The Honorable Merrick Garland addresses HLS Class of 2019

hello ladies and gentlemen it is my distinct pleasure to introduce first Dean Martha Minow who is the Morgan and Helen - Dean and professor she is the 12th Dean since HLS started 199 years ago she is an expert in human rights civil rights and constitutional law Dean Minow currently is the vice chair of the Legal Services Corporation which is the national support for legal for civil legal assistance for low-income Americans she is also currently a member of the Commission on countering violent extremism run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and headed by Tony Blair and Leon Panetta she's the author of an editor of 16 books she has served on the independent international commission on Kosovo and on a collaboration between the United States Department of Education and the Center for Applied special technology designed to enable curricular access for students with disabilities she's a graduate and without further ado Dean Minow welcome welcome welcome I can't imagine a more wonderful way to welcome you than to have with us one of my heroes chief judge Merrick garland he is the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit he's which is often described in the United States as the second most significant court in the country I think you've heard the most significant one the other circuits don't have that view but his career has spanned public service private practice litigation negotiation law school teaching scholarship and mentoring of students and lawyers he grew up in Illinois which is another thing I think is excellent about him since I did - he came to Harvard College after winning a scholarship he graduated summa laude he studied here at Harvard Law School where he served as a counselor for undergraduates and also sold his comic book collection doing both in part to help pay the bills he graduated magna laude and served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review he served as a law clerk for two of the most distinguished jurists in this country Judge Henry friendly and Justice William Brennan his jobs have included three high posts in the US Department of Justice special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States deputy assistant attorney general principal associate Deputy Attorney General you're gonna have to explain all those to us he's also served as a federal prosecutor and as a lawyer at a leading private law firm Chief Justice John Roberts also a graduate of the Harvard Law School once said and I quote him anytime judge garland disagrees you know you're in a difficult area as a student president of his high school he's successfully persuaded a change in the dress code he spent one summer he's spent one summer as a shoe store stock clerk so we're all gonna study you your appearance in great detail his wonderful wife Lynn is here they have two terrific daughters one of whom is also here and President Barack Obama also a graduate of the Harvard Law School nominated Chief Judge garland to serve on the United States Supreme Court he's a busy guy and yet he is so generous to take a precious day to come here to welcome you I have the privilege now of asking some questions Chief Judge garland far away what do you remember what about when you started law school you just started to have some recollections we walked across the campus as we were walking on the path when we took through laying down unfortunately I recollect is that the Paper Chase had just come out the winter before so all of the prospective one ELLs and MAS went to the theater in Harvard Square and we're scared out of our minds so that's pretty much how I began how did you go to law school in the first place chemistry well chemistry and math well not doing as well in chemistry and a half I was going to be a doctor and I wanted to do public service and I actually thought medicine was the best way to do this most direct one-on-one you actually see the results of what you do but it did turn out that I would turn out to be better in social science than in physical and biological sciences and I had a very good scholarship advisor who said we can do public service in all different ways you should do the one that feels most comfortable to you and going to be able to do the best in that so that's how I ended up it's we are very very lucky one of your early jobs was serving a special assistant to attorney general Benjamin and civiletti that was between 1979 1981 what does that mean what did that entail well it's a little bit like being in the room where it happens as you might is his phrase but only being a fly on the wall in the room where it happens you pretty much was you're like a law clerk to the Attorney General which is what it was three movies were made of the period in which a very short period which I was in the Justice Department American hustle about the Abscam case Argo about the exfiltration of hostages in Iran and most important the Miracle on Ice which was about the Lake Placid Olympics where I did work on the security for the Olympics so you can see just from those a broad breadth of things that somebody working as a special assistant the Justice Department does but it is more watching other people putting their two cents every once in a while and actually this is a kind of job I think many people don't know exists it's being an assistant we're gonna be short time out of law school for people at the top of the government you also worked at a law firm at Arnold reporter as an associate and then as a partner what was that like it's a great experience you have in law firms the opportunity to really learn