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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in KU NV studios on public radio K, u and v. 91.5. Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College at UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.
Unknown Speaker 0:18
I'm Lana weatherald. I'm a third year law student and welcome to social justice, social
Unknown Speaker 0:22
justice, a conversation conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
Good evening, everybody. And welcome back to social justice, a conversation, we hope you had a lovely Easter, a lovely Passover, whatever you celebrate. And we, we hope you also were able to catch up on some of the many interesting things that were in the news this week. So I think we should start off with what's been happening on this Supreme Court, one of the many follies of this Supreme Court, and Clarus and Clarence Thomas. It was it was revealed that he had been receiving, you know, we're talking opulent, luxurious vacations, not necessarily gifts, but sort of access and do exclusive things and private jets, were being chartered and these fanciful dinners and for those of you that haven't heard about what was going on, in that regard, I'm going to let the professor take over and give you the scoop. Yes, hi.
Unknown Speaker 1:12
Yes. Good evening, everybody. Yes, Clarence Thomas, who? I don't know, you know, you run out of you run out of things to say. But uh, you know, he had a relationship with this man and demand was apparently a friend of his Mr. Crowe, who was the heir to the, to the huge real estate fortune. And for, apparently, for decades, on on this man's dime, he flew around the world, he stayed at the luxury of most luxurious hotels, the most luxurious cruise ships, etc, etc. All kinds of ethical issues, obviously, about doing that. And the idea that he also was very much involved in Republican politics, the Federalist Society. And obviously, being a part of those two institutions, many of their committee of the cases under there, and that would come before the court. And Clarence Thomas didn't see anything wrong with it. He said he was just a friend, what bothers me what bothers me, I mean, besides the obvious things that, you know, ethical things that should have been addressed, years ago, regarding the judiciary, and the, you know, regulations that they should have put in place for justices, and et cetera, is, here's a guy, here's the guy, he's an intelligent guy. He's a person of color, named for me, any five cases, name for me any three cases, named for me even one case, where this man ever did anything, as as a person on the court to help this privileged, the poor, the needy, to deprived the the victims of racism? Because I can't think of any?
Unknown Speaker 3:15
No, in fact, the opposite, which is so interesting, because civil rights is the reason he's a black man sitting on the Supreme Court. So it's just fascinating. I mean, you're talking about a guy who then when he when he's writing his dissent, in the horrible case that overturned abortion rights in this country, he he mentions very particularly the next cases that are coming to boot, but then omits loving, because that affects I mean, this is the kind of guy he is right? He knows exactly, you know, what he's doing who it affects, but he just makes sure he's untouched. And I think that's what this boils down to. This is a guy who believes he's above the law, he knows it's what the kind of quote unquote gifts he's receiving are not just you know, because he's by way of being friends with a very rich man. That's not what's going on here. Right? He knows what he's doing is, you know, objectively, morally, and legally incorrect, but they believe they're above the law. This is seen across the party across the board. This is what they believe they believe that they're untouchable. And I will guarantee you in this case, he will be right. I don't think he'll face any repercussions because they truly and genuinely believe this is just rich people do enrich things and not the corruption that it is. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 4:20
I find it hard to believe, too, that the Chief Justice did not have some idea exactly about what was going on. And that he regardless of whether or not there was an actual rule or law or what have you would not have approached him and said, Listen, you know, this is not a good look for us. You know, it's you. This guy can be your friend, but you can't be going all over the creation. I was a little flabbergasted. I think we mentioned that a little bit last week about Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia. God bless So all the trips that they took, Scalia took like over 200 trips, riders have over 100 trips. I mean, you gotta know that that's something that's out of bounds. And you know,
Unknown Speaker 5:13
steadily the amount of cases the Supreme Court decides each term is is decreasing. You're seeing that. And, you know, this used to be a court that was constantly shaping the way our country and the way things were legislated and the way things were not anymore. They're not deciding to half as many cases as they did 100 years ago, I think. I think it's less than half I think less than half of the amount of cases are being decided by the Supreme Court than was 100 years ago. It's not right. Well,
Unknown Speaker 5:35
I have to I have to say that on this issue, in particular, the Wall Street Journal has been very good. Oh, interesting. You know, last last year, there was a number of articles they started out with, you know, basically, the legislative branch, and then the executive branch. And then they got into, of course, the federal judiciary, and how many of these cases were approaching like 40% of the cases where they had a financial interest? The federal judges had a financial interest in hearing this litigation before them. I mean, you know, I'm gonna say this, because, you know, I'm on the faculty at the law school and Lynas going to school here. You can't teach ethics. Yeah. I mean, you can refine a person's ethics, you can hone a person's ethics, but you can't teach ethics. And we're seeing like a complete ethical lapse on so many of these people who are highly educated people who clearly don't have any idea what ethics are.
