 And can we rely on the Supreme Court? Oh, big question. This is Think Kekowai. It's the 11 o'clock clock on a given Monday. And we have Peter Haffenberg, a co-host and contributor. And we have Avi Soy for a regular contributor and guest here on history is here to help because we need help. Welcome to the show, you guys. Thank you. Hello, how to be here. Okay, Peter, at the risk of giving you too much time. Of course. I have a little talk watch here. Could you please introduce Avi and be nice. And could you also introduce the scope of our discussion this morning? I'm always nice and following Hemingway. No adjectives and no adverbs, very precisely. And how good to have you back, Avi. I think probably everybody knows you, but just in case you don't, and they don't, Avi Soyfer is the former dean of the Richardson School of Law here and pushed it into the top 100, Moseltop. And it's also a very well-recognized and respected con law scholar with publications here, there and everywhere. Jay and I have asked him to talk about, since we only have 30 minutes, try to have some very specific topics about the Supreme Court. And Jay and I wanted Avi in particular to talk about not just the workings of the court, but what he thought the current public status might do to this institution. The most recent Pew report had the Supreme Court just plummet in public accountability. So let me turn it over to Avi and Jay. Is that okay, Jay? Was that brief enough? Yeah, that's good. Let me give you the notes that I made while I thought about this all weekend. First of all, was it Aaron? Aaron in the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, you know NYU a bit. You were teaching there on sabbatical only last year. The court got an F, which I thought was interesting. And then it shifted to the right, but you know, isn't that okay? That's another question. And haven't we had this? This is my question to you both of you. Haven't we had this in the past? Why is this different? You know, it's like the Passover. Why is this shift to the right different from all the other shifts to the right? And how did we get here over 50 years? You know, Adam Cohen in his book writes about that. There are two books to consider. You know, one is Adam Cohen, 2020's Supreme Injustice and the other is Linda Greenhouse, who I have to acknowledge is my sister-in-law. And she wrote Justice on the Brink only recently in this year. And so, you know, are we moving to a place that's worse? Are we already there? And Avi, where is it going? What's the dynamic that we can take from their questions in these cases on all these sensitive and highly politicized issues? Wow, sorry. Is that compound complex? Yes. Avi, what are you doing in the next two weeks? OK, you'll get some food and drink. Well, Jay, I'm sure she's proud to acknowledge that you are her brother-in-law. So there we are. You have a lot to be proud of. Linda, she's terrific. And she writes columns from the New York Times. She used to cover the court for a long time. And she's got a new book out, which is part of today's subject. But she really is a wonderfully knowledgeable and outspoken critic of the court, even though she knows them all and she knows the inner working is probably better than anybody. She's more outspoken these days than she ever was in 30 years in the past. I mean, how about the articles? I'm you familiar with all of them. Weaponizing, the court is weaponizing, gaslighting. And the court is, oh, I guess this refers to the Fifth Circuit, my favorite circuit. It's what did she call the Fifth Circuit, rogue, rogue. I mean, and other adjectives. These are outspoken words, maybe more than ever before. Well, Justice Sotomayor is very careful. She is very committed to, I think, very important things. But she talked about the stench. I mean, for a Supreme Court justice, to talk about the stench emanating from that body is really quite something. And there is a stench. I think there's no question about that. And part of it is because they're not playing by the usual rules. And they don't seem to care about the usual rules. So yes, we have had right-wing courts, in fact, for most of our history, I would say. So that's happened before. But the aggressive way in which they are trying to advance an agenda, which they're very clear about, and using things like the shadow docket, which has always not always been there, I guess, but has been there for a long, long time. But suddenly it's being used and abused in a way it never has before. And the shadow docket means they don't have to hear oral argument. There isn't a public attention to what's going on. They do it without briefs. They do it without oral argument. And they just decide something. And they just decide, well, this is an emergency. And what they think of as an emergency might be pandemic rules, which they believe the majority of the court believe interfered with re-exercising religion. But they don't think what's going on in Texas right now, with abortion, is an emergency. I think the public is paying more attention to the court than for a long, long time. That may be a good thing in the long run. But they're paying attention with holding their noses. And I think that is actually unusual, if not unprecedented. All that considered, the public can't do much about it. And I think what shows in these last few