The part that the public sees is the arguments up at the podium and the briefs that we file. But a significant part of the job - in fact, I'd say I spend more of my time on this part of the job, which is deciding what the position of the United States will be in the cases that we're going to be participating in before the court.
Donald Verrilli Jr.I do think that the instant nature of the reaction now, I do think it has an effect, that people's instant reactions to things are valid and valuable. But they're not always right, and they're not always capturing the full reality.
Donald Verrilli Jr.My job was always to pull a vote over from somebody who was likely to be at least at the outset disinclined to agree with me on some things or at least disinclined to agree with the policy that I was defending.
Donald Verrilli Jr.Watch what happens on Twitter. One thing leads to another very quickly. And in an ironic sense, even though it's such a democratic form of communication, there's a funny way in which it leads to a hardening of a conventional wisdom much more quickly than might happen if you were reflecting on it a little more.
Donald Verrilli Jr.There was this point about, you know, the basic point there as well - this statute treats some parts of the country different from others, and what's the justification for that? Well, you know, I had eight million things to say about that, but he put it in such a sharp, excruciating way that it was just very hard to handle it effectively.
Donald Verrilli Jr.