Particular has a monumental role. It endeavors to guard the values and architecture of liberty, equality, and solidarity found in the constitution. It does so against the excesses of majority rule, partisanship, or president ial overreach. The Supreme Court, however, is made up of nine individual human beings. Each with her or his individual perspective on the balances struck in the constitution, and on the precise guideposts on decision making. We are most proud to have one of these nine with us this evening. Stevenslecture is honorable elana kagan, associate justice of the United States of Supreme Court. [applause] mr. Anaya notably, Justice Kagan replaced Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court after the late justice announced his retirement and president barack obama appointed her to the court. Justice kagan served as the first female solicitor general of the United States and in that position, she argued a number of important cases to the Supreme Court. She had a storied legal career since graduating from harvard law school, not only in Public Service, but also in the private sector and the academy. She was a law clerk for Justice Thurgood marshall, served president bill clinton as well as president obama, practiced law at the powerhouse firm of williams and connelly in washington, d. C. , and was a professor at both Chicago Law School and harvard law school, eventually serving as dean of harvard law for five years. Thatlog oyez comments Justice Kagan brings a fresh perspective to the Supreme Court based on her prowess with technology and pop culture. [laughter] mr. Anaya i would add that she also brings to the court a wisdom grounded in a love for the law and a justice that can , and an awareness of the people in the world that it touches. Kagan on thece stage this evening is the director of the byron white center, provost professor of civil rights law, suzette malveaux. [applause] mr. Anaya the professor is a nationally recognized expert and frequent commentator on civil rights and class action litigation. She joined the university of Colorado Law School just over a year ago from Catholic University of america, and since then, her commitment to cutting edge scholarship, integrative teaching, and Public Service has have contributed to the life of the law school. After a discussion with Justice Kagan, professor malveaux will take a few questions for the justice that have been submitted in advance. I was asked to address some household matters before i welcome them to the stage. First, please make sure your cell phones are turned off or on silent. Now i feel like i have turned into someone who is a dean trying to keep everyone in order. Also, photography is not allowed except by accredited members of the press who have received permission. At the end of the event, please remain seated until Justice Kagan and professor malveaux have left the stage. It is my pleasure and honor to ask you all to join me and in welcoming to the stage united , states Supreme CourtJustice Elena kagan and professor suzette malveaux. [applause] thank you. I cannot see anything, but it looks like there are a lot of you here. [laughter] Justice Kagan i am very honored. Its great to be here. Aboutmalveaux there are over great demand for you to be 2000. Here. And it is such an honor. So thank you so much for being here. We are absolutely thrilled that you are here for the stevens lecture. One of the special things about you being here for the stevens mentioned, the dean is that this lecture is actually named after Justice John Paul stevens who was your predecessor on the bench. In fact, he gave his first inaugural lecture in 2011. And i have heard you speak eloquently at his Funeral Service and elsewhere about how you assumed his seat on the bench, but you cannot fill his shoes. Justice kagan too large. [laughter] prof. Malveaux can you tell us a little bit about his influence on you and what it is like to Carry Forward his legacy . Justice kagan it was so sad for me and for all of my colleagues this summer when he passed away. He was a great, great man. I never had the chance to serve with him, so unlike many of my , colleagues, i cannot tell stories about what it was like to be on the bench with him or in conference with them, but he is and long has been a hero of mine. He has a passage in one of his books about how he was honored to take the place of Louis Brandeis on the court. In the court, there are particular seats and Everybody Knows which justices have filled those particular seats. And i sit in a seat which when Louis Brandeis, phil douglas, and john stevens, and then me, which is quite extraordinary. But john stevens, if john stevens felt that way about Louis Brandeis, i feel that way about john stevens. He was a man of extraordinary brilliance, but even more of extraordinary wisdom which is not the same thing. He was a man of great integrity. He was a man of great independence. He always did what he thought was right no matter what, and sometimes that meant that he wrote anown way, and opinion that nobody else signed on to or voted in a way that nobody else joined, but that was ok with him. He had his own view of the law, and he stuck with it, and was extremely independentminded. He was a deeply kind person. I think all of his colleagues appreciated as well as his clerks and everybody else in the court. I think in terms of his judicial legacy, what he will go down in history for is the deep commitment to the rule of law, to the principal that no person, however high or mighty, is above the law. That we are all subject to the same legal rules, and company and principle that whether you are powerful or whether you are powerless, you know, the most humble person, the poorest person, the least educated person is entitled to be treated by the legal system with the same dignity as the rich and