My name is waylon, and a general manager of the bookstore. We are delighted to have you here today to share an evening with ali vitali and kim tran wehle. This is an iconic establishment, during the 1976 dedicated to them inclusiveness. We love to have you here again. This is about our fourth and that so far in this new space so welcome. Its unnecessary to say but you can reach us also its always unnecessary to say that. Allow me tointroduce our guest of honor. Ali vitali is a correspondent for nbc news based in washington dc. She is has worked with both President Biden and Vice President harris as well as efforts. [inaudible] as an nbc news road warrior she followed her career on rrthe campaign trail of elizabeth warren, amy klobuchar. [inaudible] she previously covered the Trump Administration as a white house recorder for nbc news digital and the Political Campaign that ended before 2016 president ial campaign. Shes running in 2012 and her first book why hasnt america put a woman in the white house yet will be out in august 2023. Professor wehle is a lawyer and legal expert. She served as a legal analyst for cbs news on facethe nation with margaret brennan. She was a regular guest on msnbc, and npr and appeared on fox news and pds. Shes contributed to the hill and the Baltimore Sun and l. A. Times. Shes a former assistant United States attorney, associate independent counsel and in the whitewater investigation and author of the book how to read the constitution and why, what you need to know about voting and why and how to think like a voter and why. Kims books are all available at the counter of the bookstore and please help me welcome ali vitali and kimberly wehle. [applause] im so excited to be here in this space, feeling good about being back in person and to be here to celebrate kims amazing achievements of this latest book, youre so prolific. Were just talking about how many she has and i think its so gstriking you say its a big moment for Civic Engagement and i think this latest book really speaks to that and of course many of us know kim for from her columns, from her many a experiences and as someone was also all the time on msnbc. You and i get to be in boxes next to each other so to be here in person is a real treat. Ive been excited about doing this talk for weeks but im really excited that were doing it today of all days cause the first thing i thought of this morning was the news that we ended up covering all day which was on the leak memo or decision from the Supreme Court about the dobbs versus mississippi case. And the first thing i thought was how do i think through this like a lawyer would . Im glad were here to talk about this tonight because i wonder for you how you digested all the different pieces of that and how we as an audience of people who are engaged in following this news, what we should be looking at. Let me first thank kramer for having me and thank you allie for doingthis. Its a really question because in the book i talk about five steps. I break them thinking like a lawyer in five steps. The number one step and one that students have said is the biggest take away frommy classes is to take a big issue and break it down into smaller issues. So we are in a very polarized world. People say that all the time but when i say that what i mean is were into black and white thinking. Im right, youre wrong. Heads i win, tails you lose. We go to our camps and entrench ourselves in those camps and abortion as that one of those divisive e issues for decades and are you pro or you against and actually its a much more complicated, nuanced question. If you took the question and do i support abortion rights or not, on many sub issues there you have to think about the healthcare implications for the person who is finds herself with those unwanted pregnancy. You have heto think about the implications for the arc of constitutional law and other rights in america. You might have to think about the moral and religious implications for yourself, Justice Alito in the late decision opened that position talking about the morality of theissue which really isnt the job of law. Its the job of the individual and the family and the faith but if you take that big issue and break it down into smaller ones, immediately you realize and easy answers. If youwant to empathize one aspect of it , maybe if people believe, many people believe the life of the unborn child is something the law should respect but if that is your priority you have to give something up and youre going to have to give up omthe needs or interests of the woman particularly low income women who are disproportionately affectedby these kinds of loss. Thats released at one and we will talk about the other steps but getting informed on the facts, the legal implications that bear on each of these issues and turning it over , saying whats the other side of the coin here . I tried to say imagine youre a person that you really respect, what is the best argument they will make for a position you dont agree with. Where not used to thinking that way and thats what the book tries to get through and theyre doing a lot of tv and radio today and ortrying to break it down into what is this really about, is it a thumbsup or thumbs down issue is the most critical element. What youre talking about with the method in this ebook is so important to how all of us can apply the ideas to how to even make sense of this opinion ideranging that came down and will have impacts over the course of the next few weeks iaand months politically and of course physically and socially but its really your first book that allows you the perfect insight into this moment f particularly because its whats in the constitution. What are our rights you so i wonder what your thoughts work when you read that alito drafted what argument he was making. The critical part of my series of books