Find that last couple of sentences to get that out is certainly on the descent, which for me took a little longer without just as scalia on the bench, although it sure was there. So really quickly we have the television died going side going to be no justice quickly on our digital side because that is a big push at cnn and something that really interests me to be able to do that because now in the old days ive been in journalism for a while. Now if we put a story about Justice Scalia up, we can maybe link to some of the oral argument and then maybe link to the interview he gave with Justice Ginsburg for the talk that they gave and maybe a little bit about his sons memorial at the memorial service. It is a totally different world and it is fascinating that push on the digital side now. You actually need to get on air with a tv camera and finer view of the morning for decisions, for example. Ironman correspondent is pamela brown, so she is ready to go in front of the cameras out there with Pete Williams and dan crawford friends ebs. You wrote a piece recently about how much you agree in advance of some of the term decisions. I suspect im not alone and the Wire Services have flown on a. The moment the decision provides our readers want to know what just happened. Its much easier to do this if there are three or four possible outcomes to write each story in advance and to post that immediately, in supplement it almost immediately with a vote count which is in quotations and then fairly soon having read the damn thing, with actual analysis and the sense of the context and consequences. But i guess it comes as a surprise that the standard journalistic device of writing socalled be matter ahead of time, which it is an uncontroversial background of thats going to work in every story. And delete that gives readers the bottom line. Is something your not doing between 1 10 0510 15 to try to get as red as you can. I have to thank my colleagues are in the same boat on this. Absolutely. Ive done this for a while so i remember the good old days when you could actually read the opinion, listen to the justices speak, talk to a few lawyers and have launched. And call my desk and say heres the lead, his love going to write for tomorrows paper. Now i think weve got would you say, 30, 45 seconds . I feel like its about 15 seconds to 45 seconds ive got to decide. They start reading, pass it on. Speed people run to their little cubicles. I walk. But it is true people go racing out of the room and you can get bowled over by them. But a look at the opinion, count the votes, look who dissented, make sure its very tense, right . Yeah, you dont want to race up with, put up the wrong headline. But as adam said we should have two or three different versions of it. I look at quickly, go back to my desk, try one more time and 45 seconds have expired so i say, i thought the affirmative action case would be a 43 decision striking down the texas plan but in a narrow way. Kennedy didnt seem like he wanted to wipe out the affirmative action but we thought, i think we thought it is i nearly wrote the version we ended up using. I had a version that says green card, i dont know, strikes down texas plan, reaffirms affirmative action. I dont think i had a 44 split but i had a version talking about that wasnt the third one, which is to uphold the affirmative action plan. So we had to quickly say Court Upholds affirmative action plan, and i think in about a minute i said go up with that and there were two sentences and then they had, what adam has referred to as the be matter, background and contact. Abigail fischer sued you can invest it sitting there but you dont want to get the headline of the lead role. I always find it interesting, fun challenge. Because we spent a lot of weeks up there with each side nothing, and then, like on the thursday, the last thursday of the term they did, what, affirmative action and immigration. And its kind of an afterthought. By the way, 44 split on immigration. Im just getting that affirmative action story straight out and hand down this one since this is an its 44 on immigration. Thats a huge story. In california that was by far the story everybody was interested in. And its a one sentence 44 split. So do it again, 45 seconds and get that out. And then again on monday we had two more, the abortion and the public corruption case. So it is an unusually, job we spent a lot of time preparing. He spent a lot of time listening to arguments. Ios8 its like being a College Student at final exams with a last week easy to regurgitate everything in the semester. The only thing that is different when i used to say that, now we do it in 45 seconds. It seems like not only do you have to be prepared and go fast, theres very little time for secondguessing. The winter the court did as this year and lester also is to be cases with easy to understand, who won and who lost. The day will come when therell be three votes to demand, and then the desk will be going crazy into not know what the answer is actually have a chance to as what everything was thrown on health care case. Anyone not followin only as cloy shouldve thought this was a case of the congress calls. Robert this is where striking down o on the Commerce Clause anyone said they struck down Health Care Law but there was that second question. I agree with at west point. Weve been lucky recently at least the bottom line of the decision is clear agree with adams point. It takes unit to figure it out but it is very clear. I was concerned because i find myself especially the last week women getting really tired and i try to think of any way that they could rule, i was obsessed with the Abortion Case. They were two provisions out about mogadishu at issue, the admitting privileges and then the Surgical Centers provision. I was very worried the court was going to act differently on the too provisions, and so that prompted me, talk about writing several different ways. It was almost like a game. If one goes out on procedural and one is 44, i spent