I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.

I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.

There was a huge movement that led up to [gay marriage legilization], and I played a small role in the great scheme of things. But it was really a privilege to get to do it.

Justice [Sonia]Sotomayor said, "Let's talk - you want to talk about the tax power."And I got like a 10-minute run on the tax power. And, boy, was I glad I did because I was able to get across this idea that, yes, this is a narrower ground on which you can affirm it. And I think everybody agrees. I think even the dissenting justices ultimately in the case agreed that, if Congress had expressly called it a tax, it would be indisputably constitutional.

The cases involving the question of whether U.S. courts should be open to claims of international human rights violations brought by foreign persons against foreign government officials. And the State Department on the one side has got a very consistent and powerful view that U.S. courts should be open to those claims because there needs to be a place in the world where they can be brought. And those human rights norms ought to be real and enforceable, and we ought to be a beacon to the world.

Brett Kavanaugh is a brilliant, brilliant judge and one of the most-distinguished conservative jurists in the country.

Sometimes one of the justices, because they're, you know, they're brilliant lawyers themselves, can put the question in a particular way so that, even if you've prepared to talk about the topic, the question is put in such an excruciatingly difficult way that there's just no good way to handle it.