JusticeDavid Stratas

2Hello, great great Great to be here Pulat. I, I look forward to it very much. I listen to your podcast and you have such an interesting cross-section of people in the legal system. I enjoy it very much.

4Yeah, we all say Toronto, but I was actually born in Scarborough.

6Yeah.

8Yeah, for sure. Scarborough, for those who don't know the Toronto area, is an East End suburb of Toronto. People might describe it as a little more working class than some areas of Toronto. Certainly it's not an area where many people with money and wealth settle. It's, I think, It was a wonderful place to grow up. It was filled with a very large number of ordinary, good, hardworking people. Interesting thing you asked about when I grew up there, my formative years, I was born in 1960, but in my formative years were very much the 1970s. And Scarborough was interesting then Pulat, because in the '70s there was a large amount of immigration and Scarborough changed and became very multicultural indeed.

9And immigrants from many parts of the world, you name it, it was there. And it was a very interesting place to grow up for sure. By background, I'm a Greek-Canadian. My four grandparents all emigrated to Canada, and I was raised very much in the Greek culture and tradition. I, for instance, was and am a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. We celebrate our Easter and Good Friday on a different day from other Christians. And so sometimes, you know, and I had some Greek features, sometimes, you know, you would get some, I wouldn't call it more than a little trash talk about that. So I understood when the recent immigrants came, I sort of felt a bond with them and understood where they was coming from.

10I mean, there was so much immigration at the time, Pulat, that you'd be sitting in, say, a grade 2 class and, and all of a sudden new kids from places around the world would be coming into the class. It was very interesting.

12Oh, I didn't do it on my own. My, my parents were, were, and are— my mother's still alive— wonderful people. My late father was a veterinarian very hardworking. He would, he would work from you know, he'd leave the house around quarter after 8 or 8:30 in the morning. He'd come home for dinner and then have an evening shift at his veterinary office until 9 or 10 at night. My mother stayed at home but was probably best described as a community volunteer. Was very active, incidentally, in multiculturalism and would organize cultural festivals and things like that for the multicultural community in Scarborough, which as I said was growing up. My parents were wonderful.

13They were, they were so devoted to me and my two brothers. But a huge formative experience or influence was the public school system. I had amazing dedicated teachers in the public school system all the way through from junior kindergarten all the way up through what was then grade 13. These people were true mentors and really set me on the course to other things.

15here in Canada. My mother and her family come from Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. My father is Toronto-born, downtown Toronto-born, but all four— sorry, three of the four grandparents came from Greece, and on my dad's side, my grandmother came from Hamburg in Germany, and all brought the culture. My German grandmother kind of adapted the Greek culture of her husband. And so really the influence was, was very heavily Greek.

17Yes. Just before that, Pulat, I also did graduate work at Oxford.

19She was an immigrant, all right.

21Absolutely. Bertha Wilson from Kirkcaldy in Scotland. Yep.

23That's absolutely right. Yep.

25Oh, she sure did. A lovely soft brogue. Very charming. Yeah.

27I was at Balliol College in Oxford, and I did a graduate law program called the BCL. Strangely, you could do it in 1 or 2 years. I had funding, so I did funding from scholarships and did the 2-year BCL, Bachelor of Civil Law it's called, but it's actually a graduate degree. It's called bachelor because I think it was the second degree ever at Oxford. They They didn't have such things as master's degrees. So, but it's a great course, very heavy in the scholarship of law. It was a difficult program.

29That's a great question. Yes, I definitely was interested in the academic study of law, but I also wanted to practice. Practice fascinated me. And I wanted, at that age and stage, I wanted to try it. Out. So, you know, the great Yogi Berra once said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. And that's what I did. I kind of ended up doing both. I practiced law, but I was an academic lawyer and did a lot of speaking, teaching, and writing, teaching at Queen's Law School since 1994. And so I kind of had a foot in both camps. To be candid, I was never a serious academic compared to those teach in law schools, but I did publish the odd thing and certainly liked to lecture at conferences and so on.