way too much time on fat. I have to admit because i just want to make sure i was ready in case that happen. We should get paid for the outtakes. I do think some justices have said since scalia said that there was an effort within the court to make things a little more clear perhaps or to compromise in a clear way. I did not. But it did seem as adam said as he wanted the opinions were a little simpler to interpret and quickly, simple to figure out who won and who lost, where sometimes thats really hard. I wonder if any of you have a thought about it . If the differences on the one hand chief Justice Roberts trying hard to get more people lasted into an opinion, and on the other hand, the socalled liberals making a real point of coming together so you can have so many conferences and conferences in the judgment. Almost every year at this time ive asked the question, which is how do you possibly get a headlight out where it says, i couldnt find one this year, so and so i announced the judgment of the court and delivered an opinion parts one and two of which for the corporate justices so and so join in full. Justices so and so joined in other parts. Alito filed an opinion concurring in which thompson joined. Spent and not the case youre talking about heres the reason you want to go upstairs. Because scalia wrote the majority and it was confusing as hell. At the end of his oral announcement by not introducing he goes but you know what . Epa 197 of what it wanted. Thats all you need, thank you. Take that quote, but at the top the story and you will not be wrong. So back to how i started. You have a theory for why there is nothing like that this year. I was hoping to of such a question for you and i couldnt find one. The contraception case was a little like that. The contraception case was unsigned, unanimous, but completely overtake and soda falsely declares that both sides are very close to agreement and well send it back to lower courts to let them finish up the work would nudge them towards because were not really judges, we are like family Court Mediators and we will bring everyone together. Both sides declared victory and thats a fairly, i forget what the headline was picked probably wasnt wrong but probably wasnt i do it because we dont know what it all means. I thought this was a is the term, i read a number of decision where its not hard to be a Supreme Court justice. I could get seven of you and me, we could be an eight member court. His shaggy do it. He read the briefs on one side makes a really good arguments. Did you read the briefs on the other side and they make some really goo good arguments. Said they would draft an opinion that says the petitioners make some really good arguments and if the law goes too far that would be a mistake so we dont want them to go that way. On the other hand, and a good argument for not every minor violation is a violation of law, and we now vacate the lower courts, based on this opinion. They had a lot of those cases down with they sort of said we dont entirely agree this would bet. We cant decide this case because thats a really close call. We will set about to let the lower court trod again. There are a lot of these opinions that didnt decide the issue in the case, and they just send it back and thats how they agreed to resolve the cases. I think the contraceptive case, i dont ever seen anything like it. It was like here, you figure it out. The parties. Its usually the courts job to figure it out, and they just said this is a mess, you can straighten it out, you are not that far from each other, you do it. Ive just never seen anything like it. It is true that this term as in previous terms the court for murder liberal wing is quite united. If the liberals want to block any move to the right they can but if they can pick up a vote from kennedy or the chief or both then they can issue a little decision. So that does change the dynamics of it. I was interested in the Abortion Case because ginsburg at oral arguments i thought really florida was very interesting in oral arguments. She played a big role from beginning to end, walked, sort of guided oral arguments. And then, of course, when the opinion came down, she didnt write. But she did write separately which she had not done the year before in the gay marriage case, for example, and she puts up with something that she mentioned in speeches a lot, which is the impasse of those laws which she felt on poor women, without access to cover. I am half french and she threw in the [speaking french] which was a very short opinion and shes basically saying that the women, you know, for lack of a better alternative, if abortion, if they didnt have access, they might resort to clinics that might be unsafe. And i thought it was interesting that she did choose to write separately to make the point that she had made before, and soda break although the from the discipline. I suspect you might like to the assignment to the senior Justice Kennedy gets to make you some and he gave to breyer, not ginsburg. I bet ginsburg would have loved to have had that decision. Spent so i think all of you, im not sure if tony is in this category, head of the beads before he became a Supreme Court reporter, nonlegal beats. How is coming to Supreme Court the same and how is it different from covering other beats . Tony, were you in that category speak with a long, long time ago i covered city hall in glasgow star massachusetts and the courts in new jersey. But the Supreme Court is just a unique beat. You get used to almost never talking to the people you cover, which is pretty rare in other beats. And editors would always say can you call up, call of justice it and asking about the red sox . Hes a big red sox fan. This was at usa today. I said i will give it a try and i got a note back from Justice Souter say on matters as controversial as this i must remain silent. On the red sox they wouldnt talk to me. Thats one thing that took a lot of getting used to. Did you ever get to talk to the justices . We do have our