how to as a litigator and a counselor an antitrust to learn how to do things the right way to have relatively on at least in those days unlimited resources to do what as much as you needed to do learn how to write memos the right way and that's a very good experience to have whatever you're going to do later I tried a number of cases while I was there that was also great saying great trial lawyers try cases and be part of the team that tried the cases I had an opportunity to do a lot of pro bono work which is very good mostly working for individuals and a whole different variety of things from criminal protestors being arrested and then I had the opportunity to work on our case that went to the Supreme Court the what's now called the State Farm case we represented State Farm in attempt to get airbags and automatic seatbelts in cars so that the private firm you maybe had some more resources than at other places and working on antitrust you actually picked up some of what you had done is another graduate right yes that's right and then we actually asked you to come here and teach antitrust law yeah because you knew something about it well I'm not sure whether that was the reason or he just had on that whole in the faculty at the time under fill' arena for whom Arita Hall is named and well deserved honor I was one of my mentors at the law school I worked on the first couple treated volumes of his treatise and he asked me to come and it was the hardest job I've ever had I'm just so you guys know it looks really easy you know they stand up they talk they ask a bunch of questions they don't even have to tell you the answers but it's an average took me about four hours outside of outside of class for every one hour that I was in class get the in order to figure out what questions to ask and where to get things to go in the right direction so I had a huge amount of respect for people who do this well you your speedy it takes me about eight hours for every hour in class my grandmother said to me tell me this again you're in the classroom five hours a week that's a job yeah right and you became a prosecutor that's a little bit unusual why and how did that happen well I've been wanting to do public service as I said that's what I came in to law school for the purpose of it's a little bit of serendipity I worked on criminal antitrust trial at Arnold importer that sort of moved me from counseling and other kind of working with respect to antitrust into the criminal stage it got to be a criminal defense lawyer also luckily in Arnold and Porter we represented the state of Maryland and a savings and loan case a big civil trial charging fraud and the savings alone the judge in the case was a former prosecutor and former public defender and during one of the breaks he said you're wasting your life you should be a prosecutor no one should waste their life and five days later and totally accidentally serendipitous again the US attorney called me and said he was you know wanted me to come to work there I've been on the opposite side of a case from him when I have been in private practice so figured those were two signs and I decided that that's what I would do so there are couple things about this that are interesting one that life isn't always linear and two that you maybe should be open to the serendipity three that you didn't mention you you took a pay cut yeah yeah in case you don't know they make more in law firms and they make the private sector no one's told you that but that's right but as I tell my law clerks you can there's lots of different things that you can do there's lots of different ways to do public service and if you want to work in the public sector the most important thing is to not get a mortgage that ties your hand with golden handcuffs you get a mortgage that you can afford work in the private sector build up a Treasury and then you can go in the government if you know if you're able depending on your responsibilities but I would say very important which is to follow you know you know to not have a big plan you can make a plan for five years out but you never have any idea of what's going to come and as you said I've I went from thinking I was going to be a professor thinking I was going to be an anti-trust becoming interested in criminal law at one point I thought I would had the criminal division in the Justice Department that was a job I was actually nominated for suddenly there was a spot on the DC Circuit and I wound up a judge on the DC Circuit so so as a prosecutor what was new and challenging I mean you'd been a defense criminal defense yeah well you're of course you have the power of the grand jury which you don't have as as a defense lawyer but what really was a really significant difference was I went from doing white color and I trust white-collar fraud on both sides - doing a violent crime right away - you know hoping your witnesses would show up at the trial and I'm talking about the police witnesses the the other witnesses you have to send out the marshals to arrest and bring in to be witnesses you know to direct personal interaction with victims my first case involved a public housing project in the district that had been taken over by a violent gang from New York mothers and grandmothers terrorized and we had to you know earn their trust their their their belief that we would succeed and getting these people arrested and getting them convicted that they wouldn't come back and kill them so it's enormous ly different than the kind of work you're doing in a law firm as a general matter you could imagine you served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice and then as I mentioned principal deputy for the deputy Deputy Attorney General and so on day to day basis what did this entail you're no longer just in the room yeah well yes not you're right not so now you're actually in the room where it happens and you actually have some say over what happens in the Criminal Division my job you know arranged from overseeing the white-collar fraud and appellate sections in the Deputy Attorney General's Office I did everything from investigate the Unabomber to plan security precautions for the winter for the Summer Olympics and then for the upcoming Winter Olympics we're kind of espionage cases national security cases violent crime cases and to work on civil rights investigations of particularly in the criminal area criminal civil rights violations well we're gonna take I want to talk about some of these we've just had the Olympics we were watching with great interest the challenges of security how and that was of course before 9/11 how much was this something that you thought gosh something really terrible could go wrong what did you have to do to make sure that things were okay well you know history has bad way of repeating itself remember Black September and you know took over in Munich and killed a number of athletes and that very much drove the fear of what might happen in the Olympics at least in the early Olympics then there was you know by that by the time of the actual Olympics Oklahoma City had happened so there was fear of domestic terrorism as well as fear of international terrorism and I think it was you know justified to be worried the Olympics provides a an international stage and so it took an enormous amount of effort by you know literally thousands of people to provide security everything from specialized teams to the people who need you at the magnetometers so do you mention Oklahoma City some people many people in the room were born don't know about it this was a terrifying and terrible event in this country what happened and what was your role so really not Warren I really I really hurts so this was 1995 and well I just talk you through my my own experience for Oklahoma City I'm sitting at my desk and start getting emails from the US Attorney's Office in Oklahoma that there's been an explosion at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and they thought it was a gas leak or something like that our you guys have lots of new sources in those days CNN was actually the only 24/7 always on and it took them about an hour to a little less than an hour to get up a picture of the bear of the of the building in Oklahoma City which had come three of the building had collapse and a large bomb had exploded and it looked just like the Marine barracks which had collapsed in Lebanon under there in during the Reagan administration as well I had warm up the Marine barracks there so of course our original thought was fear of international terrorism the US attorney in Oklahoma had just become a judge very fine District Judge leaving the office leaving the spot open and we thought there was going to be a national we thought there was at the same time calls in from all over the country bomb truck Loki seeing here bomb truck seen here none of which turned out to be true but still a great fear that this was going to be the beginning of some kind of wave of bombing so you know this is one of these things where it's not just being in the room when it happens but it's you know having going through a lot of the kind of work necessary to you know be ready for this kind of thing to be happening so the advantage of being on the line as an assistant US attorney was I knew how grand jury investigations worked I knew how telephone investigations work I knew how credit card investigations worked and I because I'd been at the Justice Department I knew the FBI agents who would soon be going out there to manage the investigative part of the team so I asked to go out there and your any general sent me and as I'm going out there we are starting to find at the same time who did it there was a the force of the bomb the bomb was 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate which is fertilizer mixed with and then mixed with fuel oil and nitromethane which was racing oil and it was in a Ryder truck if the effect of the explosion was to drop blow parts of the truck several blocks away the axle of the truck landed on a car which was fortunate in the sense that the person had gotten out of the car and fortunate in the sense that every axle has a VIN number or vehicle identification number on it so we were able to trace the vehicle identification number to a Ryder truck rental place in Kansas just north of Oklahoma City and then we there was a really great sketch artist it was also famous for having done one of the Unabomber sketches and she did a perfect sketch of what turned out to be Timothy McVeigh the FBI went around in concentric circles two motels and they located our woman named Leah McGowan who was the proprietress of the Dream Land motel where McVeigh had checked in and had parked his Ryder truck and you know from that he had used a false name when he rented the truck from writer mr. cling this was a play on Klingon which recent some of you know what that is that's from Star Trek no one's in the early Star Trek's and he but when he checked in at the at the Dream Land he used his real name so he while I am in those days you could not fly directly from Washington DC to Oklahoma City in the FBI plane we had to stop in Indiana by the time I got to Indiana I was handed a cell phone which in those days it's a big thing size of a brick yeah and they had