31Oh yes,

33Yes, I, I decided about 3 years ago that I should take all my PowerPoints from, from the lectures and seminars and judicial education I've been doing through the years. And I put them all together, wrote a few things to connect them. And all of a sudden I had a veritable textbook on administrative law. So I decided for access to justice reasons more than anything else, to make this available publicly and for free so that those who are unfamiliar with administrative law could sort of get a quick primer on the leading cases, some of the more important cases from intermediate appellate courts, sometimes first instance courts, so that, you know, the cost of ascertaining the law would be reduced.

34You know, I've never forgotten when I first started to practice law, that horrible feeling when you really need to come up with an answer fast and you don't know much about the subject area and you're drowning in cases and there isn't a good textbook. What do you do? I've always got that person front of mind in the judgments I write, but also in this project. So I decided to do this Pulat just to solve that problem. And for those interested, this, this document is on the SSRN.com site. You're welcome even to download it. I don't assert copyright over it. It's just there as a helpful resource for people to use in their own private study, or if they need to ascertain the law for their clients.

35I've also done a similar sort of thing in legal writing, to help people with the legal writing. There's a long discussion or presentation at the same place. And a little breaking news is that awfully soon I'm going to be releasing a practice and procedure guide to the federal court system as well. Same philosophy, just to make the law known. So to— so people don't drown, so they can find quickly and cheaply relevant law. From there, they have to research and fine-tune it to their cases, but at least I can give them the foundation.

37I began there. Yes, you

39Yes.

41Yes, sir.

43Oh, listen I— Justice Myers was in the year above me in seniority, so we were both associates and, and for a shortish time, partners at Osler Hoskin. As a matter of fact, he was just two doors down the hall from, from me. We were always close. I, I think our separate career paths you know, we're not in touch all the time, but once in a blue moon we have dinner together, emails with each other. I just have to tell you I admire Justice Myers and as a person, but also his work, particularly on practice and procedure. He properly understands how important practice and procedure is, and in the Ontario court system, he's so vital to its operation.

44I I think the world of them.

46I find that common thread is case management too, right? He's brilliant at those kinds of issues, and he does a lot of education through that as well. Yeah.

48Oh, that's a, that's a great question. When I was at Oxford, I was very much a private law lawyer and did not do administrative law or constitutional law. I think the clerkship with the wonderful Bertha Wilson really opened up my ideas to those areas of law. When I entered Osler's afterwards to practice, I discovered that in the litigation department of that time, relatively few specialized in that area. It was an area of, of low occupancy, so it was a very good thing for an ambitious young associate to kind of occupy. You'd get files, and interesting files at that. Another area too that at the time wasn't well occupied was factum writing. The rules in Ontario were substantially amended in 1984, I believe, or '85, and for the first time factums were introduced into many Ontario stages, in Ontario proceedings.

49And people didn't know how to do factums. I developed that skill pretty much on my own, I must say. There weren't many conferences back then, and that became a specialty area within Osler's, and I developed that skill. And being asked by a senior lawyer to write a factum is often a ticket to an interesting case. And sometimes those cases were administrative law or constitutional law. So it kind of developed from there. And, you know, you get a case, you find it interesting, you develop an expertise, people give you more cases like that, and your expertise snowballs.

51Yes.

53Yes.

55Sure. There's so much there. Let me unpack it. First of all, the rise of the administrative state. If you go physically into a library— we often don't have to anymore, but suppose you did— Look at the RSO 1960 statute books. Look at RSO 1970. Look at RSO 1980. Look at RSO 1990. What you see is a steady increase in the number of volumes. It's even more pronounced for the RRO volumes, the regulations. That has accelerated since 1990. Which was the last Ontario statutory revision. What administrative law is, is whether an administrative actor has the power under legislation to do what they say they do, and the reasonableness of their decisions under that legislation. And so with the rise of legislation, you get more and more decisions and thus more and more potential judicial reviews.

56Added to that, Pulat, would be the sheer complexity of the issues that have risen. The issues that arose when I started practice are child's play compared to the complex issues that lawyers have to deal with today. You know, as a judge, just to illustrate this, in 2009 I was appointed. In 2010, I would guess that in the year 2010, I had maybe 2 band elections under the Indian Act, and that was the only Indigenous law that I had. Now, 12 and a half years later, it's exploded, and Indigenous law is a huge amount of what the federal courts do. And a lot of that is administrative law. So it's not just the amount of government action that has caused this increase, but the sheer complexity of it.

