There are always things that you learn from arguments. We prepare so thoroughly that we try to avoid those kind of mistakes. Now, occasionally, there's some of the justices that used to be on the Supreme Court would ask questions completely out of left field that you couldn't possibly anticipate. And I've had questions from the current justices that I thought were not very well conceived. And you have to be dance on your feet. The court is allowing a little bit more time now for oral argument. But for the early part of my career, most of my career, the Supreme Court allowed 30 minutes per side. That's it. And when your time was up, your time was up. And you had to cram your argument, answers to the questions, your theme into that 30 minutes and get it all done. We'll

be right back with more of my conversation with Ted Olson.

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back with Ted Olson. So I've never been inside the Supreme Court. If you could just paint a picture for me the first time you stand up. What does it look like? You're standing at a podium looking at the

Supreme Court. They are arrayed, all nine of them, in something close to an arc so that the justices, and they're arranged in order of seniority. The chief justice is in the middle. The senior most colleague on the court is to his right, the next on his left, and on down to the most junior justices. Now, it's enough of a curve that if you're looking at one of the justices at one end of the court, one end physically of the court, you might not have in your eye attention the other justices. So it helps if you've done it often enough that you recognize voices. So they are very, very close. The chief justice is probably six, seven, eight feet from the podium where you're standing. You stand still. You don't move about. And you stand up straight and address the court as much as you can. some seats that are set aside for the press that are perpendicular to where you're standing and perpendicular to the bench. Behind you are members of the United States Supreme Court bar, probably a couple hundred, and then behind them are members of the general public. And over to your right are a group of benches reserved for relatives and friends of the justices, and behind them some of the clerks. It is not a big space. Not very many people can get in there. The acoustics are very, very good so that you can hear your voice, and my voice, fortunately, carries quite well. Some of the justices speak more softly. Justice Ginsburg was well known to speak in a very soft voice and punctuate her speech with pauses. So sometimes it was hard to hear what she was asking, and sometimes it was difficult to know when she was done with the point, and you didn't want to interrupt while she was still about to finish a sentence or a question. So it's not easy, but it is something that you have to learn and practice and become familiar with the justices, what their style is. Right now, the chief justice Roberts is allowing more time for argument. So some of these arguments

have gone on for a couple of hours. I'm curious, like, what's your intellectual history with states' rights? To what do you date your interest in the subject of what the federal government can do and what the states should be allowed to? Well,

that's a difficult question because it depends upon the context. It would be, for me, it would be something that what's the case? What's the issue? What are the merits and what kind of constitutional questions does it raise?