Lewis Brooks;
Hello everyone, and welcome. My name is Lewis Brooks. I am a proud
Brandeis alum from the class of 1980. A parent of a Brandeis graduate
from the class of 2016. I am President of the Alumni Association and
apropos of this event. I was a judge on the 1979-1980 Brandeis
Students Judiciary. On behalf of the Alumni Association and our
co-sponsors, the Lawyers Alumni Network and the Legal Studies
Department at Brandeis, it is my pleasure to welcome you to today's
alumni college program, The Future of the US Supreme Court, Impact
Equality and Justice. Today's marquee event features an esteemed panel
of Brandeis alumni judges who will discuss equality under the law from
the lower courts to the Supreme Court. The discussion will be
moderated by Daniel Breen, Associate Professor of the Practice in
Legal Studies. We're delighted to welcome you, our alumni, Brandeis
parents, Brandeis National Committee members, family members and
friends, both here on campus and those zooming in from around the
world. I'm sure you'll agree for those of you who are here in
Springold, how wonderful it is to be back on campus. I'd like to
briefly introduce our panelists. Working across, the Honorable Sharon
Goodie from the class of '85. Judge Goodie is an administrative law
judge for the District of Columbia Office of Administrative Hearings.
[NOISE] Next to Judge Goodie is the Honorable Joseph T. Carter from
the Brandeis class of 1979. Judge Carter retired last month after
serving more than 20 years as a Minnesota State District Court judge.
Next, the Honorable Barbara Dortch-Okara from the class of '71.
[APPLAUSE] Don't you hold your applause to the end? [LAUGHTER] Judge
Dortch-Okara is a retired Massachusetts Superior Court judge and a
fellow university trustee. Forth and not least, the Honorable Melissa
Green from the Brandeis class of 1986. [APPLAUSE] Judge Green was
elected to the New York State Supreme Court for the County of New York
in November of 2020 and previously served as acting Supreme Court
Justice and in the criminal court for New York County. Our virtual
moderator for today's program is Alexander Stephens, Assistant Vice
President for Advancement Communications here at Brandeis. For those
of you joining us online, please submit your questions for the
panelists throughout the broadcast and Alexander will relay them
during the Q&A. I will now hand this over to Professor Breen, who will
begin today's program. Professor Breen. -
Dan Breen
Okay. Thank you, Louis.
Thank you for all you and Denise do for Brandeis. Thanks to all of you
for all you do for Brandeis. Welcome alumni, welcome alumni in-person,
and welcome alumni remotely as well. As you just heard, I'm the
moderator for today's discussion. A company does, I am by these four
honorables to my right. I just like to give a few introductory remarks
and then we'll turn things over to them for some brief remarks that
they prepared for today's event. What an opportune time for a
discussion like this? We are living at a time here in 2022 when
two-thirds of all Americans in a recent poll were said to have very
little faith at all in the Supreme Court's ability or tendency to
follow the law and the Constitution rather than politics. Many people
today believe the court to be a politicized institution through and
through. No less an authority than Justice Sonia Sotomayor, during the
very heated and contentious hearing, during the dog's case a few
months ago, happened to echo these comments when she said during the
oral argument, "Should the dog's case result in overturning over his
weight?" She wondered, "Should the court or can the court survive the
stench?" She said. "That this would create in the public perception
that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts." I must
say that the court itself is not doing that much these days to dispel
the idea, at least that it seems to be a very political institution
and that decisions in voting patterns are influenced more by politics
than law. Just one example I wanted to bring up before we get to our
panelists is the fact that there are recently a lower court panel to
the federal courts down in Alabama, happened to strike down an Alabama
law that created voting district lines in violation of the Voting
Rights Act. According to that lower federal court panel, those lines
diluted improperly under the Voting Rights Act, minority voting
strength. I think and most authorities do believe that the law was
squarely on behalf of that decision. But there was an emergency appeal
from Alabama from the state and the Supreme Court with very little
explanation, decided to stay the effect of the order overturning those
lines so that as of the midterm elections, those lines which seem to
violate the Voting Rights Act are still going to be in place. It's
this thing that have people wondering about the future of the Supreme
Court. Now, before I turn things over to our very distinguished
panelists, I did want to point out that three of the four of them are
serving jurists at the moment, which means that they will be unable to
comment owing to judicial ethics on recent impending Supreme Court
cases. That is specific cases. But they can talk about their
experience as judges. They can talk about the rule of law, the
importance of the rule of law, and they can certainly talk about
issues of diversity and equity and justice that they've encountered
during their distinguished careers. I'm really looking forward to
hearing what they have to say. Now, the way things are going to work
in this discussion is they're going to go first, each one of them
individually presenting some prepared remarks, and then after they get
done with that, there'll be a very informal discussion among the five
of us. A more or less a give-and-take. Then after that, maybe a little
less than an hour into it, there'll be time for question-and-answer.
That will be to you in the audience. At that time, you could come up
and talk on the microphone and our virtual audience will also get a
chance to ask their questions as well. Let's get things rolling with
our first discussant. That is going to be a Judge Dortch-Okara. Go
right ahead.
Barbara Dortch-Okara:
- All right. Good afternoon, fellow alumnus. I want to
extend my thanks to my trusty colleague Louis Brooks to Professor
Green, to Allison Faken, and then all those who played a part in
organizing this Alumni College event. Friends, we are in the midst of
turbulent times. Since I am the only judge on this panel who has fully
retired and free to speak openly about my views about the Supreme
Court, I'm going to take advantage of that opportunity and speak
frankly. [APPLAUSE] I'm going to highlight two areas of the law in
which the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court is working to
take us backward to the days when states rights were sacrosanct. You
may not agree with that statement, but I will attempt to make my case.