arguments and what they're doing on cert is they're picking Trump issues, they're picking right-wing issues, and they don't care what we think. I don't know if that's arrogance or what. They've driven even Chief Justice Roberts far from where they were, and probably where he was, because they don't seem concerned about the institution. The court is an institution. And he suddenly is siding fairly frequently with the so-called liberal practices. And Gorsuch, in particular, has been going after Roberts in a pretty personal way of not being part of the team. Well, but was it Roberts who said that the most important thing is we have to preserve the institution? They're not preserving the institution. They're undermining the institution. It's not just public confidence. It's a rational analysis of what they're doing and a gaslighting thing. And it seems to me that no one can ever trust them again. Well, I wouldn't go that far. Let's hope. One can be optimistic ever, ever, Jay? I know I'm running for some optimism around here somewhere. But it is true that the justices who are leading, and we don't know about Justice Barrett much yet. So there's a little bit of shred, maybe, of hope there that she made now that she has this appointment for life. I turn out to be a surprise in some ways. I don't expect big surprises. But the justices who are leading this, including Justice Barrett, are very young. So they will be there for a long, long time. Well, I'm sure you can give me examples of justices over the years of the republic who started out conservative, who started out destructive negative and advancing the president who appointed them, his agenda or agenda well has been her. Well, at this time, a query whether that's going to happen. Well, those are usually surprises. So we don't know if it's going to happen. But I think that some of the recent surprises were Harry Blackman for sure. Justice Souter more quietly. On the other side, Frankfurter was regarded as a radical. And then he became probably the most conservative member of the Warren court. So there are surprises. And there's something to the fact that it's collegial. Sometimes they listen to each other. And it may be that Roberts is effective as a leader of a collegial body. We'll see. But Barrett has been noteworthy for not being part of the Alito or such. And to some extent, Kavanaugh team so far, in all cases, he is certainly sometimes. And I think what's really telling, but also dangerous is a lot of these things are done in ways that the public doesn't quite understand like the shadow docket. We ought to be paying attention. And at least there's some covers for an oral argument and the public presumably not following line by line, but they learned something about what went on today or yesterday at the Supreme Court. And when they're doing this, the public doesn't know. You think the press is giving us good reporting on what the court is doing and not doing? Not as good as when Linda Greenhouse was doing it. Well, you know, there's two books out. I suggest to you, this is a constitutional lawyer's delight right now. This is what justifies all the difficulty of learning constitutional law to be able to comment on it now. And I am hoping that the public will get the same, you know, level of interest. I'm not sure that's gonna happen though, because it's complicated. Well, so Adam Littak is doing a good job, I think, for the times. I didn't mean to say he wasn't. And Anthony Lewis was a very good reporter covering the court for a long time. One of the issues, and it's a big issue in our time, is that there is a lot more information out there. There are other people covering the court. It isn't just three channels on TV and the New York Times and the Washington Post. And so you can kind of find whatever you want as a member of the public. And that can be on your side and you don't have to listen to the other side. So I think that playing it right down the middle of being careful is very important in reporting and remain so. But the reporting now is much more disparate. So what does the public think of the court? We know from some polling results that the court has gone down in its prestige recently. It has gone down in its prestige before, by the way, including one of the famous issues with the court was when they were striking down much of the New Deal. And that became a hot potato, a political issue. And FDR decided to try to pack the court. And that turned out even for a brilliant politician such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt clearly was to be a disaster. It turned out that the public wouldn't stand for it. Now neither would some insiders, including Felix Frankfurter who had been an ally. But it's a third rail, I think, to pack the court. So one of the proposals that's kicking around is to add justices. The problem with that is it has been done in the past both shrinking and expanding the membership. It doesn't have to be nine. It's not in the constitution. But once you do it, then if your team loses in the next election, then they do it and so on. And then the court loses even more prestige. I think term limits is a much more sensible proposal. And it is being taken somewhat seriously. Although this commission that President Biden set up, I don't know exactly what it was supposed to do, except perhaps reduce the