Transcript:
 

Eventually people will get, I suppose, population under control. But there is a large and growing number of people. They all have to be fed. They all have to be housed. They have to learn. They’re all gonna have families, we hope. They’re all going to have lives. Each one of them is an individual life. And as you have more and more, the great positive thing is people . . . they’re . . . it’s religion, if you like; but people have within them the capacity for great good and for terrible things. And societies come together, churches come together, philosophers come together, people come together with sets of behaviors which we try to teach children so that they’ll get those bad instincts under control. And so we’ll bring out the good ones. And if you’re gonna bring out the good ones, people are capable of marvelous things. I mean just tremendous organization. So that’s why I thought India was so interesting, because I thought, “My goodness. It’s like a microcosm.” And here we have the points of light, and the dangers of darkness. And of course we all know now we can destroy the whole planet. It’s possible. It’s possible. And yet we’re working . . . and that’s why I’m so enthusiastic about these different organizations – whether they’re local, or whether they’re national, or whether they’re international – that are trying to knit things together, that are trying to create structures. So when future people are born in the world, they will have structures within which they can work to try to use their good instincts, their capacities, their abilities, to create worlds that are better. And if you contrast this century with the 19th, in the 19th they were certain that it was progress; but we’ve lived through – I have – this terrible, terrible 20th Century. And now people are not at all certain whether the forces of progress, whether the good within people is so good that it can overcome these tremendous problems. But we’re working on it. So I’m an optimist, and most people are. We work on it. We do our best.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007

Transcript:

No. I mean only vary rarely would that actually matter. And it can’t really influence your judgment in terms of consequences directly on the court – what will the press say? Will they say you’re good or bad? Will they see this is terrible or wonderful – you just cannot let it because that is the road to perdition? We’re not there to be popular. We’re not there to decide according to the majority. We’re not there to decide according to what the press is going to write. If you were to take that view of the job, why take it? The point of this job is to do your best as a judge. It is a judicial job. It is a job where you’re trying to apply as best you can to apply the law in different circumstances. And the cases in front of us – 80 a year – sounds like a few, but each of them is really difficult because they are cases in respect to which lower courts have continuously disagreed.

Years ago in the 1830s, there was a case involving the Cherokee Indians and Georgia. And they were . . . Their land bill was discovered, and the Georgians seized their land. They hired a lawyer, William Worth – a great lawyer in that time – and he brought a case to the Supreme Court. And he won eventually. He won. The court said the land belongs to the Indians. It doesn’t belong to the Georgians. And the President, Jackson, said – supposedly said – John Marks has made his decision and we must enforce it. And he wouldn’t enforce that decision. Indeed he sent troops there eventually. Those troops evicted the Indians. Well John Joseph’s story and John Marshall had a correspondence that year. And it was a dark year for the court. And they wondered, in writing, what will happen to this court. And John Marshall said something that’s famous. He said, “Well the people made the Constitution, and they can unmake it.” So ultimately we’re floating on a sea of public opinion. And that public opinion does not have to agree with our decisions, but they do have to follow them. And indeed we’ve seen over the course of history.

I often use as an example Little Rock, where a different president – Eisenhower – sent troops. And Governor ______ stood in the door and said, “I will not . . . I will not let those black children in this white school.” And Eisenhower said, “We’re sending the Airborne.” The 101st Airborne Division went to Little Rock, and they took the children by the hand and they walked them right into the school. That was a great day for the law, for the country. And today people do tend to follow the opinions . . . They understand, at some level, that 300 million people of every possible race, religion and point of view to live together, they have to have a way of resolving their problems, and they turn to the law. Now there’s no guarantee that will continue. The court is working at it, but it is an incredible asset, a treasure to the country. And I see it every day. I see it every day.

I understand that the court has to maintain standing in public opinion; but the way to do that is not for me to base my decisions on public opinion. Out of the question. The way for me to do it is to do just what I’m doing now. It’s to do my best to explain to people what the court’s about. And to hope I’ll interest them enough, so that they – whether they’re high school students, or college students, or grammar school students, they say, “Well maybe we ought to know something about this. Maybe we should find out. Maybe we ought to know about our government. Maybe even participating in government or participating in the community is a good thing for us.” And if they think about that, then I’ve done what I can in that respect.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