the powerful. For me, that is a great legacy. Of a magnificent 35year career on the court. Prof. Malveaux that is really important. Absolutely. I have to ask this question because we have a number of students in the audience. Can i get a show of hands for the students that are here . Great, wow. Awesome. Justice kagan awesome. [applause] prof. Malveaux we have a lot of students. Justice kagan and you are all in the front, too, which is fantastic. I dont know who they put up there. [laughter] prof. Malveaux the students are vips. Is law kagan what school about except for the students, right . Prof. Malveaux exactly. Justice kagan what else is everybody else there for . Prof. Malveaux this is for the students. Why did you go to law school, what it was like for you to be a law student, and if you could give some advice to our law students about the approach of law school or entering their legal career, especially in this time . Justice kagan i went to law school for all the wrong reasons. [laughter] in, when i was a dean , i was talking to a bunch of College Students about whether they should go to law school. I was saying these formulaic things about how you should really think about whether this is what you want to do, and you shouldnt go to law school just because you cant think of anything else. [laughter] and because you want to keep your options open. And as the words were coming out of my mouth, i was thinking, i dont know, i went to law school because i couldnt really think of anything else. [laughter] and i wanted to keep my options open. [laughter] so i dont really prescribe this as the way to approach. This decision. But i am here to say that even if you want to law school for all the run reasons, like that when i started law school, i just loved law school from the beginning. [laughter] does that make me weird . I dont know. From my very first day. I loved law school because it combined two things. One, i loved the thinking that law school demanded. I loved the kind of analytic rigors law school demanded, i loved the sort of logical puzzle kind of enterprise that law is. You know, trying to think through complicated legal problems, sometimes arcane legal doctrines and sort of figuring it all out in a way that you might figure out a crossword puzzle. But i also loved that this was not an abstract or sterile enterprise. That this was a way to make a difference in the world, that it was a very obvious to me in my law school classes, how it was that law was about the betterment of our society, about the advancement of human welfare. Uh oh can i help . We will just [laughter] i am the wrong person to help. [laughter] prof. Malveaux are we doing all right . [applause] Justice Kagan i will try not to move my head too much from now on. It had this really practical aspect to it. And you could see how it could make a difference in the world. And how a person using it could make a difference in the world. That is what i loved about law school. I guess what i would say to students about what to do with their years in law school and how to think about their legal careers is, you have this great opportunity to find out in laws school what really moves you, what other the kinds of things that you really care about. And they will be different for all of you. But if you come out of law school with a sense of, this is the kind of thing that if i i would want to go to work every day and i would feel ofif i was doing a job full purpose and meaning. That is a great thing to come out of law school with. Not everybody does. Some people find it later on in their legal career. But to try to use law school as an opportunity to experiment in Different Things and an opportunity to try and find that passion, that sense of, this is what i really care about, and to not be so worried about planning. I am a big antiplanner. [laughter] i think most law students are planners. Most of you will plan enough, and if you once in a while think to yourself, no, Justice Kagan told us not to plan, it would be a good corrective. [laughter] of,ink actually that most the best things that happen in peoples legal careers, and when they think of people legal careers i say, wow, to live a life like that, it is like luck and serendipity. You make your luck and there are ways of putting yourself in a position to be offered certain opportunities. But for the most part, things, the blue, i think. Thats the way life works. I think too many law students and Young Lawyers put themselves on this plan. First i have to do this, then i have to do that, and that prepares me for the next thing, and they will say no to opportunities that sounds really fun and exciting and interesting, because it is not on the plan, and they worry about, if i leave the plan, how do i get back on the plan . I think the most fun and interesting and exciting parts of most legal careers are when people leave the plan and they look around. They notice something. They say, i never considered that for a minute. Gosh, that is a lot more fun than what im doing now. I dont know. I really think the best legal careers are the ones that are guided by a sense of, is this more fun than i am doing now . [laughter] i think ill go do that then. You know . Prof. Malveaux that makes sense. You have them looking around for fun. Think about your career and the way it has gone. It seems, you know, you start off at harvard law. The dean did a good recap here. Then you are clerking on the d c circuit, then you are clerking Justice Thurgood marshall on the Supreme Court, then it is at the to Teach University of chicago, then teach at harvard law school, then you become the dean, then solicitor general, then Supreme Court justice. Justice kagan you skipped a few. [laughter] i couldnt keep a job. You know . [laughter] every four years i was off doing Something Else. Now i am looking forward to