Social Justice - A Conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:03
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.

Unknown Speaker 0:09
Hi, I'm Gabriella Tam. I'm a fourth year accounting student.

Unknown Speaker 0:13
And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation, a conversation. Well, good evening, everybody. We're back again. Charles Stanton with my partner, Gabriella Tam, hello. And we are here to talk about the matters involving social justice. And it's almost like being at a restaurant, you have some courses that are served every week. And then there's some new things that are brought on to the menu. I guess the most immediate thing we could talk about tonight is the the vote in Ohio to establish in the state constitution, the right of a woman to have an abortion basically. And, of course, what's what's interesting, Gabriella was the fact that after the Supreme Court decision, and almost all the states that voted to to, you know, establish these rights as of state law, all the people who voted for the ability of a woman to have to have that right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:19
I feel like that's so interesting, because the Supreme Court should be, I guess, like, representing the issue. They should be representative what? Like everyone writes, once, right? Everyone wants the right to abortion. Why are they overturning? Like, all these things? Yeah. And taking away our right to abortion? Yeah. Well,

Unknown Speaker 1:38
I'll tell you, I think, you know, I've said this before. I think it's the patriarchy. Yep. I think I'll put it this way. There are a lot of people who are against abortion. Yeah, for very sincere reasons. I mean, there were religious reasons. They didn't they don't believe, you know, that I respect. But I think there's a lot of people who are against the woman's right to have an abortion, because they feel that the women should be subservient to them, and that they can control women and tell women basically what to do, and just control their lives, basically. Yeah. You know,

Unknown Speaker 2:18
like, it's tough. It gets me like, so heated because, like, I am my own person, no one can control me. Right. Right. You know, yeah. Um, and like, I feel like, like these people who, who believe that women should have the right to an abortion, I feel like, it just like doesn't affect them. So I don't understand why they feel like they should have a say, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:45
yeah. Yeah, I think I think one of the interesting things about it, too, is that, you know, they're talking about the life of the unborn child. And I understand I understand that part of it. But what's interesting is, they would deny health care to women who might need to have an abortion, because it was medically necessary. Yeah. Or, or a woman who was abused. Yeah. or what have you. There was a very effective ad. That was on I think it was in Ohio, where this girl I she was, like, 13, or 14 years old. Oh, I think I read about Yeah, yeah. And she talks about what happened to her, you know, in her family. And there are a lot of these laws in these in these certain states. There is no exception for rape or incest. Yeah. And I'm saying to myself, Well, what about the life of the person who was harmed like that? What are their rights? So in other words, the rapist or the person who did this, they basically get away with harming someone? Yeah. And then the person who they've harmed, not only has the trauma of the harm that's already been done to them, but they don't even have access to medical care. Yeah. Now, there's something wrong there.

Unknown Speaker 4:08
No, it's weird, because it's like, nice people. They're like, Oh, I care so much about the unborn baby. But as soon as that baby leaves the womb, they don't care about them anymore. Yeah. Well, I

Unknown Speaker 4:19
think that's true. I think that there's there's a great disparity between the people who are very much anti abortion, some of whom are sincere and some of whom are not. Yeah, but our society as far as caring for children. The record is not good.

