This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome Professor Richard Epstein of the Civitas Institute, writing most recently, of the decisions pending over the deportation of a young graduate of Columbia University

who was involved in the violent protests against or for the war in the Middle East

in the spring of 2020, 24, and also the matter of how Columbia University has carried on through these troubled months and its

relationship to the Trump administration. We begin, however, with a Supreme Court case

that Richard points out in his essay. I did not know, so I'm keen to mention Shank v.

United States, Bear v. United States, Bear versus United States, decided in 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion of the court.

This had to do with the violent threats made by those who were in some fashion supporting the German Empire, the central powers, making war on France and Russia and Britain, and the traffic across the Atlantic Ocean.

You will recall that the U.S. entered into this war reluctantly under Woodrow Wilson, only after the Germans had been identified as

unrestricted submarine warfare and having conspired with the Japanese Empire at the time, Mexico

to a certain extent and certainly bad actors throughout the southwest of the country

to drag the U.S. into a Mexican war so that it

didn't participate in the defense of Europe from the central powers. All of that is the

background to this case. Richard, a very good evening to you. The court was given a decision

over espionage act of June 19 1917 and the Alien and Sedition Act,

I believe also comes in here.

That is controversial today.

It was not at the time.

What is it about these two acts and the memory of them that has made it controversial in the 21st century. Good evening to you.

Well, it's a perpetual thing. It actually begins back in 16-16-9 or thereabouts. We have the following

very simple scenario, which then goes global. Somebody sits there and he has his hands on his sword,

and the question is somebody strike him and in anticipatory self-defense.

And the first guy said, if we're not a size time, I, if the judges weren't in town, I would

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