Social Justice - A Conversation

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Charles Stanton 0:17
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of

Gabriella Tam 0:23
Law. Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student.

Charles Stanton 0:27
And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation a conversation. Well, good evening, everybody. We're back again. This is Professor Stanton along with my partner, Gabriella tan, hello. And we have so much to discuss so much in this program that literally we could be here till four o'clock in the morning, 24 hour, 24 hours for our show. But due to the limitations of the station, we are relegated to the paltry half hour that they give us. How do we start our program today? Well, I just have a few things to say, you know, when people talk about, you know, why our country is in the shape that it is. I've tried to approach it from like a scholarly point of view. Let's look at it this way. Let's look at our country as a big house. And this house is composed of three levels. It's composed, of course, of the president who sits at the top of the house, I suppose in a sense, head of the household head of the household, then we have of course, the legislature with supposedly works to pass laws that will benefit us supposedly, supposedly, and then there's the third part of our house, which is the Supreme Court, which is supposed to adjudicate disputes between various parts of the government or various individuals and legal authorities. The reason that we have such little faith in our house house, yeah, is because our house is dysfunctional, her house is not working. So let's look at that. Let's look at the three branches of the government. First branch of government is the presidency. Again, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna beat this Trump too many times more. But it's just to say, our president is perhaps well intentioned, but he's not as I see it a leader and people need a leader to guide them in times of great turmoil, which is what we're going through now. Our legislature is basically totally ineffective, because we cannot get bills passed, and legislation passed, because a certain person who will remain nameless, has told the Speaker of the House basically, to kill all legislation regarding immigration, and other important matters. So that might benefit my benefit Joe Biden, even though it would also greatly benefit our country. But the third part of the house, that's the most disturbing to me, is the Supreme Court. Yeah, the Supreme Court, particularly because the Supreme Court is supposed to be composed of individuals who have a high bar or authority, who are not merely scholars or experts in the law, but also people who are highly ethical people who want to maintain that high standard in the way they conduct themselves, and want to promote those laws and those bills that would help all of us. I mentioned the Supreme Court. Last but certainly not least, regarding the matter of the appeal by the states to remove the ex president from the ballot in Colorado and another states. Yeah, okay. So anyway, the Constitution as I read, it, seems to be clear that if someone has committed obstruction, that that would be a disqualifier for being able to run for office. Okay, yeah. And of course, we know that the vote was nine to nothing against what I thought was the opinion and it should have been

Gabriella Tam 4:27
nine to nine to zero line to 09 to zero is crazy. It is great even like eight to one Yeah.

Charles Stanton 4:35
Nine to zero. So So, anyway, anyway, my take on it is this, I have two takes on it. The first day got it is in throwing out what the various states had done. I find it very ironic, because how many times has this particular Supreme Court upheld states rights? As far as women's rights are concerned, as far as voting rights are concerned, as far as diversity is concerned, that time after time after time, the initiatives to promote diversity, the emission the initiatives to promote wider voter access, the initiatives to protect a woman's right to choose the woman's right to make her own choices for her body have been completely repudiated by the court, all state created decisions. Now all of a sudden, when we have a situation regarding the insurrection, where basically, it is a question of whether or not a person who basically tried to foment a upheaval in the government, nullify the vote, and basically take over the country that the state was the states can't do it. But they've done everything else. No, no. Why? Why is that?

Gabriella Tam 5:57
What literally no, like, it makes me it makes me so is so so so angry. Because it's like, it's the same state's decision to decide what they want to do about women's bodies. And then as soon as it gets to, like, voting is a hot, it's no longer the state's this, it's no longer the state's right to make that decision. Yeah, like, okay, so what classifies as, like a state's right, and what classifies as, like, I don't know, like, not a state, right? What

Charles Stanton 6:26
was very disturbing to me, that was very disturbing to me, because because I'm a lawyer. So you know, they can they come up with these different rationales for why they voted. Yeah. And we know that, from past programs, and just from the people who listen to this program, they're all in dollars, knowledge about how, in many ways the Supreme Court is compromised, because of the many gifts that were given to certain members of the court. Yeah, that they would go around and travel and do all the rest of these things, and yet still hear cases from people who had benefited them. As as in the case of Clarence Thomas, as in the case of people who are hearing matters, which they should recuse themselves from hearing, such as the case of Clara's Clarence Thomas, his wife being directly and prominently involved in trying to overthrow the government and throw out the vote literally,

Gabriella Tam 7:28
like, I don't know, like, shouldn't you would think like Clarence Thomas would like, sit down and think like, dang, my wife, literally, like tried to overthrow like, what I'm supposed to like what I'm like, heavily involved in?

