Juliette Sellgren 

Hi, my name is Juliet Sellgren and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote. This podcast has been brought to you by the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University. To learn more, visit www.thecgo.org. Today it is my great pleasure to talk with Professor Randy Barnett, a professor of legal theory at Georgetown University, where he teaches constitutional law, contracts and legal theory. He writes about the libertarian theory of law, contract theory, and constitutional law. He has also argued cases in front of the Supreme Court and was the legal mind behind the legal challenge to Obamacare's individual mandate. Welcome, Randy.

Randy Barnett 

Thanks for having me. Juliette.

Juliette Sellgren 

Before I begin, I'd like to ask you a question that I ask all my guests. What is the most important thing that people my age or in my generation should know that we don't?

Randy Barnett 

Well, I think maybe that you're not going to live forever, and so you have to make the most of the time you have.

Juliette Sellgren 

I, yeah, I mean that's pretty straightforward. Very. I think I hear that a lot of people tell me not to. Well, so…

Randy Barnett 

Well, I can tell you that it goes really fast and the older you get, the faster it goes, which seems cruel somehow. It shouldn't be that way. It seems unjust.

Juliette Sellgren 

But already…

Randy Barnett (1.54)

When you're younger, time goes slower. And then as you get older, it speeds up. As you have less and less time left, it goes faster and faster. So I'm in my late sixties and I like this age. I've been happy at every age I've been at, and I haven't wanted to go back to a previous age, but I also know that at some point that's going to stop.

Juliette Sellgren 

I mean, I can already kind of feel time slipping by as I get older and I'm only 17, and I already feel it.

Randy Barnett

I don't know. Yeah, it only gets worse. So just basically all this means is you don't want to get morbid about this. All it means is that you have to make the most of the time, you have

Juliette Sellgren

To not take it for granted.

Randy Barnett (2.40)

And not take it for granted and not think you're invulnerable that it's going to go on forever. So you just have to make the most of life.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah, I think that's a very good thing to keep in mind. So jumping in, you are one of our country's leading constitutional scholars, and you teach at a prestigious law school, but your views on the Constitution are kind of in the minority, right?

Randy Barnett 

Very much so.

Juliette Sellgren 

Can you tell us about your legal theory and why do so few legal scholars and lawyers and judges accept your view of the constitution?

Randy Barnett (3.17)

Well, ever since I was in law school or immediately after law school, I really set out to develop what you might call a libertarian theory of law, which would be a comprehensive approach to law from a libertarian perspective. I hadn't remembered that I did that, but when I was cleaning out my papers, I came across a proposal that I had written back when I was, I guess I had originally just graduated from law school in which I basically, I set this out as my intellectual agenda. Well, I read this thing of, I had written maybe 30 years later, and that's exactly what I'd been doing. So I started off talking about criminal justice theory and why we should be thinking about restitution of victims rather than punishing criminals. And then I went to contract law theory and argued in favor or developed what was called a consent theory of contract, and now I'm doing it in the constitutional realm in which I talk about how our constitution protects the individual rights of each and every one of us and limits government power.

But I guess why people like me are in such a minority, well, I think people like me are in a minority in the country. I mean, I think a lot of ordinary folks agree with stuff that I would say. But when it comes to students or professors, people with these views are somewhat of the minority and then the professor, the academia reproduces itself. Professors like to hire people like themselves, and even if they say they don't, they still do. When they evaluate people's scholarship, if it's really too far away from their view, they question whether the scholarship's any good. They think they're keeping an open mind, but they really aren't. They are very, very critical of anything's not like that, doesn't think the way they do because obviously it's wrong and so therefore it's really not as good. And that's one of the reasons why that plus just naked political bias is why people who are in a minority of viewpoint don't get hired when their views run contrary to the majority.

Juliette Sellgren 

Do you have an example, or could you give us an example of how you would think through or think of a legal question versus the way other scholars with different viewpoints would understand or think about the same question?

