Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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Global Warming Litigation – 3 Main Cases
Since 1947, the Doomsday clock has been used as a symbolic reference to measure the degree of nuclear threat. On January 27th of this year it was set to five minutes to midnight. It was advanced by two minutes on January 17, 2007 by experts assessing the dangers posed to civilization from catastrophic climate change.
Meanwhile the Bush administration continues to play down the threats of extreme weather and dramatic shifts in climate. Last May Law and Disorder aired speeches from the Catastrophic Climate Change Forum at Albany Law School including speakers such as Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies . Hansen cited hard evidence – building the case that global climate change is at a tipping point and emissions from power plants and vehicles are mainly to blame.
Of the main contributors to this one percent tipping point of greenhouse gases are utility companies, automobile emissions and housing stock. This one percent of man made emissions that can be regulated say attorneys involved in 3 major climate change cases.
Guest – Eleanor Stein Adjunct Professor of Law Albany Law School at Union University
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Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey
A film documentary that chronicles one man’s influence on the American judicial system. The first black attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Kennedy Justice Department, Thelton Anderson was later appointed by President Jimmy Carter as one of the first African American federal judges in the United States. His decisions have been informed by a profound sense of fairness, distinguished also by his tenacity in seeing that they are enforced even in the face of great political opposition. Soul of Justice includes rare archival footage, and interviews with lawyers and a Supreme Court justice.
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Guest – Abby Ginzberg, an award winning filmmaker producing films for the last 22 years. Her films focus on race, equality of opportunity and model programs for at-risk youth.
Soul of Justice – NYC screenings: Monday Feb 26, Columbia Law School 116th St. & Amsterdam Ave, 6pm, Rm 107
Tuesday Feb 27, NYU Law School, Tishman Auditorium in Vanderbilt Hall at 40 Washington Square. doors open at 5:30, film at 6pm
Law Students for Government Accountability
LSGA was created out of the Student Hurricane Network run by law students (with some assistance by various attorneys, experienced lobbyists, an international strategy consulting firm, and an international PR firm). Its purpose is 1) to continue to educate the public about the causes and costs of the hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the Gulf Coast region and the nation at large, 2) to obtain the support of the 110th Congress for a Statement of Principles to ensure that such a disaster never happens again on the Gulf Coast through providing its necessary rebuilding and renewal, or any American soil through a comprehensive federal catastrophe prevention and response plan, and 3) work in partnership and solidarity with the thousands of voices advocating for those directly harmed by this disaster to ensure that the legislation passed by Congress provides a clear and coherent plan to prevent this from ever happening again.
Right now, LSGA is working on recruiting 1000 law students to participate in a March 14 National Lobbying Day in DC, to get their representatives to sign the Statement of Principles, guaranteeing wetland restoration, Category 5 levee and flood prevention, improvement of the management of the Mississippi River that would facilitate the restoration of the land and ensure ecological and economic security, the full recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and address the underlying issues of poverty and racism.
Guest – Andrew Doss – LSGA Board Member
Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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Eric Schlosser on the United States Prison System
We’ve covered in depth on Law and Disorder the US run prison industry abroad, from Guantanamo Bay prison, Cuba, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. These are the exports of one of the most highly profitable businesses in the United States. The prison industrial complex in this country has reached record breaking occupancy. Nearly 2.1 million Americans are behind bars, the majority of them nonviolent offenders, they’re usually poor, many have substance abuse problems and many have are mentally ill. This according to exhaustive research by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser who spoke at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York about his compendium on the American Prison system.
Law and Disorder caught up with Eric during this talk and we listen to the second part of his one hour speech. In his talk he warns our society of the perils of a profit driven penal system and backs his research with well-documented facts and staggering statistics.
Muhammad Salah Case – Update
Hosts talk with Salah’s attorney Michael Deutsch on the latest in the case involving a Palestinian businessman accused of funding Hamas in 1993. His defense argues he was tortured and his confessions coerced.
The government also called to the witness stand former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Law and Disorder hosts fill in the background of this reporter who was fired from the NY Times for writing numerous stories backing the Bush administration’s war campaign chant, “weapons of mass destruction.” Miller was allowed to witness Israeli agents interviewing Salah in 1993. She testified a month ago that Salah seemed comfortable and that he boasted about Hamas operations.
Guest – Michael Deutsch, Muhammad Salah’s attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.
The Mishandled Lethal Injection of Florida death row inmate Angel Nieves Diaz
Angel Diaz was executed by lethal injection for killing a Miami topless bar manager 27 years ago. He was given a rare second does of deadly chemicals as he took more than twice the usual time to succumb. Needles that were supposed to inject drugs in the 55 year old man’s veins were instead pushed through the blood vessels and into the surrounding soft tissue.
The error in Diaz’s execution led Florida Governor Jeb Bush to suspend all executions. Bush still defends the death penalty itself and rejects calls for its abolition. In a separate case, a federal judge extended a moratorium on executions in California, declaring that its method of legal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Those are just the latest challenges to lethal injection, which is the preferred method in 37 states. Missouri’s injection method, similar to California’s was declared unconstitutional last month by a federal judge.
Guest – Kristin Houle with the Amnesty International Program to Abolish the Death Penalty
Lynch Mobs and the Killing State
Lynchings. That word alone is at the root of racism in the United States. Those who may regard lynching as a shameful part of the past need only read the book “From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State” edited by Austin Sarat and Charles Ogletree to realize that state-sanctioned executions are sanitized forms of lynching justified by society.
Professors Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat have assembled a lucid and intelligent work in which essays from sociologists, historians, criminologists and lawyers weave toegether a social history that starkly reveals how this country’s death penalty is rooted in lynchings.
Racism informs both kinds of killings. The 985 lives lost to official lynchings in the United States since the practice resumed in 1976 symbolize according to one of the book’s contributors, a much broader and enduring culture of American apartheid.
Guest – Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His books include Mercy on Trial: What it Means to Stop an Execution.
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CCR president Michael Ratner With Yoko Ono
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Co-host Dalia Hashad with Hood River H.S. students, Collective Soul, Suzanne Vega
