Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Racist Police Violence, Supreme Court, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights
Erwin Chemerinksy is the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean of the Berkeley Law School. He has also served on the faculties of USC Law School and Duke Law School, and he was the founding dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.
Dean Chemerinsky is a leading constitutional law scholar and teacher who has an uncommon ability to explain complex legal concepts so that non-lawyers can easily understand them. A study of legal publications between 2016 and 2020 found him to be the most frequently cited US legal scholar. He is the author of 14 books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. Dean Chemerinsky also handles legal cases, and has argued several times before the Supreme Court.
After a 2000 review of the Rampart scandal about corruption and excessive force in the LA Police Department attributed the problems to a few bad apples, Dean Chemerinsky conducted an independent analysis which uncovered systemic and structural issues in the department. In his new book, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights, he writes, “Race has infected policing in the United States since its founding.” People of color are more likely than whites to be stopped, arrested and subjected to police violence.
Dean Chemerinsky cites the slave patrols which tracked and returned runaway slaves. We saw the three men who killed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery use the logic of those slave patrols in their defense. Due in large part to a video of the killing, they were convicted of murder.
When I served as a commentator for CBS News during the O.J. Simpson trial, the people at KNX Radio called Erwin (who did frequent commentary) “the nicest guy in the world.” He is most generous in sharing his expertise. I can’t remember any time he has turned me down when I have asked him to speak at an event, even if it required traveling to San Diego. I have often said that if I were President of the United States, Erwin would be my first choice for a justice of the Supreme Court. Unlike most of the members of the Court, he would be a “justice” in the true sense of the word.
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Line 3 Is The New Standing Rock
Our guest today is water protector Chicago attorney Pat Handlin. She has been representing some of the 900 people who’ve been arrested for trying to stop Line 3. Line 3 brings the dirtiest oil on Earth down from Alberta, Canada to the shores of the Great Lakes. It is owned by the Canadian corporation Enbridge. President Trump issued their permit without any environmental impact statement. The governor of Minnesota or the President of United States you can stop Enbridge. But they haven’t.
The Line 3 oil pipeline has been operational since October. It snakes under 200 bodies of water including the Mississippi river. Native Americans from the Chippewa and Ojibwe tribe have treaty rights to the land affected by the Enbridge pipeline. Enbridge has a terrible record for oil spills, 194 of them since the year 2000. Since 1986, more than 7 million gallons have spilled in the Midwest. Much of it has never been cleaned up.
The pipeline runs through sacred land. The land has wild rice which the Native Americans harvest for nutrition and value for spiritual reasons. The land is protected by treaties which are being violated. Tribes are sovereign nations that have entered into treaties with United States. A treaty becomes the supreme law of the land. Biden has said that he would honor the treaties but has not done so.
Guest – Pat Handlin is a criminal defense attorney who represented numerous Water Protectors facing misdemeanor charges stemming from the Standing Rock No DAPL movement, provided legal support at the hearing challenging TC Energy’s permit application to use water for the KXL pipeline and represents Water Protectors charged in Minnesota for opposition to Line 3. She has been a public defender, legal services attorney, administrative law judge on employment discrimination matters, represented Occupy Chicago activists, and has litigated to protect victims of elder abuse, neglect and financial exploitation.
Censorship, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Racist Police Violence, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power
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Kyle Rittenhouse got away with murder and the growing forces of violent reaction have been emboldened. Trump invited Rittenhouse to Mar-a-Lago and praised him as a “fine young man.” Street thuggery and violence against the opponents of his fascist party was the hallmark of Hitler’s rise to power. His goons, called Brown Shirts, smashed enemies on the left, trade unionist, and socialists. But Hitler always denied that he had any connection with the Brown Shirts, attempting to perpetuate an illusion that he respected the rule of law.
In 1931, two years before Hitler and the German fascists eventually took power, the courageous young German lawyer Hans Litten sued Hitler in Berlin. He put Hitler on the witness stand grilling him for three hours. He showed Hitler to be a liar. By contrast, and as a measure of how serious things have gotten in our country , Kyle Rittenhouse continues to be wildly praised by the right and the fascists, like the Proud Boys with whom he took publicity shots. They all have mobilized behind Rittenhouse. We rebroadcast what we believe to be two profound interviews on what fascism is and how to fight it.
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This is Not Populism : John Bellamy Foster
Is Trump a neofascist? Thoughtful analysts on the left like Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, and Judith Butler think he is. But mainstream liberal commentators refuse to associate the Trump phenomena with fascism. They call him a right wing populist. What is neofascism? Right wing Populism? Does it really matter what Trump is called? The great German playwright and political thinker who lived in Germany during Hitler’s reign, Berthold Brecht, asked in 1935: “How can anyone tell the truth about fascism, unless he’s willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it fourth?” We speak today with John Bellamy Foster, the editor of the venerable magazine “Monthly Review”. He wrote the lead article in the current June 2017 issue titled “This Is Not Populism.”
Guest – John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He has written widely on political economy and has established a reputation as a major environmental sociologist. He is the author of Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (2000), The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (with Fred Magdoff, 2009), The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (with Brett Clark and Richard York, 2010), and The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (New Edition, 2014), among many others.
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Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand
Author Benjamin Hett outlines the fascinating and tragic story of a young lawyer Hans Litten in his recent book Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Before the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, they incited calculated violence among the working class in German taverns. Four Nazi stormtroopers were charged with firing randomly into a dance hall where a communist hiking club were holding a party. Three young men were wounded. Hans Litton was the advocate for the 3 men.
Hans Litten called Hitler to the witness stand to show that the Nazi party was a violent party, and by cross examining Hitler he tried to prove that. Litten forced Hitler to contradict himself, reducing him to humiliating rage that revealed his true intention. At that time, Hitler wanted to be a legal party in Germany and of course you couldn’t be a party that was extra-constitutional and legal but at the same time he didn’t want to disappoint the base of his party which was this violent working class aspect. Two years later, the Nazi Party rose to power.
What came after the Reichstag Fire was the arrest of about 5 thousand people across Germany who the Nazis have identified as opponents or potential opponents. Hans Litten was among them and sent to a concentration camp. Author Benjamin Hett describes a powerful narrative of Hans facing torture yet still telling stories and teaching art to other prisoners.
Hans Litten was born in 1903 in Halle in Central Germany, his father was a law professor and Jewish but converted to German evangelical (Lutheran).
Guest – Benjamin Hett, author of Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Hett is a former trial lawyer, and now Associate Professor of History at Hunter College.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Racist Police Violence, Right To Dissent, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed some of Michael Ratner’s closest friends and colleagues as part of a special broadcast highlighting Michael Ratner’s legal work and mentorship. The special also marked the upcoming release of Michael Ratner’s autobiography Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer published by OR Books. In this one hour taken from the two hour fundraiser broadcast, we hear from attorneys including Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy, Ray Brescia, David Cole and Baher Azmy.
Michael Ratner’s pathbreaking legal and political work is unmatched. He provided crucial support for the Cuban Revolution and won the seminal case in the Supreme Court guaranteeing the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. Michael also challenged U.S. policy in Iraq, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Israel-Palestine. This book is a testament to his unflagging efforts on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world.
– Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Ratner personified lawyering that brought both radical and human values into challenges to the use of governmental power to violate the essence of the Bill of Rights. From the torture of prisoners after 911 to the massive racial profiling by the New York Police Department, Michael’s voice and vision continue to resonate. This book provides a powerful testament to the spirit of this extraordinary man.
– Attorney Bill Goodman
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