57I think as well, the public, clients of lawyers, have become more rights-conscious, and this has also fueled a view that they sometimes need to challenge government decision-making. And finally, in Canada, I think compared to other jurisdictions, there's a strong accountability ethic, at least in the administrative law world. The dominant view in Canada, perhaps outside of government, is that administrative actors need to be held accountable for the public decisions they make. And in that regard, I think we're more pro-accountability than, say, the United Kingdom or even the US.

59Last, yes.

61right?

63right?

65right? Well, I'll take you back one step. Even before Dunsmuir, there were many other iterations of the law of substantive review of administrative decision-making. And I think there were two other tests, major tests, before Dunsmuir. I wrote in a controversial article in 2016 that every 10 years it seems, you know, there's a revision of the law. I talked about a never-ending construction site where one crew comes on, demolishes what was done before, and creates something new. I've got good news for you. Vavilov, which really happened as a result of a lot of the criticism that people were throwing at Dunsmuir, Vavilov has solved a lot of the problems of substantive review of administrative decision-making.

66I read just about every appellate court decision on Vavilov, and that's because I do a lot of judicial teaching aside from the fact that as a judge I should stay current. I can tell you that there are very few big issues after Vavilov. Vavilov has been clear, relatively easy for people to understand, and nobody, not even the academic community, is calling yet for any major revision to it. The Supreme Court of Canada hit it out of the park. They did a fabulous job in Vavilov. So someone's going to see this 10 years from now, so I'm a little worried, but maybe, just maybe, Vavilov is going to be with us for a very long time.

67What Vavilov did in a nutshell is it recognized that in administrative law you're dealing with so many different types of decision makers under so many different types of statutes, and some of them need to be reviewed very quickly, very fussily, for various types of reasons. Others you have to give a little more leeway to for various types of reasons. Dunsmuir put us in a straitjacket. And sort of one-size-fits-all approach to how we review these tribunals. That's at odds to really this problem of the multitude of decisions and decision makers. Vavilov goes with that reality and adopted a contextual approach to review, where in some cases we're appropriately very fussy of decision making, and in other cases somewhat more deferential to decision-making.

68And it gives us guidance on when we should be fussy and when we should be a little more deferential. And so far it's working. There isn't much confusion. Lawyers are spending less time arguing these points in court. And, and what we're finding post-Vavilov is people are getting to the real issue, which is yes or no. Should this administrative decision stand? And, you know, before, under the Dunsmuir rubric, we'd have these metaphysical endless debates, sometimes for hours, on what the standard of review should be. It was very counterproductive and pointless. So I say, way to go, Supreme Court of Canada. You did a great job in Vavilov.

70of my court. I mean, I authored some of those decisions. I think overall there were about like 14, but you have to understand that any decision from our court is a panel of 3. And before something goes out, people sure do make suggestions.

72That's the controversial one in 2016. Yeah,

74it's controversial because I really attacked Dunsmuir and what the Supreme Court in particular had done post-Dunsmuir. And it was unusual for a sitting judge to sort of raise a concern of that sort. It's not unprecedented though, but it certainly caused a lot of chatter. I wrote two other articles. One was in Paul Daly's excellent blog Administrative Law Matters, and another was in the Double Aspect blog of Leonid Sirota and Mark Mancini. I wrote two articles there too, and they were fairly provocative as well.

76Indeed, a split decision. I had the majority and Justice Gleason in dissent, and it really kind of said between the lines, hey, Supreme Court, you really need to fix this area up. And to their credit, they took it. It was a great set of facts to do it.

78about

80Yeah, I, I do have thoughts on it. And a lot of, a lot of lawyers and, and a lot of judges too, they look at the judiciary with its various different levels and they see it almost like a military where captains have to salute majors, majors have to salute colonels, and colonels have to salute the generals. And, and anyone who doesn't obey is insubordinate. That may be how it works in, in the military, but the reality is a good functioning judiciary is a healthy dialogue. I liken it very much to a law firm where there's junior partners, then there's intermediate partners, then there's very senior partners. And obviously at the end of the day for the good of the firm, we respect and obey what the senior partner says.