You know the thing that impressed me most ever written about judges interpreting text was a statement by Learned Hand, who is maybe the greatest judge ever had in the United States – certainly one of the few. And he said, “Interpreting a text is like a . . . it’s tough. It’s a difficult decision.” He said, “It’s closer to a performer interpreting a musical score.” You want to be true to that score. You want to be true to the intent of the composer who wrote the music. And there isn’t a magic formula. There’s not a magic formula that will tell you how to do it. And I would be amazed if I could give you a formula about how to use consequences in every case. Well I think if you put it more tritely, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I write down what I think. And if people read it, they will see what the reasoning is. And they can criticize it and I might learn from that. But there is not a magic answer. You know I’m probably . . . since I recently wrote a dissent in a case involving the use of race-conscious criteria in the schools . . . whether the city of Seattle could use . . . As one criteria among several, they allowed high school students freedom to choose whatever school they wanted. They listed preferences. But they said no school could be more than 85% white. Basically that was their criteria. And the question was, “Could they actually overtly, in that way, use a racial criteria?” And the court, 5 to 4, decided that they could not. They could not. I dissented. I thought, “Of course they can’t.” Were consequences relevant there? They certainly were to me. Because I said, “If you interpret the equal protection clause to forbid this, how are people supposed to deal with problems of race and poverty in inner cities of America?” And I see the Constitution as a very workable document. I think Madison’s genius was to say we’re going to get these values. We stay the same. And we’re gonna embody them in words that allow their application over the course of the next 400, 500 years, if not longer. And to do that, you have to refer back to how do these values apply today? What’s the value of the equal protection clause? Trying to bring us together; trying to create one nation; trying to create races that were separate ________ a caste system; and try to create one country out of this diversity. And it’s a miracle, but we’ve been able to do that to a degree. There’s still plenty of problems. And for me to think of that clause being posed as an obstacle to such an effort, I just think that that was wrong. And I expressed by view very concisely in about 77 pages.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

Well it’s always been true that usually once or twice a year, someone . . . someone will read a dissent from the bench. And it’s typically a dissent in a case that we think has some importance, and that we think . . . the dissenters usually think is very wrongly decided. The normal attitude when you write a dissent is “how right I am”. I mean that’s human nature. But there have been more than usual. And I think what the dissenters have been saying in their dissents is we think there are quite a few decisions with which we strongly disagree.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I saw a very interesting film. It was on a French television program. It was showing some people come up from . . . they had been nomads in the south part of the desert in western Africa. And there was a fishing season, and they arrived in trucks. And thousands of them went out and they were catching these fish, and pretty soon there were no fish left. That was the point of the film. And the real point of the film is, well, there aren’t going to be any fish left. But the message was, what are they supposed to do? What are they supposed to do? There isn’t work for them where they started. They have to eat, and so they come up and they take the fish. Well this is a huge problem. And we know that on the one hand, we’ve gotta keep the fish. And we also have to find work for these people. And so that’s the kind of problem that’s caused tremendous environmental problems; tremendous population problems; tremendous problems, of course, of keeping the what I call the fanatical, dark element of human nature under control. And it only takes a few or it’s out of control to do tremendous damage. But we have terrific instruments of cooperation . . . the Internet being one, our educational institutions. Our economy is good. We have this economic need. So forces of . . . points of light and possibilities of darkness.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I heard Shimon Peres say something interesting, I thought, because people are so pessimistic about the Middle East. And he said something more optimistic. He said, “It’s like going forward with throwbacks.” It’s . . . there are obstacles. And you hope you’ll surmount them and you might. There were . . . right now you’re involved in the Internet. Well my goodness. That could be a terrible thing. It could be a force that isolates people. They don’t have human contact anymore. Everything is . . . Or, it could be a force that brings them together. And in fact, when you see people in . . . probably in the Middle East, he said, “Once they start to see what’s possible elsewhere in the world, and what they can achieve through cooperation in a modern world . . .” Modern has a lot of bad about it, but it has a lot of good. And whether it’s good or bad, we’re in it. And once they see what is possible to accomplish through education, through savings, through trying to improve their economic life, through getting together . . . once they see that, they’ll begin more to understand it, and that will be a tremendous civilizing force. And by “civilizing force”, I mean the force that really keeps out these incredible fanatics. And so what we’ve seen in the last 10 years is there is no magic solution to me. There are no magic solutions to keeping them out.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