pressure on President Biden. But it sounds like you're not gonna do anything much. They were more open to term limits than they were for packing apparently. Is the commission bipartisan? Yeah. That explains it. If you're looking for delay, try bipartisan. Anyway, so there are some issues we should talk about and where they're going and what effect they have on all this, what you're describing. For example, abortion. It seems clear that abortions going away that the women's reproductive rights are going away. When they get their hands on it, it's all finished. And Amy Barrett will be at the center of that. I think Kavanaugh will be too. And so the question I put to you, Avi, is how does that affect public opinion? Because remember, the half the country is right wing here. Well, I think actually abortions are a very interesting example of several things. First of all, Roe versus Wade was really changed even though it survived. It has become much harder to get an abortion than it was. There's a famous incident when the court in Scalia in particular thought they were going to overrule it and they didn't. And they stressed the importance of stare decisis of precedent. And that's important now as they're overruling all these precedents. And that was a big surprise to Scalia. A very angry Scalia was seen yelling at Justice Kennedy on his lawn one Saturday. So Roe has been eviscerated. And the undue burden test is of course a very subjective test. And that's where we are now. I think- Well, let them all just go and give up the child at the local fire station or police station. But doesn't that take the burden off? Justice Barrett had to say. So there is something to what Jay just suggested in her opinion at least. So I think, I have a bet with someone who does constitutional law that they will not overrule Roe versus Wade because I think if they did, that would affect voter turnout very significantly. So I think they will continue to narrow, narrow, narrow but not on its face overrule Roe versus Wade. Are you suggesting the members of our esteemed Supreme Court would care about voter turnout? Isn't that highly political? Mr. Dooley, way back at the time of imperialism and the insular cases and what to do about the territory of Hawaii talked about how the Supreme Court follows the election returns. He did it with his fake Irish dialogue. We've got to get him to follow, think tech Hawaii. Okay, so the thing about abortion is, I wanted to ask you, I think Linda Greenhouse and was talking about disingenuous gaslighting statements by the Supreme Court. And one of the most interesting examples of that which I don't fully understand, maybe you do, she said that Kavanaugh and his questioning pointed out that there had been many cases over the years where the Supreme Court has reversed a right of years and years in place. And so the question is, why is that disingenuous? There have been a lot of cases where the Supreme Court has reversed itself. Why can't it do that in Roe? Well, the Supreme Court has reversed itself lots of times and sometimes to the good which should be said, the Supreme Court was complicit in racial discrimination for a long, long time. They were complicit in many other things. The famous case that I think is worth at least, maybe as a corrective is a Frankfurter opinion called Gobitis, which said, okay, the citizenship is very important. This is 1940, 41. So understandable that he thought citizenship was very important, patriotism. And so we can mandate that school kids have to salute the flag. And it was sort of a fascist salute. It was a straight arm salute. And Jehovah's Witnesses said that interferes with our rights as parent and the rights of our children. And the Supreme Court said, a flock, patriotism is that important. So that three and a half years later, four years later, the Supreme Court reversed that. And it's brilliant language written by Justice Jackson for the court about how important First Amendment is. And we can't be forcing beliefs on people. And that's 1944. So the war was still going on. So that's a reversal that we can applaud. So I don't think we should say never reverse or always follow precedent. Because overall the precedents are bad in many areas. And the Warren court was the exception. And some of us who went to law school or went to college or grew up with the Warren court, I think have a falsely optimistic view of the court and what it is about. So there are rights and there are rights not exactly respond to your question. One of the differences now though is that some of the justices have been signaling, oh, we want a case, please send us a case. We want to overrule this precedent. And overruling ought to be done in gingerly fashion when it's done and carefully. And one thinks about the role of precedent because the rule of law does rely on precedent, at least in our country for a long time. Now, precedent is a break on what people may want to do right now. So precedent isn't all good and all bad, but at least you should take seriously changing the law from the top when they do have the final word, not because they're right, but because they're final, as Brandeis said. Not because they're right, because they're final. You mentioned First Amendment and that's really my next question to you. I mean, one of the suggestions here is that court and perhaps the GOP