I'll touch on a few additional cases that are waiting in the wings and
that are likely to disappoint you. [LAUGHTER] Let's start with Dobbs
versus Jackson Women's Health Organization. That's on everybody's
mind. Dobbs is the case brought by the only women's clinic in
Mississippi that provides a portion services. It challenges the 2018
Mississippi statute that prohibits, with few exceptions, abortions
after 15 weeks of gestation. The Federal District Court heard the case
and granted an injunction, prohibiting the state from enforcing the
statute. The court applied Roe v. Wade. The District Court ruled that
there was no evidence that a fetus would be viable at 15 weeks. The
prior case law controlled and prohibited the state from banning
abortions prior to viability. Now, as we've all heard, the decision in
Dobbs is due to be released by July. Of course, we already know the
outcome of the case because the draft opinion of the majority was
leaked. Now, Justice Alito's opinion doesn't simply reverse the
District Court decision. If this erase Roe and Casey, the subsequent
case. Now, why does Alito go this far? This is what he says. "The
Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is
implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the
one which the defendant's of Roe and Casey rely. The Due Process
clause of the 14th Amendment. That provision has been held to
guarantee that some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution,
but any such right must be deeply rooted in this nation's history and
tradition and implicit in the concept of Ordered Liberty." Remember
those terms. Now, according to Justice Alito, there is no right to
privacy that is protected in the Constitution, and if there were such
a right, it's not deeply rooted, and it is not implicit in the concept
of Ordered Liberty. But how deeply rooted must have the right to
privacy be?. Roe was decided in 1973, two generations ago. I was in
law school then in my early 20s. What other protections have we taken
advantage of that are based on that right to privacy? Well, let's
start with the precursor of Roe, Griswold, Griswold versus
Connecticut. This is the 1965 case that struck down a statute that
criminalized the use of contraception. The Griswold court explain,
"While the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to
privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create
penumbras or zones that establish a right to privacy. Together, the
First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments create the right to privacy
in marital relations." Now, if you are content to rely on Justice
Alito to protect you if a state dare to bar contraceptives, then what
about interracial marriage? The Constitution makes no mention of
interracial marriage. The framers of the Constitution would have been
outraged by that prospect. - Has it been legal long enough that it has
become deeply rooted in the nation's traditions. Well, Loving versus
Virginia was decided June 12th, 1967. That was 55 years ago that
Virginia's Racial Integrity Act was struck down and interracial
marriage became legal across the country. That was only six years
before Roe. What about same-sex marriage? Obergefell versus Hodges.
The court held that the due process clause for the 14th Amendment
guarantees the right to marry as one of the fundamental liberties it
protects. But note that this case was decided in 2015 by a 5-4
majority in which Justice Alito dissented. I guess that right wasn't
sufficiently deeply rooted. Alito rights in the Dobbs draft opinion
that we've read, that it is time to heat the Constitution and return
the issue of abortion to the people's representatives. The
permissibility of abortion and the limitations upon it are to be
resolved like most important questions in our democracy by citizens
trying to persuade one another and then voting. By citizens trying to
persuade one another and then voting. Does that mean that we cannot
count on the Supreme Court to protect us from oppressive state laws?
The third branch of government now wants to morph into a twig. Well,
so be it. We'll have to take to the ballot box. But wait. Can we vote?
[LAUGHTER] If we can vote without obstruction, will that vote count?
That raises my second set of issues with this Court, voting rights.
You'll recall that the Supreme Court began retreating from the Voting
Rights Act in 2013 and its decision in Shelby County versus Holder.
There the Court nullified the provision of the Voting Rights Act that
required pre-clearance from the federal government when a state or
local government proposed changes in its voting laws that negatively
impacted minorities. Fast forward to the Alabama case that Professor
Brings spoke up, Milligan versus Merrill earlier this year, you've
just heard that that's the case in which civil rights organizations
filed suit on behalf of Alabama's Secretary of State, challenging the
states congressional redistricting plan. The plaintiffs in that case
claimed that the plan is an unconstitutional gerrymander because race
was the dominant consideration in drawing the new congressional
districts, and that the plan was drawn specifically to dilute
African-American citizens voting strength in violation of the Voting
Rights Act. Well, of course, they sought a ruling to bar the use of
that plan. As you've heard, in January, the Federal District Court
granted a preliminary injunction finding that there was a substantial
likelihood that the Voting Rights Act was violated because Black
voters were given less opportunities than white Alabamians to elect
candidates of their choice. In February, after the appeal by the state
of Alabama, the Supreme Court set aside the district court order and
issued a new order allowing the states tainted plan to be used in the
upcoming 2022 election. Now, the court released no written opinion to
justify that action. However, Justice Roberts stated that the district
court properly applied the law. The district court was correct.
However, some of the Justices in the majority said, "Well, there
wasn't enough time before the next election for a new plan to be drawn
term, and then perhaps there'll be a new plan after the 2022
election." The congressional plan did violate the rights of Black
Alabamians, but nevertheless, that same plan will be used for the 2022
election. Another example of the courts disrespect for voting rights
is Brnovich versus the DNC, the Democratic National Committee. At
issue, there were two Arizona laws, one that being under collection of
absentee ballots by anyone other than a relative or caregiver, and the
other throughout any ballots that were cast in the wrong creasing.
Now, Arizona has permitted early voting for over 25 years. They're
pretty expert at it. Despite that fact, there was no evidence of any
fraud in the history of Third-party Ballot Collection in the state.
Despite that, the legislature enacted the law that criminalized the
collection and delivery of another person's ballot. The DNC asserted
that these practices violated the Voting Rights Act and the 15th
Amendment. The DNC prevailed before the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth
Circuit ruled that the laws had an unequal impact on minority voters
and that there was no evidence of fraud that would have justified the
use of those laws. Now, that ruling, of course, was reversed, reversed
up about a year ago in last July in a 6-3 decision that was authored
by who else but Justice Alito. He wrote that the unequal impact of
these laws was there, but that impact was minor and that states don't
have to wait for fraud to occur before enacting laws to prevent fraud.
Now, that decision has been criticized rightly as virtually gutting
what remains of the Voting Rights Act. Now, what can we look forward
to in the courts next term? Well, among the coming attractions in the
area of civil rights are these cases, Students for Fair Admissions
versus Harvard. Now, there, the plaintiffs alleged discrimination
against Asian American applicants in favor of white applicants.
Harvard says it uses race as one of many factors in admission
practices, but argued that its process adheres to the requirements
outlined in Grutter versus Bollinger. Beyond the issue of whether
Harvard's admissions process violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is
the issue of whether colleges may use race at all as a factor in
admissions. Now, judging from the way the Supreme Court rules in cases
of this sort, it's unlikely that they will simply address the question
of whether Harvard has acted correctly. But unfortunately, they may
view this as an opportunity to abolish the use of race as any factor
in admissions. Will it be overruled? That's the question. Another case
to be mindful of is 303 Creative LLC versus Elenis. This is a case in
which a company challenges Colorado's Anti-discrimination Act that
prohibits businesses from discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation. This law bars the publication of any communication that
says or implies an individual's patronage is unwelcome. The plaintiffs
in this case is a graphic design firm that plans to expand its
business to include wedding websites. However, the owner opposes
same-sex marriage on religious grounds and does not want to design
websites for same-sex weddings. They want to post a message on their
own website explaining their reasons for objecting to same-sex
marriages. Before the state sought to enforce its anti-discrimination
laws, plaintiffs went into court and filed the case in the federal
court. The federal district court, of course, granted summary judgment
in favor of the state, upholding the Colorado law, and the Court of
Appeals affirmed. Now it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme
Court does with this case next year. Will it rule in a way similar to
the ruling in the wedding cake case? Some of you may remember the
wedding cake case, Masterpiece Cake Shop versus Colorado Civil Rights
Commission. In that case, the question addressed was the freedom of
religious expression. This case takes a slightly different bent,
although it is based somewhat on the freedom of religion. The case
before the court now is asserting a freedom of speech in speaking on
its website against patronage by same-sex couples. Well, we'll look
forward to a decision there, but we're not hopeful. Gone are the days
when we could look to the Supreme Court for its support of civil
rights and democratic institutions. Now, when the court rules on these
issues, it appears to be just another player in the political arena
and that's pretty sad. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Dan Breen:
Thank you. Thank you. Now
we will hear from Judge Carter?