Eventually people will get, I suppose, population under control. But there is a large and growing number of people. They all have to be fed. They all have to be housed. They have to learn. They’re all gonna have families, we hope. They’re all going to have lives. Each one of them is an individual life. And as you have more and more, the great positive thing is people . . . they’re . . . it’s religion, if you like; but people have within them the capacity for great good and for terrible things. And societies come together, churches come together, philosophers come together, people come together with sets of behaviors which we try to teach children so that they’ll get those bad instincts under control. And so we’ll bring out the good ones. And if you’re gonna bring out the good ones, people are capable of marvelous things. I mean just tremendous organization. So that’s why I thought India was so interesting, because I thought, “My goodness. It’s like a microcosm.” And here we have the points of light, and the dangers of darkness. And of course we all know now we can destroy the whole planet. It’s possible. It’s possible. And yet we’re working . . . and that’s why I’m so enthusiastic about these different organizations – whether they’re local, or whether they’re national, or whether they’re international – that are trying to knit things together, that are trying to create structures. So when future people are born in the world, they will have structures within which they can work to try to use their good instincts, their capacities, their abilities, to create worlds that are better. And if you contrast this century with the 19th, in the 19th they were certain that it was progress; but we’ve lived through – I have – this terrible, terrible 20th Century. And now people are not at all certain whether the forces of progress, whether the good within people is so good that it can overcome these tremendous problems. But we’re working on it. So I’m an optimist, and most people are. We work on it. We do our best.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007

Transcript:

I mean Holmes, of course, is a very great judge. Because he saw what I admired in him, and what people do admire in him, is he said, “Look. It’s not a question of a few people dictating to others. It is a question of inspiring, or leading, or getting others themselves to resolve their problems. Sometimes when they resolve their problems, they run up against what he called a “can’t help”. He said a can’t help . . . I have a can’t help when I just have to say, “My god. This is wrong.” And we’ve seen a few of those. So it’s like being under pressure. It’s like you want these . . . It’s not my decision. It’s not my decision. It’s their decision. They’ve got to do it. They’ve gotta work this out. I can give advice, but I can’t tell anybody what to do. And then you run up against a can’t help. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t put those people in prison without any cause. You can’t do this kind of thing. It’s just too much, you see . . . speech, religion, whatever, I see those things in the Constitution. So I think it’s a . . . and Holmes was influenced by what I think of as the late 19th Century, early 20th Century American pragmatist. Other pragmatists are Henry James, Purse, and . . . There’s a pretty good book called “The Metaphysical Club”. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Very good. And they describe . . . He describes a people like that time. And then I think of San Francisco, which was a cooperative. Western . . . it’s western. It’s open. It’s cooperative. It’s people of all walks of life getting together and trying to figure out how to solve their problems. And I think of when I was growing up back in San Francisco.

You said what was the world supposed to be like? Well the world, in a way, that Dean Atchison created . . . or helped create. That was a world which was going to be a world where democracy would spread; where people’s basic rights would be guaranteed; where there would be free trade. Not totally free. The mixed economy, you see? Regulated competitive. Not communism. Not les a faire capitalism, but there would be something in between there where you’d take the advantages of free markets but regulate them so they don’t get out of control. And there would be international organizations whereby people could resolve their international disputes. So you say put that . . . say pragmatic. The pragmatic . . . Pragmatic is a . . . Pragmatism, American pragmatism . . . Henry James and Purse and those people, and Cline later on, and the philosophers . . . It’s not just do whatever is good. It’s not just look out at each decision and try to maximize whatever is good. It is to try to create systems, rules, organizations, methods of cooperation that you see over time will tend to push societies towards what is better. I mean when he talked about truth – this may be more than you want to know – but when he talked about truth, James and Purse were not saying that something is true because it works. What they were saying is that something is true because it’s part of a total system. And that total system works better for people than some alternative system would.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:
 