Randy Barnett (5.42)

Well, if we move to the realm of constitutional law, I think you should develop a theory of interpretation. And in this case, the theory that I work within is called originalism. That means the meaning of the constitution should remain the same until it's properly changed, and then you use that methodology to reach a result in a particular case. So the methodology helps guide you and tells you something about what the right results should be. The main way that other constitutional law professors deal with this, and actually the way they teach their classes is they start with a series of results that they like and then they think the goal is to marshal all the arguments that can be made on behalf of their favored result. And then of course, people who come like the other result try to marshal all the arguments in favor of their result. So they start with results first and then work back to the arguments in support of them as opposed to using a methodology to tell you what the right result should be.

Juliette Sellgren (6.46)

Talking about constitutional law, you have a new book with Josh Blackman and it's called an Introduction to Constitutional Law, 100 Supreme Court Cases that Everyone Should Know, reading it and watching videos that come with it, explaining some of the court cases explained. I can tell that it's not the same as many, I don't know, traditional constitutional law textbooks and I haven't read that many constitutional law textbooks really.

Randy Barnett 

I’m sure you haven't.

Juliette Sellgren (7.17)

But it seems very original in its creation. It's more modern and it seems easier to understand. I can access it and I can understand it, and I'm in high school. So what was your goal in creating this book and how did you pick the a hundred court cases that the book is centered around?

Randy Barnett (7.36)

Well before we're done, I'd like to hear more about how you experienced the book and the videos yourself because it would be helpful to me to hear you give me your views on what it was like to watch the videos and et cetera. But before we get there, I'll answer your question and that is that we set out to, actually initially, we set out to create a series of videos that would illustrate the cases that are in Josh Blackman's and my case book that is used to teach constitutional law. It's a very expensive book. Those books cost over $200 a piece. They have all these cases in them. They're used to teach law students, professors pick the book that they then use to teach their students. And as we were halfway through the video project to try to amp up the book and help make the book a more appealing product, it occurred to me that this was a lot more time consuming and expensive.

We ended up spending two years and a hundred thousand dollars to make the videos. It was a lot more time consuming and expensive than it was too time consuming and expensive given the limited number of students who would ever have access to the videos because the only way for them to get access to the videos is for there to be a professor that used our casebook, and most professors don't use our casebook. So it occurred to me that maybe we could create a book a that all students could buy at a reasonable price, and in this case, the price is somewhere between 20 and 20 and $28, and that book would be a textbook describing the substance of what's in the videos and that when you buy the book, you would automatically get the videos with it. This allowed any law student, no matter what their professor choice was of casebooks to buy our book and watch our videos and read our book about the cases that are in their casebook, because our book covers pretty much 80% of what any other casebook covers.

It's a hundred percent of the cases in our casebook, but it's no fewer than 80% of any other casebook. If a student buys this book, they'll be able to watch these videos, and our goal was to supply what's known as the flipped classroom. The flipped classroom is when students watch videos in advance of going to class or even up doing the reading and those videos give them a heads up on what to expect in class or in the readings, and that would make it easier or more understandable for them to do the readings. And it would mean class could be time could be freed up instead of covering these basics. Class time could be taken with more advanced topics. Everybody will be on board with the basics. So that was the goal, the flipped classroom, and we made our videos between five and 15 minutes long because that's about as much time as students want to devote to something like this. We then discovered that once we had the videos, that actually these videos were accessible to college students and we believe to high school students, and we thought that the book and videos make a great homeschool course for students. We didn't anticipate the Covid virus was going to mean everybody stays at home and even law professors are now looking for videos to show their students and hopefully they're going to adopt our book. We made the videos available for free until the end of May, just so students could watch them

Juliette Sellgren (11.00)

Very, I think you really accomplished that goal because I, that's what I found. It's easy to understand and I don't know, especially me, I'm not learning it in a classroom. I'm learning it at my house just for fun, just for this interview, partially because I'm interested in these topics and especially this, and I think it's important to understand government and understand the foundation of our country is learning this and these constitutional cases and everything, but I think that it really, I don't know, it allowed me to kind of understand the basics as you said, and then I was able to then go further and question everything else, go further in looking into those cases and what they meant and their outcomes, because I understood the fundamental principles of each court case.