s in the title is the lie. If you understand the why you can understand the what so why do we have Constitutional Rights and when i asked people i question what is a constitutional right inevitably someone waves their hand and they say its something that i have as an er american but functionally its not so much that what is a constitutional right to mark it the ability to get to court and get an order stopping government from being too aggressive into some space that is personal to you. So my first question in reading alito and we can talk about the details sets up a twopart test for these rights Going Forward that is a little arcane. Its brandnew in the law or it draws from other elements the bigger question really i said i think all of the abortion debate has been framed improperly around the rights of the woman. Its really about how much do we want to confine thand constrain the power of the government . This goes to anything from the right to bear arms to the right to not be forcibly sterilized by government. Thats not in the constitution. Where talking all about abortion rights are in the constitution but theres a lot of stuff thats not in theconstitution and the problem with this decision is its a potential cascade of implications for rights that we take for granted but if you understand why we have rights, why we call them rights is because most americans want their freedoms, they dont like an overbearing government. Thats a really different frame. So if you think about it that way and not so much so, is it the woman or the unborn child , what is it about as americans how much power do we want to get government, the Supreme Court looks like its poised to aggrandize the power of government and minimize the power of individuals and i uadont think people across the political spectrum like that idea. Its a fascinating way that you talk about it because the decision would put the power with the states so the idea theoretically of less Big Government at the federal level but much bigger influence at the statelevel which is fascinating if youre looking at conservative principles to. Thats also to talk about why do we have a federal government . Because we had a civil war just as an example around certain states wanting to continue to enslave human beings for profit. We then had the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment. The 15th camendment is where abortion rights and a lot of rights come from but what happened there . The Southern States said we dont care what the constitution says, were going to do what we want. Congress had to pass a statute called the ku klux klan act that basically as we said gives people the right to go to court to get an order to tell the government to stop doing something. So the fact that states have, you know, their own legislatures isnt enough. If they were enough we wouldnt have a constitution. The framers understood its psychologically human nature to abuse and entrench their power and thats why we have the government broken up into different pieces, its all about accountability and again in the book if you understand the why and you understandthe various implications you can noodle through these problems and get out of im right, youre wrong and then that just escalates and people get isolated. People tufeel judged. People feel shamed tand once shame enters the picture, the dialogue is over. I want to talk about the tribalism but the thing that was striking to me is i picked up this book initially y and i thought my parents are lawyers, theyre going to be thrilled im reading it but when you think about how to think like a lawyer some people might wall themselves off to the idea that they m even need to because they dont work in a firm. But really i think what i was struck by in these pages was the fact that you say attacking it with this mindset can help you figure out anything from should my kids have a social media account to the bigger question of what happens if im getting divorced . I think when you make that turn to the personal it becomes so much more acceptable and i wonder why you think its important to make that turn . Part of what i do frankly and why i started doing this a few years ago was to take the law school classroom, sophisticated graduatelevel legal analysisand translate it into commonsense everyday language. The big distinction i would saybetween how lawyers think and its hard for my students to get this. The rest of us , lawyers look for questions. Whats the answer, what do you want . Ou im not going to be sitting in your office when you get the first problem and if you can wikipedia the answer nobodys going to pay you 500 bucks an hour. Youre hired because its ambiguous. Its pushy, its confusing so lawyers are like bloodhounds and look for the questions and the answers only come later if at all. Most of us are going to be on the Supreme Court. So lawyers have to deal with bad law. They have to tell their clients they cant get them what they want. You live in this in between space and what we see on tv is there fighting for their client. What we dont see are the weeks and months and sometimes years of work gathering facts, making sure theyre verifiable. Not because youll go to jail but because it makes for Good Journalism and you have professional ethics and thats the same for lawyers. I think you make the point that a lot of this is factfinding and i think right now in this moment there is so much saturation online, on social media and ri along with that comes this information. Weve seen the s reallife implications of that even on Something Like january 6 but you given this book examples of legacy media organizations are the places you should be going you use rothe marty mcfly test of if they were around then you should be looking at them now but i wonder what you think othe impact of having all these different spaces for information