Joseph Carter:
Good afternoon. My name is Joseph
Carter, and I noticed when I was introduced earlier, there was no
applause, so I'll tell you a little bit about it. [APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHTER] Originally, I am from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New
York. I came here to Brandeis and graduated in '79, so a very long
time ago. After that, I went to grad school. I have a Masters in
Social Work from Barry University, and then I went to the University
of Minnesota Law School. After law school, I practice as a Legal Aid
Attorney, from there I was a Prosecutor for a short period of time and
then a Public Defender for very long time. I was appointed to the
bench in 2001 and serve from then February of 2001 until May 2nd of
this year so I'm getting used to the idea of being retired, although I
do plan as you heard, to go back and work as what we call a Senior
Judge. In Minnesota, the court system is modeled after the federal
system, so our highest court is called the Minnesota Supreme Court. We
have seven justices and there's a court of appeals and a district
court. Serving as a District Court Judge, I got to see just about
everything. It is where cases began. So if you are getting divorced,
if you're planning to sue someone for money damages, if you have a
family law type issues, if you are juvenile who has come into contact
with the Juvenile Justice Center or a system and certainly people who
are arrested for crimes, your cases start in district court. To some
degree I've seen a little bit of everything and what I'd like to talk
about briefly is the trust we have in our court system and
particularly for those who are people of color. We're now in an
atmosphere and environment where almost everyone has some distrust of
our court system. As we heard just a moment ago, that it looks as if
Roe v Wade may be overturned and a whole litany of cases coming from
United States Supreme Court on down in which we have some issues with
trust. However, given what we are looking at in this day and age, the
Supreme Court has always been fairly political and that gives me a
little hope that maybe things will continue to progress in our
society. But if you recall, we've had President Taft, who became a
Supreme Court Justice. We had others who were governors and other
politicians who will become Supreme Court Justices. We've had a
Supreme Court Justice who had direct telephone lines to the president,
advising the president. In particular, Lyndon Johnson back in the day
where a judge for his, gave him lots of advice on how to conduct the
executive branch when he was on the Supreme Court. Hopefully that
gives us a little sense that maybe this guy is going to fall on us.
But from my standpoint as a District Court Judge in the state of
Minnesota, one of the things that I've observed and I'll give you a
brief example. When I've conducted traffic court hearings, the
scenario typically is like what we see in this room. Maybe 100 people,
all of you are charged with a minor traffic offense, for example,
speeding, going through a stop sign, driving without a valid license.
Where I sit in the state of Minnesota, in Dakota County, the
demographics of the population is probably about 30 percent, people of
color and as each case is called, everyone sitting waiting to have his
or her case come before me, is able to see and hear the process and
you're able to see what happened to the prior person. Typically, this
scenario is, people will talk to the prosecutor, see if they can work
out a deal. Most people in that scenario trying to work out a deal
with their offense will not be certified to their records so that
they'll have a clean driver's record that will certainly affect
insurance, all of those things. Unfortunately, even with my being
there, a black judge, most people of color have a tough time trusting
the system. They have a tough time, even after watching other people
plead guilty to an agreement with the prosecutor that, for example,
the case will not be certified, they have a difficult time doing it
because pleading guilty is something that is very troubling. We must
ask ourselves why? Ultimately, they come out for the worse, because
they are either try their case or they will have to come back to court
a second time, and that takes time, off work, all sorts of things that
are not helpful to them, and then end up typically with a conviction
and had they taken the deal, as I view it, that probably would not
have happened. But that's a result of what that community has
experienced and the trust in the system is something that really
affects them in which even as a judge, someone of color, it's
difficult for me to do it because it's not my role. But just think
about some of our history. In 1956, for example, there was the war on
crime. We had three strike laws, zero tolerance. If you're a person of
color, you know someone who was caught up in that net and that creates
the distrust of the system. When we hear about prosecutors, for
example, there's always a get tough on crime and never heard a
prosecutor advertise herself as I'm going to be lenient or I will be
fair and just. Just in the news now have a prosecutor from San
Francisco who has lost a recall election because he had taken that
approach. Finally, to wrap up my comments, we also have some judges in
Minnesota at one point in the early '90s, we had a group of judges who
refer to themselves as the crack cocaine judges. They saw themselves
as, I think, helping the black community, but they saw themselves as
cleaning up that community with drug cases and what they did was to
form a party among themselves and this committee of judges consisted
of probably about four or five judges out of 19 and what they did was
they passed the cocaine cases among themselves and handed down
draconian type sentences for minor offenses of possessing cocaine. In
this day and age now, we can't imagine that happening and now a whole
view of how drugs are handled. I think some people would say, and
that's because drugs are now infiltrated our entire society. There's
now this concept of, well, let's help these people and not be so
draconian. Thank you. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] -
Sharon Goodie:
Hi, everybody. I'd like to talk about three separate categories. The first one I want to
explain what my court does. Then I want to talk a little bit more,
Judge Carter gave me some great segues into racial justice, justice
involving people living in poverty. Then I'd like to add some hopeful
things at the end about things that hopefully everybody in this room
can do to help make the legal system a little more welcoming to the
folks who need it. Most folks who are living in poverty. Let me first
start with what we do. I think all the lawyers in the crowd will know,
an administrative law judge is usually hired by the agency for which
that person hears cases. If you've got a problem with your Social
Security, you go to the Social Security office, you talk to a judge
who's paid by the Social Security office. Maybe there's some bias
there, the person is being paid by the agency that you disagree with.
In a number of places, not just Washington DC, but in most urban areas
in the country, they've started something called the central panel,
where they take those administrative law judges out of the agencies
and they put us together in one independent court and that's where I
work. There's one here in Boston. There's at least two in California.
