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Epistemic Vice with Ian James Kidd May 24, 2018

Show notes

Ian James Kidd is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Nottingham with research interests in epistemology, vices, epistemic justice, and illness. He is a co-author of the recently published The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Justice.

The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project.

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Jon D. Michaels, “Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic” (Harvard UP, 2017) May 17, 2018

Show notes

Jon D. Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA Law School, has written an argument in favor of the administrative state and against recent efforts to shift government functions to private contractors. In Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic (Harvard University Press, 2017), Professor Michaels contends that the administrative state of the New Deal and post-World War II periods was a state that rightly fulfilled state functions by having an administrative entity and its dedicated employees carry out regulatory functions, rule-making, and adjudication. Professor Michaels rejects the claim that bureaucrats are a threat to the proper functioning of government; and instead argues that they are experts that serve as a counterweight to politically motivated appointed agency heads. He sees in the modern administrative state a recreation of the separation of powers (legislative, executive, and judicial) that harkens back to the Founders’ concerns about consolidated power and tyranny. Professor Michaels sees the efforts to private state functions as endangering our democratic system of government by placing private actors in too powerful positions, wherein state functions are subordinated to the concerns of private actors, all to the detriment of the public. Professor Michaels addresses the politically contentious issues of the efficiency of public employees, private interests capturing public functions, and whether the modern regulatory state is constitutional.

Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory.

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Paul Cartledge, “Democracy: A Life” (Oxford UP, 2016) May 14, 2018

Show notes

The Western concept of democracy has a lineage dating back to the classical world. Paul Cartledge’s book Democracy: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2016) details its origins in ancient Greece and its evolution of it as a theory over the course of the 2,500 years since then. As he explains, what people think of as “classical Greek” democracy was primarily the Athenian concept of it, which was one of several versions that emerged during the Hellenic era. Though typically viewed as at its peak during the days of the Athenian empire, Cartledge sees the “golden age” of democracy as taking place in the 4th century BCE rather than in the preceding one, a shift which attests to the endurance of democracy as a governing system. It was during Roman times when the practice of democracy declined, to the point where it was often seen as a failed or impractical system during the Middle Ages. It was not until the 17th century when democracy staged a comeback in the West, with its advocates in the 18th and 19th centuries championing it as the best possible form of government – a status it continues to hold in the West even with the strains it faces today.

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Sam Lebovic, “Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America” (Harvard UP, 2016) May 10, 2018

Show notes

Appeals to “press freedom” can be heard from across the political spectrum. But what those appeals mean varies dramatically. Sam Lebovic, in his excellent new book, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Harvard University Press, 2016), traces the fraught history of that contested concept throughout the twentieth century. Beginning his analysis in the 1920s, Lebovic shows how conservative politicians, lawyers, and publishers began to define press freedom as freedom from state censorship, wrapped it in the first amendment, and fought New Deal attempts at regulation. Meanwhile, liberal politicians and journalists feared corporate control of the press as a threat to the democratic need for information, and advocated a freer and more trustworthy press. Not interested solely in the debates over press freedom, Lebovic also focuses on, what he calls, “the everyday politics of information.” He reveals how state classification practices and the political economy of the news fundamentally shaped how information flowed. It is an ambitious book that succeeds in telling a crucial story and it should inform contemporary approaches to press monopolization and the ever-growing “classified universe.” The book will interest intellectual historians, communications scholars, legal historians, political historians, and historians of U.S. foreign relations.

Dexter Fergie is a first-year PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie.

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Barry Wimpfheimer, “The Talmud: A Biography” (Princeton UP, 2018) May 10, 2018

Show notes

In The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2018), Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, associate professor of religious studies and law at Northwestern University, introduces the reader to the Babylonian Talmud, the most studied book in the Jewish canon. Professor Wimpfheimer focuses on one excerpt from the Talmud, showing how its reception, exegesis, and editing represents a process of reflexive critique and legal reasoning. A valuable text for scholars and general readers alike, The Talmud: A Biography helps the reader gain new appreciation for the Talmud as a dense tapestry of religious thought, philosophy, law, and ethics that continues to influence not only the Jewish religion, but religious and secular cultures and institutions worldwide.

David Gottlieb will receive his PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago Divinity School in June.

