Topic: Staying in Touch with the Problems of Real People
Senator: Feinstein
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
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SPECTER: Senator Feinstein, you're recognized now for 15 minutes.
FEINSTEIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Just to correct the record to begin with, the Gun-Free Schools Act has been re-enacted as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. And I gather those findings were changed in the act, so it is the law. And from my point of view, that's very good.
I would like to kind of finish up some questions I have.
Let me, in trying to sort of get at you the man, as opposed to you the jurist, Senator Paul Simon, in questioning Justice Ginsburg said this:
"Theodore Roosevelt in a 1913 speech -- this is after he had been president -- said this: 'Our judges have been, on the whole, both able and upright public servants. But their whole training and the aloofness of their position prevent their having, as a rule, any real knowledge or understanding, sympathy with the lives and needs of the ordinary hardworking toiler.'"
I think that's a danger for jurists, and probably no place is it a greater danger than on the United States Supreme Court where you really are isolated and where, when you meet people, they will tend to be people of power and wealth and not people who are unemployed, not people who have many of the problems that Americans face.
Have you reflected on this at all, either in your present tenure in the district court -- excuse me, on the circuit court -- or future tenure? How can you make sure that you stay in touch with the problems real people have out there?
ROBERTS: That is something that I thought about, Senator, at greater length before I came onto the court of appeals, a little more than two years ago.
I think it's a common concern that judges are isolated. There's some natural tendency to that. You find that lawyers that you used to socialize with don't feel they can talk to you anymore. And other people, again, a certain distance develops.
And it is something that my wife and I talked about at the time. And I concluded, and she made the point, that it was a great blessing to me to have our children. They will obviously keep us in touch with things outside of the isolation of the law.
There are a lot of soccer games and swim meets and things of that sort in my future, for the next 15 years. And I'll be seeing people not just involved with the law, not just involved with the court, but other parents and other children in those activities.
And I think that will be a very healthy part of an effort to keep in touch with things outside the isolated marble palaces.
FEINSTEIN: But I would hypothesize that if it's just through your children, it's still going to be a very limited segment of society.
ROBERTS: Well, sure, Senator, but there have always been areas in which I've continued to be active, that keep me involved with other people.
I mentioned, I think yesterday, the street law program that I've been a part of for more than 15 years, which...
FEINSTEIN: And you will continue that?
ROBERTS: I certainly will. I've continued that when I became a judge, and I plan on continuing it as well. It's jointly sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society.
And that brings high school teachers -- and I have always found that extremely rewarding, because they have a very different perspective. They're obviously dealing with children a little further along at that stage. But they're not lawyers, and they're here to try to understand the law.
And I have always enjoyed very much their questions and sharing with them why the Supreme Court is so important to the rule of law, and allowing them the opportunity -- they go in and they see the court in action, as it were, and then they go back. And it helps them talk to their students about something that I think is critically important for those students to know.
FEINSTEIN: Do you see yourself mixing with people in some of the harder places in our country?
ROBERTS: Well, it's hard to look ahead and see how that would work. I have -- I know, for example, when I was a lawyer and handling a case about native village rights in Alaska, I went to the native villages. I've always thought that was an important part about understanding the real world consequences of any case: to get on the ground.
When I handled a case involving people on the assembly line, I went to the assembly line and saw what it was like.
I went to these villages that you could only reach by boat or by plane, where they make do with so little because of the remoteness.
And I've always viewed that as an important part of understanding any case that I've been involved in.
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