Unknown Speaker 4:44
Yeah, exactly. And another thing is like, they're like, Oh, I mean, you can just have the kid and put them up for adoption. These kids are not being adopted though. And like if they are being adopted, there's like, a very only a few get picked, like these kids who Don't end up growing and growing up in the system. They don't they don't get picked. And then and then what? And then they have to go fend for themselves. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 5:06
yeah, no, it's true. Well, we see it. We see it here in this city. Yeah. Well, you have a lot of kids. We have a very high mental illness issue in the city. We don't have the mental health care services that we need. We don't have the counseling services that we need. And we have an issue with teen suicide. Yeah, that's another huge issue, not not just in this city, but in the wild places in our country. Yeah. And there's a whole bunch of reasons. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. But there is a lot of it, it comes down to indifference, though, if you are indifferent, you know, people. I'm not saying all people, because there's a lot of good people. But there's a lot of there's a lot of people in this world as long as it doesn't happen to them or concern them. They don't care. They don't care. Really. Yeah, they don't care. And you and you can see that. And you can see that. What's interesting that you said which I think is very, very true, is that the court should try to reflect basically, the majority of people in the country. Yeah, I don't think you can have a viable court. If you have decision after decision, where you have basically minority rule. Yeah. And you have like 30 35% of the people basically dictating to the rest of the country, what should be. And that's basically what you have, because the numbers, as far as the polls concerned, are concerned show that between anywhere between 60 to 63 64%, up to 70%. Don't believe that a woman should be forced to you know, yeah, the child and the course, the court really is not reflective of that. So you have you have that issue. And then you have the issue of it was, as we've spoken about this before, and I'll say it again, the legitimacy of the court, in the sense that as speaking as an attorney, I respect everybody's opinion. And you know, that's America that we will we have all differences of opinion. Yeah. But the basic premise of the court or any court or even a court, you, you might go into as as a defendant or a litigant is that the people who are hearing your case, a person that's hearing your case, are unbiased. Yeah. And you have a number of judges on the court who, you know, are compromised. Yeah. And they're, and they're hearing these cases. And, you know, they've been involved and dealings with people outside of the court. And instead of recusing themselves, which would be the, you know, the proper thing to do, they go ahead and hear the case. And now there's they're still worrying about, you know, how to put together an ethics code. But there's no, there's no difficulty in putting together an ethics code. No, it's very, very simple. There's just certain basic things that you as, as a judge, or an attorney, or a doctor, or doctor, whatever you have, you can't do it. Yeah, that's it. That's it. And, you know, they're slow walking it. So who knows when this this, this, this new ethics code is going to be in, in vogue? And the other thing, of course, is that the oddity is that the Supreme Court, which is looked up to as the highest court in the land, they're the only part of the federal court system that doesn't have a code of ethics.

Unknown Speaker 8:43
That's insane. We have so many professions that, you know, have a code of ethics, like accounting, you take an ethics exam, and then I'm sure in like, law, like, there's a lot of like, ethics involved. Right? Yeah. Well, should be it should be ideally, but yeah, well, I

Unknown Speaker 8:59
think I've always had this. These thoughts, you know, you know, teaching the courses that I teach, and especially like ethics, are their ethics and business and all the rest of it. You can teach a course, in ethics. Yeah. But that doesn't give the person in the class ethics by itself. Yeah. It's something that's in the person themselves. Yeah. So you hope and pray that everybody that you teach, has an ethical background? Yeah, they have like a foundation. They have a foundation. But in many cases, it's not true with people. They don't have an ethical background or foundation. So it is, but a lot of it a lot of it has to do. I think with the institutions in our country, falling into disrespect. Yeah, I think that's another big thing. I think, you know, going back You had certain institutions that were looked up to by everybody, the Supreme Court, the church, the Boy Scouts, whatever it was, whatever it was, but now with all the scandals that you have.

Unknown Speaker 10:14
It's like, Wait, who can we trust? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 10:16
exactly. Exactly. That was a very interesting story in the paper a few few days ago, about the Southern Baptists. Oh, and this whole issue of the abuse by a lot of people in the administration of the Southern Baptists and the hierarchy of the Southern Baptist. The article was written by Ruth Graham. And of course, you know, everybody knows her relation to to Billy Graham. Yeah. But well, who was who was a Baptist religion. But if you read the article, that's a very interesting article, how it reminded me a lot of the verdict movie, because in this in this, there was all these lawsuits against them for various stuff that they covered up abuse, the rest of it, but they they disowned responsibility. They said that basically. Well, it wasn't them. This was the advice they got from the lawyers. They were dealing with.