Unknown Speaker 6:50
Well, I mean, you've got two male predators sitting on the court that you know, of, right. So at the very least, these were never, you know, the people of moral turpitude that you'd ever want them to be. But yeah, now that it's so brazen, and we're aware of this, and so much of this has been publicly documented, that kind of money and corruption that's sliding in and around this score. It's basically, you know, a defunct kangaroo court in the eyes of many, and yet it controls so much of what goes on in this country is something to ponder. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 7:16
So you know, and that and that leads us of course, you know, the, the actions of the court and and over over a turning Roe v. Wade, is, of course, the situation now with the with the attempt to ban the pills that aid and getting the termination of the pregnancy. And there was a few days ago, a truly mind blowing, editorial. Now, I'll set this up by saying that the Wall Street Journal is a very conservative newspaper. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch. I don't remember ever, in my memory, ever backing a Democratic candidate, either for the Senate or high national office, particularly the presidency. I don't think they've ever backed Republican or Democrat for the presidency. But anyway, in their article in their editorial a few days ago, they said that the judge who made this decision Texas had overreached, that it really wasn't a legally sound decision that he made. And they end the editorial, they end the editorial by saying basically, that as well being involving basically, either approving or disapproving the FDA regulations, or abortion itself, courts should not be involved in it. And I'm thinking to myself, Well, wait a minute, you are fronting for this repeal of abortion for decades now, because the political winds have changed, because you've activated use, we've activated the women's vote, that an estate that was supposed to have a cliffhanger election, the female jurist won by 11 points, and there's been a complete turn around, and you're activating actually young people to come to the vote like they've never come before. Now, all of a sudden, we don't want the courts to be involved in it and give me a break.
Unknown Speaker 9:19
I mean, boom, you had the exact analysis I was going to offer right? It didn't work. It did not work it in fact, I think it had the opposite. It's it's spoked otherwise, people that otherwise were, I don't want to say apathetic towards politics now had a mobilizer. And this was a mobilizer that affected their health, their future and everything they had, you know, especially women, right women predominantly. So I think you had a group of people that otherwise would have never voted. They don't like they don't. It's a group of women that didn't have to think about politics a lot before this. I mean, as sick as it may seem, they had civil rights and women's rights has come a long way. And there were a big subset of mostly middle class white women that were kind of removed, and now they're not removed and the youth turnout, you know, put put all those middle class white women that are now voting blue aside? Whoa, those youths. I mean, you saw it in Wisconsin, especially when especially in your college campuses with turnout just recently, just this past two weeks. But whoa. saw it in the facade in the midterms. I think you have it 100%. Correct. It didn't work. It brought out the exact people they thought were going to come in their defense, they were going to come to their side. They love strong economic policies, Bs, they love living, they love not having, you know, horrible children. They don't want to get hurt. I mean, it was they didn't do a cost benefit. You know, analysis, I think on a long term basis, the Republican Party with the, you know, their abortion stance, I think you hit the nail on the head, they did not think it would mobilize the voters it did in the way it did. And now they have to back up.
Unknown Speaker 10:44
Yeah, well, I thought
Unknown Speaker 10:48
the same thing will happen with marijuana, by the way.
