Because i can e come screami in my face as i walk from here to the capital, ecause to me, that seems like a threat, and

i would probably act accordingly. There's maybe a reason noman's ever done it. To me, thether're public safety reasons why we don't want that happening, why that shouldn't happen. And it's not unreasonable to say that you can't show up at someone's home, just like it's reasonable for us to say that, you know, someone can't demonstrate their opposition to a vote you've cast by tackling you, right, or by starting to enter into correspondence with one of your young children. We wouldn't allow tat ye e that way. Who did that happen to recently? Well, i don't knowi'm trying to imagine hypothetical scenaras ithink it could occur. I slaver something. I reminded me of something. But these, these ruth sent us protesters a it's, it was reported the week end that they were releasing information about where justice amy cone barrett and her family attend church, where they live and, notably, where her kids go to school.

This is

sick, beyond the pale. This is absolutely beyond the pale. D this is, at ta time, all americans, regardless that you can't be arrested for that. Wellyo, you make the argument, you clearly can be. We just have a government that refuses to. Yes,

they like certain kinds of harassment and intimidation, yes, if it fits there their needs. Um, ai been moving a bet back to the general discussion about the supreme court. Um, how did we, how did we get nine? Maybe, you know, maybe, maybe we could even start the conversation before that, because got a lot of history in this book. And how how did the founders even think about this particular branch of government? Ah, is it, you know, and checks and balances, and why we needed it in the first place? Great

question. So we've got three branches of the federal government. Within the constitution. Each of the three branches receives a separate article within the first three articles of the constitution. Article one is dedicated to the legislative branch, where you and i work. Article two is dedicated to the executive branch, headed by the president. Article three is dedicated to the judicial branch, headed by the supreme court, and that includes such inferior courts as congress may choose to establish. Of those three, first of those first three articles of the constitution, by far, the shortest is that which deals with the judicial branch. Article three is very brief, and it just sets out the basic responsibilities of the judicial branch, which is to cases and controversies. I talk a lot about this in chapter one of saving nine or explain what the court is and what it isn't. A lot of people misunderstand this. They're not there as a policy making body. They're not even there to spout off hypothetically about what could or couldn't be constitutional. They're with a much more narrow task. Their job is a narrow one. It is to decide cases and controversies brought before the meeting. Two people don't agree. They can't agree as to what federal law means, in a particular instance, they can bring that to a court and the court can resolve it. That's only power. And for that reason, it was always thought of and understood to be, and described at the time the constitution was written and ratified, as the least dangerous branch. And so the whole point of article three was to give congress pretty broad powers to decide the size of the supreme court and such inferior courts as might choose to create. So i describe in in chapter two of saving nine, the the process by which we arrived at the number nine. As i explaind in chapter two of saving nine, it the number nine is elisted anywhere in article three or elsewhere in the constitution. It is something that has evolved. Wou know, we had five supreme court justices. It went up to six, went back to five, went back to six, went to seven, went to eight, went to nine. Eventually got as high as ten, then we brought it back to nine in 18 69. So it's been about a hundred, 53 years where it was. Then. In my mind, we could have arrived at a number of of different levels at which the court could have been staffed, and we would have been just find the important thing is to leave it intact and to leave it alone. I actually think that now that we've had a hundred and 53 years past with it working at this number, we ought to codify that within the constitution. We ought to make it part of the constitution. Our friend ted cruz has a bill to do that, and im original co sponsor of the bill.