University of Tennessee
William Davenport Mercer is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and author of Diminishing the Bill of Rights: Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty.
PROFILE
William Davenport Mercer
Guest
FROM William Davenport Mercer
To the Point
The US Supreme Court is back in business Justice Neil Gorsuch has the US Supreme Court at full strength after more than a year with just eight members: four conservatives and four tending liberal. After avoiding important cases that might have produced tie votes, the Court is expected to come up with some blockbuster decisions in its next term. Partisan gerrymandering, gay rights, free speech, religion and immigration are all on the docket… after the court takes three months off. Is Gorsuch even more to the right than Antonin Scalia, the man he replaced? And…how come the court gets such a long vacation?
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Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
To the Point
Human Rights in the era of Donald Trump President Trump’s UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, said today the US might pull out of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. Serious violators of human rights are members of the Council itself–and a US resignation could make things worse. Later on today’s show, now that he’s into his second term, comedian turned US Senator Al Franken is telling jokes again.