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- good evening. good evening and welcome to metropolitan state university of denver and to the auraria campus. (applause and cheers) i cannot begin to tellyou how proud we are to cohost this event with the women's collaborative for colorado, a leader in non-profit collaboration.

yeah. so, thank you so much forbeing here tonight for a conversation with oneof the most influential and visionary leaders in our country, united states supreme courtjustice, sonia sotomayor. now, you may recall that justice sotomayor visited with us once before in 2013 and i will have to tell youthat one of the things i was struck by duringthat visit was her clear

commitment to making highereducation a reality for economically disadvantaged students, as well as students of color. shares that commitment. in 2016, insight intodiversity magazine recognized us as one of the 10diversity champion colleges and universities in thenation for our unyielding commitment to diversity and inclusion. in 2015, hispanic outlookand higher education

ranked us among the top 100higher education institutions in the nation forgraduating latino students. and last year, studentsof color made up 37% of our student population and31.6% of our students were the first in theirfamilies to go to college. but, what we want you toknow is that we're working to be even more accessible. we want to become a hispanic-servinginstitution by 2018. now, that means that 25%of our full-time students

would be from hispanic backgrounds. when we began this initiative in 2007, 12.5% of our students wereidentified as hispanic. today, nine years later, we are on the cusp of achieving this goal with 24.5% of our students being hispanic. now, like all events likethis, there are some rules, so i need to give them to you. that's my role.

we're excited for tonight'sevent and i'm sure everyone wants to commemorate it bytaking photos or videos, but i respectfully ask youto refrain from doing so. only credentialed mediamay take still photography during the first two and the last two minutes of the presentation and no live streaming is allowed. we thank you for honoring that request out of respect for our speaker.

tonight's conversationwould not have been possible without collaborationbetween many people and organizations outside of msu denver and i'd like to take a momentto recognize and to thank the following premiere sponsors: colorado latino advocacy andresearch organization, claro; (applause) cinda collins-arsenault;elizabeth espinoza-krupa; the federal bar associationcolorado chapter;

hernandez and associates pc; innovage; latinas first foundation; the mental health center of denver; messner-reeves llp; the women'scollaborative for colorado; and the women's foundation of colorado. and it's important tonote that we had more than 25 additional co-sponsorsrepresenting a variety of local and national women's and latina non-profit organization.

i'd also like to thank ourmoderators this evening, two absolutely inspirationalleaders in their own right, both of whom are inductees to the colorado women's hall of fame. first, on my immediate right, former state senator, polly baca and on my far right, president and ceo of the women's foundation ofcolorado, lauren casteel. and finally, i'd like totake just a few minutes

to introduce our guest of honor, justice sonia sotomayor. justice mayor was born asthe elder of two children in the south bronx area of newyork city on june 25th, 1954. her parents, juan andcelina baez-sotomayor, of puerto rican descent, movedto a public housing project in the south bronx toraise their children. when sonia's father died in 1963, her mother, now a singleparent, instilled in her

and her brother a beliefin the power of education. she excelled in school,graduating as valedictorian of her class at cardinalspellman high school in new york. winning a scholarshipto princeton university, she continued to excel, graduating summa cumlaude and phi beta kappa. she was co-recipient ofthe m. taylor pine prize, the highest honor princetonawards to an undergraduate. she graduated summa cumlaude from princeton in 1976

and graduated from the yalelaw school and passed the bar in 1980 and began work as an assistant districtattorney in manhattan. in 1984, sotomayor enteredprivate practice at the commercial litigationfirm, pavia and harcourt, where she specialized inintellectual property litigation and made partner. sotomayor also served on the board of the puerto rican legal defenseand education fund,

the new york citycampaign finance board and the state of new york mortgage agency. in 1992, president georgeh.w. bush nominated her for the united states district court judge for the southern districtof new york city, confirmed unanimously by the senate and when she joined the court,she was its youngest judge. on her 43rd birthday, june 25th, 1997, she was nominated for the

united states second court of appeals by president bill clinton. she was confirmed by thesenate in that october. on may 26th, 2009, president barack obama announced his nomination of sotomayor for supreme court justice. that nomination was confirmedby the united states senate in august of 2009, makingsotomayor the first latina supreme court justicein united states history.

in june of 2015, sotomayormade history twice when she was among themajority in two landmark supreme court rulings. she was one of the sixjustices to uphold a critical component of the 2010 affordable care act, often referred to as obamacare. and then, on june 26th, thesupreme court handed down its second historicdecision in as many days with the five to four majority ruling in

obergefell versus hodges thatmade the same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. justice sotomayor joinedjustices ruth bader ginsburg, anthony kennedy, stephen breyer and elena kagen in the majority. through her many successes,sotomayor has never forgotten where she came from, a story not like that of manyof our msu denver students. she was quoted in thenew york times as saying,

"if kids don't know thepossibilities, they can't dream. "they certainly can't dreambigger than the circumscribed "world they are in andunless i bring that to them, "this new world i inhabitmay never know the different "things that they can aspire to. "to me, if being on thesupreme court has any meaning, "my legacy is to touchenough kids that some of them "will feel inspired to do morethan they know about today." ladies and gentlemen,

tonight we will all learn todream just a little bit bigger. please join me in welcoming - so good to see you again. - great to have you back. - hello! hi! there's nothing likesitting in a living room with 2000 people looking at you. (laughter) thank you all for coming.

i am delighted to be back at msu which, whose mission i greatlyadmire, but more importantly, i'm happy to be withfriends and so thank you for joining me tonight. - it's great to have you here. justice, i know i speak on behalf of not only everyone in this roombut everyone in the country. we are deeply appreciativeto have the opportunity to have this conversation with you today.