are because on the one hand its a nice democratization. Of media and on the other hand it makes it good hard to find good facts. I i think about when i grew up in buffalo new york, one of five kids and we had the super encyclopedia. My mother bought it enough groceries she get the next volume and thats where we all went. That was everything. And so the goal and if you really wanted to date in, youd have to get the card catalog, you might have to do some microfiche or go to the xerox machine and make copies. Finding the information was the challenge. And was the skill. Now its the opposite, its sorting the information. Its sorting it, is not only overwhelming in terms of content and exponentially growing but computer algorithms based on our swipes and clicks and speech. Of thinking for us and feeding information into our phones that confirms perceived biases that we have. Its a different completely different world where we need to learn and teach our children how to sort for good facts and what does that even mean . That i think technology and i said this for many years but technology is vastly outpaced the law and its also vastly outpaced thow we problem solved. We talk about Critical Thinking skills. The fivepart method is really bad. Its okay, break it down into pieces. Identify your values and im sure well talk about that. Lawyers have to think about value systems, collect lots of knowledge and i talk about how to do it. Analyze both sides because if you dont think of your opposing counsels argument youre going to lose. You have toknow your opponents argument as well as her own and to which i think is critical , tolerate the fact that youre not going to get everything. Its not blackandwhite, its mostly gray and you have s to tolerate the fact that you cant have it all and youve got to give stuff up and were just not used to that in our culture. On team mentality, my team your team and its hurting rt kids. Thdepression rates, suicide. People are feelingalienated. They dont know how to communicate and bridge gaps and connect which is ourhuman instinct. So i think people do look at the title and sale lawyers, all they want to do is find. Itsthe opposite, its kind of chicken soup for the soul. With your one class wraps. I even grew up when you talk about having to learn both sides of it dad used to tell me you shouldnt ask questions you dont want to know what the answer is unless you know what the answer is going to be and that comes from knowing where the other side is coming from. The thing thats striking for me because i exist in a place that is regularly red versus blue. You can predict the tribal lines on every issue as a form and part of it feels like were not operating from the same set of facts anymore on a lot of these issues and im wondering how you wrap up this moment of perceived bias and the way that you cant really tolerate the other persons argument because it feels like youre not operating from the same foundation because the tribalism is just seeping in. How do you unwind all that . On i think a lot about this. I started with a book on the constitution then i realized our tomography is all about voting. Theres no right to vote in the constitution and then i realized its deeper than that. Our failing democracy is Something Else and thats the answer your question i think we need to go back to shared common values as human beings. I think what we saw today or were going to see with this decision is the crisis of co compassion in our country and just anecdotally, ive been in a number of with someone that was very dogmatic about donald trump or whatever. When i shifted the conversation to common values , common value systems, how government we want to be. Howpowerful , nobody wants that. Nobody wants government deciding how you raise your children. Nobody wants government telling you what job you can have. Whether you can enter into a contract or not. None of this is spelled out in the United States constitution so if we can connect around allright, were humans and we had this shared value system , we set aside the republican, set aside the democrat and build from that because once you do that then you have to start making compromises and when i know its a little high in the skybut its not going to be , i mean our political system is devastatingly broken. I still have hope but the structures are going to save us and obviously the Supreme Court is not going to save us. The only way this shining acbeacon of democracy in america is going to survive is or people to connect and connect with each other. I do think the one step of the five steps that stood out the most is the tolerate piece of it because ive been on the road traveling what either from eeveryone and the thing that just amazes me the most is people have stopped talkingto the neck their neighbors if they have different political opinions. They extricated themselves from family situations that might bbe uncomfortable. Those are the exchanges that can help us grow by being introduced to other mindsets that are our own, dont you think . That the concept of curiosity. I taught the class during the first trump impeachment called democracy at risk and the students were anxious about talking about these things because theyre worried and in that camp or that they get canceled. It happens across the political spectrum but i say okay, theres a recent Supreme Court case i wanted to bring to class to opinion editorials from legacy or respectful journalists that have different points of view. On whatever the issue is. At the end of the semester they said this is the safest ever felt to talk about heart issues and i came to class curious about different points of view. I also think teachers go and sort of thought leaders need to manage the conversation. When people start going into dark areas of im right, youre wrong you have to bring them back to some