting a new company which many people work dubious about. He offered me the job i wanted and i became general counsel for his tv operations. No idea what i was doing, but had a great time doing sports rights deals, setting up tv stations. And after a couple of years, where he had done a number of acquisitions at the parent level, he came to me and said i want you to be general counsel of this company i am building. Barry, i came here because i wanted to move away from law and to business. I dont think it is what i want to do. Eventually, i realized i did not have a choice. He said he said many things. [laughter] he created an office of the chairman with one other grownup like him, and the other kid was a guy who went on to run expedia and now uber. The four of us worked in that office of the chairman. It was a little bit like a clerkship in that there was like 1. 5 justices and we were sort of the law clerks. Maybe we had more responsibility but i did that for a while. Eventually, i moved from general counsel to become chief of Business Operations at the company. At this point, it was a fairly billion6. 5 multibusiness internet, ecommerce Digital Media company like with expedia, ticketmaster, traditional media companies, entertainment. And then we decided to break up the company into six public companies. If any of you were shareholders at the beginning of the ride, it would have been very good by the end of it. After that, i had been working really hard for a long time. I tried to retire. As jeff knows, i was commuting between new york and d. C. , and i came back to d. C. And put funther a portfolio of activities. I started an incubator for earlystage tech companies, worked on some boards and spent time with law schools, worked with barack obama who had gotten elected to the senate. I thought i might have some advice for him about the role of that technology could play in politics. This is a topic we had talked about for some time. I can come back to that later. I also talked to him about media policy and various ideas, why he should run and why he might win. Didnt expect him to. Got very involved with that effort and then he won. And then asked whether i would come in to government and i was open to it. I wasnt looking for it. He said, come work at the white house. I said, i dont think i want to work at the white house. I said i used to work at the fcc and i think i should run that. And he said ok. Important lesson about asking for what you want. [laughter] so that worked out and i became chairman of the federal Communications Commission in his first term. It was a wonderful experience. I wish we could move back to that. It helped a lot that i had been at the fcc and the private sector, had time in congress. Those years were filled with net neutrality, wired and wireless, cybersecurity, on and on. And then that was exhausting. And i tried to retire again after that. Realized i was old and it was too early to retire. One thing led to another and i took a job as a partner at the group where i am now. I am an investing partner, investing in and buying companies in the u. S. And around the world. Continuing in the same space that i decided to be in at my media telecom. , that world has evolved and it has been great fun along the way. I had a chance after the fcc to serve on the president s Technology Advisory board. I served on some boards outside arlyle, also where technology is a theme. It has been great fun. Im sure i will think about retiring again soon and start another career. I will conclude by trying to answer the question josh posed which is, what was it about my clerkship that helped inform the rest of my career . The three ideas i point to are, you know, one, discipline, and you know, as we all know, you all know, discipline is a key attribute of surviving the job at the Supreme Court, much less doing it well. You know, any mistake that one makes is immediately exposed. You learn analytical rigor, discipline, hard work. Second, humility. You know, you learn humility in a number of different ways in a Supreme Court clerkship. Part of it is just the amazingly talented people you work with as colleagues and on the bench itself. Humility is a good thing to carry around with you as one tries to build a career. Finally, i think i took lloyd the the i took away from Supreme Court clerkship audacity. The sort of by that, i mean the idea anything is possible, that if a child of immigrants, Holocaust Survivors can clerk on the Supreme Court and give advice to justices, you can do anything. If you can survive a year with such an amazing group, and so something seems interesting, worthwhile, important, why not . With that, i think someone else should talk. That person will be judge kraus. Im going to take an approach thats less chronological and perhaps speaks more generally to aspects of a clerkship that informs peoples careers. [indiscernible] i dont know. Is that better . Yes. Clerkshipreme court is different in the kinds of cases and number of cases, which is a lot less than we have on docket in certainly District Courts. In the intensity of it and the experiences of it. Many aspects of it can also be generalized to clerking elsewhere including on state courts. For me, the effect of a clerkship was, first of all direct and practical in that it prepared me for this job. When i started this about 5 years ago, i had some idea of what it might look like. Some ideas about how to run the chambers that were in the vein that josh expressed in terms of the lessons in civility, the ways to interact with clerks, to bring clerks from many different perspectives together, to work through issues from all