found him by incredible good police work and luck a Oklahoma State Trooper with the name Charlie hanger could not have been a more tv-ready name had had stopped him an hour and a half away from Oklahoma City about 80 miles away because you did not have a license plate on the truck on his car he had parked a getaway car he thought he was being clever took the getaway cars license plate off the car and forgot to put it on before he got away and he was stopped and he had a weapon and he didn't have a permit for the weapon so he was put in jail overnight and that was all it took for the FBI to find him so I arrived at Oklahoma City and it's dark and it is as if it were trying to think of the right metaphor a war zone there was about a 16 block radius where lots of buildings had been badly damaged by the force of a 2,000 pound blast the National Guard had ringed it with Humvees and you had to get through it in order to get to the site the courthouse federal courthouse was right behind the federal building and had been damaged so we were the initial hearing for McVeigh was at an Air Force Base and driving into the air force base for me to do the preliminary examination and explain what the government's position was and there was a mob outside and everybody thought it was a pitchfork mob I turned out it was the press and they wanted into the air force base because it was an air force base they weren't letting people into the air force base so fortunately knew the FBI agents from previous experience and I told them we're not going to have the first investigation of a domestic terrorism at conspiracy in secret so they went out they let the press in and that was my introduction introduction after after he was held we went to the site it was a huge crater the front of the building had been blown off and the front building was where the child care center your boss Jamie Garelick recalls that at that time she had young children you had children right there one of them over here that must have been just a horrific experience and as a prosecutor I think many people don't really think about this but you're dealing with victims yeah yeah there were 168 people killed and every one of them had a you know relative a friend a daughter a son spouse and a lot of there's a lot of experience with the victims and those sort of circumstances and an important part of the role in a circumstance and particularly of a mass terrorist attack is persuading people that the law will persevere that they can trust the justice system and I take things into their own hands and you know we made a promise that we would find the people who did this I will say with respect to my own daughter at the first press conference afterwards my wife and my daughters watched it on television and thereafter whenever they wanted to see me my daughters thought all they had to do was try a little bit but not very much well Oklahoma City's going on to have a memorial and that lawsuit still stands as a real turning point in the treatment of terrorism domestic terrorism and I'm not serving out of commission we talked about it it's a big deal and you also mention the Unabomber case which came up during the same time yes sir in the same time the Unabomber well he turned out to be a well so the name yet businesses are and it is not to be intended as a dig to FBI profilers but the original FBI profile was a Southern California machinist because for an airline because the original bombing was a United Airlines bombing in package bombs which exploded in Airlines which he sent to people professors professors yes and it turned out he was a a maybe math genius is too high but he was a this is one of the Harvard graduates we don't talk about he was a Harvard graduate student in math and he was sending these bombs he had stopped sending them for a while apparently Timothy McVeigh got him jealous because during Oklahoma City during the investigation he threatened to blow up Los Angeles air Airport and then he would put a bomb in Los Angeles Airport so as a result I acquired him as another subject and when I came back from Oklahoma City we you need working on that case he sent a manifesto to the New York Times and The Washington Post explaining his reasoning in extremely distinct language that we hoped the Post and The Times came in and they said you know we normally don't ask law enforcement what they think about whether we should publish something or not publish something but we're concerned about whether this would just make him do more because you had had the spotlight but we were pretty much out of leads at this point we said do it what you want to do but it will not harm anything to have it out there and sure enough within a week or two weeks both newspapers publishing this twenty or thirty page manifesto we started getting at elif we got lots of telephone calls of course but we got one from somebody he was quite persistent and after a lot of negotiating turned out to be the brother and he recognized language and he showed pictures I mean the letters that he had received from his brother with very similar language and we traced the course of the letters the course of where the bombs came from it all turned out it came from the bus routes he would go from her bus route in Helena Montana two different places to put as bombs into post offices and then with a lot of discussing and talking to people we found that he was sort of living in a hermit like existence in the wilderness in Montana and he was arrested and eventually tracked what are the lessons learned from this set of experiences really kind of terrifying and what can law do what are the limits of