itself has moved, not perhaps for real, the GOP has moved into religion. And the First Amendment has two provisions. So one is you should not have the government establish a religion. And the other is you should not stand in the way of freedom of religion. And that's getting all confused now, only in the past 20 years or so, at least according to my growing up with the Constitution, my limited growing up with the Constitution. We have turned into legally a country that puts religion on a very high pedestal, higher than the First Amendment really intended, I'm sure. But we are now pushing it further. And if you ask for some justification about the Roe v. Wade direction here, it's got to be a large part religion. Is this good? Well, I think we should bring Peter into the conversation because we think in the United States that it's very important not to have an established religion, but Peter's an expert about England and English history. And we consider them mildly civilized at least and they have an established church. What do you know? Yeah. But I do think that the establishment clause has been very important and that this court doesn't care about the establishment clause. So there's tension between those two as you just said, Jay. I'm pleased that you think you're grown up now because some of us have questions about you growing up, but there we are. They were regarded as intention and it's been a sort of sneaky way the court has done it, which is to say, we're gonna treat religion the same as we treat other First Amendment figures and actors. And look, they're excluded from the public square. Now, whether religion really is or isn't in this country is another question. I don't think they're excluded, but the way the line goes is we've got to just let them in equally. And it turns out that they are more equal than others. And the establishment clause has kind of just disappeared almost in this analysis. Peter. Yeah, Peter. Peter, you're civilized. I know you are. Fairly. Only for this half hour or so. So a couple of comments. First of all, of course, Avi. Thank you very, very much. I would say, Jay, to your big question is that, look, it has been weaponized before. The court has been a weapon before. But I think one person with the response to Kavanaugh quite clearly and then Avi, you can correct me. In the past, particularly the cases he was referring to was a matter of a precedent that had denied rights, being overthrown so a new decision could expand rights. And it seems to me what we have here is particularly in the abortion case, the theological decision that a uterus has the same rights as a woman. And so the argument is that they too are expanding rights where, of course, they are not. I think in that case, in response to your question about religion, it is clearly guiding these folks. And I think people like Alito have made no poems about it. And the recent appointee may be very strongly in what they have misnamed the right to life. And it's not really a scientific definition. I think, again, Avi, you can help us here. Maybe the court made a mistake by having viability as the determining line. Because with science, viability can change. And Roe v. Wade never write absolutely said a woman has the absolute right to an abortion. And maybe you can correct me, but looking back historically, it seems that the viability question opened up, right? So now you have the scientific ability to hear the heart. And in public opinion, right? That shifts towards a life itself. So, does Jay, does that help answer? Yeah, but I just want to put one other thing on the table is the Supreme Court either has considered or is considering the equal right to religion to give the same amount of money to parochial schools that it gives to public schools. Now, that is really upside down as far as I can see. They're saying, I think it was Kavanaugh that said, well, we shouldn't give more money to one religion than another, but then we shouldn't give more money to public schools than private schools. And before you know it, public schools are cut out. This is troubling because, A, it reinforces the whole notion Supreme Court and its constituency, can I use that term, is driven by religion. It's not just Roe v. Wade, it's the whole enchilada. Avi, am I right? I think it's more than religion though. And I think that Owen's book makes this quite clear. This is not just a religious issue. This is also a class and race issue because by promoting private schools, you're generally promoting, first of all, or well off the religion. And basically this is an attempt to bifurcate the education system. So I agree with you, it's religion, but behind religion, I think Owen, it's very important here. This has been a 50-year strategy. So I would disagree with you a little bit, Jay, in that to me, Trump is just a poster child. This has been a 50-year strategy of the Federalist Society. It's been a 50-year strategy of the right and conservative in America to deny rights and access to people of color. It's been an effort to ensure that employers' rights are supreme over workers. And here's where Avi, I don't think that Roberts is a neutral umpire. Roberts' career has been anti-voting rights and it has been entirely pro-business versus labor. And I think one of the difficulties is we focus on hot button issues, which we should, right? But