Justice O’Connor and I were in India on 9/11. We had _______ there. We were meeting with their judicial . . . with judges of their Supreme Court. We arrived on that very day. On that very day. And of course the people there were horrified, and there was a tremendous outpouring of support, and people couldn’t have been nicer. And, but it was a time of thought for me. And really, it seemed to me . . . and I mention it because what was in our minds after a week there – we spent a week there – that the world is really divided into what I think of as the forces of reason and the forces of non-reason. And the forces of reason . . . well law is part of that. Law is part of it. Judges are part of it. Lawyers are part of it, and so is everybody else on . . . you know . . . other professions. The forces of non-reason, that’s the risk. That’s the danger. So I rather see that as something that’s unifying people across the world. Because people across the world do believe in democratic systems. They do believe in protecting basic human rights. They do believe in trying to create economies that will make their people prosperous. And they believe to a considerable degree in international settlement disputes. Things like that, too. But there are forces that they have to fight against which are obvious. So that’s in my mind. Maybe that’s how I was brought up, too. That was after World War II _______ cooperation. But as you look out today, and also I’d say my experience tells me that in a way, it’s like this . . . somebody weaving a loom. I mean I’m not a political figure. I’m not in politics. And I don’t . . . and people who do . . . are in politics and in very high levels in government may see these international institutions and global politics going on at a very high level. But I say to the lawyers and judges who are technical people, who are professionals, and at our level, whatever happens at the other, there’s a kind of knitting going on. It’s like workers at a loom. It’s happening in Europe. It’s happening in Africa. It’s happening in Asia. People are learning from each other, particularly in law. How does it happen? It happens in conferences. People talk to each other. Judges talk to each other. Lawyers talk to each other. It happens as different groups try to create laws. For example in Europe, they’re trying to create commercial laws, and bankruptcy laws, and tax laws, and laws that will govern several what were independent . . . . they are independent nations, but they’re trying to get together. And this is happening at the World Trade Organization. It’s happening across the world. It’s popularly called “globalization”. But what it involves are people in business, people in law, learning what each other are doing. And they adjust their laws accordingly. It doesn’t always have to be formal. We used to have a group called the Uniform Law Commissioners. And they’d go from state to state, and they’d say, “California does this.” And they’d go to Iowa, and they’d say, “Iowa, you know California does this. Maybe you should try it.” And that kind of thing goes on every minute as we speak. And then there are different organizations developing like the World Trade Organization. There are dozens of them. And there are free trade areas. There are health organizations. There are communications organizations. There’s the Internet. There are all these things we know about. They are all forces working to bring us together. So what I see as happening – and it’s not a political matter – what I see as happening is people who are lawyers and judges in America today have to be aware. And they have to have a system of being aware about what’s going on elsewhere. Because the cases in front of them will more and more depend on what’s happening elsewhere.

 
Recorded on: 7/5/2007 at The Aspen Ideas Festival

 
Transcript:

 
Well what I talk about is what I’ve been talking about, is it is important for people at all levels to understand the need for a rule of law and independent judiciary.  And I think that that is fairly well understood; but where you try to get the understanding is at the high school level.  That’s what I mostly think we can do.  In respect to separation of powers as legal matters, they come up before us as cases.  Now we’ve had Guantanamo, for example, three times.  Most recent, we were going to hear another case.  Don’t take anything I say as commenting on that case.  We haven’t heard it yet.  But the third case involved probably the least popular . . . or one of the least popular people in the United States . . . Bin Laden’s chauffer.  And he was on one side against the most powerful person possibly in the world, the United . . . the President of the United States.  And he was claiming that he couldn’t be tried by a military tribunal.  And he came before our court, and he won and the President lost.  So it’s a mistake to say that there isn’t an independent judiciary in America.  In those cases, we decide the issues as we see them case by case.  And so the general thing, “Is the President too powerful?  Is the Congress too powerful?  Are the courts too powerful?”  In general terms, it’s a matter for the political scientists and the government professors to work out, and the newspapers to editorialize, and the people to think about; but it isn’t something that I necessarily . . . that I take into account when I’m doing my job.  I’m trying to decide particular cases.

 
Recorded on: 7/5/07 

Transcript:

No. I mean only vary rarely would that actually matter. And it can’t really influence your judgment in terms of consequences directly on the court – what will the press say? Will they say you’re good or bad? Will they see this is terrible or wonderful – you just cannot let it because that is the road to perdition? We’re not there to be popular. We’re not there to decide according to the majority. We’re not there to decide according to what the press is going to write. If you were to take that view of the job, why take it? The point of this job is to do your best as a judge. It is a judicial job. It is a job where you’re trying to apply as best you can to apply the law in different circumstances. And the cases in front of us – 80 a year – sounds like a few, but each of them is really difficult because they are cases in respect to which lower courts have continuously disagreed. And so ________ . . . Well it’s like when I think of . . . One comes to mind _______. Years ago in the 1830s, there was a case involving the Cherokee Indians and Georgia. And they were . . . Their land bill was discovered, and the Georgians seized their land. They hired a lawyer, William Worth – a great lawyer in that time – and he brought a case to the Supreme Court. And he won eventually. He won. The court said the land belongs to the Indians. It doesn’t belong to the Georgians. And the President, Jackson, said – supposedly said – John Marks has made his decision and we must enforce it. And he wouldn’t enforce that decision. Indeed he sent troops there eventually. Those troops evicted the Indians. Well John Joseph’s story and John Marshall had a correspondence that year. And it was a dark year for the court. And they wondered, in writing, what will happen to this court. And John Marshall said something that’s famous. He said, “Well the people made the Constitution, and they can unmake it.” So ultimately we’re floating on a sea of public opinion. And that public opinion does not have to agree with our decisions, but they do have to follow them. And indeed we’ve seen over the course of history . . . I often use as an example Little Rock, where a different president – Eisenhower – sent troops. And Governor ______ stood in the door and said, “I will not . . . I will not let those black children in this white school.” And Eisenhower said, “We’re sending the Airborne.” The 101st Airborne Division went to Little Rock, and they took the children by the hand and they walked them right into the school. That was a great day for the law, for the country. And today people do tend to follow the opinions . . . They understand, at some level, that 300 million people of every possible race, religion and point of view to live together, they have to have a way of resolving their problems, and they turn to the law. Now there’s no guarantee that will continue. The court is working at it, but it is an incredible asset, a treasure to the country. And I see it every day. I see it every day. So therefore I understand that the court has to maintain standing in public opinion; but the way to do that is not for me to base my decisions on public opinion. Out of the question. The way for me to do it is to do just what I’m doing now. It’s to do my best to explain to people what the court’s about. And to hope I’ll interest them enough, so that they – whether they’re high school students, or college students, or grammar school students, they say, “Well maybe we ought to know something about this. Maybe we should find out. Maybe we ought to know about our government. Maybe even participating in government or participating in the community is a good thing for us.” And if they think about that, then I’ve done what I can in that respect.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

Sometimes it will have major consequences. Think of Brown v. Board of Education, which turned the nation away from segregation, and when we started to make the Constitution mean what it says, in my opinion, certainly. You don’t know what will have consequences. You can’t . . . you don’t know. I think history looks back. And it’s sort of like the stock market, my view of history, which is not very sophisticated. And the stock market, it goes up or it goes down. And then the experts tell you the next day why you should’ve known the previous day. And of course they don’t. All they do is 1,000 things happen and they pick out what’s significant. Well the historians look back and they say, “Of course this would have happened, because these earlier things happened.” But they know what happened, and they’re looking to see what’s significant. And we’re operating in a world where we’ll decide things, and we don’t know precisely what will happen in the future. So what we do is we do our best on each case. If a district judge is deciding a case of two people in front of him, that case is tremendously consequential for those two people. And a district judge at the trial level will take that with tremendous seriousness, because it matters to those people. It might be a matter of prison. It might be a matter of whether one is bankrupt or not. It might be a matter of family. There are lots of things that matter. Now every judge at every level takes the job seriously. And that, I think, is the most that a person in my position can do. You can do your best.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

Well remember our cases on the Supreme Court, we decide about 80 or so a year. Probably more than half involve the interpretation of statutes. But a very large number involve the Constitution. And the way that I see it is that the document – and at this level of abstraction most people agree – the document is basically about . . . The first seven articles, they’re basically about creating institutions – Congress, the rest of the institutions – that will enable people to govern themselves. That’s called democracy, but it’s a certain kind of democracy. It’s a democracy that is limited by respect for basic human rights. Because we’ve learned in the 20th Century, if not before, that the majority is conteranized. So there are lists of human rights that are First Amendment, Fourth Amendment. They’re protected. So it’s a democracy that protects fundamental human rights. It assures a certain degree of equality . . . equal respect for people. It divides power vertically between states and federal government among three branches – legislative, executive, judicial – of the federal government. It divides power so no group of people become too powerful. And it insists upon a rule of law. Having stated that, I’ve stated in general terms one, the democracy, and two, the limitations, the boundaries. And what’s our job? I see our job . . . we’re the boundary patrol. We’re the frontiersmen. We’re the guardians of the rails. We have to see that the rest of the process, when it’s brought before us, follows those Constitutional instructions. So we typically say, “Is this law – passed by the Congress or by the state legislature – is this law inside or outside the boundaries?” So I say life is not always easy at the frontier; but nonetheless, the cases are difficult. And our job is, “Which side?” Inside it’s okay. Or outside, it’s off the rails.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I would say tremendous influence on me from that time looking back was the fact that my father worked for the city government, and my mother was interested in city life. So it was natural for me to think that it’s important to be part of a city, of a group, of a community. And an important part of your life is involved in work that will keep you in touch with other people in the community. That’s certainly what their lives showed. And it also showed me there are a million ways that you could possibly have that connection with the community. But I can remember thinking when I was a teenager . . . and we had some friends who lived . . . You started out by saying it was a suburb, but it wasn’t a suburb. And I wondered how could people live in the suburbs? Because if they lived in a suburb, they wouldn’t really be in touch with what’s going on in the city. And I understood after a while; but that part of civic life, community life – whether it was Temple Emmanuel, or whether it was the city School Board, or whether it was a school department, or whether it was the United Nations Association . . . She worked in political campaigns sometimes, my mother. So that, I think, had a tremendous influence in my life.