Charles Stanton 7:46
Yeah, you would think that he would think that

Gabriella Tam 7:48
but like, Yeah,

Charles Stanton 7:50
but But what was most disturbing to me? What was most disturbing to me is when they had the people who are commenting on it, and Lawrence tribe, who is probably the one of the four or five most pre pre eminent scholars of the Constitution, he's been teaching at Harvard for 50 years. He was he was asked, he was asked how he could justify the decision that they made. Okay. And I thought he was going to talk about some paragraphs that they put in here something

Gabriella Tam 8:30
like scholarly

Charles Stanton 8:32
as he just said. They did the ex president a favor. Favor. That's exactly what the bad says a favor, favor. In other words, the Constitution to our laws really don't mean anything that basically they debit co opted the Supreme Court, debit Co Op, I'm sorry,

Gabriella Tam 8:56
they're doing an egg, the egg, the ex ex president who, you know, tried to overthrow the government tried to cancel the vote. Yeah.

Charles Stanton 9:05
But they're doing a favor. They're doing

Gabriella Tam 9:07
him a favor. He

Charles Stanton 9:08
was that's that's what our politics have come down to. Because one of the thieves that one of the thieves that we've talked about on this show for the better part of three years now, is that he the ex president, he's just he's just one person. Yeah, he's just one person. But the lack of justice, social justice barile, justice, legal justice, is rampant to our system. We do not have a quality of justice, we do not have a quality of law. We do not have the people's belief any more. That if they're arrested, that they're gonna get a fair fair trial. We're not We're not without at all now. Even by posing the possibility that incarceration could be redemptive, basically what we have as a society, we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. We have the highest rate of murder by gun in the world, we have the highest rate of mass shootings in the world. And there is no justice, there is no justice, there's no justice. For people who are falsely incarcerated. There's no justice for people who are harmed in the prison while they're in the prison. There's no justice for the families of people who have been heavily burdened by gun and mass shootings. And nothing seems to be able to be done about it. So when you have all those things, plus a case like this, what would you what do you suppose would be people's feeling about actually what's going on in our country, which is that they don't believe they don't believe in the precepts. At the end the the tenets of how the culture was founded in the first place. What else you could conclude, it's just chaos. Now, chaos is the right word. Like,

Gabriella Tam 11:15
if you're in the government, you're working, you're working in the government, your job is to serve the people. Okay. But now these people who are you who you're supposed to be serving, don't believe in you at all, they have no hope in you. Yeah. Like?

Charles Stanton 11:30
Well, I'll give you a perfect example. You know, talking about justice. Yeah, you get a person, you get a person of color, who lives in any state, okay. But but particularly in a big city, where you have, you know, a bigger population, and you have a lot of cases in the system and everything. Well, the vast majority of those people, a lot of times we'll be able to make bail. So the idea that the system says that one of the one of the most important things in the system of justice, is that we have the right have a speedy trial. That's supposedly one of the landmarks of our system. That I think one of the one of the justices said so well, he said, Justice delayed is justice denied. So that's supposedly one of the goals of our country, except in this one particular case, where this case, everything is turned upside down. The idea, the idea is not to have justice. The idea is not to have an adjudication of what the truth is, or what the facts are. The idea is to is to delay and delay a delay as much as possible. Now, of course, I can understand in a sense why a person in that position would want to delay. Yeah, of course, the evidence is so overwhelming. But it is not the position, or the authority or the or the purpose of the courts, to abet somebody who's using the system to basically allow things to go through to a point where people will actually be voting, not knowing whether one of the persons who is a candidate for the presidency has committed all these crimes. Now, I say that because in the case, the case that they took up whether the President has immunity, and of course, Deborah duva scholars, you don't have to listen to me. I mean, there's far, far wiser than I who are experts would have laid out the president. I've laid out the precedents of United States versus next said United States versus credited. Even people who voted against impeaching the president said that the President could be criminally tried there are a whole bunch of them even people on the Republican Party. But what's very troubling is let's say that the Supreme Court honestly wanted to make an effort to define the limits of presidential immunity. Let's say that I got that part of it. But why would you why would you delay hearing of the case seven weeks to the almost the end of April when you are in February, why would you do that

Gabriella Tam 14:38
not only that but the like they made a decision on the the like state voting like things so quick. Right? Exactly. But for this like for the when it comes to the ex present, it's taking so long.