dr. jordan used the word"story" in his introduction and i think that the keytheme of tonight will be the sharing of your story, that our audience getsthe opportunity to have an intimate conversationwith 2000 people watching. - i wish every kid herecould have the opportunity to come up and see, and lookout, and see what i'm seeing. i'm often asked do i getfrightened and the word "frightened" isn't the right word.

but, it can be overpoweringat moments and overwhelming. you know, i never imagined that i would sit at the front of a stage. i remember graduatingfrom college and because my last name starts with an s, i was sitting all the way in the back. i could barely see the stage and i'm watching or i'mlistening to them introduce the honorary degree winners and

as they were reading their bios, i was thinking to myself, it really must be somethingvery special to become so famous that they invite you to sitin the front of the stage. i no longer think it's that special. i hope every kid has that, though. - [lauren] you are special. - well, no, i think myposition is special. - your position is specialand that's my point exactly.

within this room are manyspecial young people and throughout our countryand throughout our state. what was it that helpedyou to find and to claim your specialness so thatyou can help facilitate the opportunities andpossibilities for others? what facilitated you along that journey to sit where you are today? - if any of you read my book,you know i'm a storyteller. so, i'll tell a story, okay?

when i was nominated to the supreme court, my entire living family in puerto rico came to the induction. the only living aunt, all ofmy cousins, some of their kids and there was one cousinwho was very special to me. i spent a lot of my years in my youth when i was in puerto rico with him. and we're sitting aroundthe kitchen table at the end of a very special day andevening and he's looking

and everybody's talking and chattering and he's shaking his head "no." and i finally look at him and i say, "pappo!" puerto ricans love nicknames, okay? pappo is a favorite. his real name was mario,mario baez but he was pappo. "pappo, why are you shaking your head no?" and he says,

"sonia, you know, i reallyloved you and still love you, "but you really weren't that special." i started to laugh, sodid the rest of my family. you know, you're not born branded special. there isn't any kid inthis room who can say "i'm branded something. "i'm branded successful,i'm branded a failure." none of that comes with your birth. you have choices that you'llmake in life and those choices

can be positive ones thatwill help you move forward or they can be ones thatwill sidetrack you and present some obstacles to you. i think i was fortunate inunderstanding that very early on and understanding thatif i kept myself busy, and busy in doing thingsthat helped educate me, that taught me things aboutthe world and about people, that that would keep me out of trouble. you know, i was asked at lunch by some of

my colleagues one day, thesame question you posed to me. why is it that i succeededand so many kids in the neighborhoods i grew up in didn't? and i tell them that ifind that the kids who are involved in after-schoolactivities are the ones who are most likely to succeed. if you don't give kids goodoptions about how to spend their time and make it fun for them, they're going to be lead astray.

temptation in poorneighborhoods is enormous. the people with moneyare often people involved in illegal activity. that illegal activityprovides some kids with a family structure and theyget a family structure, but it's people that saythey care about them. so, you have to provide alternatives and i spend a lot of my timetravelling and meeting with kids in after-school activitiesbecause i really do believe

that the difference is, can you fill the life of everychild with fun and learning? - would you mind my askingyou to share a story of an after-schoolactivity that you loved? to give us some intimatesense of memory that you have that made a difference to you? - i, believe it or not, veryearly loved public speaking. believe it or not. - [lauren] it's called sole's code?

- yeah, i guess. (chuckling) i know there's a lot ofkids who tell me they're embarrassed by public speaking. i never was. i loved getting up and talking. my mother said i never shut up once i learned how to talk, you know? just like i got up, this ismy mother's story, not mine,

and in fact, very recently,i was helping my mother clean up her papers andshe had one of those books, your child's firstwhatever and among them was first smile, first words,first everything else and first walk. she put next to it the date which was eight months to the dayand next to it she put, crossed out walk and put run. because she said i got up fromthe floor and ran after that.

but the most powerful momentfor me was giving a speech in my forensics class andbeing so surprised that people were actually listening to me. you know, most kids, you know how often you look and you're like this, "mommy, mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, daddy! "listen to me!" and how often they don't? it's natural but it wasthe most empowering moment

for me was to realize the power of words, that by using words, icould paint a picture that captivated people'sattention and i learned that in an after-school activity,in public speaking. i was so proud of my nephewwhen he went to his first year, one of my two nephews that are twins, one of them is verypainfully shy and he went and took a public speakingclass to try to help him overcome his challenge andi beamed when i heard him

tell me that he had done that. unfortunately, it's still painful for him, but at least he tried, you know? - the more you try, thebetter you get, you know? - nothing ever happens inlife unless you work at it. i tell people, look at all ofyour favorite sport athletes, to kids, think of themichael jordans of the world. they're out on that court,day in and day out, for hours, shooting that little ball into the basket.

what they do, they have someskill, obviously, some talent, but the talent alone isn'twhat makes them superstars. what makes you a superstar is how hard you are willing to work and i believe that the measure of your characteris not how many times you're knocked down but how many times you're willing to get up and try again. you can't do anything really, really, really well the first time.

