Cato Event Podcast

The Constitution was designed to protect a variety of economic liberties, including the right to earn an honest living, but the Supreme Court has subverted that constitutional design by refusing to enforce those provisions consistent with the text, history, and purpose of the Constitution.From Cato University 2018: College of Law Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Law isn’t just for lawyers, but concerns and impacts everyone. A look at how simple rules that respect and protect the liberty of individuals are the foundation of complex social orders.From Cato University 2018: College of Law Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Popular legend has it that before the Federal Radio Commission was established in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos, with broadcasting stations blasting powerful signals to drown out rivals. Tom Hazlett, a distinguished scholar in law and economics and former chief economist at the FCC (the commission’s successor), debunks that idea. Instead, regulators blocked competition at the behest of incumbent interests and, for nearly a century, have suppressed innovation while quashing out-of-the-mainstream viewpoints. Hazlett details how spectrum officials produced a “vast wasteland” that they publicly criticized but privately protected. The story twists and turns, as farsighted visionaries — and the march of science — rose to challenge the old regime. Over decades, reforms to liberate the radio spectrum have generated explosive progress, ushering in the “smartphone revolution,” ubiquitous social media, and the amazing wireless world that is now emerging. Still, Hazlett argues, and current FCC controversies confirm, the battle is not even half won. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past 25 years, more than 2,000 individuals have been exonerated in the United States after being wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. There is good reason to believe that tens or even hundreds of thousands more languish in American prisons today.How this can happen unfolds in the riveting new book from Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist recounts the story of two Mississippi doctors—Dr. Steven Hayne, a medical examiner, and Dr. Michael West, a dentist—who built successful careers as the go-to experts for prosecutors and whose actions led many innocent defendants to land in prison. Some of the convictions then began to fall apart, including those of two innocent men who spent a combined 30 years in prison before being exonerated in 2008.Balko and Carrington reveal how Mississippi officials propelled West and Hayne to the top of the state’s criminal justice apparatus and then, through institutional failures and structural racism, empowered these two “experts” to produce countless flawed convictions on bad evidence and bogus science. Please join us for a conversation about the book and the broader lessons we can learn about criminal justice in our country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The President has linked tariffs on aluminum and steel to the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, although he has exempted Canada and Mexico for now. Negotiations on a new NAFTA had been looking positive, but linking the trade deal to tariffs could undermine that progress. What is the future of continental free trade? And how should a renegotiated NAFTA be different? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Representative Smith and Christopher Preble will discuss the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, including their findings from a new article they are copublishing in Strategic Studies Quarterly about BRAC, its impact on defense communities, and the future.For a number of years, the U.S. military — with support of presidents from both parties — has sought congressional authorization to rid itself of excess infrastructure. Unfortunately, Congress continues to stand in the way, often citing concerns about the effect of closures on local communities.In failing to authorize a BRAC round, however, Congress is doing more harm than good. Local communities are deprived of the support and clarity BRAC would provide, and they are denied access to property that could be put to productive use. Our military is forced to allocate resources away from training and equipping our soldiers in order to maintain unnecessary and unwanted infrastructure. Meanwhile, tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars continue to be wasted.Debate over the BRAC process needs to be better informed by context and a real-world understanding of downstream effects, particularly the less-appreciated way that closing excess facilities positively affects communities. This conversation aims to do just that. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Each year since the early 1900s, the world has recognized March 8th as International Women’s Day, an opportunity to celebrate women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements while calling for global gender equality.What is the state of global gender equality? How free are women around the world today? What role has government historically played in women’s oppression and liberation? How have market-driven innovations and the unprecedented economic growth of the last decades changed women’s lives? Are policies designed to promote gender equality working? What changes still need to happen?This International Women’s Day, please join the Cato Institute for an interactive, online-only Facebook Live discussion of women’s liberty around the world and tweet your questions using #CatoDigital. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature — tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking — which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, an important First Amendment case that could clarify voters' speech rights nationwide. Lead plaintiff Andy Cilek (executive director of the Minnesota Voters Alliance) voted in the 2010 election in a Tea Party T-shirt that said "Don't tread on me." Because Minnesota prohibits badges, buttons, or other insignia that promote a group with "recognizable political views," at polling places an election official delayed Cilek from voting and took down his name and address for potential prosecution. Cilek sued to have the law struck down. Throughout litigation, the government has embraced the sheer breadth of Minnesota's ban on political apparel. In addition to prohibiting Tea Party apparel, the ban extends to apparel featuring the logo of the Chamber of Commerce, AFL-CIO, NRA, NAACP, and countless other organizations that might be associated with a political viewpoint. Cilek asks the Supreme Court to invalidate the law as an overbroad restriction on expression. Cato filed a brief in this case, arguing that the Court should look with skepticism at a law, like Minnesota's, that targets core political speech. Please join us for a discussion of one of the most important First Amendment cases of the year a few days before argument. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The infamous “Nunes memo” has landed. Produced by Congressional staff and declassified by the President, the document alleged surveillance warrants on Trump campaign officials from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) were obtained without providing the court with important information.Intelligence experts have generally been skeptical of the memo’s conclusions, but the fight over this document may do long-term damage to attempts to provide important oversight for the secretive FISC. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.