you have to think something's through and have a really good argument on all sides, and maybe with their right to die case, 80 briefs are 100 briefs and the affirmative-action case, and we will read those. bid your opinion is not always the same as when you started. be aware of answers you may give at a cocktail party because you do not want to be held to that. [laughter] . . >> we had to be some that. at me my view is really a self-pitying remark i made up to make. i do have a vote. [laughter] so, so that different people have different views. some say no, we shouldn't read that, because we are just interested in what the text says that the representative has voted on and is at the question of that vote on a text and don't go beyond that because it is too much risk of distortion and so forth, and others like myself say i want to read whatever i can read to get enlightenment about what those obscure words and believe me they are obscure, because we are not obscure on their face. what is that case doing in our court? so i want to see what you wrote. i expect you, like me, if you wrote it would have tried to write something that was not going to be viewed as wrong by the congressman or senator for whom we work. >> is there a difference between a committed record and debate on the floor where the individual members get up in the pine? >> when there is a committee report i know perfectly well i think in virtually every state, it was sent around to the members, staff of the committee so they'll had a chance to go over it and they could jets and the staff -- the congressman, maybe he or she wanted jack but the staff person will, because he knows what he is supposed to be doing there. button with the -- the people can say anything. but sometimes i'm not thinking of, you know things that are great political moments. sometimes they are little political moments. they might be some obscure her revisions of bankruptcy code and suddenly somebody wakes up because the lawyer told them that my god, look at those words. nobody's going to know what they mean. what wachovia do? he says if you do your work well as a staff, you then go to that lawyer's worst enemy and say what do you think of this? sometimes it turns out that everybody thinks, please introduce it, it will help. so you introduce it and that kind of statement. i can remember in section 13, you remember what that was, the uniform uniform something, can't remember. mass transit relation with unions and it was very very obscure and they had a couple of senators there who were saying the way it works as it doesn't mean us and then introducer says yeah that is what it means that somebody else gets up and says absolutely we are sure it means that. and you see everybody all over the rim saying that is what it means, you think they wanted it to serve that purpose and that is helpful and sometimes it means that and it doesn't mean that at all. >> with respect to the presidential war power, in may of 1941, franklin roosevelt received a message from british prime minister winston churchill that the german battleship bismarck had broken out into the atlantic and was a menace to all shipping and a mortal threat to england. having asked his nonlawyer adviser robert sherwood if you would be impeached if he ordered the americans to try to sink the ship, he settled for authorizing the pb white patrol plane partly piloted by an american crew to help the search for the bismarck when the british lost it and the pb wife found the ship. so there is a 6.5 months before pearl harbor and the united states has assisted in the sinking of germany's best capital ship. if justice or your were sitting in a court ruling on that was that a lawful exercise of the president for power? >> there are many questions involving the war power and the past that likely could never come before us. [laughter] [inaudible] speier reaction is sort of suggesting is something that is quite interesting and certainly president -- present in the case. jackson said in his dissent, he said here is what we should do. 1944, we know there was no risk of invasion in california. there is in today. and probably there wasn't a 1942. but in january 42 in california, people thought there was. and as long as they think there is, they will act, they will act to protect the country. regardless of what we say. so let them do it. and a 1944, we will say they were wrong. but don't say they were right because if we say they were right, that president lies there he said like a loaded gun, ready to be misused in the next time. now that's dramatic and it makes a lot of sense but actually i have to say and you really think about it, i don't think that is right. i prefer murphy, who said it was wrong then and it is wrong now, and the reason i don't like it is because if you try to have rules that are so unrealistic that the president feels he has to violate the law to save the country, sometimes you won't because you just can't and the country won't be safe, and sometimes he will violate the law too often, so it is better if you can do it. if you make the law consistent with those necessities, it will arise to save the country and that is much easier said than done. and that is why there aren't really good definite, clear overarching answers to this kind of question and you perceive it live bit, little bit i little bit and don't hold too much too fast. [applause] >> how do you feel the court adapts with new justices in place over so many years and again had he feel the greater public of the united united staf america interprets the judges as being -- as judges are put in and as they retire how do you feel the american public interprets it becomes an accord and how right he is. i mean one person changes the dynamic. get to know people on the court very well and you get used to working together. you know pretty well but they think and how they will react to different situations. it is a good working river station ship. is a healthy relationship. people shouted she each other and no words raised in anger, no people being rude to each other. we are perfectly good friends on a personal basis. that was true and it is true. and a new person will change that working dynamic. he will not or she will not. she will not lead to people being rude but she in this case in the last two will in fact make a difference because it will come a different experience and different approaches and they will change the arguments about many things in different ways. >> do you feel the american public views you different every time? be every time do that? the public eye and large gets its views through