Randy Barnett 

Did you watch the videos before you read the chapter? Because there's a chapter for every video. There's 63 videos, 63 chapters. Did you watch the videos first, then read the chapter or read the chapter first and then watch the videos?

Juliette Sellgren 

So I started out, I read a few chapters and then I watched the videos, but then I did it the other way around where I watched the videos and then read the chapters, and I found that to be more helpful for me. 

Randy Barnett (12.25)

I don’t know, that's the flipped classroom. That's like you're just recreating in a sense the flip classroom for yourself without having a classroom to go to.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah, I mean, I think for some people it might be easier to read and then watch the videos or to watch the videos as a refresher on the content, but for me at least, listening first helped a lot. And the videos are really well done also, which is very, very helpful. And I don't know, they were nice to watch.

Randy Barnett (12.59)

We should mention to everybody that the videos are not just Josh and me talking, we each did half of them and do narrate the videos, but it includes pictures, videos, a lot of charts and diagrams to illustrate the concepts. And then we have excerpts even from audio recordings of oral arguments in the Supreme Court and oral recordings of justices announcing their own opinions. So you hear excerpts of the justice's own voices telling us what they're ruling in particular cases.

Juliette Sellgren 

Something I also found really interesting was the excerpts of the dissents and of the explanations of why the cases were ruled in such a way. I found that really helpful in understanding how Supreme Court justices and judges think through a case and kind of how legal precedent is set and everything.

Randy Barnett (13.56)

Well, that's the most important. That's one of the things I wanted to mention before we move on to anything else you might want to talk about. And that is that this is a book, and these are videos about constitutional law. They're only indirectly videos about the constitution. If we were going to do a video on the Constitution, you would go through each clause and you would talk about its original meaning and where it came from. We do a little bit of that, but mostly what we're trying to teach, because it's really what law of courses teach in law school, that's what our market is. We're trying to teach constitutional law, and that's the law that's made by the Supreme Court. And our view is, my view is that the best, it's not the only way to learn this, but one of the better ways of learning this is to appreciate these cases as characters in a story that started at the founding and with the adoption of the Constitution and moves forward to today.

So the cases themselves become characters novel in a narrative or story. And so you have to see how they unfold over time to see, well, why was this case decided this way? Well, it's because of what just came before and then the next case is decided this way because of what just came before that. And you then learn the evolution of constitutional law to the present day. And that helps you understand why, not just what constitutional law is today, but why or how it came to be constitutional law today, and that helps you remember it.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah, I mean I think it really easily did that. It showed an order of events and they referred to a lot of different cases that were already in the videos, and if they weren't, they gave short explanations of those other cases. So what I wanted to ask next was if there were cases that you included in this book, book, this aren't in traditional textbooks, different cases that are often overlooked that you find important, and why do you find them important?

Randy Barnett (15.59)

Most? As I said earlier, most of the cases that we have in our book are in all the cases are in our case book. Most of the cases like 80% are in other people's casebook. But there are a few cases that are in our casebook that are not, in other case books, I think they're important. For example, the first case in the case book, I believe it's the first case, let me just check the table of content to see if it's the first case in our book. Yes, at the very first case in chapter one on Chisholm versus Georgia, that was the first big constitutional case that was decided by the Supreme Court. And we won't go into the facts of the case now, but one of the things that it represents is a view of sovereignty, what popular sovereignty means, and it presents the notion that popular sovereignty is based on individual rights that we, the people are sovereigns as individuals each and every one of us.

And that's different than the modern conception or pre-modern conception of popular sovereignty is we the people as a group. The reason why that makes a difference is because if it's we the people as a group, then the next likely step in the way people think about this is to say it's the majority decision that is the will of the, the people. And the majority decision should prevail because we the people as a group, if you view we the people as individuals, then what government is therefore is to protect the rights of each and every one of us as individuals. And that's the mission of government not reflecting the will of the majority, but protecting the rights of each and every one of us. Well, so you can see how these two conceptions of popular sovereignty lead to two conception of what the Constitution is for this case.