angles. And to think about that experience as one that carried responsibility for mentoring them, as well as the focus we have on deciding cases properly under the law. It also exposed me to areas of law that i had had some exposure to in law school but thought of as quite foreign including criminal law. It was in the course of clerking initially on the court of appeals that i realized these sas who wereau coming to speak to us were speaking to what they actually did at trial. The idea that i could even in the next few years be running a trial and then arguing the case in the court of appeals was really intriguing and exciting. It led me after the clerkship ended to go to the u. S. Attorneys office in the Southern District of new york. That would not have been on the radar for me had i not seen that in the courts. In the course of clerking. The other very practical effect is the network one gets. It is an extraordinary network as the last panel was discussing. But it is also an Extraordinary Group of people who choose to clerk and have the remarkable opportunity to clerk. The network that flows from that, as i try to encourage my own law clerks now, they cant foresee the kinds of opportunities that will be provided down the road. I have no doubt i would not be in the job i am in but for one of my clerks who has spent time in the white house counsels office. When i wanted to do some teaching initially on the side, as i was working at the u. S. Attorneys office and continued to do that as a lecture at various schools, the ability to call up someone who is now there as a professor who is a coclerk or the dean of the law school after a few years in the case of columbia and has those openings to teach what i would like. And the support of the faculty in doing it. It also even in the course of private practice meant there was this array of experts in various fields that were happy to answer calls and share their views. Because it is a real bonding experience and it is in formulaic years as a professional. The experience of clerking also in short made me a better advocate. I spent many years in private practice after i was clerking, visiting scholar at stanford for a bit, and then at a firm very briefly in the u. S. Attorneys office and many years of practice until i was appointed to this position about five years ago. One of the ways, as some have spoken to, you see issues from all sides. Far beyond what you do in law school of taking one side or the other. It really is tracking down every lead and thinking about it from different angles, and thinking about more broadly the consequences of things you do as well. You have exposure to the good and bad of advocacy. It is in a way that you can learn and understand beyond what is an academic notion, because as a law clerk, you actually know the case. You know the issue. Sometimes you know it better and the record even better than the attorneys who are coming to argue. And so you really can evaluate when a judge asks the question and counsel is giving an answer, did they get it . Did they understand where the judge is coming from, and do they understand how they can best position their answer to advocate for their client and gain the confidence of the court that they have thought these issues through . Prioritizing issues is another one. At the Supreme Court, you realize quickly the depth and quality of argument is far more important than the quantity of argument. When they get rates raising 7, 8 different issues and touching on the moment briefly as opposed to a handful, they are really researched and argued. You learn to be responsive and end up being conversational. The best advocates who came before us at the court were those who, in short they were terrified. They were able to conduct themselves in a way that was really a conversation, respectful but in many ways, expressing that they were an intellectual peer in trying to get the right answer here and trying to help the justices or judges as the case may be, figure out how the law should be evolving in this area. And in terms of being an advocate, that is the other point i wanted to touch on. I think in the course of clerking and particularly on the Supreme Court, where you are looking at it and perhaps you are really looking at it zooming out to see the broader perspectives and zooming in for the concrete principles or doctrine that needs to be applied. But the ability to zoom out and think about a case and your advocacy for a client in that case, not simply to win that one matter, but to realize where it falls in the development of the law itself. That is part of what judges are thinking about, the continuity of that. And adhering to a story decisive and not deciding things that werent briefed, that have not been thoroughly thought through because of damage that might be done. So the ability to zoom out and have the perspective as an advocate and to craft arguments that way and to respond to questions from judges that way i think was very helpful to me in private practice and with various volunteer work and work for the city and the board that i did for several years. And finally, in a way that is less tangible, but in many ways more profound, the clerkship, it taught me some things about life. One is that it humanizes figures of authority. And you realize in the course of that judges and justices are human beings. That judges and justices are human beings. They have families. They are juggling things like all of the rest of us. And so there is an evolution that i think goes with that of moving from anxiety and awe to admiration and respect for human beings who are dedicated to the law, who