Question: Did your background shape your understanding of the law?

Well I haven’t really developed a theory of the law. I didn’t try to develop a theory until I thought it was necessary. And it isn’t really a theory to explain to people how our court works, and how I and others try to think about the applications of the Constitution of problems that come up in front of the court. And that led me to write about it, and that’s what you’re thinking about. And of course, I suppose, at the heart of the Constitution. But it isn’t only me. It’s Sandra O’Connor who had a very different background . . . she lived on a ranch. Interestingly enough – we’ve talked about this – Tony Kennedy is really from San Francisco, Sacramento, Northern California. But I think in my own case, it puts . . . I see the Constitution as having the democratic process at the heart of it, of having . . . The central element of the Constitution is creating institutions so people can decide things for themselves. And often I like to refer back and say, “Well that’s probably what the founders had in mind,” or “the framers had in mind when they thought of the Greek city states, or when they were writing the Constitution.” Or perhaps, since you raised the point, it’s also what I saw in San Francisco.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I went to Stanford, and my father went to Stanford. And at that time they didn’t . . . they didn’t . . . When my father was there, they didn’t have Jews in fraternities there.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

We didn’t know too much about the real problems in the country, I’d say that. I mean there are problems of race that we hardly knew existed in San Francisco, but they were right in front us. And gradually we got to see what they were. I can remember my mother telling me one day she had a friend who was black, and they wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch. And they were gonna go to the Saint Francis Hotel, and they were discussing whether they could. And that was San Francisco, that wasn’t the South.

there is not a magic answer. You know I’m probably . . . since I recently wrote a dissent in a case involving the use of race-conscious criteria in the schools . . . whether the city of Seattle could use . . . As one criteria among several, they allowed high school students freedom to choose whatever school they wanted. They listed preferences. But they said no school could be more than 85% white. Basically that was their criteria. And the question was, “Could they actually overtly, in that way, use a racial criteria?” And the court, 5 to 4, decided that they could not. They could not. I dissented. I thought, “Of course they can’t.” Were consequences relevant there? They certainly were to me. Because I said, “If you interpret the equal protection clause to forbid this, how are people supposed to deal with problems of race and poverty in inner cities of America?” And I see the Constitution as a very workable document. I think Madison’s genius was to say we’re going to get these values. We stay the same. And we’re gonna embody them in words that allow their application over the course of the next 400, 500 years, if not longer. And to do that, you have to refer back to how do these values apply today? What’s the value of the equal protection clause? Trying to bring us together; trying to create one nation; trying to create race _____ separate ______ a caste system; and try to create one country out of this diversity. And it’s a miracle, but we’ve been able to do that to a degree. There’s still plenty of problems. And for me to think of that clause being posed as an obstacle to such an effort, I just think that that was wrong. And I expressed by view very concisely in about 77 pages.