law here you are negotiating with the media about how to cover it yeah well I don't know I can't I'm not one to draw really huge lessons about all I can I mean look the lessons of both of these cases I think where you want to be as transparent with the public as you can be both kinds of cases led to all kinds of conspiracy theories as you can imagine and on the other hand we're doing investigations so we're trying to keep as much of the investigation quiet until we're you know sure we found the witness or whatever but we held surprising number of you know press conferences in which we explained that you know the course of the investigation and what was happening and then with respect to the evidence we you know basically did a complete dump of all the evidence we'd gotten and gave it to the defense so there would be no argument later evidence had been withheld a secret it even with the best of motives though some evidence was found later that hadn't people didn't know where it was because it was these were national investigations you get the bet you know you just shows you what happens what we also have a very good system of defense in these kinds of cases so the woman who represented Unabomber was also the woman who represented the boss later Boston Marathon really outstanding lawyer outstanding lawyer public defender McVeigh was represented by both public defenders and an outstanding lawyer in Oklahoma and Nichols was represented by Mike Tiger was a very famous criminal defense lawyer who at one point had been at you know this Texas bend before that Williamson Grande yeah so you know you'd see everybody put out all the evidence you can I'm a circumstance like that we were very concerned the most recent hot trial was the OJ Simpson trial which had been televised and which recently a movie recently a movie a stone once again you're familiar with it even if you weren't born which you weren't for that that's for sure and it was regarded as you know theater that and we were insistent that these trials would not be in the end of the Unabomber right while about pleading guilty but that that the Oklahoma City case would not be theater it would be you know presented matter of fact witnesses for testifying victims would testify both sides would have a complete opportunity at it so that when it was over people would feel that justice was done and it wasn't just you know performance so this is the era of so many television shows about investigations and forensics and here you are you're using many of those same techniques and yep you know it's it's also the somewhat quieter work they're not so flamboyant work that actually is a work of justice right that's right it's you know we were in Oklahoma City we were basically 24/7 for weeks at a time until we figured out the people we thought were the co-conspirators hundreds of people the way that the FBI found McVeigh's the key to his car he had driven V Nikita the bomb truck he had driven the bomb truck which was this Ryder truck down he had another place car secret away when he got into his car he dropped the key to the bomb truck so this is an important piece of evidence tying him directly to the bomb truck even if you don't believe though you know the the sketch or any of the other evidence this was the car that he had purchased it was the key he was in the car so how did they find the key the FBI had done a grid of the entire 16 you know block radius of Oklahoma City and hundreds and hundreds of police officers walk the grid looking for anything that looked out of the ordinary they picked up this key they marked the spot and some time later we you know when once we found the hotel room that he had been in we did a telephone search we found he had called terry nichols which was his co-conspirator in we did a search warrant in tony in in nichols house was a map of Oklahoma City including an X for the spot where they were going to park the getaway car and sure enough we went back to the grid and asked what was found in the grid and there was the key to the bomb track so this is it's a lot of very difficult so here you are you're a judge you're a judge at a very special court why is this court so special well as I said I think most the other circuit judges do not believe that it is particularly special and I endorse that view if any of you are out there look it's it's the difference is like all other circuit courts we have jurisdiction over district court cases appeals from them sir cases and arise under the constitution of laws the United States and/or diversity jurisdiction all things that you will soon be studying diversity jurisdiction is a case arising from dispute involving citizens of different states that's right and so it might be a citizen of Virginia suing a citizen of the District of Columbia District of Columbia being trade and treated for diversity purposes as if it were state but what's different for us is we are also the seat of the government that's where most of the government offices have their headquarters and Congress has seen it fit to put in a number of statutes jurisdictional provisions which say if you don't like what the government did in this particular area environmental protection labor law pick the topic you can either sue in the area where you're from or where the event occurred or you can sue in the DC Circuit and after 9/11 they ultimately put in the detainee Treatment Act and no two commissions Act provisions saying that appeals from Guantanamo both from habeas and for military commissions would end up in the DC Circuit so unlike maybe in the reverse of other courts we have 40% of our cases are administrative law cases