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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 April 11, 2022
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The Effects Of War On Our Economy
The US government is seeking regime change in Russia. According to Biden, they want to get rid of Putin and impose the most draconian sanctions ever on Russia after its illegal war of aggression on Ukraine, a war that the US-led NATO provoked. Once again, as it did in Afghanistan, the United States got Russia involved in a war and now hopes to bleed and bury her. For this ignoble end, the US military will fight Russia in this proxy war with every last drop of Ukrainian blood.
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, where he was the chairman of the economics department. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and the author of numerous books. He is presently a visiting professor at the New School in New York City.
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Ethical Conflict Of Interest
In an ethics bombshell for the legal community, the Washington Post recently broke the story of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Virginia (or “Ginni”) Thomas’s text messages to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
In her texts, Ginni Thomas urged Meadows to do anything he could to subvert the democratic voting result and to fight, in her words, for good over evil. The goal was to frustrate Joe Biden’s victory and keep Donald Trump in power.
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 Groundswell’s 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.
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Law and Disorder April 4, 2022
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The Supreme Court Nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
During vicious, racist questioning by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson remained dignified, poised and unruffled. Jackson’s record is impeccable. No nominee for the Supreme Court has had stronger credentials.
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 Jackson’s confirmation while appealing to right-wing voters in their forthcoming congressional and presidential campaigns.
Ted Cruz attacked Jackson with charges about critical race theory. Josh Hawley tried to paint Jackson as “soft on crime.” And Lindsey Graham accused Jackson of aiding terrorism by representing Guantánamo detainees.
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 Jackson’s 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. Her books include The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, Abuse, and she writes a regular column for Truthout.
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Basic Legal Rights For Animals: Activists and Advocates
Discussions over whether animals are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain, pleasure or suffering, date back as far as ancient thinkers such as Plutarch, Hippocrates and Pythagoras. They all advocated for the fair treatment of animals. The term animal rights stands for the proposition that non-human animals have the right to be treated, not as property, but rather as the individuals they are, with their own desires and needs.
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 to 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. Another argument is that animals may be used as resources as long as they don’t undergo unnecessary suffering.
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. These laws include the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
Guest – Attorney Tamara Bedic, chairperson of the National Lawyers Guild Animal Rights Project. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a masters degree from Columbia University-NY University. Tamara practices employment law with a focus on women and harassment in the workplace.
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Law and Disorder March 28, 2022
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Russia, Deescalation And Nuclear Disarmament
If the U.S. nuclear policy doesn’t change immediately and rapidly we are in a lot of trouble. Seventy-seven years ago, the United States became the first, and so far the only, country to use nuclear bombs when we destroyed the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki to frighten the Russians and secure an immediate and unconditional surrender of Japan in World War II. The dropping of these bombs was the first move against Russia that would devolve two years later in 1947 into the Cold War.
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 earth’s 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?
The Veterans for Peace organization spelled it out clearly. There should be a “no first use” policy and nuclear missiles must be taken off hair trigger alert. The United States should rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, from which George W. Bush and Donald Trump withdrew, respectively. The U.S. should sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Our country should initiate negotiations to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons, as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which the U.S. is a party.
To start, there must be a cease-fire in the Ukraine, the withdrawal of Russian forces, and guarantees of Ukrainian sovereignty and Russian security.
Peter’s recent article – Beijing should help mediate to end the Russia-Ukraine crisis
Guest – Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University and directs the Nuclear Studies Program. at that institution. Peter and Oliver Stone wrote The Untold History of the United States and also produced a showtime documentary series based on the book.
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World Peace Through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule Of Law
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 Obama’s administration advanced a policy, which Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued, to develop leaner and meaner nuclear weapons. The proposed U.S. budget calls for nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to build two new bomb factories, missiles, planes, submarines and redesigned warheads. In spite of the UN Charter and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we are now facing the most dangerous threat of nuclear war in the last 60 years.
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. Professor Ranney has written a book called “World Peace Through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule of Law.” In this book, he calls for arms reduction, including the abolition of nuclear weapons, and global alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, with enforcement mechanisms.
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