Unknown Speaker 10:52
I think you're thinking back to last year. And I had a woman who came to me, who was angry, she was an angry woman. I'm not saying that in a stereotypical way. She, she just, she was she was angry. And we were talking about it. And I was working with her to she was going to have her second child to plan an itinerary. And her travels back to the Midwest. So avoid states where if she has something went wrong medical complications, right? She would, she would need a care that she didn't want to be worrying about. I thought that there was a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction. Even before the the overturn of Roe in my dealings with women and meeting women and talking to women. And I think that abortion decision, and we're talking about women, the women's vote, ties into the youth vote was what happened to Tennessee? Well, you have these two men, who did nothing to merit removal from the chamber, exercise
Unknown Speaker 12:12
their constitutional rights and says the national rights. Yeah, and
Unknown Speaker 12:17
it didn't, it didn't work out. It didn't work out for the Republican hierarchy, though. So now, so now what now these got these, these two men are coming back, right? And when you when you listen to what these two young men said in their eloquence, which, which reminds me reminiscent of Dr. King, it was embarrassing. It was really embarrassing, because it's so transparent, right? That they don't want. They don't want people of color to have a voice. And we can extend that to say that they don't want young people to have a voice. We can extend that to say they don't want women to have a voice. And you know, what were these What were these legislators and the young people who were in the chamber, and in the in the whole of the legislature that they protesting against, they were protesting against the lack of a sane gun policy. And that young people, their age were being killed in the schools, teachers were being killed. We saw a couple of days ago with Louisville, again, a man who was very disturbed. And I'm very troubled by that case, I'm very troubled because the parents knew he was very disturbed. The man who was a friend of his, the way he was very disturbed. And somehow you can go out apparently, you can buy any kind of weapon you want. There is no kind of regulation. And I tell you what I'm afraid of, I'll tell you what I'm afraid of. And I hope that I hope that I'm wrong on this. I think people are going to start arming themselves. You're going to start seeing this snare right but I think that people who ordinarily would not get a gun are gonna get a gun.
Unknown Speaker 14:17
I think that will be the only way we get meaningful gun legislation is if the people they do not really want armed and by vague I mean the omnipotent NRA Republican Party sort of people that keep these loose gun control policies intact, that they right, they're scared of a certain people being armed a certain type of person, much of the people we've discussed most, mostly throughout the show, women minorities, you know, that's that's what they don't want to see armed and they have to we will have to be armed because it's a bank. It's a grocery store. It's a school. It's a movie theater, it's anywhere it's anywhere you go now. So I think you're 100% right, but I think almost that may be a good thing not to put more money in the pockets of NRA to tell everybody to go get strapped but I do think it's the wrong people in the eyes of the day. A right in the omnipotent day if the wrong people get their hands on guns, that really good see some change. So maybe I should go get a call. Maybe that should be my next.
Unknown Speaker 15:09
No, it's what I
Unknown Speaker 15:12
think you're right. I think people have to I will say the one thing that this did bring up and we saw it again in Nashville is just how horrifying that response the police response in ivaldi had to be. Because now we're seeing body cam footage come out from these recent shootings where you are seeing a quick police response that is certainly saving lives. You're seeing the sort of bravery, the quickness, you're seeing training and a lot of these body cam videos that are coming out now. So I really hope if anything comes out of this mass death, this horrible tragedy, this fear and blatant, just the I mean, distrust for the government that we all must have, because of the gun laws in this country. At least maybe maybe we can force these cops to have some bravery and want to be like the men they see on these horrendous videos that call us caused us all trauma. Yeah, if nothing else, right.
Unknown Speaker 15:56
You know what, what the other interested in that interesting thing about it is under the law of Kentucky Now this, this, this gun can be sold at auction. Yeah. So somebody, some other person can get a hold of it. And of course, a lot of the people who were killed and one of the police officers who was in critical condition had grievous wounds. So this is a this is a weapon that inflicts the massive amount of most massive amount of damage, it can on another person,
Unknown Speaker 16:34
he does it as little time as possible as little
Unknown Speaker 16:36
time as possible. And I keep saying to myself, What is the justification societally, for having these kinds of weapons? What is the benefit of it,
Unknown Speaker 16:47
George Washington, or any of our founding fathers would shoot one of those guns and it would knock those wooden teeth right out of their mouths and they would be gone like they just want to know conceptualization you're not to make light of it. But seriously, they had no conceptualization of what we would have have today. That kind of power and how would be available to not a well regulated militia like the Second Amendment says, But Bob, but Joe, but idiots but mentally ill idiots. I just, whoa, whoa. And then the fact that they've got the you know, with false equivalency is by the right, and then NRA dirty money and dead kits.