common ground. There has to be leadership around that. So anyway, i think its a really powerful thing that weve lost and the book again , you can take up to five steps. At thanksgiving, uncle milton is really difficult. How do you make it through a couple of hours of difficult conversations. The book lays out a five step methodology and i will say its a methodology. Any of you who watched the judge jackson hearing, you might recall her being asked particularly by republicans over and over whats your judicial philosophy. She wouldnt answer it. Why . Its not a black or white philosophy, its a methodology. Ishe kept saying its a methodology. I take into account all different facts. Precedents, the policy implications. The scope of my authority. The arguments on both sides and direct what i call a framework but it basically is like a decision tree for how to use through something hard . Its a myth that theres one way to read the constitution that theres a oneway judicial philosophy just like its a myth thatdeciding whether to take the job, deciding how to manage your divorce. Deciding on whether to split the elective surgery, these are easy black and white questions and politics is no different. I think thats a fantastic point and i want the audience to know i could ask questions for a middle million years and i have them but if you guys have any and youre noodling on any someones going to bring the microphone around. And someone can wait for ime in the back when they want to start doing that because im sure you have questions as well i think for me as ive looked at the arc of all the booksthat youve done on the constitution and on ethics , where do you think the next application of this goes . Where is your mind headed next . You asked earlier sort of why i do this or what the idea is, what got me intoit. Its really aching law and relating it to peoples everyday experiences. I know what thats like. People ask me all the time for years can the president he do that . Thats the wrong question. The question is if the president does it, what are the consequences. You know the speed limit is at 35. The numbers not going to slow us all down. What slows us down is the machine hiding in the bushes and that horriblething in the mail you get for 50 bucks. Its theconsequences. Thats an example of how using your common sense Life Experience to tied to these figurines. Where is this going . Hopefully starting conversations in this way in those small groups and you bring it home and then it goes and goes and we canstart working against the dark forces and join hands again on as people. And preserve what weve luenjoyed for 230 years and i have four daughters. I think its worth saving but its not going to be by listening to cable news and politicians and frankly unfortunately the United StatesSupreme Court. Which of course we love cable news. Youre going on on friday. Tune in. T but i think the one piece we havent talked about is the way people have established their fbias sets and the way bias might seep into that. I wonder if theres any way you thought of or tips you can get people for kind of as their formulating what their values are and also trying to understand whatother peoples values might be , how they confront their own biases to be a little bit more open to hearing another perspective. What i suggested thebook is to write them down. Write your values down. It could be, i mean, i tell my kids. They understand that you have to have integrity. I tell them thats one of my value systems. You have to have integrity in every decision you make. You might be unpopular, you might get people upset with you but if you hold on to that white house you will always find your way and i always tell them you get knocked down,you get up. Those are examples. You can find them from your faith, your religion or take whatever the issue is. Do i vaccinate my kids . I value health. I value education. Those two things can be competing. Your child might do better in an academic setting in school but you really dont want to vaccinate them because politically you feel thats not appropriate for the government to require that. Theres your tradeoff. But if you can say at the end of the day my value for my job is education and you can figure out how to make those compromises even if it means im going to have to take this one, im going to have to do the vaccination because my child doesnt do well on zoom and thats my priority. I think honestly most of us know what they are weve never had to write them down. And never really had to specifically put them down and of course the number of people who go to church now is disproportionately percentage wise lower than in the history of america easo thats one place people learn some of these things and now wfrankly with so much policing on terminology which im not a fan of because i think people need to learn and make mistakes, its harder and harder to have these expressed conversations in schools. I think people have to do it. They have to model it for kids and do it in your personal relationships and your classroom. I want to see if there are questions from the audience. I dont want to ignoreanyone if they have them. We dont have to be shy here. I will continue to ask my own. Im just trying to give the opportunity. I think that when i look at this two, the last question that i asked for myself was are you just creating an army of lawyers here . Answer, all of us will walk around thinking like legal scholars that could be the answer to making us a little more tolerant . Unfortunately there are a lot of unethical lawyers. So i guess the answer to that is number but the goal really is to give people a path to order out of chaos. And i like to think of that yinyang symbol, its really powerful for me. You might have seen it, its like tadpoles. Theres a blackandwhite side and the black side theres a white dot and the