in doing so, I think we've also ignored a lot of the smaller cases, which over the past generation or two have ensured it's not just voting rights, right? It's African-Americans access to work. It's African-Americans access to decent education, right? It's not just voting rights. It's women's access to education. It's women's access to work, not just women's access to birth control. And so to me, I look at this six to three and to me it looks like the 50 year war is over. And that's the difference I see and we've talked about this before. Six to three is not five to four. Like Roberts can look good, right? Roberts can actually join the other three, but what he really wants can still win by four, right? When it was closer by four, you know, he had to have compromise. And I think that's what's gonna be missing. The ability to have some kind of compromise. Now the final point just briefly is US has taken the choice which is not Britain's and not France's. And so we're in a muddle. We've been in a muddle for over 200 years. The French Revolution did not just secularize the state, it secularized society. America has never been a secular society. Religion has always been part of public life. And in Britain, Britain took the Plycee v. Ferguson option and funded private religious schools and just set up front, will fund private religious schools. So we've been wandering and stumbling for 200 years because we haven't chosen either of those to straightforward rather reasonable paths. We do not have a secular society. We have a highly religious society. I think that's absolutely right. And certainly Peter underscores important points which are lost, I think on the general public. And that is the way in which the court has been a friend of business, I would say over time as well as recently. And Roberts is certainly where you put them Peter. Although I wanna go back to the question that the Jay asked, I guess. And that is about the expansion of rights and what Peter has just stressed. And that is sometimes the expansion of right can be put at the doorstep of the current and the recent court. And one very good example and very troublesome example is the Second Amendment, the right of individuals to have guns. And for a long, long time, the Supreme Court said no to that claim over and over again. So they overruled precedent to expand rights if you think there is something in the Second Amendment for individual rights. There really isn't. And the way Scalia's so-called text was self-proclaimed, well, he said he wasn't crazy, but he says that the Second Amendment naturally has two clauses, which allows him to talk about the second one and not the first, which is about the militia, which is what the right really historically was about for the most part. And then the court interestingly didn't touch it again, except to say it applies to states in the McDonald case. So 2008 is the heller decision where Scalia does that. Six years later, McDonald, okay, that part of the bill of rights applies to the states. Fine. But there are all sorts of rules and regulations passed by cities and passed by states regulating this new individual right. Well, now we may learn that they're unconstitutional, that the second, because that case is before the court right now, and it's very scary because it looks very likely that they're gonna say, oh, those rules and regulations, they go too far. There's a right to carry, there's a right to hide your gun while you carry, we're gonna learn a lot more about that. And it isn't historically in the text, and it isn't historically what the court has been saying. So sometimes creating or discovering rights can be dangerous too. So part of my optimism, and I get kitted about being an optimist by both of these two, there's a line in Faulkner somewhere where he says, whoever wins, it won't be for good and it won't be for long. And I think that's one of the other things we see about the court. As I said, they're young justices, but who knows? Who knows? What happened with the FDR and the court was suddenly there were deaths and resignations and he got to remake the court. And so the Supreme Court stopping the enemy of the new deal, famously in 1937, having struck down a four or five years worth of whatever they could reach. Well, should Stephen Breyer retire? Because if he retires, it's gonna be very hard for Joe Biden to replace him with a Democrat before the next election. And the Republicans will delay that as much as they can. Should he retire? Do you know how the next election is gonna come out, Jay? Maybe they'll be a solid Democratic majority in the Senate. I may not know, but I'm willing to place a large bet with you about that. What, dinner? Okay, not a large majority. Let me go to something that both of you have touched on and I think we really need to talk about. So, you know, talk about the first as a rather the second amendment. That's really important to public security. It's important to keeping people, you know, off the streets and not doing violence because violence leads to and is part of the whole notion of insurrection, if you will. And so the Supreme Court, you know, if they, you know, undermine the regulation of guns, gun control, they're really asking for trouble. And that takes us to the next part of it is, you know, they are doing things that undermine our