Unknown Speaker 11:23
It's not our fault. We were advised to do this. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 11:26
That's exactly what they said. And then, in a lot of states, what they're doing now, is they're ending the statute of limitations, which I've advocated forever. I don't believe there should be any statute of limitations. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. So they asked the guy who was in charge of the whole denomination, and the guy goes, well, he says, you know, it's sort of good. But then there's things about it that I'm concerned about. And I'm thinking to myself, well, but your job is the leader of a religious organization. Yeah. Now, one of the basic tenants of religious organization is that people act ethically, yeah, like Marley, but more than but more even than that, that people who would go there to worship are protected. Yeah. So how would you have a system where all these men that worked in this organization, were doing all these things and abusing people and everything? And, you know, like, well, they shouldn't have been abusing them. But you know, it was a long time ago. That's not

Unknown Speaker 12:40
the point, though. There shouldn't be a but it shouldn't

Unknown Speaker 12:43
be about exactly. Well, it's, it's the same thing, the same thing with the Catholic Church. You know, what, what always gets me about that, and I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna droning on about this. But what always gets me about this is not even so much the abuse, but how they moved them around. Yeah, when they knew that the people were doing these things. You don't move them from church to church. And that just

Unknown Speaker 13:07
creates more victims. Right, exactly.

Unknown Speaker 13:08
That's exactly. That's exactly what it does. That's exactly what it does. So so. So that's how we begin our program. And, you know, as we've been on the Supreme Court, of course, they have heard the arguments on the whole question of whether a person who has domestic abuse complaints or or there is a restraining order against them should still be allowed to purchase guns. And, of course, to me, it's a no brainer. Yeah. That you don't have you don't have a person who is in that state of mind, who has a past record of abuse, being able to to have a gun. No,

Unknown Speaker 13:52
I yeah, I agree. You know, it is a no brainer. Like, it's a

Unknown Speaker 13:56
no brainer, but they're having this argument before the Supreme Court now. And the other thing that's interesting about it is, you know, that as far as like domestic abuse is concerned, I've often thought about this. The only remedy that the person who's abused has usually as a restraining order, whether it's whether it's a woman or a man, and it can be men too. Yeah, it's not just women, although it's mostly women.

Unknown Speaker 14:24
Yeah. But But men, as well. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 14:29
See, the restraining order is a double edged sword. On the one hand, you get a restraining order against the person who's violent. Yeah, but what happens a lot of times is that even that antagonizes the person even more No, yeah, the restraining order, so they come back to the house, yeah, etc. And then other things start to happen and you know, cetera, et cetera. So I don't have an easy answer for but certainly the idea that some will be able to get Got a Gun? A scary shouldn't be. Yeah. And of course, that's become that's becoming an even bigger and bigger issue every day with now of course the thing that happened in Maine. Yeah. And just just a backtrack about that a little bit in the thing in Maine, of course, they had they actually had a Yellow Flag Law in Maine. So they actually had a law where a person could be, could be held for a certain amount of time. If, you know, he was he was deemed to be a danger to society, the society. Right. Okay. So that's, that's very interesting to me because in that particular case, they had the military had been involved, the family had been involved. Everybody knew the guy was. So anyway, the police went to his trailer. Okay. And you figure, okay, you know, they're gonna take him in and, you know, we're having held under observation or something. And then they heard him inside the trailer, but you got the vibe from reading the stories, they didn't come out and just say it, but, you know, they were thinking, Well, you know, it could be a problem with I don't know what we should do.

Unknown Speaker 16:17
Our lives are on the line. Let's just go away. You guys. Let's not deal with this. Well, that's

Unknown Speaker 16:22
that's relatively what they did. They went away. And then he did what he did. So that's another like, disturbing thing. You know,

Unknown Speaker 16:34
I wonder if the police officers like feel guilty about it. Like they could have stopped it. But then they're like, Oh, I am scared. Well, I'm not gonna do

Unknown Speaker 16:42
I think I think I just don't knowing what knowing what they knew about the man. Yeah, I think it was a complete dereliction of duty. Yeah. You have to go you have to? You have to whether it was an arrest warrant, or whatever it was, yeah, that's your job. No, yeah. Well, you

Unknown Speaker 17:01
signed up for this. You signed up your job is to protect Yeah, your wherever, like your county, the state the city you're protecting? Yeah, if you're not going in, because you're scared that you're gonna die. Yeah. Like, what? I

Unknown Speaker 17:15
was talking with a guy the other night, he was talking to me about, just like the police response. And a lot of these places. Yeah. Where? Oh, I had a conversation, a conversation. I had a conversation with the guy who was at the pharmacy, I use, he was telling me that, you know, they have all these incidents in the store, shoplifting, whatever it is. Yeah. A lot of times the police don't show up. Yeah. How is that?