white side theres a black think of that as order andchaos. If we have too much were we got on the line and were not growing as people so you need a little dot of chaos but if you have to much chaos your freefalling and you lose sight of what matters and where you are you need order o in that. I think dialogue around these are divisive issues. Learning how to anchor our decisionmaking and medication and a value system. Those kinds of things hopefully will get some order to the chaos. Law is based on a value system. There are other parts of the world where there arent really graphic rules, if you want to drive up on the sidewalk or load through a stop sign you can. We have in our culture because we value order in traffic. We value maximizing safety. But that doesnt have to be the case. We value life to the point where were not going to walk outside and allowed someone to blow someones head off with a gun but that doesnt have to be the case. It wasnt always the case in human history. A lot of our laws are based on commonlaw england and i tell my students its like bilbo baggins, the jolly shires of england flop frolicking around, there were no laws. It was sort of plan based people work that stuff out and then the king wanted some order so he started the monarchs started coming up with what we now know as commonlaw. Things like negligence and bands on murder and battery and assault. That just organically arose to organize our life. We can think about law again as embedding our value systems and its something i think we all i think could benefit from in being a little more deliberate. One of mylast questions is its alsookay to walk away from those tough conversations. Thats something you write in the book. Other favorite lines i tell my kids a lot is when yourein one of those power struggles , whats powerful to me is to remember i dont need that other person to agree with me to have my own truth and adhere to what i believe. We can, people can agree to disagree but thats a little negative. Its not even disagreeing. I dont need you to adhere to my point of viewfor me to still have my point of view. And thats a really powerful thing. That you can let go of the rope and say thats okay, im out of the power struggle. I believe my truth and again, back to your sense of what matters to you. You can be very deliberate about that. You can tolerate the fact that you might not have everyone like you. Your value set is still written on a piece of paper. Its developed, i suggest people prioritize it for whatever decision theyre making gives a lot of strength and the last point i would say, again i have kids. And we all remember the middleschool. Theres power in groups. Theres a sense of empowerment arby being part of a group. You see it with clicks in high school. You see it with politics today. You see it with this in camps, entrenched point of view. Im on this team and thats my power. Its also a source of power to get people tools to make decisions for themselves. Thats another source of power. We could have a little bit of both and what i posit and i suggest if people are watching this on cspan is to think aboutthat. As an opportunity for feeling more solid in your life over the course of your life. We all have hard stuff. We all feel like were freefalling, its terrifying and were now clinging to an clinging, i know, barack obama got in trouble forusing network. But you know, this is where i fit in in this camp. But there is another way and theres still full of students starting studying hard, paying a lot of money to learn this education, there is a way to think like a lawyer and the book try to bring that Specialized Skill set into peoples living rooms. But you also managed to do the dance between the real legal and the court of Public Opinion which is also often the place all things should be litigated in their time. I see that as a privilege. Its a privilege to be to indicate some of these things and frankly i get people mad at me and i get people mad at me on the right. That means youre doing it right. Not relevantbut i do speak my own truth and ill go , im in marriage with that with anyone and i love them but there are lines that are like that for me around my valuesystem. Things ive wont cost and again i think thats something whether on tv or whether youre at home or in your workplace youre in your own life. Aim thankful we got to do this talk today of all days, such auspicious timing. To the audience im thankful for all of you for being here. We do have a question. With the scandal of the im eme court today curious what you think the future looks like for the Supreme Court and its integrity. I think its a great question and frankly one that we were asking all the lawmakers which is the impact of this kind of a leak which is so unprecedented although there was apparently a leak when role was first decided back in 1973 as well but what it means or the integrity of the Supreme CourtGoing Forwardto have a leak like this. I think that the focus on the leak is a bit off in that the integrity of the Supreme Court has been diminished now for quite a while. Its not the leak. It is the courts ideological, and i dont use this word lightly, radical approach to constitutional questions, peoples rights when they are not elected. They arenot accountable. Its we the people, not we the politicians and what where i got lost on this was with the texas law. Where ofwhether you like or not its the law of the land. The Supreme Court interpreted it,its like a note to the constitution. Thats the top dog, thatsthe boss of the bosses of the law and is not to ignore that. When it came to the viability test the court said where not going to enforce the constitution when it comes to that one. That to me undermines the legitimacy of the court. Much more than the leak and the other piece frankly weve lost sight of his, and this will get me in