Chisholm v Georgia is hardly in anybody's constitutional law case book besides ours. And the reason for that is that it was reversed by the 11th Amendment. The actual holding in the case was reversed by the First Amendment that was passed after what we call the Bill of Rights was passed. So it's really not the law anymore and therefore there's a case book. Editors won't put it in their case books, but we think it's important. I think it's important because it sets out this conception of popular sovereignty. The 11th Amendment didn't repudiate the view of popular sovereignty that's in Chisholm. It repudiated the consequence, the outcome of that view in a particular circumstance, and we try to make that point. So that is a major departure. There's other cases that we cover that are covered in other case books, but we sort of provide a more favorable view of those cases. Those cases like Lochner v New York are considered bad cases by most law professors and most case books, we explain why they think it's bad, but also maybe it's not so bad as people think. So we do take somewhat of a contrarian view on some of the cases that we report.

Juliette Sellgren (18.48)

I think that's very important, the fact that the concept is the important part. And while the verdict result might not be solid, might not have held through when the 11th Amendment was passed, the concept of popular sovereignty in that way defined as for the individuals is kind of that's what remains. It's not the end result, but it's the precedent that was sent that was set in the middle in the process of solving or going through the case. And this kind of brings me back to when I was brainstorming for this interview, I was thinking of asking about what the most freedom enhancing cases were and what some of the worst cases in regards to freedom were. But as I read the book and as I listened to you talk and watch the videos, I realized over and over again that's not the right way to think about it. That it really is just instead of thinking only of the end result, it is the process in which the result is found. It is the steps that are taken, the legal precedent that is set throughout the case and throughout the proceedings of the case. So instead, I want to ask you what the best and worst cases were in your opinion, and let you set the standard for what that means.

Randy Barnett (20.22)

Great. Well, I think the worst cases are the cases, A couple of my opinions about the worst cases everybody shares. It's the conventional wisdom that Dred Scott, which not only upheld slavery but protected slavery and restricted the powers of states and territories to restrict slavery. That was one of the worst cases ever decided. The Plessy versus Ferguson after the Civil War, which upheld separate but equal, was one of the worst cases ever decided. And everybody agrees about that. We explain why I think it was people have different opinions about what makes it so bad. What was it about its reasoning that was so bad in our view, my view of that might be different than other professors, but I'm in agreement that those are two of the worst cases ever decided.

Another case that people think is wrongly decided, Lochner v. New York or bad case, I actually think is a great case. It's one of my favorite cases when I was a law student and I read it, I went, oh, this is great. And then I turned the page of the case book only to discover that I was supposed to hate that case and it was ultimately reversed. So Lochner versus New York protects the right of freedom of contract by looking to see if in fact a law that restricts freedom of contract really was in the public interest, really was within the power of states to enact. So that's a case that people think is bad, but I think is good. And what was the rest of the question?

Juliette Sellgren 

It was what are some of the best cases?

Randy Barnett (21.56)

Okay. Well, I would put Lochner as one of the best cases. I think Brown versus Board of Education like everyone else thinks is one of the best cases. But the challenge that Brown presents for people like me is I'm an originalist and I think that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning and is Brown versus Board of Education, which everybody thinks is a good case in which I agree is a good case. Was Brown versus Board of Education consistent and can it be justified on the basis of the original meaning of the Constitution? I believe it can be, and I think we probably talk about that a little bit in the case book. I don't really remember, hopefully we do as to why it's justified. But those would be cases that I think are, that's a good case. I have to say, and I think you probably got this message from reading the book, there's a lot more bad cases than good cases.

Frankly, the Supreme Court is more often not doing the right thing than doing the right thing. And so the story of constitutional law is not a triumphant story in which everything always works out for the best. The Supreme Court is taking us down a lot of wrong turns. Most of the cases after the Civil War had the effect of neutralizing the 14th Amendment, which was a very important provision that was added to the Constitution, to restrict the powers of states to violate the rights of their own citizens. Something that states pretty much did have the power of doing before the Civil War. And in case after case after the 14th Amendment was enacted in 1868, 1 Supreme Court opinion after another undercut that amendment to the point where it was hardly doing anything at all. And it was only in the 1960s, fifties and sixties. Well, beginning in the forties probably, that the 14th Amendment starts to make a comeback, starts to be enforced somewhere close to where its original meeting would've suggested it should be. But we're not even back yet. We're not all the way back. There's parts of the 14th Amendment that are still a dead letter that are being completely ignored by the courts and should not be.