democracy when they don't enforce voting rights. When they take cases that are, you know, undermining voting rights, wouldn't that be sort of the most central thing that a Supreme Court of this country should be concerned with? The, you know, the Ben Franklin preservation of our republic, our democracy, and public security, which is part of it. You know, it seems to me they're really tampering with something very dangerous when they take anti-democratic cases and rule anti-democratically. Well, I think you're right. And I think that that is a tradition to be valued and cherished in all those, it's a tradition as Peter pointed out, which was a pretty narrow tradition, right? So at the time of the early years of the constitution, the framing in the early years, of course, women didn't get to vote, blacks didn't get it. You had to be a property and so on and so forth. So the vote has expanded not so much by Supreme Court decisions. Supreme Court's been pretty bad about the vote all along. But maybe the worst example of all is a Robert's opinion, Shelby County. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is very significant. And a lot of blood was shed to get that passed. And I don't mean that year. I mean, for a long time in civil rights movement. And what he says in that decision in 2013 is, well, we needed it once, but we don't need it anymore. Now, since when does Congress have power only as long as it keeps up with current needs? I mean, that's a whole new doctrine. Then he relies on federalism on state's right. And he mis-herofraises what the 10th Amendment says. He says, in two different ways, something it doesn't say. He says what he wants it to say. Now that's sloppy or it's planting seeds for the future. So the vote, very important, absolutely right about that and absolutely being limited by this court, including July 1st, where Arizona did two things to change its voting laws. One was to say, you can't bundle rights, you can't, sorry, bundle ballots. The reason that's important in Arizona is that a lot of Native Americans live far away from mailboxes. And so someone would bring in a ballots from a reservation as it were. And that was said, oh, you can't do that anymore. So it has an impact, and you could say a racial ethnic impact, which should have mattered under the Voting Rights Act. And not so much as Alito, voting is a burden anyway. And the other thing they did was say, if you vote in the wrong precinct, we'll throw it out. Now, they kept changing where the precincts were. Well, what do you know? Most places you vote in the wrong precinct are sort of a chance to review where and so on. But no, we just throw them out. And he says, not a problem. You know that, so Shelby County said, you can still have vote in section two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And he's now limiting that too. So not much concern for the vote. And I think correctly, as Jay just said, the vote is really supposed to be the base, right? From which other things flow. They also said bad things about campaign finance and so on, but for another day. For another day, but you know, I just wonder, I'm trying to put myself in the Supreme Court building, I wonder if you've ever tried to do this. I'll be trying to figure out, how they conduct themselves there. And do they know their gaslighting? Do they know they're throwing out norms? Do they know they're risking the Republic? And do they write memos to each other about that? Do they talk about it over a cup of coffee? Or do they not know at all? And not even discuss it. I really wonder how it works in there. Do you have an idea? Well, it used to be that they talk among themselves a fair amount. Then they sort of stopped doing that, but they did it through the clerks. So, Frankfurter famously was very good about encouraging, talking to them. And so, Frankfurter's clerk would talk to Douglas's clerk and maybe they would, but now they have their own little offices that are self-contained. And many of the clerks, there are too many clerks people believe, but many of the clerks wind up getting new paragraphs in the opinion just so he'll, or she will feel good. So that we get longer opinions, we get much less in the way of reaching a common result through discussion. I think it's a real problem. Yeah, and it shows. Peter, we're almost out of time, Peter. I wonder if you could comment on all of that and try to summarize the prognostications that are inherent in this discussion. We'll try to do that in two and a half minutes. If Jay's original question was really, what is the Supreme Court and what it's worth for, if anything, I think Abbey has given us a very pragmatic approach. There are problems. He seems somewhat optimistic though that those problems might not be a nuclear option for the court. We still have decisions awaiting, right? The abortion and that uncontrolled decisions. And so I think Abbey has suggested to us that we need to pay some attention to how those decisions are made, not just the end results. And that gets back into, you know, Jay's broader question about the transparency of a democracy. You know, as Toby Ziegler said in West Wing, you don't wanna see how a sausage is being made. And in this case, Justice Breyer agreed. He had an interview a couple of weeks ago about his book and he is a thumbs down on transparency. So we're