Social Justice - A Conversation

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Charles Stanton 0:18
Good evening. This is Professor Charles Stanton. I'm a professor of Boyd School of Law,

Blanca Pena 0:23
and my name is Blanca Pena. I am a third year law student at the Boyd School of

Charles Stanton 0:26
Law, and this is Social Justice a conversation, a conversation. Well, good evening, everybody. Professor Stanton, here, along with my my partner, Blanca Pena, we want to welcome everybody to the broadcast. It's good to have you with us. There's so much to talk about. I always laugh and say, we could, we could do this show every night, in which case we wouldn't be able to do anything else, even buy some groceries. But it really I wanted to talk today with Wonka. And you know, you vicariously listening into our broadcast about something that really, that really struck me after the death of Charlie Crist, which I've been giving a lot of thought to. And you know, of course, we know now that, of course, that he was, he was murdered by this young man who apparently had an interaction with him at some point. And, you know, he had, I from what I presume, the interaction didn't go well, and one thing led to another, and it resulted in what happened that day. But one of the articles that I read that was very interesting was an article by David Graham, in which he talked about the career of Charlie Crist. And he talked about how Charlie Crist had always been a huge proponent of the First Amendment that his his success with with not just, you know, speaking at campuses, but also with getting people to register, was the thought and the action that the First Amendment was basically unlimited, so you could say pretty much whatever you wanted to say, and and you had protected speech. And so that's, that's exactly what he did and while he while he was alive, although there were a lot of people who disagreed with him, myself included, and my partner included as well, there was never a question of his ability to do it or that he wouldn't be protected by the Constitution, because that would see that was one of the sacred rights that we always had. What's interesting to me is, in the wake of his death, now, all the calls for regulating speech and regulating opinions that are not popular with a certain group of people. And I find that, I find that highly ironic, because the whole movement that that they had was based on not having to worry about anybody censoring the things that they said. And of course, that's what we've always believed in America, that we have that that right to to speak freely and to and to discuss things and and disagree with one another, and it seems sort of like now that there are certain opinions that are unpalatable to a certain class of people, and that people shouldn't have the right to to express them, which is exactly the opposite of what I think this man truly believed, that you really should be able to say what you wanted to say, because he engaged in, you know, most of these campuses, he engaged in debates with a lot of the people who opposed them. And certainly, you know, he didn't make any attempt to, you know, prevent them from saying their piece as well. But I don't think that seems to be the case anymore. I don't know how you feel about that.

Blanca Pena 4:11
Blanca, no, I agree. The First Amendment seems to be on the chopping block right now, and that's incredibly scary. Jimmy Kimmel getting censored and completely taken off the air. Was jarring to see not even that right? I think that's one of the most recent happenings since Charlie Kirk's death. But even just people in high government positions telling you know, people from foreign countries, like if you celebrate the death of this man, or if you criticize him or say anything mean about him, don't ever think about applying for any sort of immigration status to the US, because we're going to deny it, right? Or, you know, that database where they're going to have all that list of names full of people who already did criticize. Him or celebrate or what have you, and them being at risk of either not getting immigration status, if that is something that they were dealing with, or even keeping their jobs, future jobs, college, you know, admissions, yeah, and it's insane. It's frustrating, because I remember during the elections, I would see shirts from the Republican Party that says facts, don't care about your feelings, kind of thing. And it was a lot of like, we can say whatever we want to say, because that is what first the First Amendment gives us. And now we're here, not even, I don't even think, a year later since, yeah, no, not a year later since the elections have happened, and now it's like a whole new thing. But I think this is just a direct reflection of the cult mentality. It's like whatever, whatever father says, goes right, and father here being Trump, I don't know if you saw that new statute of him in DC at the Capitol. It's a gold statue of him, and he's holding up a Bitcoin. I don't know if you saw that. I've not seen that. And it's just like, What is going on now? These statutes are being built, and every time he gets in his feelings about what someone said about his friends, now it's like, you're losing your job and you can't come here and you're going to be denied this. Yeah, and like, what are we what are

