- Hey everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with Ronald Weich, who is Dean of the Seton Hall Law School.

Dean, good to see you.

- Thank you very much, Steve.

I'm glad to be with you.

- Do you also admit that in a former life you were Assistant Attorney General at the U.S.

Department of Justice?

Do you admit this?

- I do, sir, yes.

- Explain how that experience has informed your role as the Dean of the Law School.

- Well, I had a very interesting role.

I was the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs.

I was representing the Justice Department in Congress.

So I really saw our Constitution in action at the intersection of the branches of government.

And that informs what I'm trying to teach students.

And of course, I don't directly teach, I'm an administrator, but I have a role in shaping the curriculum and I want our students to understand how the Constitution is supposed to work.

And of course, separation of powers is the key to our Constitution.

And I saw that firsthand.

I had a really front row view of that when I was in the Justice Department in those years.

- Well, what would you say in terms of the degree to which the United States Congress, as the three equal branches last time I checked, the Constitution, the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative, from a legislative perspective, how would you rank and rate the United States Congress being a co-equal branch of government to create this balance of power?

- I have to say I am disturbed to see Congress not asserting its prerogatives.

And while I worked at the Justice Department for several years, before that, I spent about 14 years working in Congress for different senators.

And I saw how the Senate is supposed to work.

First of all, there should be more collegiality, there should be compromise, there should be legislation that emerges from those compromises.

And you don't see that happening in Congress today.

But the point you raised, Steve, is the Congress doing its role as a counterweight to the Executive.

And I think that's not happening in the way that it should.

I think there's an imbalance in our federal government right now that is unfortunate.

And we see an overextension of executive power because Congress hasn't checked it.

- I often ask this question, and people will say to me, "So Congress is loyal to the president, "could be this president, could be any president."

So they're loyal to the president.

And the president gets to pick or select, nominate people to the Supreme Court.

And if their party's in power, they pick the people they want and they support the president.

Someone says, "So why is that dangerous?

"Why is that dangerous for a representative democracy?"

They're just loyal to the person who's supportive of them, devil's advocate.

- Right, the framers of our Constitution didn't think we were going to have sort of two teams, a red team and a blue team.

- Yeah, one of my friends who went to your law school often, one of my closest friends says, "Steve, pick a side, which side are you on?

"You have to pick a side."

And I said, "Really, do we?"

What's the thing about sides?

- Yeah, it's just not supposed to be that way.

And it's dangerous because the parties are moving further away from each other.

We've lost a consensus about our national goals and values.

And as a result, they can't talk to each other anymore.

And so the majority party now, as you say, is loyal to the president, but they're not supposed to be teammates.

Congress is supposed to be representing the people and defending its institutional prerogatives and its role.

For example, it's Congress that's supposed to declare war.

And here we are in the middle of a war in Iran that is undeclared, and Congress is not taking the steps that it should take to oversee the actions of the military.

- By the way, we're taping at the end of April.

We hope that that conflict/war with Iran involving Israel and the United States and Iran is not going on, but we don't know what's gonna happen.

But I'm gonna play this out a little bit.

I mentioned my good friend who talks to me about sides and happened to come out of your law school, the great law school.

That, by the way, you didn't know this, Dean, I was accepted to Seton Hall Law School, went one day and decided, I don't know if I wanna be a lawyer.

Literally went the first day.

- You know, not everybody should be a lawyer.

First of all, we would have been delighted to have you as an alumnus.

- I would not have been a good lawyer, but that's okay.

- Look, it's not for everybody.

It's a rigorous program of education.

I think it's a great job.

I've enjoyed my time, my career as a lawyer, and plenty of happy students at Seton Hall.

But it's not for everybody, and there are so many other worthwhile professions, including journalism.

- The school's better off from me not being there.

But that being said, here's where I wanna go with this.

Your students today in the law school, how the heck, given as polarized as we are, as political people are convinced of the rightness, and I won't get on my soapbox here, but they're convinced they're right about the political ideology.

You're trying to teach them about the Constitution, the role of the other branches of government.

But they are ideologically locked into where they are.

Is it harder to teach students with that mentality?

And I don't wanna put everyone in one pile here, but you know where I'm going, right?

- I do, I do.

One thing about law school is part of the training is being able to represent both sides of a dispute.

And so that happens in our simulations, the moot court and trial advocacy program.

But then they see it in real life when they represent clients as part of the clinical program.

And they know that they have to be advocates for their side of a dispute, and that our adversarial system is meant to arrive at the truth.

So part of the training is helping students understand how to listen, and how to find common ground with the other side.

And, but it's tough, I mean, to your point, yes, in this current environment, it's a very tough time to teach law, but we're doing our best to making sure our students graduating from Seton Hall Law School understand how the constitution is supposed to work, how the legal system is supposed to work, and we're arming them to be effective participants in this system as they enter the profession.

- Before I let you go, I do a lot of leadership coaching in my other life at one of the major law firms in our state, and the issue of AI comes up a lot.

AI will not take the job of every great lawyer, correct?

- It will not, it will not.

Lawyers, you still need lawyers for the very human qualities of judgment and analysis.

AI is amazing, I'm using it, I'm sure many of your listeners are using it in different ways, and lawyers are using it, and we teach our students how to use it effectively and ethically.

But no, we're still gonna need lawyers, I'm happy to say.

- Ronald Weich, who is the Dean of Seton Hall Law School.

Dean, I cannot thank you enough, and I look forward to future conversations talking about the legal profession, the balance of power, the United States Constitution, and other pretty important issues.

Thank you, Dean.

- Thank you, Steve.

- We appreciate it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Fund for New Jersey.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

The Burke Foundation The Adubado Center for Media Leadership.

New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Learn More at RWJBH.org.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Valley Bank.

And by NJ Transit.

Promotional support provided by NJBIA.

And by ROI-NJ.

- Next, please.

Okay, we need a neutral expression.

Sir, you're smiling.

- Oh, am I?

- [Narrator] Over 1 million lives in the US have been saved by organ donations.

So when you choose to become a donor, you're doing something good, which can make you feel really good.

- Next.

(woman sighs) - [Narrator] Register today at NJSN.org.