There's one in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles, one in Chicago
where I came from. They have talked for a while about making a federal
central panel, but it hasn't moved forward on that. I can see why
there's so many thousands of administrative law judges in the federal
system. But anyway, back to what I do. My court hears cases from 50
different DC agencies and growing. There's actually a part of our
enabling statute that lead agencies who need a judge to make decisions
on a category of cases. We can actually set up a memorandum of
understanding, which is governments speak for a contract. We can hear
those cases and what's happened in a number of agencies, they've said,
office of administrative hearings, we like what you did with these
cases, we're going to expand, why don't you take all our cases. Right
now, I hear cases about Medicaid, about food stamps, which is now
called Snap, cash assistance, disability assistance, homeless shelters
because you can be kicked out of a homeless shelter. I'm sure that's
true in all jurisdictions. Nursing homes, you can be kicked out of a
nursing home. You have a right of appeal with us. School discipline
cases, there's an automatic right of appeal if your kid is suspended
or expelled. Property cases, not everybody knows if you don't contain
your trash properly, you can get a ticket from your jurisdiction. You
can appeal those to my court. It's a taxi, cab cases, etc., etc.,
unemployment, insurance, rental housing, rental housing conditions. I
get to hear a lot of very interesting cases. They refer to us as the
people scored, I'm using air quotes here, because it's where a lot of
people interact with the judicial system, even though we're part of
the executive branch, not the judicial branch. That's what we do. The
hope is that we're not biased and we're not seen as bias because all
judicial ethics codes require that we look for the appearance of
impropriety as well as actual impropriety we're supposed to avoid
both. In many cases, local agencies, their judges aren't actually
lawyers. So when they put us together, they require that everybody be
a lawyer who's an administrative law judge. We're trying to make us
look more legit. That's what we do and it's a fascinating job and I'm
really lucky to have it there. I want to talk a bit about the other
hat that I wear. I'm on the local DC access to justice commission.
Access to justice commissions you will also find in most urban
centers, and I'm hoping also in suburban and rural centers as well. We
work on making it easier for people who cannot afford counsel, which
is mostly everybody. Counsel is very expensive these days. We try and
make courts more accessible and figure out how we can do that. I've
learned some grim statistics to follow up on one Judge Carter was
talking about. I'm not actually going to give you statistics. I'll
talk about trends. There are studies that we'll talk about how black
and brown people in the criminal justice system are getting longer
sentences for the same offenses as white people. We're hoping to work
on that. There's also the converse of that, is that a lot of people
who are victims of crime, for the reasons that Judge Carter talked
about, are afraid to talk to the police about it. Now some of that is
the snitches get stitches, which is real, especially in a gun laden
culture such as ours. But there's another piece to it. There are
people who were really afraid that the police and the judges are
together, and by talking about what happened to you, the bad thing
that happened to you, you're going to be seen as a criminal. When you
hear about all the cold cases, especially homicides and serious
assaults, there's a real fear in the community of talking to police,
of telling your story if you're a crime victim, because you're afraid
you're going to somehow be associated with having done something bad
yourself. That's just on the criminal side. I also see myself on the
civil and administrative side when I hear the Medicaid cases. I can
only speak to what I see in the District of Columbia, but I suspect
it's true in other urban areas. The vast, vast majority of people I
see on poverty, benefits such as Medicaid and food stamps are black
and brown. I rarely see any white people in my courtroom. Poverty has
this thing that makes everything so much harder, makes racial justice
so much harder. In school discipline cases, there are also studies
that are showing that in public school systems, black and brown kids
are suspended more frequently and they get longer suspension than
white kids with similar offenses. Same problem just on the civil side.
You may have heard or this may be new about the school-to-prison
pipeline philosophy that's going forward. Kids are getting kicked out
or suspended, which never made sense to me. If your kid is having a
hard time in school, you kick them out, isn't that giving them a
present in some way? They get kicked out of school, they don't go
back. They don't have skills. They're not learning the skills they
need to get even low wage jobs. Crime is one of the only ways that
they can actually make money. People are trying to work on that. How
do we get out of that school to prison pipeline, and how do we do a
better job by our kids. The other thing I see, we don't deal with IDA
cases, which is about the right for kids who have disabilities have a
right to have services provided by the public school system to give
them and equivalent educational experience in the public schools. A
lot of the public schools aren't following the law in that, there's a
large class action suits still going on in the District of Columbia
because DC schools are not giving kids with special needs, the
services that they need or the only way they can do it, which is a
killer for our budget. They're sending them out-of-state to
residential schools, but then when they come back, they're given no
skills to handle their poverty stricken neighborhoods that they go
back to. It's a tough thing. We aren't giving these kids a chance to
get ahead and starting so young. There's all the really sad awful
stuff. I want to add in my third part, talk about hopeful things,
things that we can all do. Certainly, I know that a lot of people who
went to Brandeis went to law school too. I'm going to encourage
everybody, please consider if you're retired, if you're semi-retired,
if you're still practicing, consider pro-bono service. For those of
you who don't want to be in the courtroom, I don't blame you, it's
very stressful being in the courtroom. I'm a former prosecutor and it
was an adrenaline rush, but it was also very stressful. We've got
stuff for you to do too. For any trial court house, we need people to
help people navigate. We actually now have a name for it, we call it
navigators. If you walk into a large urban courtroom, you don't
necessarily know where to go and there's a long line to talk to the
information people. There are navigators who will show you which
courtroom to go to. There are people who are drafting booklets because
those of us who are lawyers know when we go to law school, we're
taught not to speak English. We're taught to speak in really long
sentences with really long words that make us impossible to
understand. We as judges are being trained and I can't speak for my
colleagues, but I'm guessing on writing and speaking in plain English
so that we can be more relatable to people who don't speak legal. Let
me come back to that other topic in a moment. We're being turned on
that. We could use help from lawyers who can translate legal into
English to explain in written form people who can't afford lawyers to
put explanations about what they can do to put on their own case. We
can certainly use people from other professions who can be helpful
too. One of the things that we're experimenting with in the district
is co-locating. I'm going to talk for a moment to the folks who are in
the health professions. We've got a lot of lawyers who are co-locating
in medical clinics to talk to people about, it looks like you're
struggling with health, have you applied for Medicaid? If so, did you
get Medicaid? Because I'm taking a look at your your income
information and you may be eligible if you didn't. Did you know about
the office of administrative hearing? They can help you if you should
have those Medicaid benefits and you haven't gotten them. We've been
seeing that there are a lot of places where people who are entitled to
some of those poverty benefits either haven't applied for them or who
have applied and they've been denied that they haven't done anything
about it because they didn't know they could. One of the biggest
studies might access to justice commission did was to talk to folks
living in the areas with the most poverty about what they thought was
a legal problem. A lot of folks don't even know that if you don't get
Medicaid, it's a legal problem that can be resolved in a courthouse.