- justice, you know i'veknown you for a long time and we've been friends for a long time-- - let's not tell people how long. - but it occurred tome that, as i know you, i know you're a very passionate woman. - yes. - and i've heard some of yourstories about the law but where does that passion and your passion for the law come from?

where did that startand how did that start? - well, i've told the story ofhow i got interested in law. but the passion wasn'tborn from that story. if you read my book, you'llread about my love of nancy drew and perry mason, the tv lawyer, and how they influenced me tothink about entering the law. and, having diabetes was oneof the factors because i had been told that i could not bea detective like nancy drew because i had juvenile diabetes,

so i had to find a secondbest job and perry mason, for those of you who areold enough to remember-- - he's in reruns, now. - is he on reruns? some of the kids should watch it. it's a lot of fun. he would spend the first halfof the show investigating the crime his client wascharged with and the second half proving his client wasn't guilty.

well, i made a very earlyrealization that his investigation was playing detective and so that's why i started to think aboutlaw but that was what started me thinking about the path of law. what made me realize thatit was a profession i really wanted to pursue, that itwould become my life passion, is that i think law practiced in the noble way the professionexpects us to practice it means that we are helping people.

we are helping people with their problems. there's all kinds of laws,or lawyers, i should say. there are lawyers who go tocourt and those are people who are having disagreements,either with other people or with institutionsor with the government. but, we're helping those peopleresolve those disagreements. but, there are a bunch of other lawyers, and probably the vast majority, who are helping to improvepeople's relationships.

think about the lawyerswho are writing your wills. think about the lawyers whoare helping you buy a house. think about the business lawyers who are trying to makecontracts that they think will help you and makeyour businesses better. law should be service. it should be about how to make us function as a community in a better way. when you think aboutwhat the purpose of law

is in our society, it is to regulate the competinginterests of all of us. there are so many peoplewith different needs and different desires and differentways of looking at things, so how is it that we function at all? when you think about it,think about the simple matter of getting from your houseto your job or your school. what do you do? you leave your house, you cometo a corner, you see a light.

the light is green, you go. the light is red, you stopand you think to yourself, "why am i doing this?" kids mostly tell me because their parents tell them to do it, okay? but, if you think, as a parent,why are we all doing this? we're doing it, basically, because the law tells you you have to. you're gonna get a ticket if you don't.

but, more fundamentally, weunderstand that, as a society, we've decided that insteadof letting people run to where they want to gowithout regard for anyone else, is gonna cause a lot of people to be hurt. there are gonna be accidents,there's gonna be pushing. there's gonna be falling. there are gonna be fights. so, we created this systemof lights where everyone gives up a little bit oftheir time or their ability

to get to where they're goingfaster so that they will stop at the lights for the greatergood so that most of us can get where we're going safely. that's what the law's about. it is a creation of anetwork of relationships that let us survive with one another. it's imperfect. some laws are bad. some laws can be improved.

some laws are evilnecessities and some laws, like red and green lights,everybody can agree to agree. but, we need those laws toexist together and my passion, both as a lawyer but nowparticularly as a judge, is to try to interpretthose laws in ways that help us function better as a society. so that's why i love the law. - justice, you mentioneda few moments ago that it doesn't matter howmany times you fall down,

it's how many times you get up. over the course of your lifetime, have you ever foundyourself scraping your knees having fallen down and what was it that lifted you up in order for youto continue to move forward? i certainly know withinmy life that's been true. - oh, there's been so many times. it's hard to pick one that'semblematic of the situation. i think i'll describe the most recent,

okay, and the biggest, and it was my nominationto the supreme court. people forget how contentiousmy nomination was. there were a lot of peoplewho were organized around defeating my nomination to the court. there were countless articlesby people questioning my ability, my intelligence, people challenging my reputation. i had spent a lifetimecreating a reputation that

i was proud of and i hadso many good friends but to read in the newspaperthat people were saying that i was abrasive and nastyand not smart, conceited. i mean, there were a wholehost of negative attitudes that were leveled at me. it deeply, deeply disheartened me. i talked openly about it. it was hurtful, deeplyhurtful and there were moments when i stopped and said, is this worth it?

do i destroy the positivethat i have spent a lifetime building upand get into this position soiled by all this negative stuff? and i actually gave serious thought to saying i don't want todo this and pulling out. and so, you ask why didn't i? it's because of friends. i shared my feelings witha couple of friends and even though i swore them to secrecy,

they couldn't restrain themselves and they shared it amongother friends and they spent hours talking with me andgetting me out of my bad feeling and boosting up my spiritsand reminding me of what was important in what iwas doing and that actually has been the answer everytime that there's been something negative in my life. it's been those good friends, the ones who will tellyou when you're wrong

but not criticize you for it. they will give you ideas about to improve what you're thinking aboutand how to reach a goal in a different way whenyou've hit that brick wall. those are the kinds offriends that are important. they're not the ones whoalways say you're right. they're not the oneswho tell you to give up. they're the ones who work with you to make the path easier for you and

who will be there with thehandkerchiefs when you need them. and it really, if yourely just on yourself, you're gonna be likely tofail because we're human. we're vulnerable. we're capable of feeling and do feel badly about a lot of things and it's important to surround yourself with good friends who will help you see more of what you're capable of doing

than you can in those dark moments. - if you don't mind my askinganother quick follow-up, i think one of the obviousquestions that may be coming up in people's minds is that youare a woman, you're latina. some of the challengesthat you have faced and the barriers that you have broken over the course of your lifetime, how does one as a latinanavigate some of the waters that may be a little bitdifferent than for others?

- well, i don't know if ihave the magical answer, but i have my answer. - [lauren] your story. - my answer, my story. i always asked for help. it goes hand in and with my saying that i reach out to friends. i didn't remember this story, but when i was writing my book,

i reached out to people ihad known throughout my life to talk with me about mymemories and one of them was a grammar schoolfriend who said to me, "sonia, do you rememberwhen we were in fifth grade, "that you came to me andasked me how i studied?" i said no, i didn'tremember that right away. she said, yeah, yeah andshe relayed where we were and what we were doing andall of a sudden, i remembered. i remembered that i hadbeen a very poor student

up until fourth grade,largely now, in retrospect, i believe because i spoke spanish at home before i spoke english. so, when i got to firstgrade, i really didn't fully comprehend what was happeningaround me and it took until about fourth grade before the strength of my english improvedso that i was finally understanding what washappening in the classroom, but i had a sense that i hadn't

figured out how to study yet. i looked around and donna,this is the friend i spoke to. i mention her in my book. this is her story more thanmine, but i do remember it. she was the best studentin the class and i figured, you know, go to the top. and i looked at her and i said, "donna, how do you study?" and she described certainthings that she did,

underlining, taking notes, summarizing what it was she had learned, repeating it againbefore she went to sleep, going through her notes in the morning while she was having breakfast before she took a test in school. i didn't know how todo any of those things. she taught me. i've been asking for help my entire life.

