Mike Wolff has helped save men on death row, preserve the St. Louis school desegregation program, end capital punishment for juveniles, protect the vote of poor people, establish jury trials in discrimination cases, preserve jury verdicts in personal injury suits and foster efforts to rid St. Louis’ municipal courts of longstanding injustices. Few St. Louisans…
The most outstanding example of the press and the courts acting together to check the abuse of presidential power is the Pentagon Papers. Congress had fallen down on its oversight during when on Aug. 7, 1964 it approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the Vietnam War. The resolution was based on murky — and…
In the past half century the most reliable checks on presidential power have been a watchdog press and independent judiciary. In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has attacked the legitimacy of both institutions with a fusillade of insults, misstatements and lies. They were among the 133 lies and misstatements that the Washington…
When America celebrated the 200th birthday of the Bill of Rights in 1991, no one foresaw the powerful forces that would remake it over the next quarter century. The communications revolution and rise of Facebook-Twitter-Google democracy The loss of privacy to unforeseen technology 11, 2001, and the growth of the national security state Citizens United…
The press is losing its power, its credibility and its way. As the Bill of Rights turns 225, the one business it protects, the press, is suffering an identity crisis. Who is a journalist? Is Julian Assange a publisher? By democratizing news does the Internet serve democracy or confuse it? By serving as a world…