Unknown Speaker 17:41
And I think like, if people are stealing from the sword, like they can't do anything, either. They just have to like, let it happen. Yeah, well,

Unknown Speaker 17:49
sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. No doubt. And but going back to the guns for a second, Mike Bloomberg had an excellent article column in the magazine that he owns BusinessWeek magazine. And it was all about, you know, how the country is run by the gun lobby, basically. And these people determine, you know, all of our policy. But I think I think even gun owners, a lot of gun owners are not for what's going on either. Yeah, but nobody has a voice in our country. Yes. Is the that's the crazy thing, that the Congress basically does not serve us.

Unknown Speaker 18:30
Nope. nacer businesses and corporations or businesses and corporations.

Unknown Speaker 18:35
And I don't know, I don't know how you change that, basically. Because I think that I think they definitely need now to read through reinstall the gun ban that they had for a number of years and and elapsed, of course, I think they definitely need to do that you can just see from the statistics. But no, it's it's really crazy, though, that common sense has been abandoned. Like, certain things like you would know, like, I can't have a person who's deranged walking around, or just from a logical point of view in Texas, where if you're 18, you could get an assault weapon. But you can't get a handgun until you're 21. That's insane. One of my neighbors, I was talking to one of my neighbors the other day, and she was telling me about how that she has. She has a clock. Yeah. And clocks like a high powered gun. Yeah, you could fire off a number of bullets. And it's a gun unless you really know how to use it. You couldn't always control it. Yeah. How do people get access to all this stuff, though? See, that's the other thing. Yeah, you know, but so that's so that's troubling. And they had a very interesting article about you know, talking about police response and law enforcement response. Yeah, all these indigenous women and young girls that are missing in Colorado, where they have like 2020 100 missing persons cases really where they can't, where they can find these kids or young women. And this is an interesting thing. This is, this is an interesting thing and relating to the indigenous people. Yeah. There was a movie several years ago called Wind River. It's by the guy who made the Yellowstone series. And it's all about this, I guess it's it's in Wyoming. How all these girls and young people disappeared off the reservation, and they can't, and they can't locate them. And then that then that goes to the whole issue of the of the treatment of the Indians, and you know, the whole reservation system, and the medical care. So it branches out into a lot of things. But as I was reading, I was reading the arc. I said, Well, that's what's going on in Mexico, too. We're like copying Mexico. But Mexico, of course, has exploded, you literally have 10s of 1000s of people that are missing. They just disappear and ever found. That's so scary, you know, but it's a lack of, as I say, it's a lack of,

Unknown Speaker 21:19
of interest. Yeah, like I haven't heard like, I haven't seen this on the news or anything. Yeah, oh,

Unknown Speaker 21:24
it's a big thing. It's a big thing. You know, well, what's what well, what's been on the news, what's been on the news, if for those who are receptive to possibly listening to it, and taking it to heart is the new study by the American Hospital Association. And a new study by the American Hospital Association, pretty much definitively states that the US the using of cannabis, marijuana vaping, all those things that seem to be very common today are really, really bad for you. Now, we always know, of course, that there were a number of studies done on brain impairment and thought and all the rest of the stuff, which obviously showed that it's not a smart thing to do. But now the link between heart failure, heart attacks, the likelihood or possibility that you could be prone to getting a stroke. And it just really was like a major warning that went out. And it reminded me, it reminded me so much in a way of the insider movie, because in the insider movie that the villain was cigarettes. Yeah. And they got they got, I wouldn't say they got rid of cigarettes that people still smoke. But the idea that, you know, they established that it was an addictive substance, they established that the the tobacco companies were trying to get people addicted to it, and then they cracked down on it. They got all kinds of judgments against them. But now we've been replaced with something and in a lot of ways is worse than the cigarettes. No, yeah. And what do you what do you think the reason is why the government has not been active in any of this money? Money? Yes, money?