Unknown Speaker 17:19
Well, there's just, there's a movie that was made, I guess it was 2010 or 2011. Called beautiful boy.
Unknown Speaker 17:30
Timothy shell, man, it's a good movie. Yeah. Well,
Unknown Speaker 17:32
there was two of them. But this this one was the one. It was about it was about the shootings at Virginia Tech. Well, not the one I saw. Yeah. And this was a movie about how the parents of the shooter were dealing with what happened, and how he had all kinds of issues that were not that were not resolved. Right. And, you know, you mentioned the course what happened in Uvalde. A few days ago, when they were they had a verdict in in Texas, of a case, when they had the Black Lives Matter protesting. After George Floyd was killed. A man was shot to death, who was a protester. And the person who did it basically drove his car into the crowd. And then he claimed, remember that he claimed that he was being threatened by the crowd and he shot he shot this man to death, okay. It went to the case was tried and went to a jury. The jury found him guilty. The governor of Texas now wants to pardon him, before he even spends a day in jail. First of all, the pardon when a pardoned is granted, it's rarely granted in the immediacy of a verdict. It's a number of months later, which is the usual case, but the logic of this as well, they have a Stand Your Ground law, apparently, in Texas, even though he drove the truck into the crowd, he wasn't it wasn't like somebody's coming in you. You know, and you see these, you see these these cases? And you get an idea basically, that there's a prioritization of victims. In other words, in the case of Uvalde, who were, who are most of the victims, they were Hispanic kids. In this in the case of the thing that happened in Texas, it was a black man. You know, it at a certain point, you have to face what it is right. You know, when Stuart Stevens who's the who's, who would never be accused of being a liberal and has been involved in Politics for decades, says it's all about race and who what else would you conclude? I mean, how was it? How was it when they had the the votes? Who removed the two black legislators that they didn't remove the white? Well, I mean, come on.
Unknown Speaker 20:17
Right? Well, and then, you know, 100%, like, look at the response time in Louisville. Granted, it wasn't a downtown, very metropolitan center area bank, but it's a bank, it's a bank with bunch of white workers, they were there quickly, and he was dead quickly, and then you're at a Christian school? You know, I think, I think there's something to that 100%. And then it does, it sort of tarnishes what what the victims could end up standing for and the change that they could end up, you know, that the sense of life lost could mean more, if we were willing to have some level of accountability, whether it be for cops, whether it be for you know, response time, whatever it is, but tragic, and I think there's something to what, to what you've offered? Absolutely,
Unknown Speaker 20:56
I don't know, you know, from, from not knowing what happened, you know, before I was born, right? I just I struggled to understand the acceptance of our society as to these crimes. And I know we have a diverse society, I know that we have people from many different countries, I know that sometimes that can be an impediment to getting things done. But I cannot I cannot rationalize, I cannot understand how certain countries take New Zealand, for example, that in a matter of days, they're able to come up with a gun policy. And in Japan, they have four or five murders, a year by gun in us having traveled to the Orient, where gun crime is very minimal. Yes, you can say we have a diverse society, but there's something more going on there. And I think it's our society. I think it's a culture of violence. I mean, you know, we were born out of violence. We're born out of violence. We're born out of violence. And we, we when you watch when you turn around your television on a Saturday night, and you see the programming that's on a lot of it is violent, misogynistic programming, right. This is the audience that they're trying to appeal to. It's seeing to two men in a case. Last Saturday night, two women basically trying to beat each other's footfall. Now, what is the societal value of the UFC? I've seen two people try to beat each other to a pole. I don't I don't, I don't get I
Unknown Speaker 22:50
pick UFC fan out a little money on that. For me. It's for Atlanta to make money. Professor, that's last one. No, I'm no, I hear you know, I definitely hear what you're saying. And I think I think very much it's just who we've become and who we are. And let's think about where our country leads, right. Yeah. Is our country lead and per capita GDP? No. Does our country lead and you know, number of leading institutions, ranked institutions and higher education? No, where does it lead Professor military spending,
Unknown Speaker 23:19
military spending and military time and the highest rate of incarcerated people?