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Stephen Riley, “Human Dignity and Law: Legal and Philosophical Investigations” (Routledge, 2018) May 10, 2018

Show notes

Stephen Riley, a lecturer in the Law School of the University of Leicester in Britain, has written a philosophical work examining the concept of dignity and its role in legal theory and, to a degree, the application of law. In Human Dignity and Law: Legal and Philosophical Investigations (Routledge, 2018), Riley argues that the role of human dignity should be recognized by courts and all of society, but he is wary of such a concept becoming a trump card in a court’s decision-making process. He notes that the concerns of justice and equality need to be recognized by courts but court must be aware of the infrequent instances when the demands of dignity are in conflict with the demands of justice. In this podcast we discuss the definition of human dignity, the author’s philosophical orientation, and the applications of the concept of dignity has been applied by courts in different settings.

Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory.

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B.J. Mendelson, “Privacy: And How to Get It Back” (Curious Reads, 2017) May 03, 2018

Show notes

The use of our data and the privacy, or lack thereof, that we have when we go online has become a topic of increasing importance as technology becomes ubiquitous and more sophisticated. Governments, advocacy groups and individual citizens are demanding that action be taken to protect their valuable data. But what does this sporadic noise amount to? B.J. Mendelson in his book Privacy: And How to Get It Back (Curious Reads, 2017) argues that a complacent citizenry and the overly-intimate relationship that corporations have with government has led to massive breaches of people’s privacy. Mendelson humorously explains the way people’s data is used and abused as he tracks the long history of government surveillance leading to an explanation of, what he believes, could be the solution to the abuse of people’s privacy.

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Christy Ford Chapin, “Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System” (Cambridge UP, 2015) May 02, 2018

Show notes

Christy Ford Chapin, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has written a history of the funding of America’s health care system: Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She begins with an account of the development of physicians’ practices in the mid-nineteenth century and traces the evolution of the American Medical Association’s role in shaping how physicians practiced medicine and how it was financed. The advent of the insurance model for funding health care was a creation of the Progressive period and became dominant in the late 1930s, during the New Deal. Chapin provides an account of the pitfalls of the insurance funding mechanism and recounts the battles between vested, competing interests, such as the AMA, independent physicians, corporate employers, labor unions, insurance companies (nonprofit and commercial), and the state and federal governments. Each of these entities shaped the health care system we have today. Chapin’s book helps explain how we got here and her critique of the insurance model suggests possible alternatives to our contemporary system of paying for health care.

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Emilie Lucchesi, “Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz-Age Chicago” (Chicago Review, 2017) May 02, 2018

Show notes

In her book, Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago (Chicago Review Press, 2017), Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi presents the story of Sabella Nitti, an Italian immigrant arrested in 1923 an accused of murdering her husband. Sabella was found guilty and became the first woman in Chicago sentenced to hang. Through meticulous research into court documents and other public records, Lucchesi shares the riveting narrative of Sabella’s case. Situating Sabella in the 1920s, and looking at the ways in which this case shows how the legal system set up to defend her failed Sabella at every turn, Lucchesi’s book walks readers through the trial where there was no evidence and no witnesses, but reporters and the jury knew one thing for certain, Sabella must be guilty: she was ugly. Describing how the press, judges, and juries decided the guilt or innocence of women based on their looks, Lucchesi examines how Sabella’s fellow inmates such as Beulah and Belva were able to charm their juries into acquitting them. She examines the role of Helen Cirese, the young lawyer who lead Sabella’s appeal giving her a jailhouse makeover in order to be more credible. Told with deep description, Ugly Prey makes sure that the story of Sabella Nitti is not lost. Instead, it is one that shows how the present day American justice system is not dissimilar to the system of the past in the ways that gender, class, and ethnicity are impact how individuals are treated throughout the justice system.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative in peoples lives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu.

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Pablo Piccato, “A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico” (U California Press, 2017) Apr 27, 2018

Show notes

A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico (University of California Press, 2017) explores the definitive changes that the justice system as well as criminal ideas and practices underwent during the 1920s-1950s. For his most recent book, Pablo Piccato investigated spaces, actors, and fictions that shaped the complicated relationship between crime, justice, and truth during the consolidation of the post-revolution Mexican state. Through a series of compelling arguments, the author shows how impunity, the lack of transparency in judicial processes, and infamy are related to a constant quest for truth and justice that the state could not provide to Mexicans. From the abolition of the jury system in the 20s, to the emergence of crime fiction, the author shows that men and women, the press, detectives, policemen, and even murderers themselves, shaped both ideas and practices in regards to violence, law-breaking, and the normalization of injustice in the country.

Pamela Fuentes is Assistant Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, Pace University-NYC campus.

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