Juliette Sellgren (24.10)

That's very interesting. I mean, that's something I found as a recurring theme in the videos and in the book, but something that I was thinking about that I hear a lot when people try to argue about the Supreme Court or just try to talk about it, is that they always worry that the Supreme Court will get influenced by politics and that they don't really understand how lawyers and how justices think about high court cases. And this isn't to say that political beliefs don't play a role, but it's more complex. I think that I realized this when I was watching Lochner v New York, which as you said is a pretty good case for freedom, but I realized that Judge Harlan, who dissented in that case actually was on the side of freedom in other cases. That's right. So what are your thoughts on that?

Randy Barnett (25.16)

Well, first of all, getting back to the point about politics, I think politics are an inevitable influence on justices because they're just human beings and they exist in the political climate that we all exist in. And none of us are able to completely transcend assuming we even want to. We're not able to completely transcend our own views and situations. And justices are human beings and they're like us in all those respects. The point I think that you're taking away properly is that the methodology that is law should help judges to resist that it's not going to overcome it completely, but it pushes back against it so that decisions aren't made solely on the basis of politics, but it is checked and constrained by the rule of law that would allow for more consistent fair outcomes, even where they disagree, even where those outcomes disagree with the political preferences of a judge. And that does happen as much as well, judges are constantly making rulings that they might not agree with, but that's what the law seems to suggest. So, but again, it doesn't completely insulate them from politics. It just tries to help constrain, neutralize, minimize, reduce the effect that politics has on the decision making. And then I can't remember the last part of your question.

Juliette Sellgren 

Well, so I just asked for your thoughts generally on that, but should people worry about Republicans or Democrats packing the court?

Randy Barnett (27.00)

Yes, in both directions depending on your view. So it hasn't always been the case, but right now we're in a situation where the judges that would be picked by a Democratic president and confirmed by a Democratic Senate are going to have a different judicial philosophy than the judges who are picked by a Republican president, confirmed by a Republican senate because the parties have now divided on what the appropriate approach to the Constitution is not just on results, but on how you should go about interpreting a constitution. So right now, and this has again not always been the case, in fact, it wasn't the case even pretty recently, but right now, Republican president, President Trump is picking judges who are originalists people who believe that the way you interpret the Constitution is according to its original meaning, whereas a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate is going to, are going to pick people and confirm people who are living constitutionalists, who believe it's the job of the judge to make the Constitution the best it can be, even if that means ignoring the text, overriding the text, superseding the text, whatever you want to call it, the text they think should evolve and the meaning of the Constitution should evolve and grow to adjust to changing times.

And judges are the ones who are instrumental in getting it to grow and evolve. So if you have one party that believes in basically one philosophy of judging and of the Constitution and another party who believes in a completely different theory of judging and the Constitution, then neither party is going to want the other party to be able to put a lot of judges on the court. Packing the court is actually really ought to be reserved for a technique of expanding the number of justices in order to get your picks on the court. That's something President [Frankin D.] Roosevelt did or proposed doing, and it's something that Democrats have been pushing for lately. But I think just putting a lot of judges on that agree with the President who's nominating them, I would not call that packing the court, but even so there is, but even if you don't call it packing the court, it is something Democrats I think, who take a living constitutionalist view have a right to be concerned about judges being originalist.

And Republicans who take an originalist standpoint or even you don't have to be Republican to take the originalist standpoint, Republicans or Democrats or Libertarians who take an originalist standpoint are going to be concerned about a lot of living constitutionalist judges coming on. And then I guess the next question is, which I won't talk about unless you ask me to, is why should you prefer one over the other? I mean, I'm treating them even handedly as though they're the same. Obviously. I think originalism is the correct view and therefore I actually think originalism has a lot to offer Democrats and progressives if they would only realize it. But that's another question.

Juliette Sellgren 

Do you want to go ahead and answer that question?