when i don't know something,i don't make believe i do, and there's a lot of lawyerswho do that by the way. and the worst time to do it is in front of the supreme court,'cause you're getting killed. but, there is nothing wrong, i've learned, in saying "i don't know." people's ego get in the wayand you can see it sometimes. sometimes, i'm with an audienceand i'm looking at people and i can see these blankstares when i'm talking

and i'll turn around and say, "do you really knowwhat i'm talking about?" and somebody will shake their head no, and then i know i've got toapproach it a different way. but, i've instinctually known that it's okay to ask for help. when i got to college, i realizedthat i had done very well in grammar school becauseall of our tests were basically multiple choice and that's easy.

i had a good memory, okay? i got to high school andmost of the questions were short essays and very directed and i'm pretty good at that. i got to college and istarted writing papers and i had no idea what i was doing and my first grade in college was a c. it had been since fourth grade that i had gotten a c in school.

i was devastated. i had no idea what i had done wrong. i picked myself up, i stood on line for theprofessor's office hours and i showed her my paper and i said, "what did i do wrong?" and she explained it to me. the first part i understood. she said i had a lot, a lot of good ideas,

but i didn't structure theminto a story, into a theme. so, the ideas were not connected. so, i thought about that andthat was easy for me, actually, because i had done publicspeaking so i knew that you had to create a story and so i said, "oh, if that's all igotta do, that i got." then she said, "you're not writing in complete sentences. "your writing is very awkward.

"you have to work on your writing." and i'm not sure thati fully understood what she was talking about at that moment, but i did write a second paperand i at least got a b-minus, because i had organized it well. the second semester itook another course with a professor in latin american history, because i was going tokeep trying write and figure out how to writeand he took the paper and,

thankfully, he circled alot of the mistakes i made. i've never forgotten the first sentence. my first sentence was, "the authority of dictatorship," and he started there andhe circled it and he said, "sonia, you're translatingfrom spanish to english." and adjectives, there aresome adjectives in spanish but many of our adjectives areintroduced with an "of." we don't say "cotton shirt" in spanish.

we say (speaking in spanish) "shirt of cotton." so i had put "authority of dictatorship." he said in english, most adjectives can bein a possessive form, "dictatorial authority." and i looked and i said, oh! he sent me back and he said,

"find all of the otheradjectives you can correct." - [polly] wow. - i took the paper andi did that and i said, "okay, what else?" and every paper i did for him, he would circle something else. i learned how to makenouns and verbs conform. plural to plural, singular to singular. i wasn't doing that.

i learned how to shorten my sentences from passive to active voice. i spent my first summerre-reading grammar books from first grade totwelfth because obviously i had missed the lessonsof my earlier childhood and i worked, and worked hard,at learning how to write. so, what do i do now? i write for a living. - that's great.

- but, it's still not natural to me. you know, my kids, they're all, my kids, my law clerks, superb writers. i write something. i edit and i edit again and i edit again. i keep improving what i write. i sometimes have to stop reviewing my own opinions becausei'll never get them out. but, my point is thatthose were challenges,

nothing of which weresolved by any magic formula other than a, asking forhelp and b, working at it. that's what i've done with just about everything i have faced. if i can't break downthe wall, i go around it. - [polly] that is a greatlesson, it really is. - in that regard, i never learned how to dance salsa when i was a kid. i have no rhythm.

my mother says that she doesn't know why because she's a great dancer. - [polly] have you taken salsa lessons? - i did when i was 50 years old. - [polly] hey, tell us about that. - all right. i had become a court ofappeals judge in new york. i went to all of thesehispanic bar association and hispanic events and i was apotted plant in the corner.

men would come to ask me to dance and-- and i was getting embarrassedby it so i finally decided to take private lessons andthe instructor was trying to teach me rhythm and wewere having a hard time. because i don't have it, okay? so, we're practicingand he finally, he says, "you know something? "for whatever reason,you don't have your own "natural rhythm butyou're following me okay."

and i said to him, "yeah, because i'mdoing what you're doing. "i know it's a reverseimage but i'm just doing "what i see you doing." and he said, "ah, you can follow." and he taught me howto dance by following. - [polly] sure. - so now, i tell this often,

i hope i'm not insulting anyone,any male i've said no to, but when i'm on the dance floor, i have to be able to see theguy's rhythm before i say yes. all right? there are some men who dancethese little tight steps. you can't dance with me. i need those guys whoreally do the steps so that i can follow it, all right? that's getting around the wall because

it's a talent i don't haveand i'm never gonna have it. i've tried, but i've figuredout a way to do it adequately. how's that? enough so that i get up and dance now. - [polly] and that's important. - that is important! i have fun. - and you still are doing whatyou love to do and you also, i've heard a couple of things,

some great lessons thatyou share but you know that you're a role modelfor many, many, many people, but who are your role models? role model for some ofyou in the audience? but we want to know who thejustice's role models were and how did they influence you? i suspect at the time you were growing up, there were not a lot of latinasdoing some of the things that you eventually did.