Lot of folks don't know if they don't get their food stamps, it's a
legal problem and you can go talk to him about it, and chances are if
you're legally entitled to those foods stamps, the judge can make it
happen. It's fun when I can look at the agency that deals with food
stamps and say, "Hey, you guys messed this up, I need you to fix this
today. I've already given you two weeks. I've already given you a
month, fix this today," or, "We're coming back tomorrow, I want to see
that it's fixed." That's the best part of my job. Sadly, the agencies
are underfunded, understaffed, overstressed. They work as hard as they
can, but they're getting a lot of things wrong. Anyway, we need people
in the medical professions to co-locate with those lawyers so that
their clients who need help in other areas get help on the legal
problems that these folks have. For those of you who are in the
business community or who do you finance, legal aid and other legal
service providers, they are struggling too, especially in the previous
administration. I'm not supposed to talk about politics, but in the
previous administration, so many dollars are stripped from legal aid
and other organizations like that. That a lot of their lawyers aren't
in court, a lot of their lawyers are working on getting grant funding
so that they can pay themselves so that they can keep going. We're not
talking about big salaries for legal aid attorneys. Those of you who
are in business or finance, if you want to volunteer to help with
grant writing for legal aid organization, they would love that. That
way they can put more lawyers in court, more boots on the ground. I
think I've hit all the major professions. I want to encourage
everybody to volunteer, ask me questions. I can only of course talk
about Washington DC, but I think there's a lot of analogs in other
urban centers. I hope that the analogs are reaching out to rural
places because poverty is just as difficult in rural places as it is
in urban centers. It just has different dynamics to it. I'm going to
stop there and encourage everybody to volunteer. [APPLAUSE] -
Melissa Green:
Thank you very much. - Finally, [inaudible] will talk. - Hi everybody. It's
great to be here and thank you. You can't hear me. - No. - Sorry. No,
I was just saying it's great to be here. I actually started out here
as a music major and was in music 9060 for voice. I will try
projecting, is that better? [LAUGHTER] I did learn something.
Actually, I ended up dropping out of the music program because I
sucked [LAUGHTER] compared to the other kids in the group of people
with perfect pitch, I just couldn't compete and ended up doing other
things, but I did want to thank Allison for organizing this and your
hospitality and Dan for moderating. While we're on the subject of
Brandeis, so I've been a judge for nine and half years and you have to
get elected for the most part in New York. There's some appointed
positions, but I took the elected route. I was elected to Civil Court
in 2012 and elected to Supreme because New York does everything
backwards. Supreme Court, actually the trial level court, in 2020.
When I was campaigning, someone asked me, why would you as a
privileged person, have given up a whole lot of money working. I have
a background in commercial law and to do something that's high stress,
very high-profile and low pay. I said I thought for a minute, I
couldn't put my finger on it and I'm like, I think I was Brandeis.
[LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] I really do. Just the commitment to justice,
evening the playing field, and restoring amends. I really think that's
why I did what I did. Thank you Brandeis. Anyway, I wanted to talk to
you today about access to justice in the digital divide because it's
very current. As I said, I'm a commercial division judge. My
background's commercial. I sit in the commercial division of New York
County, which is Manhattan, the financial center for the country. We
have highly moneyed cases. The jurisdictional threshold is $500,000,
so you can't even get into the commercial division unless your damages
are that high. When the pandemic hit, it transformed our court. We
went to a virtual court in under six weeks. We never stopped. The
virtual proceedings have exceeded my wildest expectations. There was
an initial concern that let's say in a bench trial, I would not be
able to assess credibility over the internet, but as a matter of fact,
it's better. Because in the courtroom, the witness is to my left, I'm
looking at the audience. We've got a full courtroom. I'm being
interrupted by 20 different people at all times. Then I have this
personal thing where I'm always thinking I'm burdening people. I would
think, oh my God, I'm taking too long and the people in the back,
they've been here for an hour and it just made me very nervous. The
virtual proceedings are great because nobody's waiting, [NOISE]
everybody's in their office. I can hit spotlight on the witness and
I'm catching tells I never would have seen. I'm not sure the lawyers
are not happy about this, but for me it's great. It's been a warring
success on the commercial side. We have, it's great for the women
lawyers. I've seen some people who are appearing in front of me,
they're actually home. They don't have to worry about childcare as
much. I think people are more relaxed, saving money for the clients.
They don't have to come in. But at the same time, in one day, I could
have a case. I actually became a commercial division judge a year ago,
so I still have cases from my old less moneyed part. We had
association of musicians actually in Harlem and we were all virtual at
the time and you need three things to participate remotely. You need
the equipment, the devices. You need access to the Internet, and you
need the know-how. These particular people had the know-how. They were
educated very well. They knew how to get on, but they didn't have the
broadband access where in their neighborhood. It really didn't work
and I ended up taking emotion on submission, which is it's literally
their access to me was less. We're all very aware of the state court
system in New York has definitely making inroads into lessening this
digital divide. But it's a stark contrast and it's not fair and we
need to do something about it. I mean, as another plus though, I had
COVID in January and I did an entire virtual trial from my house.
