Quoting from Shake 'Em Up HLS's official handout: "Twelve leading scholars, practitioners, and advocates discuss the breakdown in American Law and what it will take to transform it." This was a remarkable 7-hour event organized and hosted by Ralph Nader at Harvard Law School ("HLS") on October 24, 2013.
This posting presents ONLY Nader's introductory remarks, but interested listeners and/or broadcasters are referred to https://archive.org/details/shakeemuphls, where the full content is now posted as 23 separate MP3s and the PDF of a marked-up Bio handout. (See notes below.)
WZBCs Truth and Justice Radio (truthandjusticeradio.org)
UPLOADS FINALLY COMPLETED, INCLUDING A MARKED-UP BIO PDF, 12-27-2013.
"Shake 'Em Up HLS" was a remarkable 7-hour event organized and hosted by Ralph Nader at Harvard Law School ("HLS") on October 24, 2013. Quoting from its official handout: "Twelve leading scholars, practitioners, and advocates discuss the breakdown in American Law and what it will take to transform it." Nader alone would have made this event very, very special, but he topped this even more by inviting these twelve.
Nader got his law degree at HLS in 1958, and has become one of its important critics. With Nader moderating, these presenters explore each of 12 categories of law that HLS falls short on. Nader himself spoke, and each speaker was officially given 30 minutes, 20 for main presentation and 10 for Q&A.
Again remarkable: even though the conference was thoroughly publicized in advance and held right there on the HLS campus, with free lunch provided, only a tiny handful of HLS students attended beyond the second hour! What does this tell us about this country's most elite law school? As Nader remarked, all of the really important issues in this country are ignored by all but a tiny minority of people who care, and to whom we owe our very existence.
Clearly, most broadcast outlets and most people aren't going to find 7 hours all at once, and it wouldn't necessarily be a good idea! For better accessibility, we've broken our audio-only recording up by speaker, and also separated the speakers' main presentations from their corresponding Q&A sessions (when Q&A happened).
We made a partial posting last October (Nader's initial intro and the first 6 speakers). The remainder are now posted (Krimsky, Cavendish, Western, Miller, Devine, and Clements).
Speakers in order were: Ralph Nader (his introduction) Edgar Cahn (future of legal education) Michael Rustad (tort deform) David Cay Johnston (unjust tax system) Karen Ferguson (retirement insecurity) Bruce Fein (surveillance and constitutional vandalism) Ramsey Clark (laws of war) Sheldon Krimsky (science in the law & the Dalbert decision) Betsy Cavendish (litigation centrality) Bruce Western (mass incarceration) Arthur Miller (closing court access to people) Tom Devine (the US govt war on whistleblowers) Jeffrey Clements (corporate capture of govt) Ralph Nader with HLS Professor John Hansen (closing)
We found the inclusion of 87-year-old Ramsey Clark, one of this world's true heroes, particularly special. Self-effacing, he spoke very slowly but right on point. At the end he apologizes for what he calls his "sermon." His life demonstrates the very pinnacle of integrity that ought to be the goal of every law student.
The event's "official" video recording is also available to the world (go to youtube.com/user/shakeemuphls). It comes in 5 parts, each with multiple speakers, courtesy of the Harvard Law Record. Continuing discussion is promised on its web page (see http://hlrecord.org/?p=19577).
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