Charles Stanton 6:26
we doing? What are we doing? Well, I the thing that, that thing that got me was, you know, when the President went to London and he was being interviewed by Jonathan Karl. Now, the vast majority of correspondents in this country, I believe, are ethical people. They may not, they may not always. I may not always agree with them, but you know, I know quite a few of them, and they're pretty much people you could if you they gave you their word, that would be enough. So he was interviewing the president, and the President, out of nowhere, basically said, Well, you know, I know you hate me and all the rest of this stuff. And I'm thinking to myself, Well, where does that come from? This is just the man who's reporting the news as best as he can, and not and not reporting the news in an easy environment, because just as the correspondents are having problems when people who don't agree with the President go to say a press conference many times, their their their questions are not even responded to, or they're not allowed in The press conference at all, and I'm saying to myself, well, that's really kind of anti democratic in a sense, definitely, because you have people who are going overseas and people who live here, yeah, not just, not just you know, you and me, per se, but all the people who support them, probably, and All the people who don't support him, they want to know, you know, what he's doing over there, who he's talking to. Are there possibilities of, you know, making trade agreements or stuff like that, and it's all like, it's all like, kind of hidden it. It's very bizarre. It's like, and I've often thought about this, that in the history of our country, all the presidents basically had to separate from their finances and their businesses when they became the president. And the reason that they put those rules in was, of course, that they didn't want the president to be involved in financial dealings where he could use the power of the presidency to you know, feather his own nest, so to speak, that seems to be completely gone. And you see now where, you know the Bitcoin and all the rest of this stuff. And it's like he has two he has two jobs. He has the, on the one hand, he has the, the most important job, which is, ideally to protect the people of the United States. And then there's the other job he has, where he's, he's involved with all these different businesses and companies and everything. And it's really, it's really a conflict of interest, in a sense,

Blanca Pena 9:17
totally, yeah, yeah. It's funny. You mentioned the London visit. I don't know if you saw this too, or maybe I'm just too much on Twitter, but when he arrived to the UK, there was a huge projection of him and Jeffrey Epstein up on a building, and the anti Trump protests started, there were like beach balls, and the beach balls had a picture of, I don't know if you've also seen this, but they they make memes out of JD Vance's face, and they make it into that one. They make it into a big baby. And those pictures are on the beach balls, and they're all kind of protesting Trump. And it's, it's, it's like me being Gen Z and having. At, you know, seriousness of going to law school, but also still being on social media and, you know, being a consumer of meme culture, if you will. Okay, the the two fold like experience that I, that I have every single day now with these things is is pretty interesting, to say the least, because I look at these things through the serious way, and I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, a lot of our amendments are on the line here. Not amendments rights are on the line here. But then I see a picture of JD Vance and like a lollipop, and I'm like, What are we doing? I think I don't know if you got to watch the interview with cash Patel of a few Congress members asking how many times Trump was in the Epstein files, and he's like, I don't know. And they're like, Well, is it more than 1000 he's like, no more than 500 No, 100 No. He's like, Well, how many then? He's like, Well, I don't know. It's like, so then what it I just think this is all so disappointing, because you would think that the way that this country was set up was meant to prevent things exactly like this from happening. That was the entire idea, no kings, no kings at all. That's right, right? This is for the people, by the people, and now we're in this, yeah. I mean, yeah, oligarchy, patriarchy, whatever you want to call it fascist, you know, society, yeah, yeah. And, well, what do we do?