[LAUGHTER] There's so many upsides to once people have access. It's
great. You can get legal help virtually. Let say somebody needs to
appear in court and they have a job that they don't have to take the
day off anymore. They don't lose that money. They don't have to worry
about childcare as much. There's so many pluses. But if you don't have
that broadband access and it's definitely different. I know there's an
infrastructure bill in Congress that should be trying to ameliorate
that. I hope it works, but it needs to be even. That's what I wanted
to just raise awareness about. - Okay. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Right. A
little while, we'll get to the question and answer. When you'll all
have a chance perhaps to come to the microphone. I'll let you know
when that time comes. Also there'll be some questions virtually as
well. But I did want to get a chance to ask a couple of questions from
our panel. How often they get four judges on the same stage. One
question I think maybe on all of our minds [NOISE] and that is the
most serious breach of confidentiality in the history of the Supreme
Court, which just happened a few weeks ago. Since you're all jurists,
how did that make you react? The idea of confidentiality, how
important that is. What were you thinking when you read that news? Any
of you can go. [OVERLAPPING] - I was astounded because regardless of
what the decision said or what the circumstances were, it's hard being
an appellate judge. It's hard creating consensus. I haven't set as an
appellate judge, but I know several of appellate judges. There is a
feeling of confidence in the confidentiality of your conferences about
cases. It's when cases at conference that positions are laid out. When
this draft was leaked, it had the effect essentially of deciding the
case at that point in time when in the normal course of events, drafts
are traded back and forth, maybe for months, they even sometimes for
years or many months before a final decision is made. It may be that
even some of the votes can shift. But once a document like a lead as
decision was leaked, it hardened. I mean, if we had any thought that
anybody would change their mind, that's out of the window. No one
wants to feel that they've been pushed, that they are a weak. If they
had any doubts, I think those doubts are gone by now and we will
potentially suffer for that. It's really, in my mind a bad thing
regardless of what the decision says. - It makes me worry because when
I'm working with the clerk and I share a clerk with a few other
judges, but when I'm working with the clerk, they know that I haven't
made my decision until my final order goes out. I don't want to say
bad things about the clerks because who knows where that leak was, but
everybody I work with no's until I've signed it or e-signed it, it's
not my final decision. That makes me worried. The other thing I need
to bring up is what scares me more is the guy outside of Justice
Kavanaugh's house who wanted to kill him. [LAUGHTER] As we were saying
before went on, we could talk about judicial security just as a panel
discussion, a panel topic on its own, very scary whether you agree or
not with Justice Kavanaugh, we have to feel safe in our physical
bodies doing our work. If something's going to get leaked out, that
isn't even my final decision and could put me at physical risk, that's
a real problem. - I would also like to bring up maybe a few more
general questions while we have you all here. One question I think
I've always been curious about teaching my students in telling them
about law the way, I understand it. Maybe a question many of you are
interested in is, what happens and this must be very common for you,
what happens when you get a case and maybe sentimentally, you may
favor one side or the other, you may wish you could roll for them, but
you know maybe there's a really good reason why you can't. I wonder if
there's a way you could talk about that moment, which is in many ways
unique to the enterprise of judging. It's so seldom that we get a
chance to talk to jurists about that. But you don't need to give an
example of it perhaps, but did you experience that tension? How do you
think of it? - It's attention that we deal with all the time. You go
into a case, you've read the briefs. You certainly come to the hearing
with an idea of what the outcome should be. Sometimes I change my mind
as I start to write a draft of my order, and often as a jurist, I'm
wishing that one person or one side or the other had argued something
that would give me the ability to rule in a way that I think justice
would prevail. I can tell you sometimes the law can be a dark hole and
sometimes we have to struggle to get out of that hole, and many times
there's nothing we can do. As judges, we are mandated to follow the
law, and we can sometimes manipulate the facts a little bit if we are
given a chance by the litigants to do so. Because it's the facts, the
rationale in the law that we are trying to work through. - [inaudible]
would you like to add anything to that? - We'll just sometimes
applying the law is really hard and it can conflict with your personal
beliefs. Like I may personally believe the subway should be free.
[LAUGHTER] But when I sat in criminal court, I would often take please
on people who had jumped the turnstile because that is a crime in New
York, and it's really hard. I don't have to put them in jail, but it's
hard. - It's hard with mandatory sentencing too especially when you
have someone before you, say a gun case, where there's a mandatory
minimum of a year for carrying a firearm under certain circumstances
in Massachusetts, and you see someone without a record, you see a
young person, a person with promise, and you know, a year to serve,
this is an year probation or whatever or suspended. A year to serve,
is going to set that person back potentially for life, and it's hard
to do. You have to apply the law. Sometimes there are opportunities to
get a prosecutor to reduce the case to a lesser crime, but sometime
you can't do that. You have to apply the law. - I want to pick up on
that and talk about what happens when you put somebody in prison,
nothing. There's no rehabilitation in prison. Occasionally, I was
lucky I went to Georgetown Law School and there was a clinic where we
went and taught at when DC's prisoners were housed around DC. Our
prisoners are now in federal system all over the country. There were a
lot of illiterate folks who were in prison. They go into illiterate,
they come out illiterate. They go in with no job skills, they come out
with no job skills. One other place to consider volunteering to pick
up on that theme and then I will come back to your question, I
promise. Think about volunteering in your local jail or prison, for
instance, if any of you who have dogs, who are therapy dogs, they make
a huge impact. They're doing wonderful things with prisoners who
actually want to work with the dogs, and rehabilitation happens there
to a big extent. If you want to teach literacy, it's so hard for folks
who appear before [inaudible] I think, to acknowledge that they are
either limited literacy or illiterate, go teach somebody to read, lots
of volunteer opportunities. Back to your question. When somebody lies
to me and I agree, credibility is not about being able to see, it's
about being able to hear, and being able to hear about somebody who
can keep a story straight if they're going to be inconsistent and
that's where credibility lies. If somebody is lying to me, but they
don't have the burden of proof, and the party with the burden is doing
a bad job putting on their case, then I have to let the liar win and
that drives me crazy. Fortunately, it doesn't happen very much. Very
few people are good liars, but every once in a while I have to rule
for the liar as much as I don't want to do that. - Well, that brings
up another question that both of you I've raised, and that's the
importance of the quality of legal representation, and what you do.
The arguments that are made, so much depends upon what the lawyers
said to allow you that materials for the decision you might like to
make. Maybe with that as a theme, what would you change, if you could
change anything at all, what would you do to legal education? If you
could change any, think about law school and how lawyers are trained.
Is there something you might like to bring up now that you could talk
about to suggest? - Well, typically lawyers are trained to look at the
law and apply it to a broader situation or other situations, and we
call it the Socratic method in law school, where that goes on. I went
to a school where that was used extensively, and I would like to see
in law school more clinics, and law schools have moved that way to
some degree. But more hands-on where lawyers or students are learning
to deal with particular cases and apply real life or work with real
life situations a little bit more than the theory that I learned when
I was in law school. - I think that's happening now. I taught as a law
professor immediately after retiring for about five years, and that's
the norm now in most schools. Some schools have cooperative
educational programs built in to the curriculum, but others are moving
in that direction, requiring students to have a certain amount of
clinical or experience or internship experience actually practicing
law or doing the legal work beside a practicing lawyer before they
graduate. It's important for them to see exactly to apply the law that
they're learning, so I think more of that is for the better. - Well,
thank you. I think we're about time for question and answer. If
members of our audience would like to come to that microphone there or
this microphone over here to my left to ask a question, you're welcome
to do so now. We'll also entertain virtual questions. We have a Zoom
coordinator up there who's in charge of that. Just keep in mind that
three of our four panelists can't talk about pending or very recent
Supreme Court cases, but to the extent that you have a question that
you'd like to ask them, feel free to walk up to the microphone now to
do so. In the meantime, while you're thinking about that. We have a
question right here. There's the microphone right in front of you. Go
right ahead. - [inaudible] people [inaudible]. - Is it on? - Let's
see. - Yeah. It's on. - Is it on? Probably better without my mic. -
Yes, we can hear you that one. That's good. - I don't know how many of
you can reply to this, but two questions related in terms of people
talking about reforming the court, increasing the numbers, and or
making it not a life position for the Supremes. Any comments, opinions
on either of them? - I didn't hear all the questions. But you're
asking about the reforming the courting the way is chosen? - The
Supreme Court? - Reforming Supreme Court. - Yes. Do you want to keep
white type tenure or not, is that yeah? - Yeah. Is that better? There
we go. In terms of increasing the number on the court, because it
doesn't say the constitution how many and or to change life tenure to
a certain number of years. Any opinions on either of those ideas that
had been tossed around a lot. Thank you. - I can begin. Increasing the
number of justices on the Supreme Court, I question whether that's a
good idea because I can envision one president coming in and saying,
I'm going to increase it to 12 members. The next president says, oh
boy, eight out of those 12, I oppose their views. I'm going to
increase it to 15 before we know what we have 1,000 justices, and so I
don't know if that's the way to go. I know some people have kicked
around the idea of having a staggered cord, for example, where a
president ideally gets to pick three justices, the next president at
three, and so forth, and what term limits of it. I've heard the number
18 years of being kicked around a little bit. But I think life tenure
is probably the better system than one that we have, and by the way,
when the Supreme Court was first formed, as I recall, they were only
six justices with one chief judge, and it was moved to nine I think,
in the mid 1800s. But I think the better thing for us to have is, for
example, where the justices don't completely police themselves. There
are times when there is a conflict of interest, and so we need some
type of law statue that prevents a justice from hearing a case that he
or she; there's certainly the appearance of a conflict. That's very
important. I think there's some things that can be done in that light
versus increasing the number of justices or term limits. [NOISE] Those
are my thoughts. - Yes, it's a remarkable thing that the Supreme
Court, almost alone, among institutions in the United States, has
nothing like an ethics code. It's just remarkable thing. Any of you
like to comment on that question before go on? - Well, for the same
reasons that Judge Carter mentioned, I wouldn't want to see the number
continually increased, but I do think there's a need for mandatory
retirement. Most states do have an age in which judges are forced to
retire. In Massachusetts is age 70, in many states is 70, some 75,
whatever the age is. I think there needs to be up opportunity for the
court to get new blood and not simply by death or illness and
something that you can look forward to particular vacancies at given
points of time. - Well, on that note, while some of you are gathering
your courage to walk up to the microphone. Oh, here's one person here.