Randy Barnett (29.58)

Yeah, well, I think originalism has a lot of things to offer progressives or even libertarians who don't view the Constitution as completely libertarian, which it's not. And that number one is the rule of law such that this goes back to your earlier question about judges being strictly political. If you're a living constitutionalist and you think it's the job of judges to evolve the meaning of the Constitution to conform to your political principles, let's not say preferences, let's say principles, then how do you feel about Republicans putting on living constitutionalist? Conservative judges who get to make the Constitution mean whatever their political principles say? Well, if you're a progressive, that's not going to make you happy. That's going to be worse than originalism. Where in fact, the judges are supposed to be enforcing the original meaning of the constitution, whether it cuts left or cuts right?

So the second thing to keep in mind is the original meaning of the constitution does cut left as well as right. It doesn't lead consistently to conservative results, it followed faithfully. It sometimes, in fact quite frequently leaves to progressive results. I think for example, if we brought the whole 14th amendment back, even the parts that aren't currently being looked at seriously, then I think that would reinforce the correctness of progressive results in other cases, and it would actually lead to some libertarian results that we currently don't have. So the original meaning of the Constitution does not lead to consistently conservative results, but it does lead to some conservative results. And essentially the rule of law says you need to be able to live with those results in order to get the benefit of a written constitution that's going to give you the results you want some of the time.

Juliette Sellgren (31.46)

And I think that's, I mean, the rule of law, accepting outcomes that you don't like, so you can also have the outcomes that you do. And I think that's important to keep in mind as well when thinking about different judicial philosophies. So kind of switching gears a little bit, the pandemic, we're in the middle of a pandemic and many places are locked down right now. Does the Supreme Court act differently during the middle of a crisis like wars or in the pandemic, or does the Supreme Court act the way it always does?

Randy Barnett (32:28):

It's a great question. Really, really great question. Obviously, I mean, not obviously, clearly you're onto something. The Supreme Court definitely does act differently during or periods of national emergency and so do lower courts. And the way they act differently is that they tend to back off and allow the other branches of government, or in this case it would be the states to have more discretion in handling these emergencies without getting in the middle and trying to second guess them. And that has always been the case. It's naturally the case whenever the emergency tends to subside or the war is being won, then at that point, what you oftentimes see is the Supreme Courts now starting to speak up and say, oh, that really wasn't constitutional. You shouldn't do that. But it's usually only after the emergency has passed do they start talking like that. So that's a pretty common thing to happen.

Juliette Sellgren 

So coming out of this pandemic, are you more or less optimistic about the prospects of freedom?

Randy Barnett (33.35)

Wow, the pandemic has been interesting because it has allowed government to take over our lives to an extent that I have not experienced in my life. Now, if I lived through World War II and there had been rationing and curfews and other things like that, I might have experienced something like this. But even then, everybody was not put on house arrest during World War II. So this is an extension of government power that has unprecedented in my life. So whether I'm optimistic or pessimistic about that might've been necessary. But then the question is how does that affect our constitutional structure going forward? There's a lot of people who really like it. They don't like the pandemic, but they like this opportunity that it gives them to control everybody's lives. This is actually a feature, not a bug. And then you see some governors seeming a lot more enthusiastic about this than other governors are.

So the question arises, so that's not good, but the question arises, what is the lesson going forward that we're going to take away from this pandemic? And once all the facts are in and we are able to, this is again, like the Supreme Court comes in later and figures things out. The same thing is true with the citizenry. Once the facts come in and we learn, well, really how effective were all these measures, how necessary were these measures? How many times did governors overreact? How many times did they react really poorly? Like for example, in New York, sending elderly people that tested positive for coronavirus back into nursing homes and requiring nursing homes receive all of these things may have contributed, probably did contribute greatly to the death count in New York state. But they didn't know that when they did it, their goal was to try to free up a hospital space so the hospitals wouldn't get overrun.

But it turns out it might've been a huge mistake. That's something that did not happen in Florida, and their death rate is lower than in New York. At any rate, after we're already able to see it, we might be able to take away some lessons about how all of this government interference, all this government mandates and control turned out not to be so wonderful, and maybe they weren't even necessary. And we will know going forward not to do those sorts of things again, I was just imagining that maybe state legislatures would start passing more specific emergency authorization laws like they currently have that would more greatly constrain their governors than the current laws they have are constrained the governors as a lesson of this pandemic. But we'll have to see going forward, what lessons are drawn.

