It's official, and it's one more amazing step into the future at Life of the Law: we have a new Executive Director. Six years after Nancy Mullane, Tom Hilbink and Shannon Heffernan launched the first episode of Life of the Law, with stories about jury nullification and jailhouse lawyers, we welcome a new fearless leader. Tony Gannon, whom you have come to know as our talented behind-the-scenes Senior Producer brings his vision and exciting energy to LOTL as our new Executive Director. This chang...
Sep 26, 2018•20 min•Ep. 139
When things go bad all you need to do is pick up the phone and CALL. Since the US Supreme Court allowed lawyers to advertise in the 1970s, practices like these have skyrocketed, with often shoddily-produced results. Are tacky lawyer ads trashing the profession or simply making it more easily accessible to those who might not otherwise know who to call when they need an attorney? We are rebroadcasting a long-time favorite episode from our archive as we slow down for the summer. We aim to publish ...
Jun 26, 2018•25 min
Where does one find a discussion of research on abduction for forced marriage amidst West and Central African conflicts? Where does one find research on how ‘yes means yes’ policies on university campuses have affected the college students intended to follow these new rules of consent? What about a conversation on the various strains of conservative thought? The Law and Society Association’s annual conference just came to an end, and we were happy to find the scholars and researchers engaging th...
Jun 19, 2018•9 min•Ep. 137
Immigration law is a mystery. Unless you’re an immigrant seeking relief under the law, or you’re an immigration law attorney, it’s an unknown. Then, earlier this year, Karla McKanders, a professor of immigration law at Vanderbilt Law School sent us an email. Her law students were producing their final reports on immigration and refugee law as audio stories, and would Life of the Law be interested in listening to, and possibly publishing their work as part of our New Voices series? Absolutely. To...
May 28, 2018•35 min
How curious are you about your genetic makeup? There are hundreds of companies that provide direct-to-consumer tests that promise your genealogy, deep ancestry and biogeographical ancestry. Other tests offer genetic information about your health and traits, with some promising your whole genome sequencing. But when you get the results, do you really know what you have? And do you know, without a doubt, who ultimately has access to your genetic information? This week, our team meets up in the stu...
May 15, 2018•43 min•Ep. 135
Some two decades ago, filmmaker Andrew Nicols wrote and directed GATTACA a sci-fi movie that presented a future in which individuals and society were at risk from having gained access to, and control of, our genetic code. Today, 20 years after the movie's initial release, that future fiction, once considered distant and impossible, is, in many ways, now. More than 500 laboratories offer 2,000 genetic tests. Once limited to medical professionals, the FDA has approved direct-to-consumer genetic te...
May 01, 2018•45 min•Ep. 134
Mothers, brothers, sons and daughters in cities across the country are suffering from the loss of a loved one to police use of fatal force. In 2017 The Washington Post reports police officers in the United States shot and killed 987 people. Sixty eight of them, men and women, some of them teenagers like Tony Robinson, were unarmed when they were shot and killed by police officers. The county with highest number of police shootings per capita in the country, is right here in Kern County in Califo...
Apr 17, 2018•48 min•Ep. 133
Police officers throughout the U.S. shoot and kill unarmed people, in Sacramento, Detroit, New Orleans and in Madison. The Washington Post reports 987 people were shot and killed by police in 2017, sixty-eight of them were unarmed. There are marches and calls for investigations and in the end, justice is elusive. So when Life of the Law producer Zoe Sullivan said the mother of an unarmed bi-racial teenager who had been shot and killed by a police officer in Madison had been keeping an audio diar...
Apr 02, 2018•39 min•Ep. 132
This week Life of the Law presents LIVE LAW... stories from people living with the rapid fire shifts that come with tech in the Bay Area, folks who are pushing back against the gentrification and alienation to try to make real life contact through music, journalism, murals, and filmmaking. LIVE LAW San Francisco: Initial Public Offering took place on Friday night, February 23rd at The Polish Club in San Francisco's Mission District. We recorded the night so we could share it with you -- stories ...