Charles Stanton 14:53
Exactly. And here's here's the thing that's crazy about it though. dou by dou better. You know whether you're a conservative liberal, whatever you are, let's play this out. Let's play this out. Now in this case, of course, I think it's pretty clear that there's no immunity, that will eventually give immunity like they'll eventually though eventually, whatever they do, it will come down with a decision that there's no beauty is the precedents are there. And obviously, logic is there too. Because if you weren't able to be impeached, and you committed high crimes, that the only thing that could be done, would be to try the person after they left the presidency. Yeah. Also, also, they obtained search warrants for the president's home in Mar Lago, they brought indictments, they brought indictments in Florida. And they're brought indictments in Washington DC. If the if the idea was that the president didn't have the immunity, then it would seem to be that his attorneys would have made a motion before the Supreme Court to cancel those cases. But they did not do that. They did not do that. Because the implication always was that there couldn't be a trial for, you know, crimes, because the it was no longer in office. Here's the other thing, though, that's even more disturbing and more Friday. Let's say, though, that the trials, let's say that the trials convict him, yeah, let's say the trials convict him. He's convicted of these crimes. As as as a as a private citizen, he becomes president. He says, I'm going to pardon myself. What does the court do then? What does the court do then?

Gabriella Tam 17:02
Why is no one thinking of this? And that's

Charles Stanton 17:05
and that's, that's going to be a far, far more politically explosive issue. We're now there now. Because the thing to do would be, the thing to do would be this. Here, here the case on an expedited on an expedited schedule. Okay. The cases go to trial, okay. He's either found guilty, or is found innocent. The people know, when they go to vote, that they had these two major trials, I'm not talking about the state cases in New York or Georgia. That's something completely else that that is not subject to the pardon power. But he's either convicted, or he's found this enormous a hung jury. Okay, either way, then the society benefits. If he's found not guilty, then he's found not guilty. That's good. It's hard to believe. But he's found not guilty. It's hard to win if he even if there's a hung jury. Okay. We didn't get 12 jurors to agree. Okay, I'll go with that. So there was that one, the one juror didn't agree. That's the American system. He's free to do what he has to do. But this isn't Saturday, no, you have basically now going to go into the pardon power, which is like totally, a totally new area of law, and make a decision that's going to that could be catastrophic, literally, as to the reaction of an already divided country. And it makes absolutely no sense to me. It makes absolutely no sense to me. But again, I again, the problem is also one of the things I talk about it and you know, because you were in one of my classes, both of my class is that we suffer from a lack of belief. Yeah, this is what the illness of our country is. There's a lack of belief and by lack of belief, I mean to say, a lack of belief and certain principles, and guideposts and rules that seem to have escaped our government. You know, I mean, what else could you say?

Gabriella Tam 19:21
There's nothing to say like, like, we've talked before, like, this just, we have these rules, but the rules are not being applied. And so now, we're all thinking like, not that I would do it, but like, if I did do it, would I get the same treatment? Would I? If I was on like, if I had like, 91. What, like, charges or whatever. And I want to run as president. I mean, I couldn't because I'm an Asian woman. I probably wouldn't get a lot of votes, but like, let's say like, ideally, Yeah, you know, like, what I get the same treatment? You know?

Charles Stanton 20:03
Yeah, sure. Well, I think what's crazy too, though, which is, which is very strongly that we know, of course, that there's that there's that equal justice, we know that we know that. Yes, it's God since the probably the founding of the country since

Gabriella Tam 20:19
day one of America. But

Charles Stanton 20:24
the thing that's troubling is, you know, the case of the obstruction that has to be proved, in the case of the situation down in Georgia, the conspiracy case, which is a RICO case, that has to be proved, in the case of, you know, the New York case with Michael Cohen, of course, that has to be proved. But the one case, the one case, that's the most egregious of all the case, cases, is the documents case, for two reasons. First of all, first of all, the crime, that is, is being charged in multiple counts, is the crime of the possession of those documents, that the mere possession of those documents is a crime. And what what makes the case even more egregious, though, is is is not even the possession of the documents, which, which is, as I said, is a crime. But the repeated efforts to repeated efforts on the part of governmental agencies to negotiate with the ex president to have the documents returned, whereas there wouldn't have been any need or purpose for the Justice Department to get involved in it. But what we saw was that instead of the cooperation, and and, and, and the removal of the documents to their rightful place, which was, you know, the National Archives and everything. It was resisted. The documents were hidden, the documents are moved

Gabriella Tam 22:15
around. That's so so suspicious. That's just screams like, yeah, suspicious, like behavior,

Charles Stanton 22:22
right. But but here's the other thing that that is troubling, too. There's a movie, I've talked about it before, I think everybody should see it. It's called reality. And it's about this woman. She had been in the military served our country. And I don't know whether she transmitted a document to somebody, I guess she saw herself as a whistleblower. But it was one document. One that was all that it was, she went to prison for, like five years.