Unknown Speaker 23:23
So it's, it's, that's this is a we are I mean, the metrics tell the story, right. I mean, we are no longer I've never really word this, you know, superpower. The you look to us to be this, you know, no, we're violent. We are and that's how we've maintained this power that is supposed in my mind is violence. Well,
Unknown Speaker 23:43
if you watch if you watch a Paul Thomas Anderson's There will be blood. If you watch the Coen Brothers, right, you know, a movie that Tommy Lee Jones was in Bardem, No Country for Old Men. I mean, it's there. It's there. It's it's part of our, I guess, how the country was created, in a sense. Would you know, would we deprive we deprived the slaves we derived the indigenous people, we took people's land, we built all these things. But there's, there's a lack of moral. I don't know, a moral guidelines, you know, you know, and you see, you see how we have all these when you go into rec TV some night, and you see all these religious shows that are on there's like, 20 of them, but the society is amoral. Yeah. You know, I got well the shows in the world, but all these things are going on. If he and there's, there's an acceptance of it. So when they say, you know, it's time for prayer, and it's time for reflection, I'm all for prayer. I'm on Wohlfahrt and I pray, I pray right, okay. But it's past the time for prayer. We've moved past fair, now is the time to take the bull by the horns and do something. And you I know you wanted to talk about the very fine. A documentary about Brooke Shields on Hulu.
Unknown Speaker 25:16
Oh, yeah. So listen, if you haven't watched that you should give it you should give it a watch for sure. I think it speaks. If you don't know anything about Brooke Shields, certainly it's interesting from her perspective, but I think it speaks larger to how we treat women, how we treat beautiful women and how they are handled at such a young age and how youthfulness has sort of become. And then I think it does a really good job encapsulating how terrible we handle motherhood and certain problems that are associated with motherhood in this country too. So if not only to see Brooke Shields, it certainly is it speaks to something much more sinister and larger that that is going on to this country and sort of through her lens. And I think it's important because I don't I don't think the average man, you know, a median voter man sort of understands what, how young women can begin to get sexualized, and I shouldn't say women, children. You know, it started for me personally, and probably 11, probably 12, I think Brooke Shields was even younger, I think for a lot of women, especially women of color, who tend to develop a little younger, it becomes even younger for them. And then you have this problem where they're viewed as older, even though they're younger. And then people handle mature topics, or try to treat them more maturely than they actually are. And this goes across the board for women, but especially women of color. And I think, you know, for Brooke Shields to come out and sort of allow these topics to be talked about through her lens, right and use her life as sort of a jumping point to have these larger conversations about how women are handled is, is really something really impeccable. And props to her. I think the only thing that makes me draw pause is that her daughters are now sort of involved in the very same industry that I think warped and took her in a different direction than maybe she could have been had she not been involved in an industry like that. So that, you know, that made me draw a little bit of pause. But for the vast majority of that, that Brookfields it's called Pretty baby on Hulu, I would really give that a watch. And it really is some food for thought.
Unknown Speaker 27:08
Yeah, I agree. And I think that I think that that industry has to take a look at itself very carefully. Because there are a lot of instances where these were the kids in particular have been exploited. And, you know, people have to look in the mirror as to how you, you would you acts, right, basically, you know,
Unknown Speaker 27:36
right, I think that's 100%. Right. So we are coming down to some of our last few shows of this semester, I am graduating law school. So we do really want to hear from you guys. If you have anything we want to talk about before the show ends up. It's a wonderful two year run. So w e t h e l one@unlv.nevada.edu. If you have anything that you would like us to discuss that you haven't heard the professor and I discuss, I'm just hoping when we come and we bring the next show to light that we don't have another mass shooting to talk about. Maybe we can have one week where where that doesn't happen. So we'll see you soon. Thank you for listening.
Unknown Speaker 28:12
Thank you. Good night, everybody.
Unknown Speaker 28:14
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at whether one that's w e t h e l one@nevada.unlv.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton, contact him at CHA R L E S That's Charles dot Stanton s t a n t o n@unlv.edu CNN axon
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