Transcript
STROBE TALBOTT: Now, this is billed, of course, as a lecture, but as you can tell from the format, we are going to depart from the usual lecture style and have this be much more of a conversation and indeed a trialogue among the three distinguished people to my immediate right. And what a terrific trio it is and how proud we are to have them here at Brookings.
In addition to their individual distinctions, which are many, collectively, our three guests represent what I would call a couple of welcome antidotes to some lamentable facts about national and international life. Here in the United States, as everyone in this room knows, we are in the midst of what seems like an endless poisonously partisan season, which is all the more reason to be grateful for the relationship that has developed between Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer. Even though one of them was appointed by a Republican president and the other was appointed by a Democratic president, they not only become close friends, they have traveled the world together as frequent flyers to China and many other parts of the world both to learn about how law is made and practiced elsewhere and also to impart knowledge about how the system works in this country, and they have been able to find a great deal of common ground between them on judicial issues.
Another very unfortunate trend in recent years has been the seemingly chronic attention and friction between the United States and France, which, by the way, is one more reason that we have a France program here at The Brookings Institution, and it's also one more reason to be grateful that Jean-David Levitte is the French ambassador here in Washington. Jean-David's presence in this town is sort of like a drip of aspirin into a system and into the relationship. And I might add that there is a comparably analgesic and salutary effect that the friendship between Stephen Breyer and Robert Badinter has had. They have developed not only a close personal friendship but an intellectual partnership that has had a public and published dimension to it, and I think you will get a little bit the flavor of that this evening.
So, we have the makings of a great discussion with, I hope, as much participation as possible by you, the audience, and in that spirit the three guests of honor are going to confine their opening remarks to some brevity and succinctness so that we can get into a little bit of a discussion among the three of them, and then we will open it up to all of you.
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