occasional meetings with them. There are social events at the court, but it doesnt happen very often, not often at all. I covered education for a number of years before i started. I must say the difficulty of writing about education is everything is mushy. Almost all the language, all the terms are mushy. I found it very hard to pin people down to what does that actually mean wax i like it when i started. As you said i kept doing it for a long time. I like the fact people in the law business want to get to the bottom, what does that really mean wha . Would you explain that to us . One of the great things about the law, they deal with a lot of, when i was cutting education, for example, what did the word segregation and desegregation mean . They are hugely significant. Does it mean stopped segregating students or did it really mean he got to integrate your city schools by affirmatively desegregating . It was hard to write about things in the education business because there just wasnt the same level of precision and focus. Ive always been a fan of, i like him in the lobby people are much more clear and specific when theyre arguing some point. Try to be as clear as they can be. Ive only covered the law but before i covered the court unless the National Legal reporter for the times in new york. And a job in the way was much more satisfying because you get to hunt around can find stories no one else is writing about, traveled the country, pry open a window on some big issue that hasnt been touched on, tell cool stories. And then you come to washington and your writing the same story everybody else is writing. The journalistic impulse of course is to do something distinctive, yet the opposite is the scoop. Its a wonderful press corps. Its been the highlight of moving to washington, a nice collegial, smart, fun press corps that it is. Many, many days we are writing the same damn story. You put them sidebyside and to look the same and have the same quote in the third paragraph. Theres frustration in fact you dont get to choose your own stories. Or almost never. Youre basically doing the stories that night old people who are in a sense your editors assigned to you. They just happen to wear robes. One of the most difficult things for me especially with the end of the term is you are carrying around in your head four or five cases and they havent decided it, and the court doesnt tell you in advance which opinions theyre going to release. You have to sort of cross threading ahead and keep them straight and sort of, that is the challenge for me. But another thing thats not true in other beats is when youre just talking about what we do, like nominations aside, there are no leaks. I think when you cover other beats you are always worried that someone is going to one of your competitors is going to get a leak. And here i think that maybe happened, it happened twice i think with tim obrien of something, ages ago. But for the most part every 30 years. You are not worried about the leak which my colleagues who cover the white house and the hill, they are. You know, thats a concern. Dont you think this is one of those classic explainer beats . I think theyre quite a few of them. If you cover science, for example, or medicine, a lot of what i think could want in a medical writer if somebody who understands medical Research Well enough to write a story that explains this is a significant advance for this reason why this is a questionable. I really think the job we do, Something Like 90 of it is really explaining the court said this, they set up for this reason, the dissenters said it was mistake. Trying to get some sense of the significance of what they decided. So it is a frustrating be, as adam and others have alluded to. If you want to dispute or breaking news you are in the wrong job. But i do think its a worthwhile endeavor to basically try to explain the law and explain what the court is doing. On that note i have a question specifically for you, david, that he got from scotusblog. The day after the macdonald opinion came down the last day of the term that was a couple of people from the National Association of criminal defense lawyers who at a symposium piece on scotusblog and they said in macdonald the Supreme Court of the biggest leap rejected a government effort to convert to federal crimes conduct not prohibited by the federal bribery and corruption statute. Nevertheless, many in the media led with headlines along the lines of quote Supreme Court next prosecuting corruption more difficult and the decision was something other than the unanimous opinion vacating the conviction on federal bribery corruption charge. Charges to have ushered in Supreme Court rejects prosecution theory that converts traditional constituent services into federal crime. So i went back and looked, and her story on the l. A. Times, the morning after the decision was Supreme Court makes it hard to prosecute officials for taking bribes. They were thinking about you. I dont how much control you have over the headline writers at the l. A. Times, but do you think these guys from the criminal Defense Association had a good point . How did you decide how to i thought it would be a good headline in the aclu newsletter. No, i did think that this was a case that would make it harder to prosecute corruption. I quoted somebody, owl sure taught at the university of chicago, said, you know, if i told you that i gave secretly gave the president s chief of staff 1 million to get my mikes liking for 50 minute meeting with the president to advocate some product, and you about that, i think every person that i know would think wombat, that was bribery, corruption wow. They took a Million Dollars to get this guy on the counter so he could make his pitch to the president big only problem is eight people in the country dont think its a crime. They all sit on the Supreme Court. You know the facts of the mcdonnell case, dont you . This is a situation where the guy, this guy, Johnny Williams has a private plane. He takes the gun on a