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Now & Then

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Criminal Justice, & Public Defense

Now & Then

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Society & Culture, History, News Commentary

4.93.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Senate Republicans have attacked Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for her past public defense work. How have defense attorneys elicited criticism and praise through American history? Why is the right to counsel so important to democracy?  Heather and Joanne discuss past moments of transition for legal counsel, from John Adams’s representation of British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre, to Clarence Darrow’s plea for the lives of Leopold and Loeb, to the impact of the 1963 Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright.  Join CAFE Insider to listen to “Backstage,” where Heather and Joanne chat each week about the anecdotes and ideas that formed the episode. Head to: cafe.com/history For more historical analysis of current events, sign up for the free weekly CAFE Brief newsletter, featuring Time Machine, a weekly article that dives into an historical event inspired by each episode of Now & Then: cafe.com/brief For references & supplemental materials, head to: cafe.com/now-and-then/ketanji-brown-jackson-criminal-justice-public-defense Now & Then is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:10.0

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0:15.0

because your wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps and heath and you get to the top

0:20.0

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1:03.0

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is now and then.

1:11.0

I'm Heather Cox Richardson and I'm Joanne Freeman.

1:14.0

Today we're going to talk about a topic that was raised by the Supreme Court confirmation hearings

1:20.0

of Katanji Brown Jackson for which there was a lot of uproar among some Republican senators

1:29.0

asking her a number of questions, some of which did not directly seem to have a lot to do

1:34.0

with her role as a Supreme Court justice. But in particular, there was a strain of questions

1:40.0

attacking her work as a public defense attorney trying to paint her in some way or another

1:46.0

as being soft on crime and really essentially attacking people who do public defense of that sort

1:53.0

as though there's something inherently wrong with that.

1:56.0

So somehow or another defending quote unquote criminals is something that shouldn't happen.

...

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