The Bush administration’s use of torture after 9/11 was aided by government lawyers who provided contorted legal justifications for its use against detainees. In this episode, Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy during the George W. Bush administration, joins hosts Katy Glenn Bass and Madhav Khosla to recount how he discovered that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay detention facility had been authorized to use techniques that he believed qualified as torture. He explains how his initial assumption that this was due to misguided advice by other lawyers that could be corrected gave way to the realization that the abuse was deliberate and sanctioned at the highest levels of the United States government. Mora reflects on the moral and strategic costs of torture, the failure to hold high-level government officials accountable for authorizing it, and how that absence of accountability has helped pave the way for the broader erosion of legal norms we see today. 

"Lawyering Without Law" is brought to you by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Please subscribe and leave a review. We’d love to know what you think.

To learn more about the Knight Institute, visit our website, knightcolumbia.org, and follow us on social media.

What happens when lawyers stop believing that law and politics are different things? Constitutional law scholar Deborah Pearlstein joins host Katy Glenn Bass to discuss legal ethics, the rule of law, and how decades of erosion of norms within the legal profession have fueled the democratic backsliding we’re witnessing in America today.

Pearlstein’s scholarship and her forthcoming book, Losing the Law, map the forces that have weakened the ethical foundations of American law—from the Reagan-era DOJ and the rise of the conservative legal movement, to the diminishing options for holding lawyers accountable for actions that undermine democracy. 

Her diagnosis is sobering. But Pearlstein also offers a surprising and ambitious proposal for how the legal profession and American democracy might find their way back.

"Lawyering Without Law" is brought to you by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Please subscribe and leave a review. We’d love to know what you think.

To learn more about the Knight Institute, visit our website, knightcolumbia.org, and follow us on social media.

Bribery is the corruption we prosecute. But according to Lawrence Lessig, it's institutional corruption that poses the most danger to American democracy. Hosts Katy Glenn Bass and Madhav Khosla speak with the Harvard Law professor who makes a pointed distinction: the corruption hollowing out American institutions isn’t about bribes, it’s structural—the capture of courts, law firms, corporations, and Congress by economic dependencies pull each away from its founding purpose and leave them vulnerable to political pressure. Yet Lessig finds hope in the lawyers who have refused to bend, in universities that eventually drew a line, and in preparing law students to make professional decisions that align with their values.

"Lawyering Without Law" is brought to you by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Please subscribe and leave a review. We’d love to know what you think.

To learn more about the Knight Institute, visit our website, knightcolumbia.org, and follow us on social media.

What does authoritarianism look like when it operates through law? In the first episode of “Lawyer Without Law,” hosts Katy Glenn Bass and Madhav Khosla speak with Princeton University Professor Kim Lane Scheppele. They explore historic examples of the legal profession’s role in democratic backsliding around the world and in the United States.

They examine how authoritarian leaders have exploited legal systems to consolidate power, what that means for legal institutions as democratic norms come under strain, and how lawyers have too often been complicit in this dynamic. 

"Lawyering Without Law" is brought to you by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Please subscribe and leave a review. We’d love to know what you think.

To learn more about the Knight Institute, visit our website, knightcolumbia.org, and follow us on social media.

What happens when law becomes a tool of democratic decline?

Authoritarianism is often framed as lawless. But many of the most effective assaults on democracy operate through law itself.

“Lawyering Without Law” is a biweekly podcast examining the role lawyers play in defending democracy or facilitating the slide into authoritarianism.

Across six episodes, the series brings together scholars, litigators, and practitioners to explore how legal systems are used, bent, and contested as democratic backsliding unfolds in the United States and around the world.

"Lawyering Without Law" is brought to you by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Please subscribe and leave a review. We’d love to know what you think.

To learn more about the Knight Institute, visit our website, knightcolumbia.org, and follow us on social media.