Law and Disorder

May 17, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Landmark Case Roe v. Wade Analysis; and Government Agencies Delay Food Safety FOIA Requests

Samuel Alito's draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization would overrule the landmark cases of Roe v. Wade. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito writes that abortion is no longer a constitutional right and he leaves it up to the states to enact and enforce laws restricting a woman's right to choose. Prohibition of and restrictions on abortion would disproportionately affect poor women and people of color. People suffering early miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies could be adversely affected if Roe is overturned. Fertility procedures such as in-vitro fertilization, egg extractions and stem cell procedures could be outlawed. Other unenumerated rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution would be jeopardized. They include the right to travel, the right to vote and the right to interracial marriage. Guest - Attorney Marjorie Cohn - Professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught from 1991-2016, a former criminal defense attorney, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild.

The US Freedom of Information Act is a 1967 federal law requiring federal agencies to disclose information to the public. The logic being: a government of, by and for the people, is transparent and accountable to those people. Over the last half-century, FOIA requests became critical tools for both journalists and activists seeking to illuminate federal agency activities. The problem is-- its getting harder to wrest information from recalcitrant government agencies. Federal agencies began both heavily redacting information, or ignoring requests entirely and delays got noticeably lengthier. The law gives agencies 20 business days to respond. But in 2019, the average wait time for a reply to your FOIA request was nearly six months (177 days). Guest - Zach Corrigan, is a champion of food safety and senior attorney at Food and Water Watch.

May 10, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Paralysis In The US Antiwar Movement; and Free Speech And Censorship In The United States

It is the position of many antiwar activists in the United States that Russia initiated a war of aggression by invading Ukraine this past February. Other antiwar activists say that Russia acted in self-defense, considering what happened in 2014, the expansion of NATO and military bases up to Russia's borders; they have refused to outright condemn the Russian invasion. This disagreement has caused a paralysis in the U.S. peace movement. Moreover, the United States has supplied the Ukrainian government with billions of dollars worth of weapons and has demonstrated no inclination to support a cease-fire or a negotiated settlement. Guest - Medea Benjamin, a leader for many years in the U.S. peace movement and the cofounder of CodePink, a major antiwar organization in our country.

In recent years a number of public opinion surveys have disclosed that a goodly number of Americans believe people with hateful or very controversial views that might unduly excite people, or insult people, should not be allowed to express those views in the public arena. And this is true of both liberals and conservatives. At least one in four college students think its fine to ban highly controversial speakers from their college campus and, in fact, one in six students believe that if all else fails, they can resort to physical intervention to prevent them from speaking on campus. Well, as the old adage about it not being legally permissible to shout fire in a crowded movie theater, what are the limits on free speech today? Should racist speech be allowed? How about misogynous speech? Or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel speech? Does the fact that our nation is very divided, very tribal today, inform the answers to such questions? Guest - Attorney Nadine Strossen is the New York Law Schools John Marshall ll Professor of Law, Emerita. From 1991-2008 she served as the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first woman to do so.

May 3, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

US Petitions The ICC For War Crimes; and Beyond Fossil Law: Climate, Courts, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future

As the war in Ukraine continues to rage, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution that “encourages member states to petition the [International Criminal Court] or other appropriate international tribunal to take any appropriate steps to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Armed Forces.” Yet the United States has consistently undermined the ICC. The U.S. government thinks the ICC is reliable enough to try Russians but not U.S. or Israeli officials. Guest – Marjorie Cohn – Law and Disorder co-host, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

The technology exists to halt and reverse the ongoing catastrophe of climate change. What is lacking is the political will to do it. It is legal in the United States to put millions of tons of poison into the air but it is illegal to disrupt this ecocide. The necessity defense is the legal concept that a person can commit a minor crime in order to prevent a larger one. In this case the valve turners admitted to trespass on oil pipeline company property in order to prevent their ongoing contribution to the crisis of climate change. Guest – Attorney Ted Hamilton, author of the just-published book, “Beyond Fossil Law: Climate, Courts, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future.“ Bill McKibben describes Ted Hamilton book as “a sweeping account of how the legal system enables the ongoing destruction of the planet.“

April 26, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Radio Documentary ” It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories; and Horrors Of Adana by Bedross Der Matossian

Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century. Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget the senseless slaughter of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it, the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race. Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.

In April 1909, a few years before the 1914 Ottoman massacre of Armenians, two massacres killed more than 20,000 Christians, primarily Armenians. They transpired in Adana, situated on the Mediterranean cost of southern Anatolia. Images of the area after the attacks show unprecedented destruction of a formerly prosperous city. Armenian churches, businesses, and homes were destroyed, and the violence quickly spread across the province and extended outside its eastern borders into the province of Aleppo. Despite the magnitude of these devastating atrocities, no one was held accountable. Guest - Bedross Der Matossian has written a meticulously-researched examination of these events.