To go back to a specific case, I was most pessimistic about the court’s decision in the Seattle case involving the use of race-conscious criteria. When I think about that seriously, I was in the dissent. I think it was a bad decision. That’s what I wrote. It impedes the ability of communities to take people who are isolated in the center of the city, very poor, family background could be terrible, and lacking opportunity, and try to work out the problems in the community context. So I think this is a bad decision. It’s a throwback. But it’s only a throwback, you see? Because really, ultimately, I am an optimist. And ultimately, I do think that people overcome even this kind of a barrier. And people figure out how to solve these problems . . . not perfectly, but we’ll do it. The country itself is becoming much more of a diverse country, and yet we can cooperate. We cooperate. We know how to do it. That’s really, I think, our great . . . If there’s an American contribution, I think it’s in that respect . . . the respect of being open, and coming into a problem and not being prejudiced about it; and trying to look for whatever solution arises out of a problem. It’s a pragmatic attitude. It’s an attitude that is not a respecter of persons. It’s a respecter of problems. And we don’t just take what people say as if from on high.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007 at The Aspen Ideas Festival

Transcript:

It was a very good time to grow up in San Francisco. It was a wonderful place. We lived in the city. My father was a lawyer for the San Francisco School Board. I still have his watch. It’s his watch. It says “Irving Breyer, San Francisco Unified School District, 1933 – 1973.” He was born in San Francisco. His father moved there, I guess, before the turn of the 20th century. My mother was from Saint Paul. She moved out. I had one brother who was younger. And San Francisco was, as I say, a wonderful place because it was . . . you could very easily get to the mountains. Or I was in the Boy Scouts. I loved the Boy Scouts. We’d go on hiking trips. We could . . . You could go across the Bay. The weather was good. And I don’t think we realized how lucky we were. It didn’t take a lot of money. It really didn’t. And today I guess you’d have to have a lot of money to live the way we did then without very much at all. The times were good.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I’d like to know what are the structures going to be for making decisions internationally? It might involve war or peace. It might involve conflict resolution. It might involve how do you resolve these very tough conflicts? Because we’ve seen . . . I mean going it alone may not work. And at the same time, maybe bringing every nation into every decision might not work either. And so how . . . what kind of structure will we have? We used to, after the World War II, we relied on NATO. Or what are the new substitutes? What are the structures gonna be?

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

It’s not very original advice. The things that I think work are first that people become interested. I mean, you know, high school students, college students, young professionals. And the young professionals are the hardest because they’re so busy. They have to do their job every day, and maybe they’re starting a family. But to be interested in problems that aren’t just related to your work, and become adjusted as a member of the community and something a little bit broader. And I think that’s certainly one good thing, and an important thing. And I usually say the Constitution foresees that, and it does.

The second thing is, I think, natural to an American attitude. It’s that when you get into a problem, you have an open mind. And you sort of fight ________ a conclusion. And you open to whatever’s going to work. Now be careful of that, but it’s a good attitude. It’s a very good attitude.

And the third thing, I think, is you take other people’s views into account. That’s why I think it’s important to know what’s going on in China. You don’t have to know everything. You can’t. But at least have a general idea and know where you can go to find out more. Or know what you’re going to learn about in India, or in France, or in Africa, or some other place. Know enough to see that we’re not alone in this world, and we’re not absolutely right all the time either. And we’d better take into account what other people think. I mean those are the . . . those are just fairly trite, but I think that’s ___________.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcription:

I don’t know better than anyone else, but it’s the number of people. Eventually people will get, I suppose, population under control. But there is a large and growing number of people. They all have to be fed. They all have to be housed. They have to learn. They’re all gonna have families, we hope. They’re all going to have lives. Each one of them is an individual life. And as you have more and more, the great positive thing is people . . . they’re . . . it’s religion, if you like; but people have within them the capacity for great good and for terrible things. And societies come together, churches come together, philosophers come together, people come together with sets of behaviors which we try to teach children so that they’ll get those bad instincts under control. And so we’ll bring out the good ones. And if you’re gonna bring out the good ones, people are capable of marvelous things. I mean just tremendous organization. So that’s why I thought India was so interesting, because I thought, “My goodness. It’s like a microcosm.” And here we have the points of light, and the dangers of darkness. And of course we all know now we can destroy the whole planet. It’s possible. It’s possible. And yet we’re working . . . and that’s why I’m so enthusiastic about these different organizations – whether they’re local, or whether they’re national, or whether they’re international – that are trying to knit things together, that are trying to create structures. So when future people are born in the world, they will have structures within which they can work to try to use their good instincts, their capacities, their abilities, to create worlds that are better. And if you contrast this century with the 19th, in the 19th they were certain that it was progress; but we’ve lived through – I have – this terrible, terrible 20th Century. And now people are not at all certain whether the forces of progress, whether the good within people is so good that it can overcome these tremendous problems. But we’re working on it. So I’m an optimist, and most people are. We work on it. We do our best.

Recorded on: 7/5/07