- i certainly didn't meet a latina lawyer til i got to law school. i met a couple of latinolawyers in law school but i didn't know anyone who was a lawyer. my family lived in the projects. there were no lawyersand there were no doctors in the projects back then. there probably aren't any today. but, no, i didn't have those role models.

but, i want to saysomething that i think is important to say about role models. my greatest role modelwas my mother, all right? but, if you read my book, you'll know that westruggled to come to terms with my limitations andhers for many, many years. mine was not the perfect childhood. my mother and me, neitherof us are perfect. no one is and if what you'relooking for is perfection,

then nobody will ever be your role model, because no one's perfect. and what i have figured out is that i've met very few people, and the ones who didn'thave this were generally the criminals i was prosecutingas a prosecutor, okay? but, virtually everybodyhas good in them and virtually everybody hasspecial skills and talents. if you can figure out how tolook for that good in people,

they will respond. one of my friends once said to me, "sonia, you make me want to be good." - [lauren] ahh. - and i thought about it and she said, "you know, with you, "you challenge me to do the right thing." but, my role models were people who could do things that i admired.

they were the people in my workplaces, supervisors, leaders, butnot the leaders who were bombastic or who everybodywas crowding around. it was the people who i thoughtwere doing the right thing and the right thing thati wanted to emulate, how to be a lawyer filled with integrity, how to be a lawyer thatcared about people and i looked for those rolemodels in my workplaces that did those things that iwanted to learn how to do.

that's actually how ifind my role models and have found them my entire life. the professor that i found at princeton, i understood that hecared about teaching me, that he cared about my learning and so i hung onto him for dear life. he had more courses with methan he ever wanted, okay? but, he really helped me. - [polly] that's great.

- so, for me, i collecteda lot of role models. my book talks aboutthe many big names that have helped me in my life butthey're terribly important, but more important have been those people, those ordinary people whohave done extraordinary things and who i've been blessed to know. i think that what kids haveto learn how to do is accept that the people in theirlives might not be perfect, they can get annoyed at them,

but to look for the good thatthey're trying to give them. so, that's how i pick role models. - the justice has alsosaid that she would like to take some questionsfrom the audience and so, justice, i know if she takesquestions from the audience, she does want the studentsto have an opportunity first and also, you need to stayseated so stay seated and she'll come to you and i think miguel is there with the mike.

he's going to go through the audience and you have the opportunityto ask some of your questions. - all right, let me say the following. - okay. - there are all of these guysand gals around here in suits. a lot of them have thislittle thing in their ear? they're marshals or police security. they're great guys and gals. they're here to protect me and

they're not here to protectme from you, necessarily. they're here to protect me from myself. they don't like it that i likewalking around, all right? i got up and ran at age eight months. i'm still doing that. so, i'm gonna walk around you. polly said the right thing. if you get up, they geta little nervous and they might pull me off and pull me back,

so if you stay seated, they'll be calm. if you ask a question,miguel will come to you and then you can stand up, because then they expect it, all right? so, if that's the deal,i'm gonna walk around. i'm going to let thestudents ask questions, but i'm gonna walk aroundeverywhere so that all of those people sitting in theback, you get to see me, too. i'm not gonna talk about casesand i'm not gonna tell you

how i'm gonna decide or vote in a pending case before the supreme court and i'm not gonna talk about politics. you know what counts? if you ask me who i'm gonnavote for, i'm gonna say, "i'm one vote. "who are you voting for?" because that's whatyou've got to do, vote. and finally, if i can't answer,i'll tell you why, okay?

so, if it's a deal, if you'rea student raise your hand. all right, over there. you were the first hand. in the black, right there. thank you. and i know that there's aphotographer in the room, right? where's the photographer? all right, one of you guyswith the camera back there, if i let you take apicture, will you take it of

this young woman and i? and give it to her? ah, there's the camera, come on. you see, that's my bribefor asking a question. all right, ask me your question. - will you sign this book for one of the best phds and a chicana? - not as a question but before i leave, give it to miguel with the name of the phd

on this piece of paper and i'll sign it. did you have another question? - no, that was it. - all right, who has another question? all right, who are you? yes. yes, who are you? - my name is nicole. - hello, nicole.

you're at msu, what are you studying? - i'm studying political science with a minor in criminal justice. - wonderful. where's that nice photographer lady? don't go away. you can stay. you gotta look for her so shecan give you her name, okay? - i just wanted to ask whatadvice you have for students

who are trying to go to lawschool but are kind of hindered. i'm a daca student so-- - what does that mean? - it means deferred actionfor childhood arrivals. the wonderful partabout law school is that they don't expect you tostudy anything in particular. you don't have to take pre-law courses. you don't have to takea specialty of any kind. what law schools are looking for is

well-rounded people who have passion and are interested in helping the community and you can prove that in so many ways by doing well in what you are doing. show them that you have that drive and that energy to overcome your challenges. they will see it and they will like to see that you set your mind toa goal and you reach it, so don't worry about am idoing what the other kids

who are not in this program are doing? do what you're doing and do it well and find courses and activitiesthat you are interested in so that you're doing them well. i tell people if you don'tlike what you're doing, you're not going to succeed, because you do only thethings you want to do well. the other things, you dothe motions and you sort of sit there and maybeyou're a lump on a log and

you get through it butwhen things excite you, you make a difference. so, figure out, in yourworld and your life how to overcome yourchallenges so that when you're writing that essay to law school, you can tell them, "this is where i started,this is how far i've gone "and this is where i wantto go and i can do it "because i have the driveand the interest to do it."

don't give up, okay? good luck to you. all right, yes? - so what skills do you thinka student leader should have, or any leader in general? - well, i think every studentshould not leave school until you can write well. no, no. there isn't any job youtake that is not going to

require you to do some writing, even if it's only to evaluatethe people who work under you. every job and everythingworth doing requires you to have the skill ofpersuasion in writing. that's what college gives youthe opportunity to learn and so make the most of collegeand find the professors like i did who are goingto help you do that. the second skill, you know,i spoke about my nephew. he's very, very shy.

he's never gonna be a public speaker and not everybody is a publicspeaker but everybody can learn the basic skill set of how you speak, how you organize your thoughtsand how best to present them. and so, that's somethingthat you can do and learn in college as well, bothin speaking up in class and going back to your professors and saying, "i don't think youunderstood my question so "could you help me figureout what i did wrong?

