Entitled

We've all heard about different kinds of laws...but there is a higher order law that often gets overlooked—it's called Natural Law. The idea behind Natural Law is that all humans are born with an innate understanding of what's right and what's wrong, and that laws should be based on morality. In today's world, where there is no shortage of international wars, authoritarian leaders, human rights violations, and more, where and how can Natural Law be applied? 

On this episode, we speak with Mary Ellen O'Connell, Professor of Law at Notre Dame and an expert on international law. O'Connell has been studying Natural Law over her career, and gives a justification for how it could be applied in scenarios from the Russia vs. Ukraine war, international human rights, and more. 

When it comes to discussion about the conflict in Gaza, there is an endless parade of commentators on both sides telling us what is right or wrong, legitimate or illegal, a crime or a justified attack, but in all that debate and discussion the actual international laws of war often get pushed to the sidelines. 

We’re planning to do a series of episodes on this conflict in the coming     weeks, but we wanted to start by getting a baseline understand on the laws of war with an international expert.

Oona Hathaway is a professor of international law and a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law at the United States Department of State since 2005. For decades, she’s been exploring the complicated legal questions that are coming to the forefront since October 7th which makes her the perfect guest for this episode.

The word apartheid gets used in many different contexts to indicate the severity of crimes across the globe. But its use is controversial because the word has a very specific definition in international law. Even more controversial is the concept of expanding the term to include gender.

If there is one place on earth where it could be argued that a gender apartheid designation is needed its Afghanistan. Since the US withdrawal from the country, the Taliban have instituted a brutal repression of women. But is it gender apartheid?

What would it mean for us to create this designation and assign it to Afghanistan? Does cultural relativism throw a legitimate wrench into this argument or does that take the concept too far?

We discuss all these questions on this episode with Mohammad “Musa” Mahmodi, a Research Fellow in Law at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale, Zahra Motamedi, an Associate Research Fellow at Yale, and Karima Bennoune, the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and author of “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here”.

In recent years, book bans have swept the nation. According to PEN America, more than 4,000 books have been banned in some capacity in public schools since July 2021. Books that discuss topics like racial justice or have characters that identify as LGBTQ+ are just some of the examples that have received widespread attention. While book bans are not a new phenomenon, parents rights groups have accelerated their attacks on what books can be put on school's shelves, leaving a bigger question up for debate: Who should decide what books are available, and moreover, who has the right to read certain books?

The American Library Association has been helping to support libraries as democratic institutions for decades by providing resources to librarians about what books to select based on the information needs of the communities to which they serve. In this episode, we speak with Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom and Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation. Caldwell-Stone discusses why book bans have increased in recent years, and why she says the right to read needs to be protected.

As kids, we all heard someone tell us that it's wrong to lie...but as we grew older, we realized that people lie all the time. Politicians, presidents, and even executives at corporations tell lies—big and small. As citizens, there are obvious exceptions where lying is wrong, for instance; perjury, lying on your employment application, or lying to get a bank loan. But do we have a right to lie? And if so, what are the boundaries?

On this episode, we speak with UCLA Professor of Philosophy and Law Seana Shiffrin and George Washington University Professor of Law Catherine Ross. They discuss both the philosophical arguments against lying and the legal arguments against notorious lies made by President Trump and former Congressman George Santos.

We’re doing something special for this month’s episode. In October of 2023, we hosted a live recording here at the University of Chicago. Tom Ginsburg was joined on stage by renowned scholar Genevie Laikier to have a conversation about free speech on social media. In other words, it was very relevant to our current season about the right to free expression.

We’re going to share that recording with you this month. We hope you enjoy, and thanks to everyone who listened to our podcast this year.

Some might say one of the most important ways we exercise the right to free expression is through protests. And we’ve certainly seen groups all over the world using that right in the last few years, from the George Floyd protests in the U.S. to democratic marches in Hong Kong to demonstrations in Chile, Venezuela, Iran and Peru.

On the surface this right may seem straightforward, but there are many thorny questions to grapple with: when does a protest become a violent violation of other rights, what does it mean to protest in the age of surveillance, does the content of the protest matter for it to be protected? On this episode, we speak with Jameel Jaffer, Adjunct Professor of Law and Journalism and Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

We all know the phrase: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But is that actually true? Recent research in psychology has shown that words can cause a plethora of different harms. Should this make us re-think our approach to hate speech?

In the US we’ve been hesitant to regulate hate speech, while other countries have been incredibly stringent. Which approach is right, and why? And, how do we even define what hate speech is anyway?

To get some answers we sit down with Yale Professor Robert Post and Laura Beth Nielsen the Chair of the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University.

On the third season of Entitled, we're circling back to the first fundamental right: the freedom of speech. Lawyers and law professors Claudia Flores and Tom Ginsburg begin this season by peeling back the curtains of how this right is currently playing out at universities across the country. In recent years, there have been tensions — and intense clashes — around speakers invited to campus, what professors are allowed to say in the classroom, and what subject matter should even be allowed to be taught. Now, with many of these cases making their way to the courts, is free speech at universities entering a dangerous new era?

In this episode, they speak with Robert Post, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School; and Ben Wizner, Director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the ACLU; and Komi Frey, Director of Faculty Outreach at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

On our last season, we focused entirely on the idea of equality from an international perspective. But when it comes to domestic questions of equality, or equity, they often focus on an important and specific topic: race. And one of the leading voices in that conversation is Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.

Kendi is most famous for his 2019 book "How To Be An Anti-racist". The book argues that the opposite of racism isn’t “not racist” but anti-racist. Meaning, rather than just being neutrally against racism you actively try to remove the inequality generated by racism and racism itself from society. This year he released a graphic novel version of his earlier history of slavery which is called "Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America"

Although we missed out on having Kendi on last season we thought, with the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, that this was the perfect time to talk with him about how his views intersect with human rights, international law, the concept of the University and his thoughts on the recent case.