are working very hard to try to get things right, and who are using the opportunity they have been given, the privilege of serving in that platform to also better the institution of the legal profession. Whether it is through academics or Community Service or civics education. Is the confidence and competence you get having to play devils advocate with someone of that stature. Finally, the broadening of the meaning of success, which is something i think we really need in this profession. That is to say that coclerks, there are coclerks of the law in a wide variety of things, but there are also coclerks of mine who went into private equity or became novelists or School Administrators or opted out for a time permanently from the Office Environment and decided to, after the clerkship for example, to focus on raising a family and using the skills and insights they had gained for Community Service and volunteer work. So gaining that sense of both confidence and autonomy i think are things that are very helpful and useful things to import into the Legal Professions at a time when the happiness and satisfaction in the profession is struggling in many ways. Jeffrey i think it is a wonderfully natural transition. [laughter] our expert on happiness. So please, take it away. We have 10 minutes. We are right on track. Gretchen i have written nine books of nonfiction and three novels which are safely locked so they will never see the light of day and i have a podcast called happier. This is nothing i would have envisioned back when i was in law school. I did not anticipate that i would end up here. I went to law school, i was editor in chief of a law journal, i clerked for the Second Circuit and then came to clerk for justice oconnor. And there i was. And one of the things that always happened to me throughout my life is i would get intensely focused on weird issues like i went through this with color. I got really obsessed with color. I am obsessed with aphorism. If you have any favorite ones, i am collecting them. Right, sorry. And so this is something i knew about myself. When i was clerking, there was a day where i went for lunch, during my lunch hour to go for a walk around the beautiful capitol hill and i was looking at the dome against the bright blue sky and asked myself a rhetorical question, what am i interested in that everyone else in the world is interested in . Power, money, fame, sex and these words kind of locked into my mind and overwhelmed me and i became interested. So there i was, i was clerking the Supreme Court, working, working, then i had free time i would stay late or i would come in on the weekends because this was before the internet, so i would run giant searches on lexisnexis. Also littleknown perk of being a Supreme Court justice is you can check out books from the library of congress. Like, everyone else has to look at them in the library. If you are a justice, you can check it out. I would request all of these books and ask for books like deep in the heart of texas, the true story of Three Sisters who were all dallas cowboy cheerleaders. What the librarian thought, they never asked. It is an extraordinary meditation on fame. I was doing this in the background. You know, i had done this throughout my life, so i knew what this felt like but it was getting bigger and bigger. I went to go work for the fcc where we overlapped. I was continuing to work on it and it finally occurred to me it is the kind of thing somebody would do if they were going to write a book. I went to borders downtown and checked out a book like how to write and sell your Nonfiction Book proposal and started following the directions. And so i was finishing up law and i had it reached the where i point thought i would rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer. I dont know what i would do in law. If i ever am going to take my shot, this is the time. If i ever am going to take b, i dont think i will risk it again. I will be deep into a path. I wont want to step off and do Something Like write a book. My husband and i were moving back to new york. He was leaving law as well. He took Financial Accounting at night. We were in new york and the day came where we got notices from the new york state bar association. Time to pay the bar fees. I looked at my husband and said are we going to pay them . He said, are you kidding, of course not. I was like, this is really happening. I got an agent and started writing books and that is what i have been doing ever since professionally. When i look back about what was it about sort of the extraordinary experience i had as a clerk and as a lawyer, part of what it was for me was the level of excellence. It is rare. As you get older, you realize how rare it is to be involved in truly where truly, every Single Person is straining with all of their might to work at the uttermost of their capacity. Even people who disagree with what the justices believe and argue, i dont think anyone would say they are not doing according to their own rights own light what they believe to be the best for their country and trying to do their best work. That standard of excellence i felt was a rare opportunity and taught me the pleasure that comes from working at the level of excellence. Also, the logic of it. I mean, i dont know about you, but i read stuff and am like this is not, you are not arguing something logically. You are asking me to assume something that you have not proved and i reject everything. Just the rigor of it. And checking sources, all of it has paid off. I have also learned some negative lessons, which perhaps you will share my pain. Legal writing. The turgid, the