Topic: Children's Education
Senator: Feinstein
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
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FEINSTEIN: The reason I ask that is because I had a Plyler question I was going to ask you, and I got your memo because I was really surprised by it as well.
Let me ask you this question. It's signed by Carolyn Kuhl, and your name is second. Does that mean you wrote the memo or did not write it?
ROBERTS: Senator, I have to just say, I don't know who wrote it. It, obviously, was submitted by both of us. I don't remember.
FEINSTEIN: It is submitted by -- but her name is on top. I was just curious, because clearly the purpose of this memo is to try to get one justice, namely Justice Powell, over on your side.
But the kind of concluding part -- and I just don't understand why you would say this. And, you know, perhaps you'd believe today it was wrong.
Let me quote: "As you will recall, the Solicitor General's Office has decided not to take a position before the Supreme Court on the equal protection issue in this case. The briefs for the state of Texas were quite poor. It is our belief that a brief filed by the Solicitor General's Office supporting the state of Texas and the values of judicial restraint could well have moved Justice Powell into the chief justice's camp and altered the outcome in the case. In sum, this is a case in which our supposed litigation program to encourage judicial restraint did not get off the ground and should have."
Now, this concern, regardless of what the briefs were -- whether children should be educated in our country. I come from a huge immigrant state. We're 36 million people. We probably have 12 million, at least, immigrants; maybe 3 million to 5 million people here illegally in our state.
To say that this vast number of children shouldn't be allowed to be educated, I'd be surprised you'd write that kind of...
ROBERTS: Well, Senator, I don't know if it was from both of us. I don't know who wrote it. If my name is on it, it's on it.
But I agree, of course, that children should be educated. The example I just gave of my activities with the Street Law program focuses on the importance of education for children.
The legal issues presented in that case and the question of whether or not it was consistent with the attorney general's litigation approach and program, those are different questions from the basic issue of whether children should be educated.
FEINSTEIN: Could I do this? Could I give this to you? Because I have 15 minutes tomorrow. Could I ask you to read it?
I'd really like to know whether you think this way today. And I'll ask that question tomorrow.
And attached to it is the Congressional Research Service analysis of this. So if you wouldn't mind...
ROBERTS: Not at all. I'd be happy to.
FEINSTEIN: ... I will do this.
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