Charles Stanton 11:31
Well, what's what's interesting to me is the acceptance of a lot of this stuff by people who obviously know better that it's not correct. In the case of the Epstein thing, this is a very simple process. You know, there's no really legal complexities here. Yeah, here is the basic, here is the basic thing that I would say, I don't say it as I don't say it as a progressive or as a liberal or just as an American, just as an American. We are aware in this country of Jeffrey Epstein and his partner, just Lane Maxwell, participating in horrific crimes that went back over many, many years. Those crimes involve people of high power and high prestige in our country, leaders of business and industry, people in politics. All that we have a duty in our country to protect those not just not just those people who were harmed, but in the people in the future who could be harmed by people like this. So to me, it's a very simple equation. All the records are released, all the bank records are released, and you evaluate exactly what has been brought out. I think they should have a special committee in the Congress of both Republicans and Democrats. It can be, it can be 5050. Can be whatever mix they have, including Maga people and progressive people. And you know, of course, there's been a lot of Maga people who are very much for the release of the records as well. Yeah, bring all these people together, and the facts are what they are, yeah, and if and if and if, the facts are that people who are in influence, donors, or whatever they are, they were in Hollywood. I really don't care about that, right? I just care about the fact that not just, not just these women and girls, but but women in the future to be protected. They have their day, in which case this stuff is laid out as to what these people did, the failure of the Congress in this is deplorable. Just the other day or last week, they had a situation where they made a motion to try to get the committee, the House committee, to subpoena the bank records of all these transactions, which is absolutely correctly what they should have done. People need to know how what the bank was doing with these customers of theirs while there were literally 1000s of transactions that were suspicious. Yeah? And we, as regular people, like, we're overdrawn on our bank account by $30 it's like a big deal. Here you have people transferring vast sums of money, yeah, and then you had, then you had the man who's the chairman of the board, or whatever you want to call him chase. He apparently didn't know that Jeffrey Epstein had a $250 million deposit in his bank. Now, how could that be? How could that be? I mean, it's just not it's just not credible. And then, and then you have people who worked in the bank who repeatedly told. Told the people at the higher in the hierarchy of the bank that there were a lot of very bizarre things going on. Just blew it off.

Blanca Pena 15:06
Of course, it's convenient. It's convenient to say it was all, quote, unquote, under their noses and they had no idea. Yeah. And as a woman seeing these things, it's very disappointing to see men get away with things. I mean, of course, abusers come in both gender, shape, sizes, whatever you want to call it. But you know, specifically, it's like you have these men who are rich and powerful and famous and they're getting away with horrific things. But even on a smaller scale, I think, you know, you you get to talking with people and they say things like, oh, but also, women can lie, and with a lie like that, it can ruin a man's career. But does it? Does it? I mean, I don't mean to name drop too many people, but like, let's take Chris Brown, for example. That was, like, a big thing back then with Rihanna, and you saw the pictures come out of how she looked, and it was a clearly very abusive and toxic relationship. And guess what? He's still popping and locking on a stage, he's still selling tickets, he's still doing his thing, making money, making music. And it's just like a recurrence over and over again, and it's the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Is just the recent thing, but it almost just feels like a pattern. And yeah, I don't know if I've ever seen justice be served with things like this, and it makes me angry. It really does

Charles Stanton 16:29
well, I'm very much of the same mind. I believe that there should be really zero tolerance for this stuff. I think that the laws are not what they should be. I'm not saying that there's never a case when somebody makes up stuff that didn't happen, because in the world, there's always a possibility, but in, but in, but in my experience in the law and from my teaching and my scholarship and everything, the overwhelming majority of these cases are horrific. Yeah, there's like no, there's like no, not just no excuse for them, but it is really the responsibility of our society that we stand up for and with the people who have been harmed. The whole problem in this country with abuse of women starts not at the level of what Jeffrey Epstein was doing or Harvey Weinstein was doing. It just starts at the level of abuse in the home, women being battered, women being abused. Yeah, and the whole, the whole lack of response on the part of law enforcement, oh, yeah, that women are not are not believed or not listened to, or what happens to them is trivialized.