trouble i think with again people around politics but justice thomass failure to recuse himself from reelection related cases when his wife was texting chief of staff mark mark meadows urging the illegal overthrow of a legitimatepresident ial election. Thatto me i ask myself okay , why did he rule the way he did . Was he influenced, was he biased for personal reasons . That to me undermines the court much more than a clerk who prematurely released what is probably 99 percent the justice decision. That release doesnt necessarily affect how the decision came out. Whatever happened, those five are the way they are. They might have tweaked some language but the courthas itself to blame for its diminished legitimacy. Its not about the leak and historically there have been leaks. Its not okay, but if washington. You the hyper politicization of the Supreme Court that were going to be dealing with the ramifications of for a long time. Is there anyone else . I have questions about your writing process. The first one is what would you say has been the most difficult concept or idea youve tried to bring through . In terms of making it for people and then whats the most surprising thing youve received in terms of feedback as they read the book. The first question is what is the hardest part ofwriting the book. I think thats what we were talking about around lawyers. Its kind of getting over the stereotype that lawyers are really aggressive. That lawyers are thinkers, that lawyers get involved when people cant resolve things written to a selfhelp book was when someone i think one of the most moving pieces of feedback i got was from a radio host in california named jason downs who said he read the book and thought of the show ted lasso. At ted lasso, hes ahead of a sports team. I win, i lose but why people love ted lasso is because it thhes up doesnt approach the world that way. He approaches the world with curiosity and all these things so that was one of the best things i read. Nei also read online someone say i read the book and i still cant be my own lawyer. [laughter] thats a good take away. Anyone else . Im a minister and i have some concerns about roe versus wade from a ethical, moral and legal perspective. As a minister, from a protestant tradition i believe that thats an issue between the woman and her spouse. Now, some might disagree with that. But im a protestant minister and i believe that one goes to god for themselves. That we dont need an intermediary. The Roman Catholic church and a lot of the evangelical churches have been against roe versus wade. So my question is where is the church . Where is the church in this discussion . As i might have mentioned the very first sentence of alitos draft opinion talk about the morality of abortion i think your question is important in that it gets to the first step of the by breaking things down. Where is that conversation p. Is it supposed to be in the hands of the government. Whether that be a state legislature that decides that abortion at any point is okay or one that decides which i think were going to see its a point of conception its illegal and thats the case even in the case of rape or incest involving the child. Questions of faith are complex, nuanced, 40. Difficult questions. Questions that are at ask your answer in a blackandwhite fashion. Now you have a twopart test number one, did you express in the constitution if its not, then number two, is it embedded in the history and d tradition. And then the question is when you look at that. Justice alito gets in a time machine and goes back to the framing of the various parts of the constitution, back when people of color had no right to women, of any race had no rights, you have no right to your children if your husbanddivorced you, couldnt own property, couldnt vote. Couldnt legally be raised by your husband. So i just think to answer your question , it should be between a person and their maker. Their belief system, their families. Their own value system and id say forthose people that dont go to an organized religion again , step two ntidentify your values. Go internally but it shouldnt be in the hands of politicians and certainly shouldnt be in the hands of five human beings who are not elected and are not accountable and dont represent and reflect the very nuanced complexities that this issue presents. Primarily for low income women. I want to say 75 percent of abortions are experienced by women ywho are low income, 50 percent below the Poverty Level which shocks people. The Poverty Level is about just under 12,000 per year. For a Single Family household. People on the Supreme Court cant begin to fathom what an unwanted pregnancy would already have a couple of kids. Avyoure working shifts, you dont have healthcare. You have an abusive boyfriend. It cant begin to answer the complexity of that problem. And no one runs around saying and i can speak from experience but i think there are very few women that took the easy option. So you have a, you ask a very important question. And i got the majority would say were sending it back to the states, we agree with you. Thats why were taking it away from the constitution. I just think in theory the constitution is there to implement a baseline of a value system and that is about a limited government. That we dont want government to come so powerful that it can encroach on our personal physical autonomy. Our private spaces with our family. Religion etc. And the First Amendment is really terse, lots of unarticulated rights in the First Amendment. Theeminent doesnt say anything about freedom of association. This is assembly, this is expressly protected. But if i want to go out for a bite to eat that association. Theres nothing in the constitution that says government cant say we dont like this relationship, were going to penalize ali and kim for having a relationship. Were