and 7% are criminal I'd say if anything everybody else is reversed and even in our civil cases about half of them have the government on one side of the other you know the government's suing civilly or somebody's suing the government and many very much headline issues net neutrality access to broadband whether environmental protection agency regulations the things that really were hot in Congress then maybe there's an agency that an axe a rule and there's a big debate there and then there's a lawsuit in your court that's right just know clear I haven't participated in any of these cases but and I haven't but we have net neutrality we have clean power regulations coming up in the fall big on bonk which I'm not gonna be sitting on we've we have a pending challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection bureaus both its constitutionality its organization its operations in the Iguana MO area in last fall we heard a case on whether inchoate conspiracy could be tried in for a military commission in connection with 9/11 we have pending a case now whether the Palestinian Authority is a person for purposes of the due process clause and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United States so yes we have how do you organize your office what do you do with your law clerks how often do you talk to another human being how much are you not talking about does it suggest law clerks are not human being not my experience actually yeah so every judge does this differently and every judge has to sort of array the resources available based on the judges own perception of what the judge needs and of the judges perception of what that judges strengths and weaknesses are in in my case a very important element here is ability to get along with each other I'm not advertising for law clerks right now but you know ability to get along with each other to not have sharp elbows we are locked in one chambers altogether for one year and in addition to judges the other human beings who I mostly talked to or my law clerks the only time we actually see lawyers you know the four times a month when we sit and and for that that's just a morning generally hear oral arguments your oral argument right so that's a big factor my own method of organization is you know the clerks start reading the briefs they start reading all the cases they start reading start looking for things that are not cited in the briefs thinking outside the box many of the cases come from district court where people have had to act really quickly and so have not been able to develop the legal analysis and yet are stuck in whatever doctrinal box they thought was the correct box there and so the clerks have to look outside and then I give the clerk's a couple of weeks head start and then I do the same thing I read the briefs I read the cases hopefully by now I'd have to read fewer cases because I've something I've written but but but at least a lot of them I've read and then I don't do bench memos many judges do use bench memos where the clerk's write a memo to the judge about all the presidents exactly exactly and I do better I think with oral discussions so we have a continuing conversation about the case and do you read hard copy to read online what do you do well no no it's fair so I'm actually in the first generation of Westlaw and and lexis so I'm actually I to say this my clerks are listening I'm better at this than they are because I know how judges talk and the way now in which you find things online is getting the right combinations of words and if you know how judges talk and what kinds of things are likely to be in an opinion on the subject you want it's easier to do the search than it is for somebody who's you know just trying to imagine but my I read a lot online but I am a dedicated iPad user now so everything gets put into PDFs onto my iPad and I have a great program which I'm not going to advertise because they're not paying me which I used to mark up the all the materials so justice Souter who was here not so long ago talked about being introduced to his iPad and how wonderful it was and you could actually hit a button it would read it aloud and then he said but I didn't know how to turn it off so I just put it in the bathroom and closed the door for me the two greatest inventions in terms of extending my lifespan were the wheeled briefcase which you could put all your briefs in and then not have to carry and then the iPad where you could put all of everything into and you could carry under your hands so I'm I do not put it in the bathroom I so do you in the different jobs that you've had can you describe the work family balance the life balance what's possible is it possible to see your family and how does that compare are different stages of your career public sector private sector this is the part where patient have had them sitting in the front row so to be honest I would say this really it more depends on the person than it does on the job at people who tend to work a lot are going to work a lot in any of these jobs right yeah and the difference actually go I think as work towards the flow of the work so if you're a litigator it is very up and down emergencies happen if you're in court pretty much 24/7 while you're in trial if you're counseling it's a more steady state although you could be called by a client or anybody else at any moment and if you're in the government if you're in a management position a lot of it is crisis management and a lot of crises in the government I think Walter Dellinger was was the head of the office of legal counsel when I was in the government and was the acting Solicitor