81But the dialogue between the branches is extremely important. And, you know, that model of how the various courts work was set out by the Supreme Court in a case called Crown and Henry 2005 SCC 76. Justice Binnie, he doesn't use the metaphor of a partnership, senior, junior partners, but he encourages courts below the Supreme Court, in particular intermediate courts of appeal, to speak on issues of law, to sometimes criticize aspects of Supreme Court decisions. Ultimately, the Supreme Court has to decide, and their decision has to be obeyed. But the fact that they have the last word and it's binding doesn't mean there's no dialogue. You know, Pulat, one of the problems I'm sure as a practicing lawyer you see this all the time, the Supreme Court sometimes releases decisions, and in the interest of unanimity or or close to unanimity, the reasons aren't always that clear.

82They sometimes contain the suggestions of various judges. I sometimes talk about some decisions looking like a box of chocolates, where not all the chocolates are the same. And that kind of empowers us to take the chocolates we like and perhaps leave some other chocolates back in the box. And so intermediate appellate courts in particular have the very important task of interpreting Supreme Court jurisprudence and sometimes reinterpreting if something doesn't quite make sense. Now, the Supreme Court can always grant leave and tell us whether we're right or wrong, but this is part of the dialogue that takes place, particularly between the Supreme Court and intermediate appellate courts. If I'm sorry, it's such a long-winded answer.

83I'm really fascinated by this and study it academically as well. If you want to see an academic treatment of this phenomena there's a, there's a U.S. academic, Professor Richard M. Re, R-E and he's written a classic article called Narrowing Supreme Court Precedents from Below. And —its thesis is intermediate appellate courts in the U.S. do this all the time, and he adds it's a good thing because it's led to appropriate revision of the law, and it's led to the Supreme Court sometimes revisiting its own precedents. You know, a great example in your jurisdiction, Pulat, in Ontario is the Ontario Court of Appeals' reaction to to Sattva and the issue of the standard review of private arbitrations.

84The Ontario Court of Appeal has actually voiced views about Sattva and where it's going, and the Supreme Court has rendered two later decisions on the same point. And Courts of Appeal all across the country, frankly, are dialoguing back with the Supreme Court. This is how our common law develops, and it's a wonderful thing. But don't think for a moment that as a lower court judge below the Supreme Court I'm not allowed to express my views. I should express my views appropriately when I think there's a problem. Ultimately, I have to respect and do respect what the Supreme Court says.

86Lawyers and litigation lawyers need to know the doctrine of precedent. You know, a fabulous article that talks about the legalities of precedent was recently written by Justice Rowe with, alongside one of his law clerks, and it's superb. That tells you how it works in terms of legalities. But in terms of practicalities, I've just explained it to you. And so when you're making submissions about a Supreme Court case remember the leeway that Courts of Appeal have to interpret and reinterpret sometimes leading jurisprudence. Great example is the Supreme Court Section 15 decision in Fraser. It contains certain uncertainties In a decision last summer from my court that I wrote called Weatherly, there is an important interpretation of Fraser that tries to clear the doubt.

87This is just how the doctrine of precedent works.

89Yeah,

91Well, we do have inherent jurisdiction, as I'm about to explain. Let me— and I think the differences are vastly overstated. If you bear with me, I'm going to unpack this a bit. And it's important because the federal courts in this country play an enormous role, sometimes not as big as some people realize, You know, in, in other big democracies, federal democracies like the United States and Australia, federal courts are recognized and given pride of place, and the lawyers are very familiar with the federal courts when you go to them and what they do. For some reason in Canada, we seem to be asleep about the importance and the role of federal courts.

92The first thing to know is there isn't much difference between the two, as I'll explain. If anyone's looking for further reading on this, check out my article. It's called "A Judiciary Cleaved: Superior Courts, Statutory Courts, and the Illogic of Difference." You'll see this on SSRN. Google and you'll get it. Another place is 2017 58 University of New Brunswick Law Journal 54 were not that different. And let me explain why. First of all, under Section 4 of our statute, we're more than a statutory court. The Act says that we are a superior court of law, equity, and admiralty with civil and criminal jurisdiction. As well, under the Judges Act, we are called Superior Court judges because We are.