the press and television and so forth and so a lot depends on what is said there. it is only in a very long run and maybe never. you know people understand fully. linda has gone back and written a really good look on harry blackmun and what was the abortion decisions at that time and she had to go through dozens of papers and so forth, and that look will probably have an influence on how people see that court and those abortions decisions but that is the job of history. >> good evening justice. my name is kennedy. i lived the past 21 years of my life in the state of new york. remember every second of my 11. the girl down the street loft -- lost her father. my question is this. one day at work i opened up the paper in the paper took mayor bloomberg has had the -- constitutional right to have a mosque near ground zero. my question to you is, do you believe in the constitutional right or to the people of new york have a reason to deny a mosque being put there for cosmetic reasons, for reasons that has outshined any memorial we had to these people who died? >> well, i knew you were talking about something that is very much, a very great intense emotional interest to a lot of people and moreover i can't say too much about it, because who knows what will happen legally. but i would say this, that i have an impression that when we as a country and do sometimes get into these very emotional arguments, there is also a countervailing tendency before deciding anything and before really making up your mind to go back to try to find out what the facts actually are. and that is illegal and staying. a lot of people share it. and then want to find out what the facts really are, then you try to figure out what really would make sense given a lot of desires that sometimes conflict. so i think, what i would suggest to people who are interested in this is that there are people with web sites including the group that wants to put out, i think from what i know, it is a community center and it will have the mosque in a place of worship inside from what i've i read in the paper. for muslims, jewish christian and others, so i would suggest you go and look up the facts and find out what you think is the case and what is in the case and then make up your mind. that is an answer you would expect from me. i'm a judge. >> i think we have time for the three people in line and probably that will be yet. >> it seems to me your pragmatist approach would require get to have some sort of knowledge or understanding of the general will of the people for the value system and the current value system of people as a whole. justice holmes kind of thought about the average experience in how you can establish loss on that and sort of an aggregate of different experiences in our country. my question first of all is, does it require some sort of understanding of public opinion? is a required understanding of the value systems that we as a country have right now? and secondly how do you find that aggregate of experience? as a gesture opinion polls like you've talked about our alternative methods to sort of understand? >> no, my reaction when i hear the question is to say no, yes and it's more complex thing. i'm not taking a new count of some poll of how people are feeling about a particular case that i have decided. that is out and what i do think and pragmatism isn't necessarily the right word either. i've called this thing sort of a practical approach. i've called it not a set theory but a series of approaches and the approaches of different from area to area, and so it's -- it doesn't have to much bearing on how i'm going to decide cases. but i'm tempted to contradict what i just said. [laughter] of course i do have some concerns, that people don't understand well enough how the court works, and i think it might help a little bit, a little bit. is really just sort of like trying to do my part. to write something that will help explain how i see it, even if my approach isn't the right approach. there are many different ways of going about this. >> it is kind of what i was getting at you spoke earlier. >> i think we need to get onto the next person. >> hi, good evening. i enjoy the colloquy so much. i am recalling an incident which seems rather rare to me. i have a recollection of it only happened once in my adult life, and i wonder if you could comment on this as to whether it was a way for the court to make democracy work, and that was where the court invited, don't remember if it was a party or a judge -- there was an issue that was not presented by the party arguing before the court and the court itself reached out and i believe that was to mr. coleman, to come in and argue on behalf of another interest. i think it was a civil rights case. i don't remember when it was or if you were on the court at the time. >> early 1980s. >> it seems such an unusual thing for the court to do and i wonder if you might comment on whether that really was appropriate and would it advance your concept of making the court. >> well mr. coleman is here and linda remembers that incident and i will be biased because mr. goldman as a friend of mine and i'm sure it was a good idea. [laughter] >> five seconds a context on that. that was an instance where the regular -- reagan administration was new and had refused to defend a position taken by the internal revenue service under many previous administrations, so the question was who was going to, who is going to argue the case? and so they distinguish up in court advocate was invited by the court to take the position that the new administration had abandoned and there was nothing at all inappropriate about it? it was a course way of making sure that the argument got heard >> and that happens sometimes. it is not totally rare. it might've been rare in circumstances because the whole thing was ready because usually it will spot in advance when the two sites for example don't want to argue something and even before the case is being argued you will appoint a lawyer to argue this part. >> you have the honor serve the last question. >> my name is coleman too. [laughter] i suspect i could probably get in trouble if i were to offer a donation to a policeman has got me in traffic, and yet i could probably not get in trouble for offering a $2 billion for a congressman to effect a change that would be personally beneficial to me. as someone who has lived in this area for a long time i sort of feel pity for the naïveté of the tea baggers and the tea party people coming in here with very little understanding of the dynamics of money in this government. certainly in the