Go right ahead. - Hi. Is that on? Yeah. - Yeah. I think we can hear
you. - I really enjoyed hearing all of your points of view, and I
really enjoyed listening to your discussion. It was really very
interesting to me. I don't get an opportunity to speak to for judges
very frequently. My question is not exactly germane to any subject
particularly carried right now. I just came in from California a
couple of days ago we had an election. There were 21 items on the
election where I'm in Southern California. Nine of them were voting on
judges. Nobody knows who these judges are. I tried to be a responsible
voter. I have trouble getting information, hearing opinions, that
thing it takes enormous research, whatever. I just like to hear your
opinions on that, whether we should be voting for judges, the average
person in the city, or if you have another method of doing it and what
your opinions might be. Thank you. - I think two of you were voted at
one time or another, right? - Not me. - If you like to talk about the
advantages of that, how you feel about that, or if you feel
uncomfortable about that. That's okay too. But if any of you have any
thoughts on that I'd like to hear. - I'm against electing judges, and
of course, I'm biased because of Massachusetts judges are not elected.
They are appointed like in the federal system for life essentially
until reach mandatory retirement. But on good behavior, there is a
Judicial Conduct Commission is very active in policing behavior of
judges. You can be removed, but I just don't know what it would be
like to run for office, and some of you can tell us. - I'm in a
jurisdiction where it's a little bit of a hybrid. Under our
constitution the judges are elected and that's the case in most
states. So what happens is, for example, I retired a few weeks ago and
I retired in the middle of my six-year term, and as a result of that,
the governor appoints my replacement, and typically in most states, as
in Minnesota, there's a commission on judicial selection, and it's
made up of a couple of judges, several lawyers. They interview people
and make a recommendation to the governor on who should be appointed.
Well, almost always, the governor appoints that person who goes
through that selection process. Once the governor appoints the judge
to the bench, then that judge has to run for election between one and
three years depending on the cycle of the election period. Once that
judge has been elected by the public then he or she is in the office
for six years until he or she retires. Retire on May 2nd, like I did,
then the governor gets to do it again. - I have a lot of reservations
about judges being appointed, and I think of the civil rights era
where judges had to decide whether or not blacks had to be compelled
to ride in the back of the bus, could be served at restaurants, those
were federal district court judges who made those tough decisions.
They were able to make those decisions because they were not elected.
If you know anything about the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama, I believe,
there was a novel by Lee Harper that followed that case To Kill a
Mockingbird, and at one point, a district court judge or a trial judge
believed that one of those boys did not commit that rape and gave him
leniency. The following year he was voted out because there was a
lynch mob who wanted to have those nine kids executed. When you're
making decisions thinking about whether you will be able to keep your
job, that's not a good thing. - In New York, we have a type of hybrid
system. I'm elected, the criminal court judges are appointed by the
mayor, court of claims is appointed by the governor, and so there's
good and bad aspects to all types of ways of becoming a judge. But I
think your question was more, how do you find out about these judges?
Is it? - That is the question. - Yeah. We see, I don't know if
[OVERLAPPING] - [inaudible]. - I know with New York, at least
downstate. Upstate is different, so I'm only talking about really New
York City, but it's very blue. The Democratic Party really controls
the elected process because the Republicans cannot win. Well, at least
for the most part, they're Staten Island. I don't know if there are
primaries there. It's really messy to specify New York City because
it's different, but let's talk about Manhattan because that's what I
know. There's deep bedding that goes on on both sides actually. So,
the appointed process and the elected process, There's a tremendous
amount of vetting and I know because it's exhausting. There's panel
after panel, both on the appointed route and the elected route. The
democratic screening committee puts together the elected screening
panels. I don't know specifically either appointed route because they
didn't go that way, but they have their own screening panels. So by
the time we get on the ballot, there's been an enormous amount of
vetting. I imagine it's similar in Southern California because of the
politics. Were you voting as a primary, like were there to people
against each other or? - The judges [inaudible]. - It was? - Was not.
- Was not. So, that's the scene that we have because they are whole
processes. A lot of it's on the Internet also. I think people who
wanted to see about me, by the time I was running for Supreme, I'd
already been a judge for seven or eight years. So you could look up my
decisions obviously. But I think there is a certain amount of not
knowing where to look for the general public. And I think you raise a
very valid point about how do we educate the electorate about the
judges in general, because otherwise you're just relying on the
screening. Folks. - Can I [OVERLAPPING]. - Go ahead. - Okay. I do know
that in some states and I know in Chicago, bar associations will vet
people who are running for election and give their recommendations.