General I think put it best when he said you have to think of your life not as a flex time but as a flex life and you'll have periods of your life we're gonna have to work really you know Howard all the time and other parts of your life where maybe you can pay back a little bit and and have a little more free time or at least work I'm not less up and down time but I don't think there's no way to promise any of you that it's gonna be just you know vacation it's not going to be like this week maybe they're done and all of our electronic devices make make it even less likely that you have a sharp demarcation between work and that's right and the rest of your life and yet with all of this you have continued to do volunteer work this is one of the many things about you that I find so impressive so what do you do and what is the experience like and why do you do it well I'm a tutor in a District of Columbia elementary school I've been doing that pretty much since I started being a judge I'd say I've always liked this idea of counseling and and tutoring when I was in law school I was a resident advisor and I house and I was a proctor and in the freshman yard when I was in private practice I did tutoring of a guy who's in our Xerox room because he wanted to finish his education he's now by the way a lawyer really great but I wanted when I became a judge to do something where I would feel personal direct feedback you know they said you're a judge you've got the human beings in your office and then you go out and you sit on this high bench and that's pretty much your your contact and I wanted sort of immediate contact and I also wanted to see the results of what I was doing you know you're a judge you hope you're doing justice you're hope you're you're advancing the rule of law but it's at a high theoretical you know outlook kind of way when you're helping kids get over the reading hump or understanding you know multiplication or what it means you see that directly with an actual human being in front of you it helps you get outside yourself and when you know it helps you focus on something other than your own career and your own goals and your own stresses so it it you get it is both an opportunity for service and it isn't it's a wonderful thing for yourself there's a zillion ways to do public service of that kind including legal services is a particularly good way and I try to speak for legal services as officer a wonderful support no thank you so everybody has a different there's a different thing everybody can do in this regard but I encourage everybody to find something that is you know not high level not Harvard theory but involves you know interaction with other people who need help teaching reading is particularly challenging you know we've seen the fMRI is watching what parts of the brain light up when you read it's all of the brain all you need all of it just happened to have picked since my daughter sitting in front of you she's the one who introduced me to fMRI she studied psychology in college and and my first lecture about what fMRI as it was from one of her professors that's it's a it's an amazing it's an amazing tool but it is amazing that it does affect your entire so the most important thing I've done in the area reading is that this daughter but my other daughter had a little difficulty getting over reading and the thing that got her over the hump was being read the Harry Potter books and Minh the end having her read the Harry Potter books to us so one of my other part-time jobs was being on the Board of Overseers for Harvard and I recommended that JK Rowling get a degree honorary degree which she did and I think that's paying her back and she gave a phenomenal commencement address which is online and I highly highly recommend it among other things the Dementors came from her experiences working with torture survivors really remarkable how she transmuted that and also her classics background her parents said what will you do with classics anyway so we have entering students here what is your advice solutions what is your advice about how to prepare for class how to not get too stressed how to do things like talk to human beings and do other things in law school well I wish I could tell you that everything's going to be easy it's it's not I mean for some people this will come easy for some people this will come hard as for some people some parts will come easy some parts will come hard don't get too down on yourself about this it's just the way it is my when my favorite lines from Harry Potter is Dumbledore saying to Harry it's not what your abilities are that make you what you are it's your choices so make good choices I think you have to study hard in the beginning just thing about learning to be a lawyer there is an important element that this is actually true and at least learning to be a law student and the hardest part is the first year but you'll get the hang of it so I'm going to take a little bit longer so I'm a little bit less but I would try to get the hang of it and worked really hard on that at the same time I would try to have one thing that is outside of the law for as in my case it was you know being a freshman Proctor working with people who are not in your law school who are not doing what you're doing and it can be anything it's something to get you out of this particular area and give you some perspective on what you're doing Chief Judge Merrick garland you are my hero thank you very much for being here with us

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Id: yN46ER6PPz8

Length: 48min 43sec (2923 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2016