Life of the Law
Law is alive. It doesn’t live in books and words. It thrives in how well we understand and apply it to everyday life. We ask questions, find answers, and publish what we discover in feature episodes and live storytelling.
Episodes
September 26, 2018 • 20 mins
It's official, and it's one more amazing step into the future at Life of the Law: we have a new Executive Director. Six years after Nancy Mullane, Tom Hilbink and Shannon Heffernan launched the first episode of Life of the Law, with stories about jury nullification and jailhouse lawyers, we welcome a new fearless leader. Tony Gannon, whom you have come to know as our talented behind-the-scenes Senior Producer brings his vision and ...
Mark as Played
June 26, 2018 • 24 mins
When things go bad all you need to do is pick up the phone and CALL. Since the US Supreme Court allowed lawyers to advertise in the 1970s, practices like these have skyrocketed, with often shoddily-produced results. Are tacky lawyer ads trashing the profession or simply making it more easily accessible to those who might not otherwise know who to call when they need an attorney?
We are rebroadcasting a long-time favorite episode fr...
Mark as Played
June 19, 2018 • 9 mins
Where does one find a discussion of research on abduction for forced marriage amidst West and Central African conflicts? Where does one find research on how ‘yes means yes’ policies on university campuses have affected the college students intended to follow these new rules of consent? What about a conversation on the various strains of conservative thought?
The Law and Society Association’s annual conference just came to an end, ...
Mark as Played
May 28, 2018 • 34 mins
Immigration law is a mystery. Unless you’re an immigrant seeking relief under the law, or you’re an immigration law attorney, it’s an unknown. Then, earlier this year, Karla McKanders, a professor of immigration law at Vanderbilt Law School sent us an email. Her law students were producing their final reports on immigration and refugee law as audio stories, and would Life of the Law be interested in listening to, and possibly publi...
Mark as Played
May 15, 2018 • 43 mins
How curious are you about your genetic makeup? There are hundreds of companies that provide direct-to-consumer tests that promise your genealogy, deep ancestry and biogeographical ancestry. Other tests offer genetic information about your health and traits, with some promising your whole genome sequencing. But when you get the results, do you really know what you have? And do you know, without a doubt, who ultimately has access to...
Mark as Played
May 1, 2018 • 45 mins
Some two decades ago, filmmaker Andrew Nicols wrote and directed GATTACA a sci-fi movie that presented a future in which individuals and society were at risk from having gained access to, and control of, our genetic code.
Today, 20 years after the movie's initial release, that future fiction, once considered distant and impossible, is, in many ways, now. More than 500 laboratories offer 2,000 genetic tests. Once limited to medical ...
Mark as Played
April 17, 2018 • 47 mins
Mothers, brothers, sons and daughters in cities across the country are suffering from the loss of a loved one to police use of fatal force. In 2017 The Washington Post reports police officers in the United States shot and killed 987 people. Sixty eight of them, men and women, some of them teenagers like Tony Robinson, were unarmed when they were shot and killed by police officers. The county with highest number of police shootings ...
Mark as Played
April 2, 2018 • 38 mins
Police officers throughout the U.S. shoot and kill unarmed people, in Sacramento, Detroit, New Orleans and in Madison. The Washington Post reports 987 people were shot and killed by police in 2017, sixty-eight of them were unarmed. There are marches and calls for investigations and in the end, justice is elusive. So when Life of the Law producer Zoe Sullivan said the mother of an unarmed bi-racial teenager who had been shot and kil...
Mark as Played
March 20, 2018 • 97 mins
This week Life of the Law presents LIVE LAW... stories from people living with the rapid fire shifts that come with tech in the Bay Area, folks who are pushing back against the gentrification and alienation to try to make real life contact through music, journalism, murals, and filmmaking.
LIVE LAW San Francisco: Initial Public Offering took place on Friday night, February 23rd at The Polish Club in San Francisco's Mission District...
