 What was your motivation to become a church and devote your life to law? My father was a lawyer and law has been in our family. It's always been something I've thought about when I was in college. At the university I thought I'd like to be a lawyer. A lawyer is a person who helps other people. I don't know if you're concerned about that, but you also have to use your head. So if I tell the law students it needs a head and a heart. Everybody has a heart and everybody has a head. But if you don't have a good head, as well as a good heart, you won't be so good as a lawyer. So it's perfect. It combines the two. To be a federal judge in this country that is biased in England is something you do in mid-career. Usually in your 40s or 50s. And a federal judge is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate of the United States. There are trial judges, appeals judges and the Supreme Court. I was appointed to the Court of Appeals in 1980 by President Carter and was confirmed. And I served in Boston which is in charge of that region which is several states there in Puerto Rico for 14 years and then was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1994. The job of the Supreme Court in the United States is to interpret and apply federal law. That's laws passed by Congress and the Constitution of the United States. Typically when lower courts have disagreed about the meaning of a text or the application of a constitutional provision, we do have to find a word on what they mean. Congress can change the meaning of the text because they can write a new text. If it's a statute, if it's the Constitution, they can't. And therefore this Court, a typical year as around 70 or so cases probably maybe half or a third of those are constitutional and some of our cases might seem incredibly trivial. What is the meaning of a comma in the internal revenue code? Or they could involve a major constitutional question such as whether the prisoners in Guantanamo have the right to go to court to complain that they are being held unlawfully. Or as in 1954 whether it was constitutional. Constitution says that every person is entitled to equal protection of the law. So in the South of the United States as well known before 1954 the races were segregated and those who were black had much worse conditions than those who were white. It was a little bit like South Africa and apartheid. And the Court in 1954 held that that was contrary to the Constitution. And then it took a long time to make that effective. Still to this day not completely effective. But the legal apparatus that surrounded that incredible, really terrible system of segregation was gradually dismantled over time by the courts.