Welcome to Law and Disorder Radio
Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.
Law and Disorder September 8, 2025
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From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style
From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style is the title of a recently published anthology edited by Zachary Sklar and our own Michael Smith. Co-host Jim Lafferty wrote the introduction. The book draws from seven key interviews with prominent socialist thinkers in the United States and Canada. They include Margaret Kimberly, Henry Giroux, Dianne Feeley and Bill Mullen. Bill will also be joining Michael and Jim in the guest seat. He’s Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue University and author of We Charge Genocide! American Fascism and the Rule of Law.
Chris Hedges who is also included in this book, writes “when fascism comes to America, it will be mass of recitations of the pledge of allegiance, the Christian cross and the flag.” We’ll explore these frayed boundaries of Christian fascism, capitalism, and the assaults on free speech and censorship while highlighting the strategies of community based actions.
Guest – Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of many books, mostly recently Imagine: Living In A Socialist U.S.A. and “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler. He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and had practiced law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department.
Guest – Jim Lafferty is the Executive Director Emeritus of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and the host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica Radio’s Los Angeles station, KPFK. Jim has been a national leader in the peace and social justice movement for 60-years. He served as a national Coordinator of the National Peace Action Coalition, the group that organized the largest protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and in leadership positions in other peace coalitions opposing various imperialist U.S. wars. In the early 1960’s he was the national Director of the National Lawyers Guild during its historic work in the South. In the mid-1960’s until the 1980’s, Jim was in the private practice of law in Detroit, Michigan, where he specialized in Selective Service law, employment discrimination law, and civil rights law. He serves on the governing board of the A.C.L.U. of Southern California, is a member of the steering committee of the national Julian Assange Defense Committee, and a Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California.
Guest – Bill Mullen is professor emeritus of American studies at Purdue University and the co-founder of The Campus Anti-fascist Network. He’s also co-author of The Black Antifascist Tradition and We Charge Genocide: American Ashes and the Rule of Law. He’s a contributor to the just published Law And Disorder book From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style.
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Law and Disorder September 1, 2025
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Paul Le Blanc On Democratic Socialist Trend
In a remarkable come from behind victory in the Democratic primary over disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic Socialist Zorhan Mamdani is likely to become the next mayor of New York City in November when he wins the election. This comes a decade after the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) exploded onto the stage of US politics. The organization is full of vibrant campaigns, discussion, and experimentation. How can democratic socialists build a working-class political alternative powerful enough to defeat Trump’s authoritarian agenda? How should it relate to the pro capitalist Democratic Party? What strategy can revive the labor movement? What is its vision of democratic socialism? How does it get there?
Guest – Paul Le Blanc – is a retired professor of history from La Roche University in Pittsburgh and he has been active in movements for human rights and economic justice for more than six decades. Currently a member of Democratic Socialists of America, Solidarity, and the Tempest Collective, he has written and edited many books, including A Short History of the U.S. Working Class. He is a contributor to A User’s Guide to the DSA and recently attended DSA’s bi-annual convention in Chicago.
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Lawyers You’ll Like – Attorney Mel Wulf
Mel Wulf died at age 95 on July 1, 2023. He was one of the great constitutional litigators of his time. He served as Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. Today we bring you a re-broadcast of an interview that attorney Michael Ratner, and I, Michael Smith, did with Mel 10 years ago for a segment we called Lawyers You’ll Like. It is a scintillating fast paced discussion with a relevance to our situation now
We’re joined today by Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. He’s now retired after practicing law for 54 years. As part of our Lawyers You’ll Like series, we talk with Wulf about his work with the ACLU during the early 60s, and also about the forming of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee.
Attorney Mel Wulf:
- Phil Agee was a dissident CIA agent who spent decades working against the CIA, published a couple of books.
- He lost his passport because when the dissidents took over the embassy in Tehran in 1979, the New York Post carried a story accusing Phil of helping the students who’d invaded the embassy to put together all of that written material that had been shredded.
- It was another New York Post bald faced lie.
- The State Department, based upon that story revoked his passport.
- I had represented Phil Agee, I was his principle lawyer for 30 years.
- Agee was very widely disliked in Washington because he was well known to be a CIA dissident who disclosed the names of many CIA agents.
- I was for the workers and not for the bosses and I’ve always been for the workers and not for the bosses, which I think is the distinguishing political factor in our world. Which side are you on?
- I got my Bachelors Degree in ’52 and I had a Navy Commission which I had gotten from the New York State Maritime Academy earlier on.
- The draft board sent me a 1A notice, I applied to Columbia and when I finished Columbia they sent me another 1A notice because the draft was still on. I spent 2 years in the Navy as a Lieutenant Junior Grade Officer in Southern California.
- I went to work at the ACLU in 1958 as the assistant legal director, in 1962 I was given the job of the legal director of the ACLU.
- I had actually been going down to Mississippi from 1961 to 1962, working with then one of the two black lawyers who were practicing in Mississippi.
- We tried a couple of capitol cases in Mississippi. I continued to argue the systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury.
- I finally got a case up to the Supreme Court on that issue.
- Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee: We had several hundred lawyers who went down to Mississippi for periods of a week or two. They were representing people being arrested during the Mississippi summer.
- Most of the judges allowed these lawyers to make some sort of presentation.
Guest – Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. He’s now retired after practicing law for 54 years.
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Law and Disorder August 25, 2025
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The First Amendment Heavily Tested Under Trump Administration
The First Amendment is being tested in many arenas not only in response to various Executive Orders which Donald Trump has issued in his second term, but also in state legislatures which are experimenting with how far the government can go in restricting freedom of speech.
In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the US Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for access to Internet porn sites. In 2024, Mississippi enacted House Bill 1126 after a Mississippi teen became the victim of sextortion on Instagram and died by suicide. That law requires young people to obtain their parents’ consent before they can create social-media accounts. On August 13, the US Supreme Court issued a brief unsigned order allowing that law to go forward despite a lower court injunction.
Meanwhile, South Park is savagely ridiculing Donald Trump, CBS capitulated when Trump sued them over a 60 Minutes segment, and a conservative federal appeals court struck down an injunction for an on-campus drag show. There’s a lot going on when it comes to free speech.
Guest – Robert Corn Revere has been a First Amendment litigator for more than four decades. He is Chief Counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE. He is the author of The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder: The First Amendment and the Censor’s Dilemma, which explores how free expression became a part of America’s identity. FIRE filed an amicus brief in support of Net Choice in one of the cases we’re discussing today.
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Chambers v. Florida and the Criminal Justice Revolution
In 1933, four young Black farm workers in Pompano, Florida, were arrested for the murder of a white shopkeeper. With no lawyers and no meaningful due process, for a week they were held, beaten, threatened with lynching, and ultimately forced to sign confessions. Their convictions and death sentences seemed almost certain in the Jim Crow South. But 7 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed those verdicts in a unanimous ruling, declaring that confessions obtained under psychological coercion rendered them involuntary and violated the 14th Amendment.
In Chambers v. Florida and the Criminal Justice Revolution, author Richard Brust vividly revisits this often-overlooked case. Chambers opened the door to the Warren Court’s criminal procedure revolution, laying the foundation for decisions such as Miranda v. Arizona. The book also highlights the lawyers and communities behind the case. Jacksonville attorney Simuel McGill, one of Florida’s few Black lawyers, kept the appeals alive until the case reached Washington.
Guest – Richard Brust is a journalist and historian whose work focuses on law, politics, and American history. He was a longtime editor for the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal and has written extensively about the courts and the evolution of U.S. legal culture.
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