Jerry Summers: The Bravest Judge In Legal History Monday, December 28, 2020 - by Jerry Summers
Jerry Summers
Most of the legal decisions that establish new precedents or expansion of civil liberties are usually handed down by appellate judges and not by trial judges. The reasons for this are numerous:
1. Appellate judges are usually removed from the local notoriety of highly sensational cases. They normally hear cases at some distance from the actual trial. The hearings at which attorneys argue the merits of a conviction are usually poorly attended in contrast to the actual trial in the community where the alleged crime took place.
bates, one of the alleged rape victims recanted and testified for the defense. he reversal set off a year of court cases with the rape charges being dropped for five of the nine and the four convicted in the retrials. ultimately, it set up a lifetime of struggle for nine innocent young men. so if you need some encouragement, governor, to finally right this wrong, there s former alabama governor bib graves who commuted the death sentence of one of the scotsboro boys, clarence noyes, to a life in prison which was a step, and george wallace even though he was inextricably linked to segregation pardoned norris, and another small step or recent example north carolina governor bev purdue who signed pardons for the wilmington 10 who were wrongly convicted 40 years ago in the firebombing of
0 president obama. just last month in his second inaugural address president obama called for an inlasting p does not require perpetual war, but that is what this administration has largely institutionalized. this week, michael isikoff got a hold of a secret department of justice memo which outlines the legal basis for the administration to use legal force in count terrorism tactics even against american citizens. this is the provocation for use of force and one that trumps constitutional protections and it goes further that the military can engage in a preemptive attack even without clear evidence that a specific p attack is eminent. while we can be sure that a mere territorial dispute will not lead our troops back into the and the definition is so vague that drones can be employed anywhere in the world against united states citizens without due process of law and that makes us ask, when is the united states, the president, and the administration very often in secret justified in proj
book tv presents after words, an hourlong program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week sylvia nasar and her latest book, grand pursuit: the story of an economic genius. and if the best-selling author of a beautiful mind takes readers through the history of economics, the city s most influential theorists and the intellectual pursuits that she believes have helped people all over the world. she talks with u.s. managing the trip of the financial times, gillian tett. host: sylvia, thank you for joining me to talk about your earliest book, absolutely fascinating covering the issues of economics and economic fallout over the last couple of hundred years. can i start by asking you why you decided to write a book about economics now? guest: well, i didn t decide now. i decided about ten years ago, and but now is actually a great time because when things are going really well, people outside the economics tend not to be as interested in in economics a
in your view? guest: because i think it captures so many aspects of the case even when it was not written about. the forlorn and bewildered expression of the boys themselves, as they were called, their poverty, the mill tarrization of the militarization of the trial that surrounded them, the total ab jex of the scene itself. host: if they were arrested in paint rock, how did this become known as the scottsboro s boys case? guest: because scottsboro was the town in which the first trials were held. the boys were arrested on march 31st, 1931. within two weeks, all of the boys had been tried, eight of them had been convicted, eight of them had been sentenced to death. they all converged in scottsboro, alabama. host: within two weeks? guest: two weeks. host: all white jury? guest: all white jury that ultimately became the basis of one of the first supreme court decisions about the case. host: who defended them? guest: good question because in some respects,