Blanca Pena 18:02
Yeah, I was gonna say it's almost like women reporting sometimes get more of the backlash than the man who was reported like they like they start calling her a liar or she wants attention or money or something like that. And just the standard that these women and men. You know, whoever is on is on that side of of the situation. The standard that they're held to to prove their case is so unbelievably high. I so I'm in the domestic violence survivors and representation clinic at the law school and law enforcement at from what I've seen so far, needs like text messages are not enough. Pictures are not enough. It's almost like they want a 4k video of them getting slapped for the police to be like, Okay, we'll look into this. We'll investigate, we'll charge someone. But and here's the thing too, abuse is not one size fits all. It's not always a big man punching a woman, you know, into the floor. It could be financial abuse, it could be sexual abuse. It could be, you know, withholding the kids, instilling fear, yeah, you know, just controlling her in every aspect. It comes in different sizes and and this is why women don't report, because they're afraid of their abuser, yeah, and they're afraid of getting turned around by law enforcement. They're afraid of maybe getting embarrassed by their family. Because, you know, it happens too, where whoever is facing this abuse is making excuses be for that person, because they love them, and they probably have conversations with their friends and their family saying no, like they're probably they're a good person, and it just keeps happening and happening, and at some point it just becomes embarrassing, at least for for some people. And I know this from experience, but it's just too much of a toll, and that's why people like this get away with it even more so when that person is someone famous and rich and can ruin your career and can make. You shut up forever. It's like it's a balancing act of okay, do I want to speak up and put myself out there, or would I rather just put my head down and just hope it ends someday?

Charles Stanton 20:10
Yeah, yes, I agree with that. I mean, you look at Hollywood as a perfect example. And you know, they call it, what was it. They called it the casting couch syndrome. But it goes way. It goes way beyond the casting couch syndrome. When you see what the what the video showed when Puff Daddy was dragging the woman across the floor, yes, there's, there's no, you have to have two things. You have to have. You have to have responsive, responsive, empathetic law enforcement, but you also have to have the certainty of long punishment. There has to be a system where people who do these things are not around to do them anymore. They go away for long periods of time, and in that way, you protect people from them. And I think that the society has been largely indifferent, you know, it's very, very ironic because, you know, there have been a number of documentaries recently, because I'm sort of into I did a lot of sports coaching when I was younger, so I'm into that to a degree.

Blanca Pena 21:26
You're seasoned

Charles Stanton 21:28
a little bit. The days of my athletic brilliance are gone, but, oh,

Blanca Pena 21:34
I doubt it. I'm sure you could still sprint a mile.

Charles Stanton 21:38
But they've had a number of documentaries now, and it's very fascinating to me about abuse of men in all these different universities who are on the athletic teams. And I'm saying, Wow, that's, that's, that's really interesting. That never really came out before. But a lot of this is because in the universities, a lot of stuff is covered up. I mean, I would be interested to find out the true statistics of American universities, as to find out how many complaints there actually were, and how many complaints the administrations of these universities really tried to help the people. Yeah. I mean, it was that case in Stanford, you know, a few years ago where the guy, what was his name? The name escapes me. Where he sexually abused this woman, then they threw her in a garbage can, and then he got, he had to, he had to take a semester off. Oh, that's ridiculous. That's really mind boggling. That's horrible. But select, I think, I think what a lot of it is to overriding what you said, which is so correct, especially in the treatment of women and in the system. It's a lack of respect, you know, it's a lack of respect, you know. You know from having worked in the justice system, it's a lack of respect, like somebody comes to you with that kind of a situation. It's not something to be ignored. This person was grievously harmed. I mean, something should, something should activate in you that you want to help the person. But people are so indifferent today, I think that's our problem in America more than any other problem. Yes, it's a problem about, you know, different factions, but it's also about people who don't care. They don't want to be bothered,