going to make that illegal work were going tospy on them. Were going to bully them, were going toaudit them. Thats not in the constitution. If anyone in america comfortable with giving the government whether its state, local or federal the power to make that decision for us west and mark i dont thinkanyone is. Thats whats at stake. With church and state prior to 50 years ago it was against the law for a woman to have an abortion. But with roe versus wade, it became legal or allowable lets say. Even before roe, it depended on the state. What roe versus wade is about is about constraining the power of states to make that decision for a pregnant woman. Right . Its a hard decision but its not a decision for government officials to make. Its a personal decision. Thats really what its about. Its about confining the power of government b. Its more about that than it is about what should an individual woman do about her personal circumstances and its been framed improperly in my view. The debate has been too much around the woman versus the fetus. It should really be about how much power do we want government to have versus your minister or your spouse, versus your family versus your own internal value system, etc. I think thats also sometimes lost your. Yes. This gets toty my first book on the constitution. Poverty is that something the Supreme Court has recognized as relevant to their Constitutional Rights. We hear about police reform. Theyll reform. An innocent until proven. Thats actually not in the constitution. Its not anywhere in the constitution. But if you are a low income person who is arrested and you cant make bail, you could serve your entire sentence without having a single day of process or trial. That is a mechanism of poverty. And this gets back to my other point. We have a crisis of compassion in this country. Thats the problem. We are thinking of things in his black and white political issues, not in our common humanity. When you do it that way things get clear i think and people are along the political spectrum have to give and take some things because what i say is vote at the ballot box for the person you want babysitting your kids or the one you want to teach her children orr the persn who is your best friend when youre sick and you trust to take care of the stuff in your house or whatever in your lifetime. That same value system probably as much as any other walk of life should inform who you give this massive power of government to, right . If i were to kidnap you, i would go to jail. The Police Officer put you in a squad car, thats an arrest. Government has powers you and i do not have. They need to be constrained. They need to be constrained. And this court is, did the opposite. They grand isle the power of government,so minimize the power of the small person. That should worry everybody in america,ub republican, democrat, and the panda, noncitizen. Be worried about that. I dont want to cut anyone else off from questions so a last call. Yes. I actually have two quick questions myself. One is, i picked up a copy of each of these books. Im looking forward to reading them and is one if i could have both of your autographs on them. We could do the afterwards. And second, i dont know the right way to ask this song give it a a shot. Even thoughh i dont, im not as much, i dont watch msnbc as much as my parents do. But i would say im autistic and ive been wanting to look into both law school and the legal field itself and with no intention to get to political, which is my thing anyway, that i would ask any specific influences . Like how you got started and stuff. Thats a greati question. Honestly im probably guilty school because i was really good student and it was time to go to more school. I dont know. Its definitely, i get, i get a buzz about when it comes to thinking through thorny problems. Thatat gives me a measure of joy and also like to communicate, and so those two things with other people and those two things are part and parcel. One of my colleagues whom i respect deeply, mike myerson, he tells his students, and i borrowedak this, its not that t makes you smarter. Its not that it make sure cognitive capacity high but it does make you smarter, more agile in noodling through hard problems. And again if theres an easy answer, there is no role for a lawyer, and are plenty of lawyers. What it means is that most of law like life is great. And again thats with the book tries to get that, so thanks the question. Thank you all. Thank you all so much for coming and thank you so much for all of your candor and your amazing insights into both this moment in political history, and also the way we can take it home for ourselves and be smarter. Everyone should be picking up a copy of the book. As excited as her friend here at a thought it was a great read. Thank you so much. Its been really an honor to have this conversation. Thanks to kramer books and cspan. [applause] watch booktv now on sundays on cspan2, or find it online any time at booktv. Org. Its television for serious readers. Weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History tv documents americas story, and on sundays booktv bring to the latest and nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 come from these Television Companies and more including cox. Homework can be hard. But squatting and a diner for internetwork is even harder. Thats why were providing a lower income students access to affordable internet so homework can just be homework. Cox connects to compete. Cox, along with these Television Companies, supports cspan2 as a public service. Yall are very kind. Thank you and welcome to all of you in this nearly packed auditorium but those of you also will join online. For a gentleman who needs very little introduction and who is a great friend of the Heritage Foundation and no doubt as i scan the audience a g