93Third, this issue of inherent powers. When the Supreme Court talks about the inherent jurisdiction of superior courts, and you look at the articles it relies on, what it means is that if a subject matter is not covered by Section 101 federal courts, or Section 96 provincial courts, or Section 92.14 provincial courts, it all goes to the superior court. In other words, it's not so much inherent jurisdiction as residuary jurisdiction. But statutory courts have inherent powers. This was recognized by the Supreme Court in a case called Cunningham at paragraph 19. It's according to the Supreme Court, and, and I certainly agree with this, Inherent powers are necessarily implied in the grant of power that we have to function as a court of law.

94So courts, for instance, have inherent powers like the power to run a registry, the power to deal with dysfunctions within their procedures, to just to deal with dysfunctional litigants or unmeritorious litigation. We have inherent power to defend our courts against incursions by others and so on. If you want to know more about this in, in the federal court system and our inherent powers, they were recently canvassed in a case called Dugré and Canada, D-U-G-R-É, and that's 2021 FCA 8. And they were also dealt with in a really fascinating case called re Section 6, 2020 FCA 137. And we in our jurisdiction don't call them inherent powers so much as plenary powers. These are things you won't find in the statute, but they're powers that we necessarily have as a court to function as a court.

95This is different from administrative tribunals. The Supreme Court in Tranchemontagne and Ontario made the point that administrative tribunals don't have inherent powers. We have unlike administrative tribunals. Let me correct you on one other thing too. You seem to equate— and many do this— you seem to equate the federal courts, the Section 101 courts, with statutory courts. Just want to point out that all courts of appeal in the country are also statutory courts. The Supreme Court has told us time and time again that any appeals you have and any appeal courts are statutory in nature. They are not superior courts in the sense of, you know, those with the jurisdiction of the High Court in London way back when.

96So we aren't alone. We have lots of company as a statutory court. The Supreme Court itself is a statutory court under our section, Section 101 of the Constitution Act 1867. Finally, let's look at the Ontario Superior Court where you practice all the time. Yeah, it It's the great court with inherent, I say, residuary jurisdiction according to the Supreme Court. But I actually pulled just before our talk, this is the last version of the Ontario Annual Practice I have, big thick book. Pulat, you got yours? Getting yours out? Yeah. No, there's a lot. It's your Bible. These are statutory or legislative powers. For this inherent court. So, you know, all courts these days, let's face it, let's get— let's, let's be real about this, they're all statutory courts.

97We just do different subject matters, and our subject matters tend to be in federal jurisdiction and types of things that qualify for us. Interesting areas like tax, communications, privacy, patents and ownership of ideas like copyright, Indigenous peoples, national infrastructure like pipelines, railways, federal funding including healthcare issues, national security and foreign affairs, immigration, refugees, freedom of information, federal privacy, internet regulation assuming the current federal bills get passed, any number of things. And lastly, I hope I haven't gone on too long, but you know, inherent in your question was also why a federal judiciary? Do we need it? Because you say, and quite rightly, superior courts, if we weren't around, superior courts could do it. They'd have the jurisdiction to do it.

98But think of the chaos. You might have a tax deduction allowed in Lloydminster, Alberta, but disallowed in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. Or you might have something not disclosable under national security privilege in one province, but the same thing might be disclosable because they don't think the privilege applies. Patents might be valid in one jurisdiction but not in others. A copyright might be valid in one jurisdiction but not in others. There might be an airline tariff in force in one jurisdiction, but not in another because of a differing court. A federal elections issue, you know, you could actually have a federal elections issue where an issue arises and Alberta says one thing and Quebec says something else.

99Think of the chaos. The whole purpose of our system, as then Justice Minister John Turner said way back 50, approximately 50 years ago, 1971, he said, look, we need a federal court system for the uniform interpretation and application of federal laws. Australia knows they need it and celebrates it. The United States knows they need it and celebrate it. We need it too. And I really enjoyed this opportunity to say a little bit more about what the federal judiciary is, why it exists, and why it's a good thing.

101Don't give me a microphone, it's a bad thing. I apologize.

103Yes, well, it's a shame really because the judiciary is sometimes unnecessarily secretive over certain things. You wouldn't believe the amount of dialogue between courts and at judicial conferences, particularly in the area of judicial education. As now a relatively senior appellate judge in the Federal Court of Appeal, I know many, many appellate judges across the country. I teach and attend lots of these conferences, and you get to know them. I've been teaching new judges school since 1998, which means I teach administrative law to all the new judges that come in, and you form a bond with many judges. Some become your friend. There's nothing pernicious in this when every judge gets a case the judge decides it themselves.