convoluted sentences, the jargon, reading all of this stuff, scholarship debriefs, made me commit my life to clarity. I have spent so much time, can i cut out these phrases and say whisper instead of said softly . I feel like i really learned seeingom legal writing, how much more efficiently and effectively people were able to persuade when you could understand what they were trying to communicate easily instead of struggling to understand what they were saying. That really showed me the power of persuasion comes from clarity. I clerked for justice oconnor. There were two things i was moved by with justice oconnor. She was an icon. She was a Supreme Court justice where people recognized her. She was a figure. Someone mentioned humility. One of the things that was a tradition in her chambers was we would celebrate birthdays. She is sort of a party giving type of person. It was always a big deal in the chambers. A year before, they had given her a birthday book. It is like your birthstone and astrology sign and funny that happened in history. The clerks had given that to her. My year, we were looking it up for the first time, what happened on our birthdays. On her birthday she said, tell me, who important was born it is you, justice. [laughter] a very strange look on her face. I thought it is strange to be justice oconnor. She told me something about happiness i have never forgotten. I read about happiness and was having lunch with her, stopped by her chambers and said, ok, justice, so what do you think is the secret to happiness . Right away, no pause, she clearly had thought about this before, she said work worth doing. The more i have thought about that over the years, the more profound and true it seems to me to be that work worth doing really is a secret to happiness and one of the things about the clerkship is we feel like we are doing our best at work worth doing for ourselves and we hope for the country. So it was a wonderful experience. Joshua nothing brings a moderator greater joy than someone who finishes on the 10 minute mark. Thank you. Joshua take it away. What a privilege to be here and what an honor it was to be a clerk. I want to spend a minute i see students in the room. Reminding people how much a Supreme Court clerkship may not matter because i think so much of what we become as lawyers, adults, professionals is defined by things that happened before and after. I am an immigrant. My family were refugees from sri lanka and we came over when i was three years old escaping a civil war. My parents got a chance in Baltimore City. My parents were both teachers, my mom retired at a reasonable age. My father taught at a bunch of different schools in Baltimore City and retired as the oldest teacher teaching in the state of maryland. He was 80 years old. Hes 83 now. Doesnt look 83, doesnt act 83, doesnt like people telling he is 83. Thats the tradition in which i was raised. Going to Public Schools myself, and then i went to some tough andols, yale for College Harvard for law school. I was resident of the log review before law review before barack obama made it cool. I devoted myself to public service. I think about whether that would have been that different if i had not gone to clerk for justice breyer. I am not sure. I thought i would be a law professor. While clerking, we had a case involving school segregation. Naturally, because his father was the lawyer for the San Francisco school board and my parents were teachers at some hyper segregated schools in baltimore, which was a school like the one i had went to as well, that was naturally the thing i devoted a lot of my time to. At the end of the year, the plan so well laid as president of the harvard law plan, to become a law professor with the last thing i wanted to do. I went to justice breyer. He was so evenhanded and even keeled about what had happened. I was up in arms. I was so apoplectic about the fact that this 54 dissent would become the law of the land and that so much work that he had done was in the words of dissent. I said i dont want to go become a law professor to write about these things when there are fights to be fought. I had he had this reaction to calm down. You are here for a year. We do this every year. He gave me some great advice that helped me define and decide what i wanted to devote my life to. I think of the lessons, not just from justice breyer. It was from my clerkship with greater calabrese as well. I think the mentor relationship you form with the judges and justices are perhaps the most important thing. In that regard, it doesnt matter whether it is a justice or judge or law firm partner. There are insights, true wisdom that come from them. From judge calabrese i remember there was a lawyer for the Justice Department. They were before the court and it was an immigration case read case, the immigrant was pro se. The lawyer had the better argument. The question the judge had asked was, counselor, we understand the Justice Departments position, but isnt there another way this asylumseekers could seek asylum . The lawyer said yes. I have advised my opponent that he could in fact apply if this does not prevail through that and perhaps obtain relief. The judge interrupted and said can you sit down and ask the pro se litigant to come up . And said, is it true the Justice Department lawyer actually shared that with you . He said yes. He said you should continue with your appeal but if i dont get this, there may be a parallel route. He called the lawyer and said was a very early memory of mine he said it is nice to be , reminded you dont work for the department of deportation, you dont work for the