city. and i am just wondering you are talking about things you can undo. if he could didn't do something where people would say yeah with the best government money can buy. >> question, question? >> is their legal way to undo conflation of bribery and the first amendment rights? >> you were thinking of the case that came up with the citizens united and i joined john stevens and every instinct i had about being cautious suggest that i should go no further than that in trying to answer your question. [laughter] [applause] >> i think we had a good time and we are grateful for you for joining us. [applause] >> stephen breyer is an associate justice of the u.s. supreme court. he was appointed to the court in 1994 by president bill clinton. to find out more about the court, visit supreme court.gov. some of the authors who touched upon it through their work. this weekend on booktv, we take you to downtown indianapolis for a look at the new kurt vonnegut but more a library. >> kurt vonnegut is perhaps the greatest american writer. he was a world war ii veteran. he was a hoosier. he was a satirist. he was a political activist. he was a husband. he was a father. he was a friend. he was a friend to his fans. he would write back to his fans. he wrote more than 30 pieces of work, including novels, short stories, some of his more familiar books are slaughterhouse five, which is perhaps his most famous. breakfast of champions, cat's cradle and many other books. vonnegut always brought in his midwestern roots and often wrote about indiana and indianapolis specifically and if i may read a quote, many people ask me why did this -- is as vonnegut library here in indianapolis and i have many different answers but then i found this great quote that says, all my jokes are indianapolis, all my attitudes are indianapolis. my adenoids are indianapolis. if i ever separate itself from indianapolis, i would be a business. what people like about me is indianapolis. so, we took that as a green light to go ahead and establish the vonnegut library here in indianapolis. we have an art gallery, a museum room, a reading room, a gift shop and i would like to share details about these with you today. this is a kurt vonnegut timeline if you would about male would like to read the quote at the top of this beautiful painting, which was created by the artist chris king and by a body get scholar named rodney allen and both of these individuals is live in louisiana. the quote reads, all moments past present and future, always have existed, always will exist. they can look at all the different moments, just the way we can look at a stretch of the rocky mountains for instance. they can see how permanent all the moments are. it is just an illusion we have here on earth that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever. something that is unique about her timeline is we actually start on the right side and move to the left, rather than the left-sided move to the right. one thing we wanted to mention about this quote, we hope that vonnegut would know that while he may think, may have thought that once a moment is gone it is gone forever, we like to think that the moment of kurt vonnegut will move on forever here at the vonnegut library. he went to cornell university. he was studying chemistry. he did not plan to go into architecture like his father, but he did think he would move into a science career and discovered at cornell that he was not very much interested in doing that, so he enlisted in the army during world war ii, and i would like to point out a moment here on the timeline that is very important in the life of curt -- kurt vonnegut in 1944. is dying from an overdose probably intentional of alcohol and sleeping pills. vonnegut anders combat in europe and is captured by germans in belgium during the battle of the bulge. soon he is writing in a boxcar with other american p.o.w.s to dresden, supposedly safe german city, unlikely to be bombed. so dresden was this beautiful cultural city that was not a military target. as vonnegut wrote -- rode in on the train he was able to view this beautiful city and then he was placed in a slaughterhouse where the rest of the prisoners of war were held. has slaughterhouse with slaughterhouse five. we have an exhibit that we call the dresden exhibit that is really his world war ii experience that became so important in his writings and his worldview later in his life. i will start with a photo that was taken right after he was released as a prisoner of war, along with fellow prisoners. we also have his purple heart that was donated by his friend mark vonnegut to us. he received a purple heart for frostbite and kurt vonnegut was embarrassed to have received a purple heart for frostbite. so many of his friends had suffered from other types of physical problems and disease. we have a first edition of the book slaughterhouse five. this is important, because slaughterhouse five is probably the most well-known book written by curt vonnegut of the 30 some pieces of writing that he completed. this was possibly the most famous. >> why? >> let me give a little bit of history about what happened to him in germany. and my impressions of wyatt affected people so much. vonnegut as i read was taking to this later house. while he was in dresden, the allies bombed dresden and so his own countrymen as well as allies bombed the city. it was a horrible bombing. it was literally a firestorm and tens of thousands of people were killed. these were noncombatants. these were women and children and old people, and vonnegut, one of his pacts as a prisoner was to go out and remove the bodies you know, from these burning buildings and he also was required to bury their dead bodies of women and children and that affected his life tremendously. he came back from his world war ii experience being completely against war. he was searching for peaceful resolution to conflict and supported diplomacy and other approaches to solving problems. i will also point out a photo that was taken after he came back from the war. he got married to jane cox vonnegut, who was from indianapolis as well. this photo was taken on their honeymoon and you can see he is in uniform. vonnegut and jane had three children. march, it eb and a net, nanny, and then many years later, his sister alice died just a day or two after her husband had died in a freak train accident. alice had four children and three of them came to live at the vonnegut family, so they had quite a large household, seven children and vonnegut at that time was writing books that at that time were less familiar, but he had pu