We are going to tell a story out of school that predates 9 11. Thats getting involved with the fbi and it is a neonazi was wanted for murder in germany was hiding out at the compound in west virginia. The marshals that decided and went into the town disguised the good boys for the trip and at the same time a group of fbi agents looking quite official came into the town. They have been in former. This fbi agent kept leaving his file around about the informant and mike being mike tried very hard to find a Common Ground and the agents apparently were not that interested in it and they said wait a second, we have to talk this out. They left the room and they left this file sitting on the desk and they came back and ended the fbi agent started talking about how this was an fbi operation and they had a secret inside that no one could talk about. They took it out of the water and said do you mean this guy cracks. Its just you have that on the case and you try your best to work it out mutually. The officers were from 90 different Law Enforcement agencies and these are people, Mount Vernon Police department, new york border parole and i would be curious to know what its like bringing all of those other services into the martial culture. Im only 25yearsold david. [laughter] just kidding. It was a difficult task because when we first stood up the program, we would have to go out and solicit and they came in and said we need to bring our federal, state and local folks on board. We have the funding for them so go out and sell the program. Its like walking into the facility and saying we are here to help. It didnt work out well so as time went on in the Success Story that we are rolling in and we left the state and local commissioners to the press conferences and jump up to a microphone we walk away and move on to the next case. The groove from 30 investigators and they love it. They had the same authority to jump on airplanes and across the state lines and the violent predators around the world. That the fbi we have assisted in a lot of cases. But they are good at what they do and we are good at what we do. You do. Basically they couldnt find themselves in the merit. [laughter] its fun to have different agencies. The federal agency and Law Enforcement agency in the country when did that shed start . September, 1789 by george washington. He appointed the first 13 u. S. Marshals. The president still appoints the u. S. Marshals confirmed by the senate. If you would thin think in law t that would change as the director and the deputy direct director. We have a couple more. Im just curious from the spouse perspective what is it like . Im curious also, sir. Thank you for asking the question. In her the microphone. Im the type of person i dont really think about it and i dont think about what he does. I keep myself busy but when i do think about it i kind of forget. He was always good at keeping in touch and what they are and what they were doing but there were a few times that he wasnt calling and you know that is the things that happened whether they got in a car accident or somebody, you know, was taken to the hospital so it was one of those things that when you think about it, you freak out because i am more worried about when you are in dc with the sniper case watching tv and when they were doing that chased down the highway crashing at 100 miles an hour, the little instances like that. I know that he he is good at wt he does command really he always told me what he did and when he was on the show manhunt useful but he did. Thats what you really do. That is the reality. That is what got me through. [applause] in his book on certain Justice Lawrence argues that the Supreme Court under the chief Justice John Roberts is rewriting the constitutional wall in a variety of areas including free speech, privacy, Voting Rights and president ial power. He spoke at the Harvard Bookstore in cambridge massachusetts. Thank you very much. One of the Research Assistance when you could be outside enjoying the weather. Im glad that something true you all here and im glad to be talking to you. He spent some time speaking with his High School Music teacher he didnt know that he was working with me and she kind of unloaded on him upon the great disillusionment with the great Supreme Court and had been looking at the headlines about how people like Linda Greenhouse were saying that it was a private and polarized court. Why werent they just a bunch of politicians, why should i trust these guys . And my students tried to reassure that its not really as bad as all of that. She wasnt convinced. She made an analogy to umpires. Shes only going to be an umpire involved in the strikes. He was only going to be neutral. She didnt find it very convincing. Theres judgment involved in the work of an umpire and they famously described i as a living and breathing document the way thathat today described the supe court constitution. She was a lot more convinced by what elena kagen said. In the tough caseand the tough e the only ones that reached the Court Judgment was involved. We bring a lot of ourselves to the process of deciding cases and this is as it should be. She responded, she was very bright and she said what if its not what roberts claimed she could make it. Why isnt it just a matter of him elected judges serving for life and imposing the political preferences on the rest of us. And he is a very loyal Research Assistant in his reply was read his book. [laughter] good for you. The umpire analogy was great pr and also did contain a germ of truth mainly good judges like good umpires should apply their philosophies consistently issued and bend them to cut slack for their favored players that they like to bring home the pennant. That much is true but of course the analogy is the vast oversimplification. It is a personal understanding of what the constitution is about. The National History connects us to. It is the language like liberty, equality, ambiguous principles like