Unknown Speaker 23:14
No, but like, it was. It's interesting, like, um, sorry, um, like, they were like, commercials and stuff. were pointing, you know, like, hey, like, don't smoke, like, this is what, this is what happened to me after so many years of smoking, and then there was a decline in like, cigarettes and stuff, but then like, vaping, and all this stuff came out. And then it the sales were that like skyrocketing? Yeah. And you could tell like, they were targeting like people like my age. People even like younger than me, which is scary. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:48
Well, one of the one of the doctors was talking about jewel. Yeah. And how many people are smoking jewel products and taking jewel products? Yeah. And how the people who were involved in these alternatives to cigarettes, got involved with with different flavors and the rest of that stuff, you know, and it's a definite problem, though. Yeah, it's a definite problem. And of course, it's also a problem that you don't have to the medical facilities, the counselors, to to talk to people and to basically one about the dangers, you know, but as you say, it's money. It's money. See, it's the tax minor taken in, see the marijuana, the government is taking in an enormous amount of money.

Unknown Speaker 24:38
And it's interesting because like, federally like marijuana is banned. Like it like these businesses can't technically report that they're like, they're selling like marijuana. So it's just like, it's just like, interesting to me. How is like, how it how it it's like, so how there's so much money involved. Oh, No, it's just like as an accountant, it's like so interesting. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 25:02
Well, the thing is too, though, that, you know, they've legalized the lung stuff.

Unknown Speaker 25:09
That's also true here here especially Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 25:11
so but but here's the thing, though, as a physician, or a police officer, just to name two professions, and there's others. Yeah, it's a disqualifier, though. If you're, I mean, you know, like, we saw the movie training day. But that's, that's, that's, that's that your drug tested? Yeah. So you got anybody who's a law enforcement person, and they're doing whatever a drug they're doing? You're gone. You get rid of you. But so if that's the case, if it's an impact, if it's an impairment to them, why would why would it be still being sold to everybody else? See, that's the whole thing. If it really does these harms that they say it doesn't, I believe it does the harms. Why would you have people who, like it's okay for everybody else to do it. But this particular class of people can't do it. And they've had so many cases, one of the problems with the marijuana thing. And these these vaping investors, is all the all the accidents and Robo deaths have been caused by people driving in in neighboring states to the state that legalize it, and the other states didn't legalize it. Yeah. So you know, like, where, you know, like, Colorado has had a whole bunch of cases Kansas. I mean, you know, people travel around, you know, they're drugged up, they get into a car accident, and while the expenses and the litigation and everything, so so people, so people inherently know that it's dangerous. But as always, it's always about the money. Yeah, it's always about the money. And I

Unknown Speaker 26:50
feel like it's also like, like you said, like, Why? Why can why can one class of people do it, but the other class I can't? I feel like it's just to create, like separation, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. Even more separation. Yeah. There is no, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 27:07
Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. It's interesting that you mentioned that because the one of the professions, obviously, that would be watched very carefully, is if you're a pilot. Oh, yeah. You know, and you

Unknown Speaker 27:19
can't fully rely on autopilot. Oh, you got to, you know,

Unknown Speaker 27:23
and what's that? That's as an aside, though, it's very, very interesting. I don't know if you'd say it's social justice, but certainly People's Protection. How many people in the in the aviation industry now are being made pilots, because of, you know, the tremendous demand for air travel? And, and the thing is that they have very little experience. Yeah. So you're getting people who are being made pilots who only have one or two years experience, and they're piloting your plane? That's another that's another kind of dicey thing. Hey, no, I was on a flight. I'm not gonna mention the airline. But I'm just gonna say that the guy who was the pilot, he was not a happy camper. Oh, no, yeah, he had gone. He had that same day gone from San Francisco to Boston. And then he went from Boston to New Jersey, oh, to go to Vegas. Oh, he came out of the cockpit. And he was not a happy camper. And that's all I'm gonna say, Oh, my goodness, oh, you can fill in the blanks there. But so so that's basically our that's basically the, our the meal that we've served for this week. And we hope that it's been of some interest to you. We hope you enjoyed the meal. We hope you enjoyed the meal. And we will be back next week. Because in the world we live in, where so many people could do the right thing. Many times they don't. And we try to. We're all looking out for you out there that hope you can, you know, not just listen to the show, but it piques your interest to learn more about the topics that we talked about.

Unknown Speaker 29:10
Okay, thank you for listening.

Unknown Speaker 29:12
See you next time.

Unknown Speaker 29:13
Thank you so much. Good night.

Unknown Speaker 29:15
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.

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