sort of left with Abbey's optimism and Breyer's inability for us to actually confirm that optimism. So in a way, we're back to where we started this show, which is do we have faith in the institution? In other words, can I believe in the Supreme Court like I believe in my car will work without knowing how the battery actually operate? Even your car works, wait a minute. Barely, barely. I'm not quite sure we have. That is another show. Yeah, all the things Abbey said that I think was most perceptive and disturbing is that the Supreme Court is unlike anything else. There's too much information out there, too many websites, too many people who think that they're experts. So in other words, you go to your website already with the view about the court and you don't really have what Jonathan Roth with all the constitution of knowledge, which is a book I recommend. That the constitution... Yeah, sorry. One more bit of optimism in a way. So as bad as this court is, and I certainly agree with that, Trump broke out over and over again in both state and federal court systems, including the United States Supreme Court when he tried, what, 60 times. So there is still some respectable something there. I hear from my dear friends, my dear friend, you and Jay both give Trump too much credit. I'm not giving Trump credit. No, in other words they don't really care about that. They don't care about Trump. They have, in the 50 years of the federal society, Trump is just like with the evangelicals, he is a vessel of God. He is the agent for... Oh my God, this is a family show, Peter. So let me just put one more question to you guys, both of you, before we close. And as we do have three, last time I looked, we had three branches of government. Do you have more confidence in the Supreme Court or more confidence in the United States Senate? Which one, Trump's? The NBA commissioner? I have more confidence in the NBA commissioner. Okay, so for all that we've said, the Supreme Court, unlike most people in Washington or most people, I guess in government more generally, they put things in writing. They put it out there. They don't just give you the result. So at least that keeps those of us who do constitutional law with material to talk about, new things to teach about. But it also, there is some responsibility in that and actually some transparency. It's not to say that they're actually saying what their gut might have led them to say, but they try to explain. And then we all get to say, wait a minute, that's not the way it works. So that's not what that precedent said. But you're absolutely right. Our newspaper, among many others, has this kind of daily quiz, our Star Advertiser. And what did you think of such a, there's not even a pretense in anyone read the opinion, right? Just what did you think of it? And so we're very result oriented and it is a problem. I'm gonna give you- Which one do you have more confidence in? I have more confidence in the executive branch because- I didn't ask that. Yes, you did. That's one of the small branches and little twig because, and this will probably date me and my father, the federal executive branch is a bureaucracy. And historically, bureaucracies, as we even know during the Trump administration, we're able to stop things from happening which were overly radical. And that's a lesson from Max Weber and that's a lesson from history. Don't pay attention to the appointees. Pay attention to the lower members of the bureaucracy. When people get upset, they'll say they're not elected but quite often they are the experts who have an institutional memory and actually have a much better respect for the public interest. The public doesn't have much respect for the public interest. The bureaucracy has respect for the public interest. So I'm going with the executive branch and I'm gonna say something even more surprising that the current head of that executive branch is quietly getting some things done. He's gonna lose on the big issues but he's quietly actually gotten some very important things done because the ability to use that rock. So I'll give you a slightly different answer. I'm very disappointed in the legislative range. That's when I used to work and I think that there's a real problem there. I'm a little worried that the Senate has actually broken it should be a topic for another discussion. But I'm very worried about that. Oh true, but I'll be against the last word. Of course. Since when? For years. So some of Peter's optimism about civil service has to do with his study in England and career civil servants who really are seeing themselves as civil servants. But I think there's much to what Peter says and it isn't just federal. People did their jobs often under pressure and that is why we know that was a big lie, right? Because there were people who were on the spot and a lot of them were Republicans. And so there's something to be said for doing your job and that gets back to constitutional faith, I think for all the problems we've been talking about. There is faith in this system for all its warts, its flaws, its crevices, so let's keep at it. Right. Constitutional law and constitutional history has never been so interesting and important. Thank you, Abi Soyfer. Thank you, Peter Hoffenberg. Great discussion. We'll do it again. I promise so much more to cover. Aloha. Thank you.