Mark as Played
March 6, 2018 • 74 mins
What would men in prison say, if we just listened? This week, Life of the Law presents a new INSIDE SAN QUENTIN episode - conversations inside San Quentin produced exclusively by men incarcerated inside the prison.
We have laptops and can watch just about any movie or series anytime we want. Prisoners have access to some tv and select movies approved by the prison, but not all movies and, up until recently, not Moonlight, winner of...
Mark as Played
February 20, 2018 • 52 mins
Over the past month, Life of the Law's team of journalists and scholars have published a three part series of feature investigative reports on Uganda, examining the long-term impact of the violence committed on the people of the East African nation by rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army or LRA.
Beginning in the mid-1980's and for more than a decade, LRA rebels abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in northern Uganda, ma...
Mark as Played
February 7, 2018 • 38 mins
For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were then forced to fight, kill, and loot. Young girls spent years in captive marriages, forced to bear the children of LRA commanders.
Where were the local police and government troops? How was this allowed to happen to so many children over the course of so many ye...
Mark as Played
January 24, 2018 • 46 mins
For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lords Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people, from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were forced to fight, kill, loot and have sex with rebel commanders. Why didn't the government stop the abductions and the violence? Where was the international community? Who was upholding their right to protection under the law?
This week, Life of the Law reporter ...
Mark as Played
January 10, 2018 • 39 mins
Today man named Dominic Ongwen is on trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands. The 42 year old Ugandan is charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Northern Uganda.
Ongwen is the only commander with the rebel group, The Lord’s Resistance Army, who is on trial before the ICC, but he wasn’t alone in the commission of crimes against the people of Northern Uganda. From 1986 through...
Mark as Played
December 27, 2017 • 63 mins
On Saturday night, Dec 5, 2015 more than 200 people filled the pews of the Catholic chapel inside San Quentin State Prison for a first-ever uncensored storytelling event behind the prison walls. Together, inmates and volunteers, officers and staff gathered to hear stories about the all-too-secret, often misunderstood community that sustains each of them inside and outside the prison walls.
For two storytellers, Troy Williams and Wa...
Mark as Played
December 12, 2017 • 41 mins
Traditions. We all have them. Some good and, well, some not so good. Think for a minute. When you were a kid, what were your holiday traditions? Do you still follow some of them today? Put up lights? Bake special cookies or visit relatives? What if the law makes it impossible to follow your traditions?
More than two million Americans will spend the holidays locked up in a jail or prison. In the Bay Area, volunteers spend a few hour...
Mark as Played
November 28, 2017 • 44 mins
The polls got it wrong. What matters in the end, on election day, is who has the right to vote and who goes to the polls to cast their ballot. Due to strict voter ID laws, not all Americans are allowed to vote on election day. In fact, some 21 million are prevented from voting simply because they don't have the required ID or paperwork when they go to the polls. The Government Accounting Office reports that can shift the election o...
Mark as Played
November 14, 2017 • 23 mins
2017 has been a terrible year for tens of thousands of people. Fires in northern California and record-setting torrential hurricanes and floods in Texas and Puerto Rico have meant that families have lost their homes and in many cases all of their belongings, including documentation and identification -- Social Security cards, drivers licenses and birth certificates. What happens when you lose your identification? As it turns out i...
Mark as Played
October 31, 2017 • 56 mins
"As incompetent and bumbling as the Trump Administration has been in so many areas, they have been brutally ruthless on immigration."
-- Jose Chito Vela, Immigration Attorney and Candidate for Texas State Legislature
It’s been a year since the Presidential election of 2016 and the night the world turned upside down and inside out. Polls showed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ahead by a solid margin. But by the end of the nig...
Mark as Played
October 17, 2017 • 37 mins
Nearly two years ago on January 26, 2016, Life of the Law presented Un-DACA-mented, a report on the Obama Administration's DACA Program, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program, begun in 2012 offered undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, a chance to defer deportation.
Life of the Law producer Jonathan Hirsch traveled to Texas where he met Luis Morales, a young man who came to the US from Mexico with...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.