104There's nothing pernicious, but it's not uncommon for a judge to email someone they know and say you know, I'm wondering if there's a recent decision on X. Counsel haven't told me about it. And, and we'll help each other that way between courts, sometimes within courts. Now, obviously, if the decision is really important, the Supreme Court in cases like Crown and Mian has told judges, you know, you've got to let the parties know and give them a chance to speak about the case. But I would say there is a thriving, healthy, and very positive underground exchange of ideas between judges within courts, and also between courts.

106Sure.

108Well, that's nice of Andrew. I am busy. I guess in answering that, I just want to tell you that as knowledgeable as Andrew is, He and all lawyers have no idea just how busy judges are. Do you mind if I start with that? Because there are a lot of unseen things that people just don't know about. Aside from orders, directions, reasons, and judgments that we release, there's lots of external things. In my case, I do a lot of judicial teaching, helping judges across Canada or within my own court. I attend lawyers' conferences, about 15 a year. I participate in podcasts, guest lectures, competitive moots. There's some things you've mentioned, like the online administrative law and writing stuff, and practice and procedure.

109I teach a lot of writing at conferences, and there's academic roles. I, I get invited to law schools to seminars and that sort of thing. But what's unseen is really the internal stuff. I do 3 orientation lectures a year for law clerks. I'm on the Courts Administration Services Computing Committee, the Registry Committee, which deals with a lot of issues of practice and procedure. Currently in the middle of an update of a judge's operations manual. I'm the full-time, senior full-time judge, which means I'm the institutional memory for many judges of what has happened at the court, and I get a lot of administration from the Chief Justice. In my personal life, a lot of mentoring of former Queen's students, former clerks, current clerks.

110I have to carve out time for supplemental reading and reflection. And I'm not alone. There are many people who are doing a large number of these other things. We're really busy. When you take into account 60 and 70-somethings like us have their share of health problems, it can get a little challenging. This is why the most important thing is the size of judicial complement, and we badly need more judges. That's just the truth of the matter. The federal court has doubled in size since 2002, but we've only increased by 20%. This is not good enough. So, so how do you manage your workload? Well, Pulat, as a busy lawyer, I could ask you the same question.

111You just have to be extremely disciplined and, and in terms of time, you have to program particular times to do certain things and be ruthlessly efficient at it. And also program times just to be a good colleague, to do a walk around my floor here at the court. That's something I do. I just plan out time to do stuff and then impose a discipline on me to do it. Law clerks though are great. Some law clerks really policed me. And keep me efficient, and I hugely appreciate that.

113Every— sure, every judge is different. I think different judges hire different types of law clerks. I actually hire diversity, not so much well, I have hired clerks with various Section 15 traits, if you want to call them like that. I've been pretty well all over the map on that. But I mean diversity in a different way. Diversity of interest, diversity of background, diversity of thought. As judges, we're somewhat cloistered, and the threat is you can stultify or be a little stale. I find law clerks from different backgrounds really wake me up and throw me into different worlds that I've never seen before. So for instance, one excellent law clerk I had was in the military reserve and was also an accomplished musician.

114I don't have interests in either in a personal sense, but to be able to be exposed to that world is a wonderful thing. So I'm obviously looking for academic excellence, not necessarily top of the class. I'm looking for really good life experience because it informs good judgment. I'm looking for ability to research, but also I'm looking for that, as I explained, a little bit of diversity in the sense I explained it. After all, in the federal court system, it's a one-on-one relationship. It's almost like you're choosing a roommate for a year. You really want someone who, who is going to be interesting and you're going to get along with.

116Oh, we can do something about it. We can make recommendations to our administrators in, in the federal court system. It's the Courts Administrative Service, and, and they will deal with it. You know, an interesting feature, it's unique the federal court system. You look in our statute, every courthouse across the country, and I think we have 13 of them, has to by law contain a suggestion box. And if anyone has any suggestion about some way that we can better serve the public and do our job better, you put the note in the suggestion box, and by law that goes to the Chief Justice and has to be considered. You know, I'll just say this.