Juliette Sellgren (36.22)

Yeah, all we can do is hope that people realize in the future how this impacts their day-to-day lives and how kind of to look at the numbers as you said. So finally, do you have any advice for kids my age who will be going to college this year or next year?

Randy Barnett 

Let's see. We don't even know what college is going to look like next year. Nope. So it's hard to give advice that would be specific to what's going on right now

Juliette Sellgren 

Or just in general if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic.

Randy Barnett (37.15)

Dunno if you probably told me you were going to ask me this question, but I didn't remember that you were going to ask me this question. So let me just tell you what happened to me and see if this constitutes advice. I went to college with my number one interests dating back to when I was 10 years old in what I would call justice. That was the thing that interested me the most ever since I saw a TV program about the criminal justice system called The Defenders when I was 10. It made me interested. I didn't realize till many years later that what unified all my interest was an interest in justice, but that's what was going on. And I wanted to be a lawyer because of that. I want to be a criminal lawyer. I went to college and I was also interested in politics, I think also because I was interested in justice.

So I come to college, I went to Northwestern and I was a political science major because I was interested in politics. But then what I found out when I got there is political science isn't about what you think it is. It's not generally about political theory, which is what I'm interested in. It's about empirical studies of how the political system works in various ways. And I found it very tedious and boring. And then for whatever reason, I don't even know why I ended up taking, when I was a freshman, I took a philosophy class, introduction to philosophy, and I had no idea there was any such thing as philosophy given where I went to high school. I never heard of it before. And I thought, oh my gosh, there's a whole discipline in which people are interested in things like right and wrong and good and bad.

That's what I'm interested in. And then I took an ethics course and then I switched my majors and went from political science to philosophy because that turned out to be a lot closer to what I was interested in. And that has been a really good move for me because the philosophical training I got, being a very serious undergraduate major, really has contributed greatly to my scholarship as a law professor. I actually was tempted to get a PhD in philosophy, but I'm kind of glad I didn't. But that's how interested in it I was. So I think the less, the takeaway from this is try to be introspective about what you really care about and why, and then keep an open mind about your course of study to try to fit your course of study as closely as possible to what your deepest commitments and passions and interests are, and be prepared to be flexible. If you do go down one course that looks like the best course of action, and then you discover, oh, wait a second. I think I might've made a mistake. Maybe it's not too late to switch to something else, because that was a hugely good move I made to go out of political science into philosophy. Does that seem like that there's guidance in there somewhere, Juliette?

Juliette Sellgren (40.11)

Yes. That's very helpful. Hearing people's stories I think is probably the most helpful thing for me, especially just because then I can, it helps me to comprehend how I'm feeling and what my thoughts are and how that relates to what other people have been through. I don't know. It helps me to process. So that was very helpful, I think.

Randy Barnett 

It's the way a lot of people process. In fact, that's the reason why to get back to the book, our case book and our textbook and our videos are the way they are. It's all about stories. Every video is about one, two or three stories. That's number one. And number two is all the videos together are about the story of constitutional law in the United States. So I think people do learn best with stories, and that's how we try to teach constitutional law in our case book, in our video series, and in our book, an Introduction to Constitutional law, 100 Supreme Court Cases, everyone should know.

Juliette Sellgren (41.10)

And I think you did a very good job of that, and I really learned a lot, and I've definitely been recommending the book and the videos to a lot of people I know who are interested in politics and justice and freedom and just understanding our country in general. So Randy, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation, and thank you for making this book and for those videos. I really am looking forward to continuing studying these topics. And I don't know, maybe even doing something like that in the future with my life, who knows. But thank you again. 

Randy Barnett

Well, thanks for having me on your program, on your podcast, Juliet, and I hope you'll keep me posted as to what ends up happening, where you go to school and what you study. And just keep me apprised.

Juliette Sellgren 

I definitely will. Thank you.