Law

On this installment of ST, a discussion of the marriage equality movement in our country. Hard to believe, perhaps, but the right for same-sex couples to marry was granted to the people of Massachusetts only ten years ago. A lot has happened in the last decade --- and by now, given that 20 different states have approved same-sex marriage, it's obvious that a lot of Americans have changed their minds and/or embraced gay-marriage tolerance, especially younger Americans.

While the Hobby Lobby contraceptives case made most of the headlines, the U.S. Supreme Court term, which concluded yesterday, also rendered important decisions in 1st Amendment free-speech rights, 4th Amendment search-and-seizure laws, copyright law, the limit of presidential powers, federal election law, and affirmative action. Our guest on this edition of StudioTulsa is constitutional scholar Lyn Entzeroth, the Associate Dean of the University of Tulsa College of Law, where she is also Professor of Law.

On this edition of ST, we learn about the Lobeck Taylor Family Advocacy Clinic at the TU College of Law, which is, per its web page, "an intensive, one-semester course that offers students the unique opportunity to gain hands-on lawyering experience and explore the ethical, strategic, and theoretical dimensions of legal practice.

On our program today, an interesting discussion with Carl Elliott, a physician, author, philosopher, and professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota.

Our guest is David R. Dow, a professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. Dow is also the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network; he has represented more than 100 death row inmates in their state and federal appeals.

On this edition of ST, a nuts-and-bolts discussion of a topic that few of us actually want to talk about. Nevertheless, our program covers some important ground today; our guest is Scott Taylor Smith, a venture capitalist and lawyer in California, who talks about his new book, "When Someone Dies: The Practical Guide to the Logistics of Death." This is a useful and readable guidebook that is --- as was noted in the Library Home Journal --- "well-organized, succinct, and detailed without being overwhelming....

On this edition of ST, we are joined by Michelle Wilde Anderson, an Assistant Professor at the UC-Berkeley School of Law and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Stanford Law School. She'll deliver the Sixth Annual Judge Stephanie K. Seymour Lecture in Law at the University of Tulsa College of Law tonight, Wednesday the 12th, at 6pm.

On this edition of ST, we speak by phone with Deborah Rhode, the Director of the Center on the Legal Profession and the E.W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Prof. Rhode will give the free-to-the-public Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture on Thursday of this week (the 13th) at 6pm in the John Rogers Hall on the University of Tulsa campus. (There will be a pre-lecture reception at 5:30pm in the mezzanine of John Rogers Hall; you'll find more details about this event here.) Prof.

Today we're speaking about the intersection of law and politics at the highest levels of American society --- which is to say, we're discussing the workings of the U.S. Supreme Court, both then and now --- and our guest is a highly regarded expert in this regard, Professor Martin Shapiro of the UC-Berkeley School of Law. Prof. Shapiro gave two free-to-the-public lectures here at TU last week, when he spoke as a part of the TU College of Law's 2012 Lectureship in Politics and Law.