Can you really understand someone's reasoning on a hot-button issue without agreeing with it?

In this special edition of The Connection Effect, Bill Groner sits down with Dan Levin — an attorney who has spent decades inside the highest levels of American power, including chief of staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller (starting on 9/11), chief of staff to Attorney General Bill Barr at the Department of Justice, senior associate counsel to President Bush, and legal advisor to the National Security Council. He's also been Bill's friend since fourth grade.

For the first time, the show breaks its usual format to do both process and content at once: rather than debating specific Supreme Court rulings, Bill uses curious inquiry and active listening to explore, through Dan's eyes, how justices decide — walking through the legal theories that divide the Court (originalism, textualism, and the living Constitution), and the human, non-legal pressures — political atmosphere, institutional protection, peer dynamics — that can creep in alongside them. Dan and Bill work through what makes a decision legal versus political, why the Court's reputation has taken a hit in recent years, and what concerns and encourages him about where it stands today.

The takeaway is that healthy conversation about political issues can be about understanding-not about winning.

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Topics of Discussion:

00:00 Episode Setup

01:26 Meet Daniel Levin

02:26 Inside FBI Leadership

03:32 Justice Department Role

04:46 DOJ In Government

06:20 Why Supreme Court

07:03 How Justices Decide

08:49 Three Legal Frameworks

11:59 Do Justices Evolve

15:42 Textualism Explained

20:13 Bias And Pressure

24:21 Protecting Court Legitimacy

25:55 Examples Of Legitimacy Calls

28:15 Justice Vote Trading

29:35 Legal Versus Human Factors

30:56 Ideal Judicial Mindset

32:59 Is The Court Political

35:38 Neutral Rules Examples

38:25 Lower Courts Politics

40:25 Executive Power Breakdown

44:13 Legitimacy And Polarization

49:19 Reform Ideas Term Limits

55:02 Closing Reflections