keeping this for a while. [laughter] [applause] prof. Malveaux from an outsiders point of view, it looks like a dream life. Wow. I am interested in the times you failed. Can you tell us about those and how you deal with disappointment . Justice kagan it is like, you look at my resume and you seal the jobs i got, but you dont seal the jobs i didnt get. Truly. For every job i got there were two that i did not get. And that i was disappointed about not getting. It started from law school. Law school i did very badly my first semester. I thought, oh my gosh, law school has finally outed me for the fraud that i have always been. [laughter] prof. Malveaux it wasnt true. Justice kagan right. I turned myself around and figured it out. There is nobody who has at least there is nobody maybe somebody you know. I have flitted around a lot. Are goingsome people to do one thing and get one job, and it is going to be perfect. I will do that for my whole life. If that is what makes you happy, thats fantastic. But if you are more like me, there were plenty of jobs i did not get along the road. One job i didnt get was bill clinton nominated me to be a judge before. And the senate didnt give me a hearing, and i never became a judge. There were other jobs in government that i didnt get when i was dean at harvard i was. Considered to be president of the university. I didnt get that. I mean, some of these were highclass disappointments. I dont want to [laughter] know. Dont i am a big believer in you just , cant let disappointments get you down too much. I know it is a little bit of magical thinking but i am a big believer in the idea that when a door closes, a window opens. It may be the best thing you that ever happened to you that you didnt get a job. That was true of when i was nominated to be a judge. I was quite young at the time, i was in my late 30s. Four yearsworked for of the Clinton White house. I thought i wanted to be a judge. The senate thought otherwise. [laughter] it ended up being, you know, i didnt get it. I spent the next decade doing all kinds of things i really enjoyed. And i became a justice anyway. You now . So it worked out fine. Yeah. [laughter] prof. Malveaux i want to turn our attention we have a lot of folks here in colorado. There are certain legal issues that are salient in a square state like colorado. What i am thinking about really is indian law, water law, environmental protection, those sorts of things. And wondering what your approach is. How do you go about educating yourself when it comes to those complex areas of law, but then also other cultures you may not be intimate with. How do you educate yourself and your colleagues to address those matters . It is interesting that you said you are here in the west fourth year on the and remember my fourth year on the court. I was assigned an opinion by the chief justice. It was a water law opinion involving kansas, nebraska, and colorado. Colorado was a more big player. It was a big dispute between kansas and nebraska. I remember thinking i know nothing about this. You know . It is like these big Square States that have water problems. [laughter] i grew up in new york city. I went to school in massachusetts. Water law was not really high on the curriculum. [laughter] so i think he learned the same way there are so many things we dont know. Border law might be one of them. I once wrote an opinion that was a super complicated thing about electricity regulation, which i knew nothing about. There are those kinds of things. It happens all the time that there are things you do not know. That there are perspectives you never encountered. He said cultures you never , experienced. I think you are just under obligation to keep learning. As a justice or a judge and , you know, just going back to johnfirst question about stevens, when i got to the Supreme Court, i asked him for any advice you might offer me. He was a very humble man, and i dont think you much like giving advice. I really tried to push him. He said, i think the best thing i ever did was that i try to learn something new every single day i was on the court. You think about that. This is a man who served for 35 years. You could be forgiven for saying around year 34 [laughter] i think i learned it all. You know . [laughter] but he never did. I think that is the attitude a justice has to take. Is that there are all kinds of things in this world, and in the law, but i dont know, and to keep an open mind and figure out how to learn about them. To know what you dont know and to have strategies for learning about them. Contextht come in the of one particular case or in a broader context, that i think that is the john stevens advice, to just think about all the things you have to learn and then go out and learn them, is the way to be a judge. Prof. Malveaux i hear you. And i think one of the things that really brings up a sort of an important issue is diversity on the court. As you know, the court as a whole does not reflect the demographics of american society. If we look at the justices themselves, many of the appellate lawyers come from a small number of law schools. Only three women on the bench. I do say only. And not a lot of diversity when we look at race, religion, ethnicity, and even geographic. What worlddering, are you think, if any, peoples experiences and backgrounds shape how the court makes his decisions . Is there any good example where you think it really mattered . Justice kagan in general i am a big believer in diversity in the judiciary. But for a different reason than that, which ill come back to. In general, i do not think diversity necessarily means you will get a different set of views on the court. I mean, if you think about, like women. There are lots of women in the world, and they have all kinds of different views. My colleague, just as jew was once asked, how many wo