"how can i present thequestion in a clearer way?" because it helps you in your thinking and developing your approachto people and to problems. so, they often say in law, clear speaking, clearwriting means clear thinking. i think that's true in everything in life. so, i, for one, went tocollege to learn things that i didn't know and i wanted to know about. i took, i majored in history,

but i took an introductoryart course because i had been to museums and ididn't understand pictures. you know, i would walk aroundmuseums and i felt like what are they saying to me, you know? well, i took an introductoryart course and i learned what artists through the centuries, how they've approached their art and what their thinking was andwhat they were trying to do and the impressions they weretrying to leave people with

and now, i can actuallygo into a museum and, i'm not an expert, buti can enjoy a museum and that was my whole purpose. and it was other things that i took, like an economics course, because i wanted to read the newspaper and when they were talking about the economy, or when they were talkingabout the two political parties arguing about their economic platforms,

that i would at least understand what they were talking about. and i'm not an expert ineconomics, but i actually get it and so i vote, i think,in a more informed way. so, all of those generalstudies that i took, i think have made me amore interesting person, but a person who iscurious about the world. that curiosity lets meread things that i never would have imaginedpicking up as a kid and

now i read them for joy. so, that's what i would use college for. those are the skills thati think are important. yes, this here, right here. - who are you? - michaela morales. - hello, michaela. - hi. other than the supreme court justice,

what is your favorite mostachievement in your life? - ah, what an interesting question, because it's pretty big, you know? that at my induction to the supreme court, my entire family frompuerto rico, new york and across the united states, my friends from everywhere came, that i didn't travelmy path alone but that i traveled it with peoplei loved and who loved me.

very hard to be successful, it's harder to be successful while you're taking everybody with you. i think if i had reachedthese heights without them, it wouldn't have beenvery meaningful for me. so, i tell kids who go to college, there's a lot of kids whogo to college whose parents never visit the college. are there some kids here whoseparents have never been here?

right, okay. when i've been in school, a lot of my friends would say to me, "sonia, my parents don't speak english. "my parents wouldn't understand this." that may be true. they don't speak english. they may not understandthis but it's important for them to see theworld that you're in and

i've taken my family with meto every world i've been in. now, my favorite story? at the white house party thatpresident obama gave for me, i invited all of thosepeople, including my aunts. and at one point, i ranto the rest room and there was my titi gloria in her wheelchair with her pocketbook and shewas stuffing coffee cups, the plastic coffee cupswith the white house emblem and the napkins withthe white house emblem,

she was filling herpocketbook with them, okay? you can take her out of the south bronx, but you can't take thesouth bronx out of her. we had a great time and thebest time was last christmas when i went to the whitehouse christmas party and the president always says a few words and, during his speech, he said to everybody, "please go out, have fun, theonly thing i ask you to do "is don't take the silverwarewith you, it's historic,

"but you can take thecoffee cups and napkins." so, i really do think that that's my greatest accomplishment. who else? are you a student back there? go ahead, who are you? hold on, that nicephotographer, don't go away. i forgot pictures with atleast two of you, right? hold on, where did iforget, starting over here.

come on up. and we match. come here, come up and i'llget the picture with you while that young man, go aheadand ask your question and then i'll wend my way to you, okay? - [milo] my name is milomarcus and i'm a student, a special education student here at msu. what kind of advice canyou give future teachers to help them succeed in the classroom,

especially those of usthat are working with individuals with special needs? - well, you've used theright word, "special," right? one of the things i mostadmire about my mother, and it used to frustrateme when i was a kid, she treated my brotherand i so differently. she let him do things she never let me do, she let me do things shedidn't let him do and i would sometimes get annoyed.

as we were growing up, one dayshe looked at me, she said, "you're different people. "you have different needs. "i can't treat you alike. "if i make the demandson him that i put on you, "he will be angry and fail. "you, you get angry and you look at me "and say i'm gonna do it." and she was right.

my brother grew up just assuccessfully as i did and i still admire my mother forrecognizing our differences. if you put expectationson kids that they don't think they can meet, then theybecome discouraged, i think. i think you have to let kidsshow you their expectations. you have to let them setthe standards of what they can do and what they want to do and that's pretty hard fora lot of parents to do, to challenge theirchildren to do better but

not on their terms, but working on identifying with the child what their terms are. that's a subtle but socritical distinction. you know, i have acousin whose dad really, really wanted him to be a doctor and he only wanted to be a musician. if you read my story, in the book, my cousin nelson diedof aids from drug use.

i still think that it wasthe fact that he fought so long against his owndesires that he wasn't given a chance to live thelife he wanted to live. so, accept them with their strengths and their many weaknesses andwork with them to figure out what it is they think they want to become. good luck. all right and then i'mgoing back over there. yeah, yes?

did i take my picture? yes, i did. did i? yep, thanks. come on out. hi, tell me your name. - hello, my name is sage gonzales. i'm an msu denver student. i'm a veteran of the marine corps.