April 19, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Federal Case Against Donald Trump; and Russia, Ukraine War Analysis

There is a great deal of speculation as to whether former president Donald Trump will eventually be indicted for crimes allegedly committed while he was the president. Well, in what might prove to be the most serious blow yet to Trump's effort to stay out of jail, on March 28th, a federal judge ruled that both former president Trump and Atty. John Eastman who had advised him on how to overturn the 2020 election had most likely committed felonies, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States. The ruling represents a highly significant breakthrough for the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Judge David O. Carter found that the actions taken by Trump and Eastman amounted to a coup in search of a legal theory. Guest - Attorney Michael Tigar. Michael Tigar has been acting professor of law at UCLA, the Jos. D. Jamil Chair of Law at the University of Texas, and the holder of an endowed professorship at Washington College of Law.

We look at Russia's war in Ukraine and the role of a free press in war time. Today, much is made of the fact that in Putin's Russia, little or no accurate news of the war is reaching the Russian people. Instead, what they read in their newspapers or hear on their radios and see on their televisions is no more or less than what Putin wants them to read or see or hear. Meanwhile, here in the United States, the American people are provided with virtually non-stop newspaper and live eve-witness television coverage of the war in Ukraine; coverage that comes from reporters and others, often in real time, and on the ground in the middle of Putin's war. Guest - Norman Solomon is truly one of Americas true champions of a free and honest press, free and honest in war time as well as in peacetime. Mr. Solomon is one of the founders of F.A.I.R., or Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, which has proved to be a powerful watchdog of the US media.

April 12, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

The Effects Of War On Our Economy; and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Ethical Conflict Of Interest

It is the opinion of many historians and economists that the American empire is on the way out. They think its exit has been accelerated by the sanctions it has imposed on Russia, that these sanctions have boomeranged and that the unipolar world headed by the United States is about to be fragmented.

What will be the effect of the sanctions on the US dollar, which is now the currency of international trade, if the United States loses its place as the unipolar power on the planet? How will the US economy be affected if the dollar is no longer used as the only reserve currency for international trade and what will the consequences be for Americans? How will the war affect those who depended on Ukraine as the breadbasket of the world for its massive production of wheat? What about its effect on Europeans, who depend on Russian natural gas and oil? Guest - Economist Richard Wolff assesses the catastrophic effect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Richard Wolff is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.

Ginni Thomas has been a persistent voice on behalf of tea party activism. She founded Growdswell, a group of far-right activists, nonprofit heads, journalists, and others who reportedly meet weekly at the offices of Judicial Watch to strategize in order to advance a right-wing agenda. A New York Times Magazine investigation revealed that Thomas oversaw Groundswells project of a 30-front war to exchange and amplify hardline positions on immigration, abortion, and gun control. Ginni Thomas also sits on the board of the action arm of the Center for National Policy, a secretive, right-wing entity that helped advance, according to the Times, the Stop the Steal movement. Thomas was thus greatly involved in efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Advocacy on these and other issues that come before the Supreme Court, without Ginni Thomas's husband recusing himself, threaten to further erode Americans trust in this legal pillar of democracy. Guest - James Sample is a professor at Hofstra Law School. Professor Sample regularly comments on ethical issues for leading media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Law Journal, Slate.com and The Huffington Post, and he is a frequent presenter at national conferences.

April 5, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

The Supreme Court Nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson; and Basic Legal Rights For Animals: Activists and Advocates

GOP senators on the committee leveled racist and sexist attacks against Jackson, playing to their radical right-wing base. Many of the questions mirrored QAnon talking points. GOP committee members apparently sought to peel off votes for Jacksons confirmation while appealing to right-wing voters in their forthcoming congressional and presidential campaigns. Nevertheless, it appears that Jackson will be confirmed to the Supreme Court, the only Black woman ever to serve as a justice on the high court. Although Jacksons confirmation will not change the skewed ideological balance of the court, she and Sonia Sotomayor will comprise a strong progressive wing of the court. Guest - Attorney Marjorie Cohn, who is a co-host on Law and Disorder. Marjorie is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a former criminal defense attorney.

Animal law is now widely taught in law schools across North America. There are 167 law schools in the U.S. and Canada, and 11 in Australia and New Zealand, teaching courses in animal law. Several legal scholars support extending basic legal rights and personhood to non-human animals. Critics of animal rights argue that nonhuman animals are unable to enter into a social contract, and thus cannot have rights. Certain forms of animal rights activism, such as the destruction of fur farms and animal labs by the ALF or Animal Liberation Front, have also attracted criticism, and prompted Congressional reaction by enacting of harsh laws allowing these activities to be prosecuted as terrorism. Guest " Attorney Tamara Bedic, chairperson of the National Lawyers Guild Animal Rights Project.