department of convictions but you work for the department of justice. He then wrote a letter of commendation to the Justice Department for what this person had done. At that moment, it stayed with me. You suddenly realize that even at the level of the Supreme Court, where some of the most controversial issues are been decided every year, the way in which these incredibly thoughtful, brilliant jurists approach the most impassioned issues with a level of dispassion is actually really, really important. That they dont rewrite the entire constitution. They dont shout and scream from the rooftops, they find a moment of measure. Thisi remember toiling on important dissent and knew it was important to the justice and i wrote something that was a scream. He said no, this will not do. You spend 20 pages writing evenhanded history of what happened. No adjectives, no hyperbole. What happened. Then you write 20 pages of evenhanded analysis, no exaggeration, no amplification. And then you can explain why the sky is falling. Because what youve written will persuade people that are already convinced you are right and they will make them angry but it will convince no one else. The art of advocacy is convincing people on the fence or perhaps even on the other side they have to open their mind to change. It was an extraordinary lesson. I didnt know what i was going to do. I certainly didnt plan on being a prosecutor or aspiring politician but it was an insight that stayed with me for a long time. The last lesson i thought was really potent, and it was mentioned a couple of different times. There is an individual humility and institutional pride that comes with working at such rarefied heirs. There is also, the perfect word was audacity. Realization that some of the most important things being done in the world are being done by human beings. The ideas that are hatched are hatched by ordinary people. Sometimes 24yearolds that are a couple of years out of law school provide an insight or a piece of research and it changes things. It really can change things. It allows you to go off into the world and have a level of confidence there is not another room down the hall where the great decisions are being made. Oftentimes, you are in that room and expected to be that person. That has been very powerful. I will end perhaps with a story that is both about baltimore and about how little value as a clerkship canourt have. President obama didnt waste any time with Supreme Court clerkships. The other person that did not do that was a young man from baltimore named thurgood marshall. He went to Frederick Douglass high school where my father had taught many moons ago. He then went to Lincoln University and wanted to go to the flagship law school, university of Maryland Law School. Back then blacks were not , admitted. He went down to Howard Law School and he started studying discovered by the dean of Howard Law School, Charles Hamilton houston. Dean houston was the first africanamerican editor admitted to the harvard law review. His portrait is the only portrait that fits in the law review building, not barack obama, not all the Supreme Court justices. Just Charles Hamilton houston. It was not because he was the first africanamerican editor but because he discovered thurgood marshall. As a dean, he saw the student who was so brilliant, advocate, ntored and he mean him. He graduated top of his class. He could have gone to any law firm, but he went back to baltimore. Fresh out of law school he hung up a shingle on a redwood street downtown. He filed a lawsuit against the university of Maryland Law School for not admitting blacks. He made an argument no one had ever made before. He made the argument no court had accepted before and he won. University of Maryland Law School became the first graduate program desegregated by an order of the court. The same argument he made in 1932, he made 20 years later when he argued brown versus board of education. I am proud of the fact that kid is from baltimore but it is also a reminder that that audacity and confidence, you can make an argument no one has made before doesnt require you to clerk on the Supreme Court. It requires you to appreciate that the power of the law and the power of advocacy and the power of insights, we saw day after day at the courts but it lives and breathes in advocacy and in courtrooms and in law schools everywhere. Joshua i feel silly trying to add or improve on that. I know that we are coming on the 3 00 deadline so thank you for joining us. For theirow panelists inspiring presentations. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] chatter] cspans washington journal , live everyday with the news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, wall street journal economics reporter sarah cheney will join us to discuss the september jobs report on the slowdown in manufacturing. Crstality of virginias ball managing editor talks about how the impeachment pushes affecting campaign 2020. Watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Be sure to watch washington journal starting monday at 7 00 eastern as we continue our tour across the country. On monday morning, we will visit the battleground state of ohio. Attorney general william barr delivered remarks at a Justice Department lawful access summit in washington, d. C. He spoke about social media and Technology Companies using and end encryptiono and the threat it poses to the public. He along with his counterparts from the United Kingdom and australia sent a letter to facebooks ceo, mark zuckerberg, asking the company to delay oend across its messaging services, citing public safety. [applause]