Gabriella Tam 22:56
No, I saw someone that was like, yeah, they had the, like, they had possession of like, you know, special documents, and they got sentenced to like, 17 years, everybody

Charles Stanton 23:05
has gone away.

Gabriella Tam 23:06
What's taking so long for for this for this man to go away? Because

Charles Stanton 23:10
because they do have an equal justice. You see it, what you have basically in our country is yes, you have the justice, you have the justice of money. Yeah, the injustice of money. But you also have the, the injustice of patriarchy, you also have the injustice of a white man. Of Sacha, versus in the case of reality winner, a poor woman with no statue. Yeah. So there's a completely different judgments show. Yeah. But there shouldn't be any different judgment. The judgment is the law is the law. The person is a person versus I mean, it's just like, you know, like, what do you see a lot of these cases that you read about where the, the, the agencies, the institutions that are supposed to be protecting us are asleep, or they don't care, or they're indifferent. And that's why there's a disaffection in people's minds about how the government works. And that's how the ex president has gained all these followers. Because many people say, well, the system isn't working. Nothing's it. But he and the rest of these people are part of it. Yeah. But the vast majority of people in the country don't understand that. You see, that's the problem. So frustrating that they don't understand it. And you can and, and the other thing, of course, is how a lot of the institutions that we rely on the police, the police is one example that there was there was an article in the Times New York Times about it lawsuits against the police. The New York City government paid out $500 million over the last six years for police misconduct.

Gabriella Tam 25:15
$500 million over the past six years. Yeah. Yeah.

Charles Stanton 25:20
And a lot of the people that were harmed, had their convictions vacated. They should not have been he should not have been arrested, they should not have been convicted. And this happened innumerable times. So that's an institution that people we're supposed to look up to. Yeah, but do you have a case like that? You have a case with? You have a case with our industries? Our corporation? Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna mention Boeing, again, we're back again. Weeks go by. And again, again, now. They've been cited, again, for false and quality control. This is like the third or fourth time,

Gabriella Tam 26:03
it's just like, you know, these, these institutions, these people, like they just don't care.

Charles Stanton 26:09
Well, it's they don't care, but they're enabled by the system that allows them to not care. Because what's happening in our country? You know, this, there's a very interesting, relatively new story about Liberty University. Yeah. And you could talk a little bit about that, after I say a couple of words on it. But this is supposed to be a religious and religious school. And rampant abuse, lack of security, lack of follow up.

Gabriella Tam 26:43
Like, they're paying $14 million, because of their lack of notification for their students sending like messages out, like, like, at least like here at like, UNLV. Like, we'll get messages like, instantly if there's like, even if they're just they're just running a test, which is like, great, amazing. Awesome, right. But I don't like the it's just like, Christian University. Yeah. And you just a lack of care for these children who want to attend your school? Yeah. Why don't you want to protect these kids? Yeah. Well,

Charles Stanton 27:24
it's, it's, it's, we've seen it in a lot of universities in this country. We saw it. We saw it at Stanford. Yeah. With Brock Turner, at how he he got he got a term off or something or whatever it is.

Gabriella Tam 27:41
All these universities that like have like hazing.

Charles Stanton 27:45
Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, Northwestern Yeah, certainly, that would offer years.

Gabriella Tam 27:52
Just all these universities, and

Charles Stanton 27:54
it's a lack of it's a lack of belief there too, though. Yeah. It's a lack of belief there too. Because, you know, I used to do, I used to do sports coach, you get everything. You have people in charge of the, of the football program? And you know, I mean, if you don't know, you shouldn't be involved. But you know, that there's a certain discipline, there's a certain code of behavior. Yeah,

Gabriella Tam 28:21
you're the coach, you are like, you have to be there for your players. Of course, you're kind of like another? Yeah. Like maybe like another like parental figure. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 28:31
well, of course. What's interesting about that, yeah, me, which is really interesting to me. You know, there was always there has always been issues with you know, weapon being mistreated, yeah. Sticks, while the rest of it. But that's starting to come out with more and more cases about men being so interesting. They had, you know, Suffolk, University of Michigan, the wrestling team at Ohio State, Northwestern University, I mean, so it's everywhere, but it's also it's also a lack of responsibility from the people who run the institution. Yeah. It's basically laying down the law to the people who run the athletic program that listen, that the light that will be tolerated with it's not going to happen. Yeah. And that's what they don't do. Well, anyway, that I we've wrapped up a very busy show, we could probably go on for hours, but as I say, our time is of a limited nature. Yeah. But we look forward to seeing all of you next week and we wish you the best and be safe and thanks

Gabriella Tam 29:33
for listening. Good night. Good night. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is T A N G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.