March 29, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Russia, Deescalation And Nuclear Disarmament; and World Peace Through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule Of Law

The threat of nuclear war has never eased and it is now imminent with the fighting in the Ukraine which could draw the U.S. and NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. We are now in a new stage of this war. It has become hot and so perilous it threatens all of humanity, all of earths creatures, with annihilation. Any mistake, any miscalculation would quickly and irretrievably doom us all. This almost happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis where nuclear war was avoided, according to scholars, by luck and decent leadership. What has been the history of attempts to contain and roll back the threat of nuclear war? What has been tried and what is failed? What will it take to get the nine countries who possess nuclear weapons to give them up? Guest " Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University and directs the Nuclear Studies Program at that institution.

In 1945, following World War I and World War II, wars that claimed millions of lives, the nations of the world enacted the United Nations Charter to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. The Charter prohibits the use of military force except in self-defense after an armed attack by another state or when the Security Council approves it. The five victors of World War II, who became the permanent members of the Security Council, agreed to the Charter because they each received a veto over matters of war and peace. The United States is a party to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nevertheless, it continues to violate the provision of that treaty that requires the parties to move toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Although he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obamas administration advanced a policy, which Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued, to develop leaner and meaner nuclear weapons. Guest - James Ranney is a retired Adjunct Professor at Widener Law School, co-founder of the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center, a legal consultant to the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and a board member of the Project for Nuclear Awareness.

March 22, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Ukraine, Russia, NATO and United States Conflict Analysis; and Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives

Starting in 1990 with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the US Secretary of State James Baker promised the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the US-led NATO organization would not move one inch east towards Russia. This promise was broken. Since then, NATO has recruited 11 former Soviet bloc and Warsaw Pact countries into its military organization. Led by the United States, NATO is an organization has played an aggressive role, having carried out the bombings of Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Libya. NATO has placed missiles in Poland within 100 miles of the Russian border. This is not to defend Russias actions but to place them in historical context. The world now has come to the edge of an abyss. A nuclear war could easily be started, annihilating all of humanity. The rule of law must be restored. Guest " Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign correspondent, 15 of them with The New York Times, covering conflicts in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the former Yugoslavia.

Assata Shakur is an inspiration to many young Black and brown activists today. She was a Black Panther Party member in New York in 1968 when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said that the Panthers were the single greatest threat to the internal security of the country. Hoover launched the Cointelpro program to eliminate the Black Panthers. When the Panthers broke up, Assata became a member of the Black Liberation Army. She was seriously wounded and apprehended in 1973 by state troopers in a shoot-out on a New Jersey highway. She was tried and convicted of murdering a state trooper even though the medical evidence showed that she was badly injured and could not have fired a gun. Assata escaped from prison in 1979 and five years later, she was given political asylum in revolutionary Cuba where she lives today. Guest - Donna Murch, associate professor of history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Professor Murch, who specializes in African-American and US History, Black Radicalism, and History of Mass Incarceration, is known as the historian of the Black Panther Party.

March 15, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Russia, De-escalation And War Crimes; and Ukraine Invasion Economic Analysis

Russia is guilty of aggression against Ukraine. But that being said, the United States has baited the Russian bear repeatedly, starting in 1990 with the breakup of the Soviet Union. At that time, US Secretary of State James Baker promised the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the US-led NATO organization would not move one inch east towards Russia. Since then, NATO has recruited 11 former Soviet bloc and Warsaw Pact countries into its military organization. NATO has placed missiles in Poland within 100 miles of the Russian border. Missiles on the long border between Ukraine and Russia could hit Moscow in 10 minutes making it impossible for Russia to defend itself. Russia's attempts to make United States understand that they have crossed a red line has been consistently rejected. Guest - Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University and directs the Nuclear Studies Program. at that institution

The United States and other Western countries have imposed sanctions against Russia, including expelling some Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system, essentially barring them from international transactions and effectively blocking Russian exports and imports, as well as banning imports of Russian oil and gas. But these sanctions harm not the Russian oligarchs, but the Russian people while raising gas prices for people in the United States. The prospect of cyberwarfare lurks in the background, and the U.S. and its allies continue to send massive armaments to Ukraine, to the delight of the huge military contractors. While Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine constitutes illegal aggression prohibited by the UN Charter, it is necessary to analyze the history and geopolitics as well as the role NATO has played in the region, in order to understand both the context for the conflict and how it could have been prevented. Guest - Corinna Mullin, an organizer and professor of political science and political economy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Brooklyn College-CUNY in New York. Corinna is also a member of the steering committee of the International People's Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures.