The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Podcast

Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Geoffrey Stone talks about his involvement in the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. Organized by the Office of the Dean of Students and recorded on February 4, 2014.

"Although everyone is familiar with the damage anger can do in both personal and public life, people tend to think that it is necessary for the pursuit of justice. People who don't get angry when they are wronged seem weird to many people, lacking spine and self-respect. And isn't it servile not to react with anger to great injustice, whether toward oneself or toward others? On the other hand, recent years have seen three noble and successful freedom movements conducted in a spirit of non-anger: those of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela -- surely people who stood up for their self-respect and that of others, and who did not acquiesce in injustice. My lecture argues that a close philosophical analysis of the emotion of anger can help us to see why it is fatally flawed from a normative viewpoint -- sometimes incoherent and sometimes based on bad values. In either case it is of dubious value in both life and the law. I'll present my general view, and then show its relevance to thinking well about the criminal law and about transformational justice." Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School. This talk was recorded January 14, 2014 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

Is there a principled reason why religious obligations that conflict with the law are accorded special toleration while other obligations of conscience are not? In Why Tolerate Religion? (Princeton, 2013), Professor Leiter argues there are no good reasons for doing so, that the reasons for tolerating religion are not specific to religion but apply to all claims of conscience. He also argues that a government committed to liberty of conscience is not required by the principal of toleration to grant burden-shifting exemptions to laws that promote the general welfare. Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director, Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago Law School. This talk was recorded on November 19, 2013, as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court dismantled one of the two pillars of the Voting Rights Act: Section 5, which had barred southern jurisdictions from changing their election laws unless they first received federal approval. The burning question now is what will happen to minority representation in the South in the absence of Section 5. In this talk, Prof. Stephanopoulos explores the differences between the defunct Section 5 and Section 2 of the VRA, which continues to apply nationwide. His sobering conclusion is that Section 2 provides substantially less protection with respect to both redistricting and franchise restrictions. The demise of Section 5 is therefore likely to reverse decades of progress for voting rights in the South. Nicholas Stephanopoulos is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. This Chicago's Best Ideas talk was recorded on November 13, 2013.

A panel of leading scholars discuss Douglas Baird's pathbreaking work on Contract Law published in his new book Reconstructing Contracts. Avery Katz, Vice Dean and Milton Handler Professor of Law, Columbia Law School Stewart Macaulay, Malcolm Pitman Sharp Professor & Theodore W. Brazeau Professor, University of Wisconsin Madison Law School Ariel Porat, The Alain Poher Chair in Private Law, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University Moderated by Omri Ben-Shahar, Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Economics and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics, University of Chicago Law School. This panel was recorded on October 23, 2013.

Recorded on February 7, 2014, at the University of Chicago Law School, this session featured author Scott Turow as Plenary Speaker and Law School faculty Alison LaCroix, Judge Diane Wood, and Richard McAdams.

Martha Nussbaum, "What Is Anger, and Why Should We Care?"

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, "The South After Shelby County"

Panel on "Reconstructing Contracts: The Contracts Scholarship of Douglas Baird"

Saul Levmore, "Coase's Legacy"

Harvey Levin '75, "How to Use a Law Degree to Start a Business and Make It Successful"

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, "The South After Shelby County"

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Geoffrey Stone, "Roe at 40"

Cass R. Sunstein and "Simpler: The Future of Government"

Rashida Manjoo, "Violence Against Women Around the World: Trends, Challenges, and Solutions"