Blanca Pena 23:28
yeah, or they do. They simply do things wrong. There's all you'd be surprised, how many victims of abuse are actually the ones that get arrested. Oh, yeah, and it's they, you know, when people are never in the criminal justice system and they're all of a sudden thrown in, they don't know what to do, and they get this deal from the DA like, oh, just plead no contest. Take this anger management class, pay this fee, and then you'll be all done. You'll just have a misdemeanor on your record, but you'll be done, right? And you have victims of abuse who now have criminal records simply because they either defended themselves or they were drained and just couldn't deal with it anymore, couldn't do it, and their abuser ends up calling the cops first, and just because it was them who cried wolf first. Yeah, the cops come and, you know, they make up whatever story, or they say, Oh, she hit me, or he hit me, or whoever, and the victim gets arrested. And so we need, we need a hard reset button on our system, just in all aspects, because we, I think we have the right idea in the beginning, but as we have seen, especially in recent times, the more we just apply it to real life, the more it disappoints, the more it lets us down. And that's just, you know, we're not meant to be perfect, and that's okay. I just think we need more love in the world. And yeah, I agree, though, if we love, if we love, and if we truly want to, you know, further. Our society and humanity, we need to take a look at ourselves and fix what we endorse and fix what we do in our day to day life. We don't have to make big, giant changes all the time, because that's, you know, it takes a while, but even just on an individual level, doing acts of kindness every now and then, you know, understanding people, listening to them, yeah, not being so skeptical about everything all the time. It's yeah. We just need more love in the world, I think. And it sounds corny, but it's

Charles Stanton 25:34
true. I believe that I well, I you know me from seeing me in the class when I talk. That's our our duty and our obligation to move outside of ourselves and to see people who need who need our help, who need our guidance, who need our support. The society, in many ways, heralds the individual. It's about me, it's about what I want. It's about what I need. But there's a world outside of yourself that you have to you have to confront it, yeah, especially when, especially when you you know you see things that you know are wrong. One of the problems we have today in our society, not just in you know, what we've just been talking about in our government, it's a lack of belief. Though, see all these things that are going on in the country right now, and a lot of which we know are wrong, aren't being corrected, because the people who were supposed to be the checks and balances, they don't have a system of beliefs. So when you, as I think I mentioned in the class, when you talk about what a person does, let's say they go into Supreme Court, or they go into the Congress. Well, they take an oath, yeah, but the condition preceding to taking the oath, though, is that you believe in certain things you could take the oath Don't be meaningless, yeah, if you don't believe in certain basic like principles, that are things that you would think people do believe in. Yeah, that's how they rationalize it.

Blanca Pena 27:07
Yeah, those are our pillars. And if we don't believe in them, then they mean nothing. I mean, I just took the MPRE this past summer. I passed, thankfully, but it's like, I'm over here stressing out about this ethics exam, and I'm learning about the ethics that I need to maintain as a lawyer, and without passing it, I can't become a lawyer. But it's like, Okay, I am forced to take this test and pass it and follow all the rules, or else I'll lose my future bar license. Yet, where are the ethics and all of these people in government and and politics and in the law, I

Charles Stanton 27:45
Well, I don't see it. Well, what you say, what you say, is the definition of the perfect example of the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court is supposed to be the zenith of the law. It's the law. The people who are at the top of the food chain, but in a good way, they don't have an ethics code. They don't want an ethics code. They're not interested in having an ethics code. Of course not. Then they have people appearing before them who are who are connect, who have given them goodies, who've given them trips, who have given them all these different things, and you say to yourself, well, that's like a basic thing. That's like a first year law student knows you can't take anything, you can't take anything, but they're doing it, and they're not they're not ashamed of it. Well, on that sort of somber note, we're going to wrap up our our program for tonight. We thank you so much for listening. I thank my partner for being with me. Thank you and lending lending her voice to you. Know what we're trying to do here, which is to reach out to all of you, regardless of your party, regardless of your political affiliation, regard, regardless of who you voted for, that there are certain things that should be universal among us, and we hope we can never stop talking about them, and you never stop listening.

Blanca Pena 29:07
Thank you all. Good night. You.

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