Now Chicago's [OVERLAPPING] is as deep do as Manhattan is, but
downstate, totally different again. That can be helpful if you know
where to find it. Sometimes it'll be on a website. Sometimes Chicago
council of lawyers used to publish it I think in a newspaper. I know
this because my mother served on the Chicago Council of Lawyers. She
went to Brandeis too. And a retired judge. So, look for a bar
association that might be able to give you some information. I'm an
appointed judge and there are issues with that too, because part of
the reason I got this job is because there's a five-member statutory
commission. The head of that commission used to be my boss when I was
a prosecutor and I helped with a high-profile case and made the city
look good. So, he was like, oh, Sharon, yeah, and he also had seen my
work because it was a high-profile case I was reporting to him. But it
is about who you know, and that sometimes can be positive, but
sometimes it can be negative too. So I think there's flaws going both
ways, which may be why there are hybrids. Just a guess. - Also the
bench needs to reflect the population of the communities it's judging.
I think that's a concept that I believe. So how you get to that point
and the diversity you need is really, really important, and no matter
how that works, either appointment or elected, that's really should be
the goal. Or one of the goals. - I think we have about ten minutes or
so to go to virtual questions. Probably there were some from the
remote audience. - Yes. Thank you, Professor [inaudible]. Lots of
discussion online. I think everyone's hungry to hear your thoughts on
some of our most recent headlines. We've had several questions about
the current Ginny Thomas headlines. So, I'm not sure if any of the
panelists can speak to that wave of Clarence Thomas and pressing
lawmakers to reverse Trump's defeat. A specific question. Is there a
way to prevent Justice Thomas from ruling in a case involving his wife
and potentially even himself? - I'm not sure if that's one that all of
you could comment on. - Well, I think the short answer is no, and
that's problematic that the supreme court is not bound by any code of
ethics. All the lower courts federal and I'm sure in state
jurisdictions there are codes that judges follow. But the supreme
court is not bound and cannot be disciplined or brought to heel for
anything that we view as violations. I mean, they can decide amongst
themselves certainly, but nothing can be imposed upon them and we
won't hear about anything that's done internally unless they publish
happily reversed Plessy versus Ferguson, even though it was on the
books for a long time. This is the case that set up separate but
equal. This may be the same for Roe v. Wade, but time is not the
deciding factor, is it? Related to that, if Roe v Wade is overturned,
when and how could we pursue restoring that? - When and how what? -
[OVERLAPPING] Restore Roe. - Restoring Roe might be a trick. It's
actually overturned, and I think as we've heard earlier, you have to
go to the legislative process for that. But the entire idea of
precedent was at stake in that draft opinion in dubs, and this might
be a good time, maybe to talk about how you perceive precedent. Is how
actively to perceive that as binding on you and what's the importance
of precedent and what you do? - As a trial court judge, that's not an
issue because I have to follow the law. For the Supreme Court, they
get to interpret and to some degree make the law, and so they ideally,
I think find themselves thinking about precedent. Sometimes it can be
a bad thing. We've had some cases where we're all glad that those
decisions were overturned. But on my level, I assume most of us here,
that that's not an issue for us. - There's the difference too, we're
all bound by ethics codes. We all are required to follow stare
decisis. It's wholly different there, and I forgot to mention dad went
to Brandeis too. Hi dad, [LAUGHTER] and he's watching. - Speaking of
ethics codes, how do you all as judges leave your bias at the door of
your courtroom? You started talking about that briefly. - Constant
vigilance. - Yeah. - I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. - Constant
vigilance. You have to always check yourself. Everyone comes to the
table with their own background and their own experiences, and you
have to set that aside and judge the case on the facts and the law
before you. It's very important and on the subject of training
lawyers, I really think the implicit bias training would be an
important class for law school. There wasn't that when I was in law
school. I don't know if that's changed. - That's a good point. - There
are classes and various programs amongst judges. Many of the courts
have judicial education programs that emphasize issues around implicit
bias. But it's a day-to-day thing. You can't walk in and say I have
arrived, I will not be biased against anything or for anything. It's a
struggle every day, but you owe that to litigants. You're not there to
pursue your own ends. It can be difficult. [NOISE] But it's important
that there is diversity on the bench, that we come there with our own
backgrounds, our own affinities, our own views about things. You
really do have to reflect the populace before you. But, in an
individual case, you've got to toe the line and call it as you see it
and as the law requires. - We also have to be working on temperament,
and temperament and implicit bias frequently go hand in hand, so we
have mandatory training on both of those things and those are not easy
things to train on. I see it as I'm a work in progress. I'm never
going to be totally right, but I try to improve myself as much as I
can. - I think that's an important thing for students these days to
hear. I think that there can be such a thing as the rule of law. But
the rule of law is consistent with your own backgrounds being
important in shaping how you view some of the issues that come before.
That's another reason as we just heard, diversity in these
institutions is pretty important, and I think you have another
question maybe? - Yes, we do. Speaking of diversity or lack of
diversity, with the Supreme Court conservative majority, how are you
viewing the future of this court and the cases that we'll be taking in
the coming years? - I'm having a little trouble hearing what the
entire question is. - If the question may be one to which one of us
can respond. That would be, how you see or view the future of the
Supreme Court, especially in coming years? - Well I'll just say that I
think is quite a bit gram, at least on the issues that are important
to me. Now, there are lots of issues relating to business and the like
that are ruled on as a matter of course, that many of us would not
disagree with. Even some of the criminal law issues will be troubling.
But I think we're in for a long haul. Some of these justices are
fairly young as Supreme Court Justices go. They can and likely will be
on the bench for a considerable amount of time and it's a six, three
majority, it's hard to overcome that. But over time, things will turn,
but I believe it will be a long time. - Yeah. - I guess there is the
heartening idea as you said that not all of these decisions are wholly
politicized. I think 40 percent of all decisions are 90 nothing. But
there are these really important cases that affect people's lives that
are going to be crucial, and maybe not in a way that many of us would
like. That may be a little bit of a dim way to end things. Would you
like to say anything on a hopeful note before [LAUGHTER] we walk to
Louis to say goodbye to, Louis? - I can do it. I had the privilege to
teach with then, judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and thrilled to see that
progress. I think she's going to do a fantastic job. I'm trying to
come up with different metaphor words here. As a single mom, It's
great to see somebody on the Supreme Court bench who is juggling the
mom thing and the judging thing. It is not an easy thing. There are
other issues, but I'm glad to see that glass ceiling finally get
broken. This is the first time there's been a mom of young kids on the
Supreme Court, so baby steps. - Thank you. - Okay. - Many thanks to
our distinguished alumni judges and to Professor Brings. It was a
great privilege to host this program with you. We are delighted to see
so many of our Brandeis alumni and friends coming together to explore
topics with our Brandeis faculty and alumni experts, both in-person
here at Brandeis and online. We look forward to you joining us for an
exciting array of programs throughout alumni weekend, and we greatly
appreciate your participation and your continued support of Brandeis
University. Thank you, and thank you. -Thank you. [APPLAUSE]