There may be few challenges greater for a democracy than collectively defining justice and how it will be served. Guests on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL have offered insight into everything from the limits of civil liberties in a post-9/11 world down to the practical policies of sentencing guidelines.
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On achieving justice today: "I often say that Jim Crow, we could think of Jim Crow as a nail. And the protests against Jim Crow were a hammer. A hammer is an extremely effective tool when you're dealing with a nail. Contemporary racial inequality is structural. It's undercover. It is connected with, also with sort of black achievement which is also going on at the same time. Contemporary racial inequality is a screw, and if you take a hammer and start pounding on a screw, you just end up with a mess which means we have to live with the fact that a new generation is going to have to innovate a screwdriver to deal with the new problem. And that screwdriver might not look anything like the hammer. And we can't keep yelling at them to use a hammer for a new problem."
Watch the rest of Bill Moyers' conversation with Melissa Harris Lacewell.
On forgiveness: "As a Christian, you have to say, 'Are there things that are unforgivable?' I'm afraid we follow a lord and master who at the point when they are crucifying him in the most painful way can say, 'Pray for their forgiveness.' And we follow the one who says, 'Forgive one another as God and Christ forgave you.' That is for us the paradigm. We may not always reach to that ideal, That is the standard."
Watch
part one and part two of Bill Moyers' interview with Desmond Tutu.
On the US Supreme Court: "You know, we talk about Supreme Court Justices often as if they exist in some sort of world apart from politics. And I think a rational view of the Court is that it is part of politics. It is not separate from -- and the presidential election I think will determine the future of the Court for decades."
Watch Jeffrey Toobin's full interview.
On capital punishment: "We've sent 130 men to death row to be executed in this country, at least 130 that we know of, who have later have been exonerated because they were either innocent, or they were not fairly tried. That's 130 people that we've locked down on death row. And they've spent years there. Including Ron Williamson, the guy I wrote about. Well, you know, if that doesn't bother you, go to death row. Go see a death row. Go look at one."
Watch the entire interview with John Grisham.
On the cross and the lynching tree: "Crucifixion and lynchings are symbols. They are symbols of the power of domination. They are symbols of the destruction of people's humanity. With black people being 12 percent of the US population and nearly 50 percent of the prison population, that's lynching. It's a legal lynching. So, there are a lot of ways to lynch a people than just hanging 'em on the tree. A lynching is trying to control the population. It is striking terror in the population so as to control it."
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Watch Bill Moyers' interview with James Cone.
On justice and wealth: "Crime is secondary. There are no millionaires on death row nor will there ever be. Almost everyone on death row is poor. And do you really think that no millionaire ever committed a capital crime?"
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Watch Bill Moyers' interview with Thomas Cahill.
On justice in the War on Terror: "I fully supported and the administration's authority to detain enemy combatants, including American citizens, without charge or trial, just as Franklin Roosevelt with hundreds of thousands of German and Italian soldiers in World War II. And I knew that we had the legal authorities to do this. But when I went to this dilapidated prison in a naval brig in Norfolk and we saw this young man in — who was a foot soldier for the Taliban — and he was off in a wing by himself. And we saw him through a fuzzy black and white television in the corner of a room. And he was sitting in the corner of his isolated cell. And he hadn't seen many people for a long time. And he was in a fetal position in his bed, sitting there. And I did have this moment where I said I know we have a legal authority to do that. But is this the right way to do this?"
Watch Jack Goldsmith on his experience in the Bush administration.
On the Justice Department: "The President appoints the U.S. Attorneys. They're political in a certain respect. But the Department of Justice — the power that they hold is so great, it's life and limb, you know — put you in jail, make you run up hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal costs. Even though we understand that political appointees take these jobs. We don't assume that the party in power is going to use that kind of power to advance its political interests."
Watch the rest of Bill Moyers' interview with Josh Marshall.
