Judges - Enemies of the People??

You can see Joshua Rozenberg (host of the BBC's Law in Action) talk about his latest book Enemies of the People? How Judges Shape Society with James Libson,  managing partner at the law firm Mischon de Reya, here . 15 min., transcript available.

Harvard Law School Celebrates Its 200 Years

Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, is celebrating its 200th birthday this year.  It organized an October summit for exploring big ideas, “HLS in the World” with videos of many of the events posted on YouTube. You can find them here. There are so many that it's hard to offer a selection on this blog, but one of the most popular is an interview with Harold Koh and Samantha Power about their careers as academics and government officials in the area of international law. Another one is a discussion with three federal appellate judges about how they work. Part of the celebration even included a re-argument of the landmark Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison. The videos posted are usually about 1h 30 min, no transcript, but often good subtitles.
The law school appears to be adding more videos in addition to the 30 already posted.

Supreme Courts

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has posted a conversation on youtube with three present or former members of three different Supreme Courts: of Israel (Justice Dorit Beinish), Canada (Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella) and the United States (Justice Elena Kagan). 1 hour 26 minutes, no transcript.

Unreliable Evidence

BBC Radio 4's Unreliable Evidence, with Clive Anderson, is back. The first programme in this new series is entitled "Cross-Examination in the Dock". The next will talk about whistleblowers, followed by a program me examining the right to take the government to court.

SCOTUS v. POTUS: The Role of the Supreme Court, Historically

PBS's Newshour of April 4 has program which includes an interview with two Georgetown law professors, Louis Michael Seidman and Randy Barnett. Barnett is the one who came up with the idea, in the context of the health care debate, that the commerce clause of the Constitution, while it allows the federal government to require citizens to refrain from doing something, cannot require citizens to DO something. The Affordable Care Act now before the Supreme Court requires most uninsured people to buy insurance if they are not otherwise insured, a requirement which is called the individual mandate. The Newshour program is not about the individual mandate, but about the propriety of remarks made by President Obama about judicial activism, remarks which can be heard at the beginning of this program. A little help with the acronyms: SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, and POTUS the President of the United States.
streaming  video or downloadable .mp3, 12min 32 sec, transcript available

Judging in the United States

Judge Richard Posner delivered a lecture entitled "The Rise and Fall of Judicial Self-Restraint" at the University of Chicago law school where he is a senior lecturer. Judge Posner's remarks, followed by comments by Lee Epstein and Aziz Huq, can be found here. More information about the lecture can be found here. Recently added to the U of C website, the event was recorded April 14, 2011.
82 min, downloadable .mp3, no transcript

Judicial Power

The BBC World Service programme The Monday Documentary recently took a look at judges worldwide - Power and the Judges — part 1 was first aired on 18 December and part 2 on the 25th.
25 min. no transcript