Mar 20, 2018•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 131
What would men in prison say, if we just listened? This week, Life of the Law presents a new INSIDE SAN QUENTIN episode - conversations inside San Quentin produced exclusively by men incarcerated inside the prison. We have laptops and can watch just about any movie or series anytime we want. Prisoners have access to some tv and select movies approved by the prison, but not all movies and, up until recently, not Moonlight, winner of the 2017 Academy Award for Best Picture. One day after watching ...
Mar 06, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 130
Over the past month, Life of the Law's team of journalists and scholars have published a three part series of feature investigative reports on Uganda, examining the long-term impact of the violence committed on the people of the East African nation by rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army or LRA. Beginning in the mid-1980's and for more than a decade, LRA rebels abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were then forced to fight, ki...
Feb 20, 2018•52 min•Ep. 129
For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were then forced to fight, kill, and loot. Young girls spent years in captive marriages, forced to bear the children of LRA commanders. Where were the local police and government troops? How was this allowed to happen to so many children over the course of so many years? Where was the international community? This week, Life of th...
Feb 07, 2018•39 min•Ep. 128
For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lords Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people, from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were forced to fight, kill, loot and have sex with rebel commanders. Why didn't the government stop the abductions and the violence? Where was the international community? Who was upholding their right to protection under the law? This week, Life of the Law reporter Gladys Oroma presents Part 2 of our special series following the ...
Jan 24, 2018•47 min•Ep. 127
Today man named Dominic Ongwen is on trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands. The 42 year old Ugandan is charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Northern Uganda. Ongwen is the only commander with the rebel group, The Lord’s Resistance Army, who is on trial before the ICC, but he wasn’t alone in the commission of crimes against the people of Northern Uganda. From 1986 through 2017, over the course of more than 30 years, LRA rebels abducted...
Jan 10, 2018•40 min•Ep. 126
On Saturday night, Dec 5, 2015 more than 200 people filled the pews of the Catholic chapel inside San Quentin State Prison for a first-ever uncensored storytelling event behind the prison walls. Together, inmates and volunteers, officers and staff gathered to hear stories about the all-too-secret, often misunderstood community that sustains each of them inside and outside the prison walls. For two storytellers, Troy Williams and Watani Stiner, the night would be the first time they would return ...
Dec 27, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 125
Traditions. We all have them. Some good and, well, some not so good. Think for a minute. When you were a kid, what were your holiday traditions? Do you still follow some of them today? Put up lights? Bake special cookies or visit relatives? What if the law makes it impossible to follow your traditions? More than two million Americans will spend the holidays locked up in a jail or prison. In the Bay Area, volunteers spend a few hours inside San Quentin State Prison's cell blocks singing holiday s...
Dec 12, 2017•41 min•Ep. 124
The polls got it wrong. What matters in the end, on election day, is who has the right to vote and who goes to the polls to cast their ballot. Due to strict voter ID laws, not all Americans are allowed to vote on election day. In fact, some 21 million are prevented from voting simply because they don't have the required ID or paperwork when they go to the polls. The Government Accounting Office reports that can shift the election outcome in some states by 2-3 percentage points. In our most recen...
Nov 28, 2017•44 min•Ep. 123
2017 has been a terrible year for tens of thousands of people. Fires in northern California and record-setting torrential hurricanes and floods in Texas and Puerto Rico have meant that families have lost their homes and in many cases all of their belongings, including documentation and identification -- Social Security cards, drivers licenses and birth certificates. What happens when you lose your identification? As it turns out it's not always as easy as you might think getting government issue...
Nov 14, 2017•24 min•Ep. 122
"As incompetent and bumbling as the Trump Administration has been in so many areas, they have been brutally ruthless on immigration." -- Jose Chito Vela, Immigration Attorney and Candidate for Texas State Legislature It’s been a year since the Presidential election of 2016 and the night the world turned upside down and inside out. Polls showed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ahead by a solid margin. But by the end of the night, the networks had declared Donald Trump the next President of th...
Oct 31, 2017•56 min•Ep. 117
Nearly two years ago on January 26, 2016, Life of the Law presented Un-DACA-mented, a report on the Obama Administration's DACA Program, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program, begun in 2012 offered undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, a chance to defer deportation. Life of the Law producer Jonathan Hirsch traveled to Texas where he met Luis Morales, a young man who came to the US from Mexico with his family when he was eight years old. In 2015, with the help o...
