Senior CNN Legal Analyst Elie Honig challenges whether the rule of law is under attack when powerful people square off against judges and juries. As author of Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It and a former federal and state prosecutor, he served on air as a CNN Senior Legal Analyst throughout the first criminal trial and conviction of a former US President.

Kathy Spillar, Executive Director of Feminist Majority Foundation and Executive Editor of MS Magazine joins SideBar to discuss why ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is an essential legal tool to guarantee women's rights. Ratification of the ERA would constitutionally prohibit sex discrimination, recognize systemic inequities across different groups of people, and uplift historically marginalized people to achieve true equality and justice.

Madiba K. Dennie is an attorney, columnist, author, and professor whose work focuses on fostering an equitable multiracial democracy. Dennie is the author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back. She currently serves as Deputy Editor and Senior Contributor at the critical legal commentary outlet Balls and Strikes. As counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, she addressed democracy issues involving the census, the courts, and attempts to disempower communities of color.

Since the Dobbs Supreme Court case was decided, we have gained a heightened awareness of the criminal laws surrounding pregnancies, including the decision to terminate one. But the criminalization of abortion isn’t a new post-Dobbs phenomenon. Women, especially women of color, have frequently faced punitive state laws regulating reproductive health. Dr. Michele Goodwin, attorney, law professor, and author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, joins SideBar to discuss her research into the long and continuing history of the government policing and criminalizing women’s reproductive health.

Law Professor Mary Sarah Bilder discusses the amazing story of Eliza Harriot, a rare female public lecturer who delivered a University of Pennsylvania program attended by George Washington as he met in Philadelphia with delegates to draft the US Constitution. Harriot’s performance likely inspired the gender-neutral language of the Constitution and her advocacy inspired countless young women to consider a college education and fight back against exclusions based on sex, gender, and race.

Law Professors Joy Milligan and Bertrall Ross discuss how we should interpret a Constitution that was not written for or drafted by “We the People”. The original constitution excluded women and racial minorities. The drafters and the commentators of the period were exclusively white men. Many of the subsequent amendments were adopted under "undemocratic" conditions and interpreted by courts that did not fairly reflect the population then, or now. However, there is evidence that the language and intent of the drafters was to leave "space" for future interpretation. Milligan and Ross join SideBar to promote the proposition that "We the People" will only be protected by the Constitution if the "history and tradition" of ALL the people are considered in Supreme Court interpretations.

Since the mid to late 1980s, an increasingly conservative federal bench has made it more difficult to defend Indian rights under existing treaties and federal law. John Echohawk is an attorney and Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) defending Native American tribes, organizations, and individuals. He joins SideBar to discuss issues such as tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, natural resource protection, voting rights, and Indian education.

The federal constitution neither explicitly nor implicitly includes the right to vote. Instead, the framers allowed the States to determine the “Time, Places, and Manner of holding Elections.” Rick Hasen, author of A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy, believes that needs to change. He asserts that a constitutional right to vote can deescalate election litigation and can safeguard democracy from election subversion.

Federal judges have lifetime tenure with little to no oversight. Despite employing thousands of new law school graduates as law clerks, they aren’t subject to anti-discrimination or other workplace laws. How is it possible that federal courts do not have to follow the same federal labor laws they enforce? In this episode, Aliza Shatzman, founder of the Legal Accountability Project, describes the experience that inspired her to create LAP and what needs to change to hold federal judges accountable.

Access to an ethically based justice system not only protects free and fair elections, but also impacts the rights that affect our everyday lives. In this episode of SideBar, Professor and Author Renee Knake Jefferson calls for lawyers and judges, including the US Supreme Court, to further commit to ethical access to justice.