what the role of the court should be and how active of the role it should play in american life. All of those dont come down. They are not written in stone that were objectively decipherable and they shouldnt expect the justices and not the philosophies to their door should we always expect to find the philosophy striking is as bright or even as neutral when we might be coming from a different worldview. Elections of course have consequences, and the selection of justices by a serie the serif increasingly conservative republican president s with a certain perspective on the world and on the constitution. The umpire analogy is off base to the extent that it pretends the system expects judges to be blank slate that thing other than their view in the wall to the cable. So, max did urge them to teach legal experts some important lessons. Its filled with Great Stories about everything from really fascinating cases to the justices personal obsessions with things like baseball. One story that he mentioned featured in the book was about the devotion to the Cincinnati Reds which extended to making sure his clerks were watching this small tv he set up in the chamber on the playoffs between the mets and the reds. He resigns in that order. My assistant went on to explain that reading the uncertain justice which he hadnt read that he helped me with a couple of footnotes and its like we touch the tale of an overhead someone else touches the trunk. Somebody touches the underbelly but nobody has seen the elephant full so he finally saw the elephant and he read it and said the story about the increasing number of the five to four split along the political and even partisan lines make good press but it shouldnt disillusioned because it was a lot more misleading than informative. It turns out only about one fifth of the cases since roberts became the chief justice in 2005 has been divided fiv five percor and at least one third of the 54 split involved unlikely bedfellows like the alignments where one of the liberals joining us with robert kennedy, thomas and alito to create the 5for alignment in which the dissenters are the other liberals possibly a is invariably protective of the privacy rights and the government and more liberal than by air or any other justice. You would end now that from that reputation thats only a has nurtured as a radical uncompromised conservative. Just yesterday the elena kagen led a decision that immigrant children had bad luck to turn 21 before their parents who have green cards got to the head of the slowmoving line for an immigrant visa. Her opinion was joined by Anthony Kennedy republican governor Ruth Ginsburg a democrat and her conclusion was supported in a separate opinion written by roberts and joined by scalia. The justices that ruled in favor of the boy that turned 21 and emigrated from el salvador from 1998 waited in line for eight years but it was his misfortune he had to go to the end of the line. They were also unlikely bedfellows. Clarence thomas, samuel alito, stephen breyer, and Sonya Sotomayor. That wasnt difficult in the divisive cases you get to these in the usual alignments. There was a decision the book deals with in some detail where kennedy led a 53 majority and elena kagen was refused. Striking down most of the arizona show me your papers Immigration Law school he wrote a dissent that called the decision mind boggling. He went out of his way to attack obama for something unrelated to the case. His use to pay for the children as dreamers. The Washington Post which usually selects the president or senator or cabinet member for the honor bestowed upon scalia the worst week in washington price partly because he was also outfitted in the Obamacare Decision that came down three days later. Those are just some examples and the book deals with them and explains them and gives you a way to understand them. Its not just the usual alignments in the cases decided by the majority that exposed the fallacy of the increasingly common description of the Roberts Court of the gang of rightwing political hacks in robes. There were plenty of rulings that accounted for nearly half of the decisions in 2012 to 2013 in which the nine justices were divided among themselves. It just looks unanimous but they are pointing in lots of different erections. And if you study the directions you dont have to be a legal maven to understand them you just have to speak plain english and decipher what the court is doing. They divide among themselves in ways to tell us a lot more about what is really going on in where the court is likely to go next and the numbers alone suggest. Among the most intriguing and eliminating divisions in the ranks of the five justices appointed by republican president s are those between scalia and alito when he was nominated for the court of the people called him scalito thinking he was going to be a clone. Nothing was further from the truth. Theyve battled each other about free speech and privacy and about the need to stick to the original meaning of the various parts of the constitution. First its in the oral argument about selling the violent interactive video games to kids without the consent of their parents. It looked like alito was prodding the lawyers about handling and crippled it its pretty violent the original constitution didnt treat violent speech differently and alito losing patience told one of the lawyers i think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about the video games. Did he enjoy them and what if they were violent . What about the use of the gps to track somebodys car for a month without a warrant . In that case, there was an even more fascinating back and forth in the opinion between alito and scalia. Scalia said there are in allergies from the 1790s to this and alito basically said likewise lacks scalia said the constable could hire for weeks to monitor the owners movements. And alito in his concurring opinion and this is where all nine justices thought following somebody with a gps for a month without a warrant was impermissible. He wrote Something Like this might have occurred in 1791 but it would have required either a gigantic coach, very tiny constable or both. [laughter] not to mention a constable with incredible fortitude and patience. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Over and over again the justices who come from the same plane of the ideological spectrum have a different take on the constitution. They will sometimes agree on the bottom line but the disagreements tell you a lot about the pending case about the cell phone privacy and about lots of other cases where if you just count noses and do arithmetic you are going to be completely misled. After exploring similar patterns and contradictions on topics like equal buddy, gun rights, states rights in the book which people across the spectrum including ted olson, the guy that beat me and david in the bush v. Gore case described as a superbly evenhanded. It makes me feel good when people across the spectrum say this is a fair treatment of the deeply divisive issues. After exploring those patterns and contradictions, the book shows that the court is in the business of undertaking something promising and innovative inquiries into how the governments powers to coerce and drive offers short of coercion might be raided by the constitution in areas ranging from obamacare individual purchase and the medicaid mandate that states to plea bargaining and criminal cases to the law that conditioned federal subsidies on the recipients agreement to see the governments to even when doing so means undermining the recipients integrity and its ability to pursue its social mission. Let me say another word about that example. In the decision that i think is overwhelmingly important, but that got very little attention last year. Roberts writing for the court said that the government had no authority to tell the nongovernmental organizations that were fighting hiv aids around the world that it could get government money to supplement its private resources only if it promised to join the government constitution campaign. Now a lot of these characters said if we dont do that we wont get the trust of the workers. Scalia and thomas dissenting from the roberts opinion striking down that conditioned said too bad. They can just say no and roberts says freedom to turn down the governments offer is not always a sufficient answer when the author uses a government leverage over private resources to get people to sing to the governments to do. So there are a lot that deals with. The book identifies powerful trends in various injustices of use of coercion and marginalization that connect important aspects of the decisions discussed in the book like the five to four ruling upholding the core of obamacare. The seven to two ruling striking down the medicaid part of obamacare. The five to four ruling striking down one campaignfinance regulation after another. Those may not seem like they had a lot to do with each other but i show in the book that in fact they are born of similar views and they are subject to similar contradictions. And then there are decisions that of course i do not discuss in the book that were handed down since it was finished like the decision ithat decision in f greece versus galloways applauding the sectarian town meeting prayers. Terrible decision in my view. Over for powerful dissent. The most brilliant of which is probably that maybe im biased she was a student of mine but that is balanced by the fact that the chief justice was a student of mine and i see a few of my students in the room so i have had a great time teaching, and that gives me kind of a look into the approaches that the various people are likely to take. One of the things about the case that distressed me the most is that all nine of the justices including the supposedly bubbles went out of their way to see that the Supreme Court had been right 31 years ago when it upheld by the legislative prayers in marsh versus chambe chambers. That is the beginning of the difficulty for the separation of church and state. So they were counting angels on the head of a pin when they should have said that the pen was rusty to begin with. Anyway, the more i read from the book or give away its insights in advance the less you will be tempted to read it yourself but this is advertised as a reading from the book. But the freedom of speech sex, lies and video games, an area. There were distinguished people that say it is the most speech protected court ever and there are people like adam liptak of the New York Times that say what is going on is the justice vote for the speakers they agree with and not the other way around. I think the book shows both of those positions are absolutely unattainable. Let me begin and end with these paragraphs from the freedom of speech chapter and then take your questions. Throughout the late 1960s the justice of the court spent a day each year in the basement watching porn together. It was fantastically awkward. Unable to define obscenity but the First Amendment couldnt possibly protect the unduly dangerous and more laker expressions. It is one scene at a time. The films range from scientific arguments are useargument to rad probable escapades of lesbian maniacs. Justice marshal a civil rights hero to converse with pleasure in narrating the clips for the benefit of john harland the Second Coming and elegant former wall street lawyer who was by then losing his eyesight so marshal would basically say okay was happening now. The assistance that i know that when i see it the clerks would call out in the dark i see it. [laughter] in the 1968 about 20 years serving in the u. S. Navy that still youthful steward reflected on the more adventurous times and confided in a particularly curious clerk. You might wonder who that was i think that you will all guess that he had indeed seen it when i said have you seen it . Thats all i want to say about the book and i re