If you missed last night’s Justices on Justice event, you missed out. Fortunately, you can catch the entire discussion here.
With so many fantastic and distinguished jurists sharing their wealth of knowledge last night it was nearly impossible to get through the questions prepared by our moderator, Professor Leslie Gielow Jacobs, let alone the great questions we received from our audience members and viewers online.
While we were not able to ask all of the questions that were submitted to us, we were able to ask a few, and you can listen to the answers to the questions in the videos below.
From a pre-law student – Was there ever a case where your personal ethics or moral system affected, or threatened to affect, your handling of a case?
Answer from former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin
Answer from United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy (ret.)
Answer from Constitutional Court of Austria’s Judge Wolfgang Brandstetter
Answer from Presiding Judge Ann Power-Forde, Constitutional Court Chamber at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague
The second question that was asked, and directed specifically to Judge Power-Forde was: In the introductions, it was stated that Judge Power-Forde has emphasized children’s rights in her work. In your opinion, what are the next steps that need to be taken in the national and international community to protect the rights of children?
Judge Power-Forde’s answer to that question was:
There was a third question posed to the jurists, however, none of them attempted to respond to it in the very short amount of time left. That question was: What are your views on whether it is appropriate for judges to have life tenure?
Those are the three audience questions that were asked. Below are many of the other questions that were asked by audience members. This isn’t a full list, as there were multiple questions that were very similar.
- What’s your favorite food?
- How do you individually determine what is best for the people of your country? Do you fear that some people may not feel objectively justified by your decisions?
- Do you think that the desire to be a justice disqualifies one from being a justice?
- What current laws do you believe should be changed in order to help future generations?
- Have you ever doubted if a decision you made was morally right as opposed to legally right?
- What do you see as a growing problem within the field of law? How do we remedy these problems?
- What is one piece of advice that you would give to young aspiring lawyers?
- What was the hardest case you ever had to decide? Why?
- Which case that decided was your favorite and why?
- How do you distinguish justice from right and wrong?
- When do you consider something “settled law?”
- How do you balance animosity between justices on your respective courts? How does the debate/discussion flow?
- What is the court’s involvement/influence in the issue of freedom of the press?
- How is your Court funded?
- Do you think that the ECHR can slow or stem the growth of the far right in Europe?
- How do the courts strike a balance between education on the case and the merits of the parties?
- Why do you think European countries were more willing to yield some of their sovereignty to the ECHR than the United States has been to yield some of its sovereignty to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?
- Are the decisions of your court influenced at all by the decisions other courts around the world?
- When deciding a case, does the impact of the decision on the Court’s legitimacy sway your decision?
- How would the U.S. program on immigration enforcement by separating minors from parents without a hearing fare under the ECHR?
- What rights and/or values would be most helpful and strategic in encouraging coordination, mitigation, and accountability on the issue of climate change? How can local, national, international, and supernational courts work to mitigate the impacts of climate change?
There were also multiple questions on the confirmation process for U.S. Supreme Court justices, both in general terms and in terms specific to the most recent confirmation.