- thank you, thank you for your service. - i want to know how youstick to your beliefs when it goes againstthe popular opinion and people would like you tobelieve another way or i guess, fall through on your beliefs. - it's not always easy. well, i think you have tostart with realizing that you're not always right, because if you can startfrom that perspective

then you can be open to listening to what other people are trying to tell you. there have been plenty oftimes that that listening, i've understood thatwhat i thought was right maybe wasn't quite right. it becomes much easierto deal with change when you can understand itsimportance, the why of it. so, if you start fromthere, and you realize, "gee, i could be wrong and if i'm wrong,

"i'm gonna change my mind." i have, through my years as a judge, been in positions wherei've voted one way and, after reading somebody else'sdraft or even sometimes, writing my own draft of the way i voted, i changed my mind. i realized, this wasn't quite right. if you're doing that, if you're challenging eachof your assumptions and

you're working through your own arguments and trying to ensure that they'reright by questioning them, then it really does become easier when you are right to stay there and to say this is the right thing to do. but, it takes that giveand take within yourself to ensure that you've lookedat every side of the question and decided this is wherei think i have to say i won't move, but thatshould be a last moment.

it should never be your first. so, how do you do it whenthere's so much pressure on you? and by the way, when you're on a court with multiple members, like the court of appealsor the supreme court, sometimes there's a lot of pressure. and if you look at our opinions, every year a justice willwrite a dissent where they're the only person dissentingbut it's not that common.

being out there by yourself is not easy. but, we still all doit occasionally because it's at that juncture where you've reached the point of saying, "even if i'm the only voice, "it's the voice that needs to be heard." but never do it for you. make sure you're doing it because it really is helping other people.

- my name is dextio stantu. - hello. - hello and earlier youdiscussed the importance of getting back up when youfall and in regards to that, what would you say wasone of the greatest fears you faced and gettingback up when you fell in one of those instancesbased off of that fear? - hm. all right, i'm gonna, whoeverasks the next question

from this group, i'mgonna walk around there so you'll have to chase me, okay, because i promised thesepeople that i would do that. the greatest obstacle tosuccess in life is fear and the greatest fear, i think,that i have faced and that most of us face,is the fear of failure. most of us do not like to be embarrassed. the idea that we try somethingand people will laugh at us, that's why most people whodon't ever ask questions

never ask a question. am i gonna seem stupid? think about the jobs you haven't taken. why did you not take them? probably because you were afraid you couldn't do them, right? that has stricken me. the first year that i wasa district court judge, i was learning so much newinformation that one day

i described the processas having a head ache. not a headache, a head ache. i figured out that the brain was a muscle. they tell you that all the time? and i had filled itwith so much information that i felt my brain was gonna burst, but in that, i was driven by this sense of "what if i can't do this?" what if i don't turn into a good judge?

talk about public failure! and it was driving me toa point where i was really driven to almost exhaustionbecause i was running in place and running so hard from myfear that i would have failed if i had continued onthat treadmill of fear and what i ended up doing was one day, catching myself in this panic mode. that's how i was living every day with that panic in my stomachand thinking to myself,

"look, all i can do is my best." all i can do is try as hardas i can to get it right and if i fail, it won'tbe from a lack of trying. it will be just becausei didn't know something and maybe i'll learn it andmaybe i won't, but i tried. and i stopped, i got off the treadmill and i started to work in a moresane and measured way and i survived and i became a judge. took me a number of years but i did it.

but that is, and thatfeeling has overcome me in a lot of different positionsand a lot of different places including princeton, butwhen i got to princeton, in college, i was sodifferent from everybody else but i was too stupidto know how different. so there, i just reallyworked at trying to understand the world i was in. i talked to everybody. i made friends withkids from all different

kinds of backgrounds,mostly to learn about them because i didn't know their world and i found out over time thatthey didn't know my world and we became friends becausewe learned from each other. so, you pick miguel, becauselet's go up a little bit. okay, guys, this partthey don't like at all. thank you, all right, go ahead. - [sarah] hi. - hi, does that camerahave a good telescope?

great! over here, thank you. - my name's sarah freed,i'm a student at msu denver and i'm a history major andan elementary education minor. - okay, except for the elementary, we're tracking each other so far. - so, in your experience,both as a student and getting to observe schools, what do you think is thebest quality in an educator?

- ah, hm, that is a really good one. i've never really beenasked that question. what is? love your students. the educators who i knowwho i admire the most are the ones who care about their students. not their grades, but them as people. helping them become better people. so, for me, education isnot just book-learning.

it's learning about, or helping a student learn about themselves. inspiring them to grow and become more than they can imagine and you have to love your student to be able to do that. so, you know, you can learnall the teaching techniques and there are plenty of teacherswho know those techniques but if you don't see the passion in them, i don't think that you'rereally going to take passion

with you from them, so that's my definition of a good teacher. we're going over there. miguel, go find somebody on that end. all right, you guys, youcan get up as i move across. all right, thank you. all right, okay, miguel you pick somebody. go ahead, love. - [miguel] you want to go downthis way or over this way?

- [sonia] you do what you want. - [miguel] why don't youcome to me over here? - all right, come on down. all right, look at, where does she go? over there. don't you leave. i'm gonna take a picturewith you before you go. - thank you first for giving me the opportunity to ask my question.

my name is ernie and i currently work for a political campaignwhere i work with colleagues who agree with most of myviews and perspectives. (laughing) but, i also work with the private sector where it's a little more varied, right? - mm-hm. - you've got to be cordial, you learn to get along with one another,

potentially maybe avoid politicswith certain colleagues. you work in close quarterswith seven other folks, in close quarters, verypublicly have disagreements. how do you maintain those relationships, not lose sight of yourcolleagues and yeah, just maintain thoserelationships, i guess? one of the first thingsi learned in my job, if you move this way, i can go that way while i'm talking, okay?