117The question comes as a bit of a surprise to me. If the person who posed that question is acquainted with problems and more importantly has possible solutions, we'd love to hear about it. And beyond that suggestion box, frankly, any note written to any judge, particularly the Chief Justice, will be read. And, and we have a, a rules committee that looks at all aspects of practice and procedure. And if, you know, people sometimes propose really great ideas, really great solutions, and they become part of our practice and procedure. So I encourage that person immediately to point out whatever problems that person perceives And even better, offer some solutions if you can think of any.

119Sure.

121Yeah, lots of white space. In other words, don't cram all the lines together. Put nice spaces between the paragraphs. It actually matters for a reason I'll mention in a moment. As well, in your citations, please don't use supra or infra. Imagine you're— and again, I'll tell you something in a minute that will really underscore this— imagine you're reading and I see footnote 12. I go down to footnote 12 and it says such-and-such case, Supra. All I want to know is what court decided the Smith case that's being footnoted. I have to disengage from the text pinch it to make it smaller then go back on my iPad— I'm using an iPad— and do a game of hide and seek.

122Hide and seek, scroll to the bottom and look for the reference. It's even worse if it's not footnote 12, it might be footnote 154. That's an even longer game of hide and seek. And all I want to know is the damn court who decided it, nothing more than that. And you're putting me through an involuntary game of hide and seek. And I've totally disengaged from your text and your message. I, I alluded to another factor, and I'll tell you about it now. The fact is that during the day we're really busy. We got hearings, we got visits from colleagues or visits to colleagues, discussions, meetings, all sorts of things. We often read at night, and we're often kind of tired.

123The other thing about reading is we deal with so many different cases and so many different subject matters, we're almost punch drunk in the sense that our minds are flitting from topic to topic. So just imagine it's 10:45 at night and someone at footnote 86 says, "Supra," and all I want to know is the damn court, and you put me through an involuntary game of hide and seek. How happy do you think I am? Yes.

125Right right now I will say this as a little bit of a plug. The federal court system is one of the most innovative and advanced in the country. In its practices and procedures. We are right now looking we're functioning as an electronic court like most courts, but, and we're soon going to have a better e-filing system. But underneath that is going to be a new system similar to what's being asked about there. It's being developed. I'm on a committee. One of the things I didn't mention, I'm on a committee dealing with this, and that capability will be available. A tricky thing are policies and procedures that have to go into place, for example, to prevent data miners, people that will bulk download data for commercial purposes.

126Another issue is, is in some cases, privacy interests and so on. These are thorny issues, and the committee that I'm on is discussing these various issues. But yes we're, we're underway. It's just not deployed yet. There's still a lot of work and consideration that has to go into it.

128Yeah we're always attentive, we're always keenly interested in what counsel have to say, but there is a certain reality here. I've often— Pulat— I've often analogized the advocacy game to a hockey game, and a hockey game has 3 periods, as you know, 60 minutes in total. 20 minutes a period. And I guess my question for you is, if we look at the advocacy game as 2 periods, 30 minutes each, like a hockey game and, and one component of the game is written advocacy and the other component is oral advocacy when we walk into a courtroom, how much of the advocacy game is already over. How many minutes left in the game, Pulat, do you think the oral advocacy begins in terms of our consideration of the case?

129Do you have a guess?

131Yeah, close. I think I surveyed colleagues once on this. 8 minutes left in the game out of 60.

133So, you know, written submissions and the record and the evidence in the case counts for an awful lot. And like in a hockey game, after 52 minutes of play, there's a score in the game. In some cases, it might be 2-2. In other cases, it might be 8-2. One side may have it over the other side. So in answer to the question, we hit oral advocacy. In the 8-2 game, oh, we're interested in listening. But it's going to be very difficult for the side that's behind to win the day. But in a number of cases, there's everything to play for because there are many questions arising from the written material that we've read and studied.

134Those are the 2-to-2 games, and oral advocacy counts for a lot. So in answer to the question, it really depends.

136I'm sorry.

138Thank you. Thank you, Pulat. And all judges are concerned about is serving the public and, and giving confidence to the public, and this has been a just a wonderful opportunity to try to increase understanding of who we are and what we do. So thank you.