Oct 17, 2017•37 min•Ep. 120
Look around. Change is happening. People you know and people you pass on the street are in transition. They are transforming their lives. Unless you stop to hear their story, you may miss it. Each year new and former Soros Justice Fellows gather for four days of discussions, workshops, plenaries, breakout sessions, and meals to debate and discuss issues facing the US criminal justice system. On the last night of this year's gathering in Detroit, seven Fellows took to the stage to share personal ...
Oct 03, 2017•1 hr 13 min
All over the world people create. Music, art, literature. But is their creative work protected? Sure there are international copyright laws, but are they enforced? And if not, what then? This week our team took to the studio for a discussion to sort out global culture and international copyright law. If you haven't yet listened to our most recent feature episode GIFT AND CURSE OF MUSIC - Haiti's Fight for Copyright by reporter and composer Ian Coss, take a minute to hit the play button. Then com...
Sep 19, 2017•42 min•Ep. 118
As a child, Serge Turnier fell in love with the sounds of the carnival bands that would pass near his house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Now one of the top music producers in the country, Turnier is faced with the reality that Haitian law offers little protection for music copyrights and he must decide whether to quit the music business altogether, in order to provide financial security for his family.A musician is not even recognized as a real job here in Haiti. You're just nothing in eye of the l...
Sep 05, 2017•39 min•Ep. 117
"Every criminal trial is a competition between the prosecution and the defense. The judge has relatively less dominant role than in other countries and a lot of times, we have the guilt and innocence of people decided by juries, unless of course there's a plea bargain. This means prosecutors are crucially important because they're the ones who decide whether a case is going to go through, and what shape that case is going to take." - Hadar Aviram, Professor of Law, UC Hastings This week on Life ...
Aug 22, 2017•51 min
It all started out as a plan to steal some comic books, sell them and split the cash. That was before a busted lip, a heart attack, and federal prosecutors stepped in. Reporter Mary Lee Williams, a graduate of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, tells the whole messy story of some people who got caught up in two different systems of laws, and two prosecutors who saw their crime from two very different perspectives, with long term consequences. Our story… Ten Hours to Twenty Years.Ten hour...
Aug 08, 2017•33 min
It's been more than 45 years since a thousand inmates at Attica Prison (Correctional Facility) in New York took control of the prison. In her 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy, Professor Heather Thompson pieces "together the whole, gripping story, from the conditions that gave rise to the rebellion, which cost the lives of 43 men, to the decades of government obstructionism that prevented the full story from being told." (NYTi...
Jul 25, 2017•52 min
America is a nation that locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world. The Sentencing Project reports 2.2 million people are incarcerated in America's prisons. That's a 500% increase over the past 40 years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research in London reports America locks up 670 people per 100,000. Russia locks up 439 per 100,000. Rwanda 434 per 100,000. China 118 per 100,000. How in the world did this happen? Are Americans criminally prone? Or has America's desir...
Jul 11, 2017•1 hr 12 min
What does it take to win an NBA Championship? On Monday night, June 12th, Oakland's Golden State Warriors, aka "Dub Nation" silenced the Cleveland Cavaliers to win the 2017 NBA Championship. Three days later, thousands of diverse, loyal, cheering, screaming fans filled the streets of Oakland to celebrate a victory many felt belonged as much to them, as to the players. For now at least. After 40 years homed in Oakland, the Warriors are moving across the Bay to a new arena in San Francisco. Life o...
Jun 28, 2017•48 min
It's official! The Golden State Warriors are the 2017 NBA Champions! Life of the Law honors the team and each of the players with this special episode. One day a year, the Golden State Warriors' coaches, managers, and players go behind the walls of San Quentin State Prison for a game on the prison's lower yard against the San Quentin Warriors, a team of hard-driving inmates. And like all real basketball, it's an annual battle of will and determination against time and rules. "I love coming in he...
Jun 13, 2017•23 min
What does color of skin have to do with equal access to justice in America? The Equal Protection Clause, part of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which took effect in 1868, provides that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction "the equal protection of the laws." In 2017 America, does every person have equal protection under the law, or not? Over the past month, Life of the Law presented Sarah Marshall's two part report on the life and execution of Warren McCleskey. Unequa...
Jun 02, 2017•52 min