- gotcha, okay. can i move through the both of you? one of the early lessons i learned was that every member of the supreme court is as passionate anddevoted to the constitution, our government and our country as i am. we all are there becausewe care very, very deeply about the work we're doing andabout bettering our society. now, we disagree on how to dothat but it's a disagreement

borne of that passion and when you look at a majority opinion anda dissenting opinion that are going at it, ifyou read it carefully, you will see that passion. it's the dissenter shakingthe majority and saying, "why are you guys not seeing this? "why are you getting it so wrong?" generally, the most passionateones are the dissenters. occasionally, the majority, of course,

because the dissent wenta little too far, okay? but it's much easier toforgive that kind of exchange when you understand what it's borne of. that it's borne of thesame caring that you have about the direction of thecountry and what's right for it. you can forgive a lot when you understand that and if you're bothworking to your fullest to make the best argumentsthat you can make, to give it your all,then the fight seems fair

and the fight, even when youlose it, doesn't sting as badly because you fought honorably. you have really givenyour all to each other and you can walk awayrespecting each other for doing the right thingin your own druthers. and so, i think that that's something that i see in the currentpolitical discourse missing, is that respect, is that understanding that people are making statements because

they genuinely believethat something's wrong. they may be, in your view,identifying the wrong reason, they may be expressing itin a way you don't like, but if you have respectfor the fact that they feel the way they do for some reason, it's easier to addresswhat their needs are and to walk away from the conversation with a sense that a talk has been had rather than the frustrationof screaming at each other.

hello, how are you? yes, young woman, yes. you know, i broke my ankle during the senate confirmation hearing and i learned from my mistakes. i hold on when i have to. hello, who are you? - i'm makia nalls and i go to dsst. i'm in 11th grade.

- hello, makia, thank you for being here. all right, one more step. oh, they must like you becausethey've let you through. - what organizations are you currently in to make it possible forpeople that look like you and i to be better and succeed? - okay, i do a bunch ofdifferent activities, among them, which is notorganizations like the ones you're thinking about,

but i'll tell you aboutthe one that i am, okay? i do a lot of talking in highschools, grammar schools, some colleges. i do talks like this all of the time. in washington dc, where i live now, i got to local schools atleast twice each semester. we're not a semester, we're a term, but we're almost co-existentwith the school year. so, in the fall, i go to two schools,

either in virginia,maryland or connecticut, or i go in the spring to two schools in one of those three places. and i do that regularlybecause i truly believe if you begin to believe, that you can go as far as youwant to go, that you will. and so, that's why i do this. i also, support atraining, a college-bound, it's actually called collegebound training program in dc.

not only do i give financially, but i go to many of theirevents and i talk to their kids. it's a mentoring after-school program for inner city school kids. all of their kids go to collegeand now they've been doing a virtual mentoring once a weekwith their kids in college. i think, last year, all of their kids graduated from college. so, when i was in new york,i belonged, not belonged,

i did work with a similarafter-school program. as i said earlier, i believethat if we spend time and give attention to ourkids outside the classroom, that you'll achieve more and so i try to live by that example by supporting programs that do that. - thank you. - all right, i'm going tothat end of the hall so you walk over there, pick somebody and

sean will help me down. thank you, miguel. the other end. asking me to wrap it up? in a few minutes, go ahead. i gotta go to that end. but you have to hurry upand walk over there, miguel. oh, okay, thanks. how do you want to do this?

(speaking spanish) - [polly] justice, you haveone more event to go to. how about taking just one ortwo questions on this side? - i know they want me to stop. - what they might do, i don't know. can you get through there? i guess you can. - i know. - hi, my name is jorge andi'm also a daca student

here at msu denver. - hello, how are you? where is-- thank you, thanks. - as a latino, we knowwe have a lot of various obstacles in our pursuitto higher education. i was going to ask youwhat is your advice to us, now that you have made it this far, to maybe pursue our dreams intohigher education as latinos.

- you have to master english. you can't lose the spanish because that's part of your identityand in this culture today you can be more successful ifyou master spanish as well. but we do have to master thewriting and speaking of english because to communicate ourideas outside of our community, we have to do that aswell as we humanly can. so, my advice is the sameadvice i gave earlier. work on your writing.

take classes that willhelp you speak publicly. learn how to present your ideas in a way that will help you move others. public speaking is anart form and it's not one that comes natural to most people. you learn how to do it. you learn how to engage peopleso go to school and learn it. one more, one more. all right.

hi. - hi, my name alilia rey. i'm a junior at bogan high school. - hello! i'm so glad. - and i'm here withdante international club. - hello, guys! - my question is, as beinga latina, a female latina, what were your biggestchallenges in high school?

- ah, in high school, okay. i'm gonna talk about what's our biggest challenges generally, okay? whoever you are, whetheryou're latino, you're black, you're white, you're any background, you get a sense of comfortfrom people who are like you. we're all more comfortable in environments we're familiar with. the biggest challenge, and iwent to a high school that,

at the time, was mostly not latino. we were, the whole latinoclass in my freshman year, was 10 students and they stuck us all in the same spanish class, okay? and the spanish teacheractually thought that we knew more spanish than we did. i was elected by my classmatesto tell her to slow down. she finally realized that weknew less than she thought. we have to learn how to be uncomfortable

and get out of our worldand mix in with and learn from the other people and their lives. it's using our communityas that sort of safety net where we draw comfort, weparty once a week with. but, we join otherorganizations with kids with different backgrounds. you should never leave,whether it's high school, college, law school,professional training, with friends who look like you only.

you should always leave yourworkplace, anywhere you're at, with people who are differentbecause you want to get the best from everyworld that you're in and i think that that's the biggest challenge, learning how to be uncomfortable and despite the discomfort, reaching out. sorry i didn't get toask you guys questions. thank you, thank you. thanks, thank you.

thank you for being here. are you okay? take her camera and take a picture. you'll even get one without my glasses. - [woman] thank you so much! - you're welcome, thank you. i hope you'll drop thatin a box somewhere so that everybody can get it. thank you, all right.

i'm finished? polly, lauren, thank you. it's been a great evening. thank you so much. thank you all for being with me.