that the delimitation we are seeking out. thinking habits are been through similar thing happened two years later in chicago. chicago is the case, another black plana. the reason the court takes up the second case is the first case was in the district of columbia and all the first is established was for purposes of limiting the federal government, the second amendment establishes individual right. it was unclear whether you had application to the amendment of this day. the tunneling case established that position at august the donald was the 72-year-old lack manned army veteran who is living in a neighborhood where he again was seized by young black men. he said i want a gun for the same reason shelley parker wanted a gun and the court ultimately upheld his claim. >> in the final moment that we

have, we have traced the tradition of black arms and how it's been challenged in the mid-20th century and now the corrected scores over gun rights and the protection of black rights, many who bought the hands of our gun violence. how do you see the long rich tradition, black tradition of arms being revived in the short time we have? >> ultimately what i have is that people have to make up their own mind. i try and give lots of data. this is something they teach. it's got another textbook that deals with lots of details on questions of risks and benefits. we've got all kinds of data about the benefit of firearms, defensive and uses ranging into the millions per year. you don't hear about them because they are branching out this when no shots are fired. deterrent value of firearms

chronicled by the center for disease control of the national crime at the survey. read all of that detail in the book. my assessment of this coming away is that on balance, we are better off if members, the sober, mature members of the black community has the choice of owning firearms for self protection, that we are better off on balance. doesn't mean arms don't have their costs. we are at a stage where hopefully we can have a less visceral, more calm her conversation about whether there is some role for the black tradition in the modern era and we can move away from just the reflex we've had over the last comest certainly 20 years that says, well, these are evil instruments we need to get away and get out of the commute. so 40% of black folk who we

ensued in the pew poll found it was more important to uphold the individual right to arms. they spoken some way gives voice to those people and those concerned and hopefully will cause others in the community to at least engage the question at a more serious level than just a reflex reaction against guns that are a caricature of what the actual conversation needs to be. >> is certainly have given me a reason to revisit guns with a more historically informed. thank you for the contribution. >> guest: thank you.

>> mascot another interview from both tvs color stories. georgetown law center professor paul butler talks about his book , "let get free." he describes the he describes the site as a prosecutor in a position to leave the job after being wrongfully arrested and charged with assault. this is about an hour. >> host: "let get free" is the

name of the book. the author, george, professor, paul butler. the faster butler, with a hip-hop. justice? >> guest: a hip-hop theory of justice is if you listen to hip-hop, you are reminded that you are 2.5 billion people lockstep. watch all these reality shows about housewives and vampires. you'll never know that we lock up more people in the united states than any country in the history of the world. you can listen to urban radio more than 30 minutes without being reminded of that fact. their constant shutouts in hip-hop culture to brothers and sisters who are away, who are locked up, who hip-hop doesn't let us forget. so anything from chandra kumar wondering why a father

devastating draws and to hold the worst is alcohol, the devastation of being drunk. people wondering why we flock to people for wheat. wheat is the hip-hop drug of choice. they love it. so lots of questions about criminal law policy, how it is in the book and also on this tree. lots of opinions about how we can be safe for you and for your if we listen to hip-hop. you know, the people who create hip-hop actually are perfectly situated to give us great criminal justice. there is this philosopher named john rawls who talks about the best possible just as created by people who don't know who you're going to be in the world. imagine you don't know whether you are black, white, asian,

latino, immigrant or citizen, you make the best possible law. with criminal justice, that's the hip-hop nation. it consists of people most likely to be charged with crimes. everybody knows that. but also people most likely to be the terms of crime. in their music, and their art, hip-hop artists are laying down on track with the criminal justice is will look like, what the justices similar click if we treated everybody equally, treated everybody fairly and want to keep the street safe. again, brilliant ground-level reporting nobody else is doing right now about the law on the books industry. >> host: does hip-hop justice have any relationship to zero tolerance, three strikes, broken windows? >> guest: yeah, the artist

have pockets in the next. it takes all of these things that you read about in the news paper. other people experienced the street like stopping frisk, three strikes and you're out. but also, a classic philosophers the importance of richard duchenne. an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. jc has a song where he says if you kill my dog, i will kill your cat. same concept, dysphagia. when i started thinking about hip-hop, carefully around the time i started being a law professor. i practiced criminal law is a prosecutor for years. i've never really gotten to the theories until i started teaching. i heard the conversation between the classic philosophers and emmanuel calms and snoop dogg on the other hand and lil' kim,

nikki minaj. they were saying the same thing about the fairness of punishment, who the society should select now to intentionally hurt. people say you should write about the things that only you can write about. i didn't know anybody who was his welfare's both hip-hop and criminal philosophy as me. so sure enough, on this comp tips again, this remix of three straight system comes out not just as interesting philosophy, but a brilliant art. tupac shakur were as a song about it's called your momma. it's about his mom who is a really political act this do for a while suffered from an addiction to drugs. his dad wasn't in the picture. the doughboys on the corner who helped raise him, helped make him a man. so the hip-hop considered

current events? yes. is it kind of put that through art and culture and history? absolutely does. >> host: paul butler county road and became a prosecutor because i hate holy spirit i stopped being a prosecutor because i hate holies. >> guest: so, i grew up in chicago. you can't as a young, black kitten in chicago have a veto, and idealistic romantic view of the police as being your friend, the guys who help you in your cat gets dark in a tree. that's not how it was director. when i went to law school, people thought i was down for a cause brother who would come out for legal aid to be public defender. but i had heard prosecutors had all this power. the way to make a change was to create change for me and died. so i went in as this undercover

brother to see what i could do from the inside. it didn't work. what i found this rather than change the system, the system changed me. it is not like i started on the first day calling the defendant always fibers the prosecutors used to talk about the defendants. that took a while. needless to say in prosecutor's offices, defendants are held in high regard. so when you think about the things i was concerned about click unequal education, the lousy miseducation of lot of our children, broken homes, the kinds of rings that make folks at risk for going to prison. prosecutor offices there can tittered winning your case. it's not that they are mean people who don't care about poverty and discrimination and income equality. it's not their job to think

about the effect that goes that whites have on their defendants. where prosecutors to law days for people in prison. again, i knew that going in. it is amazing to me that i kind of got caught up in that mindset. part of it is just lawyer culture. we are competitive. we like to win. the way you move ahead in a prosecutor's offices to lock up as many people as you can for as long as you can. unfortunately, i got caught up in that mindset. but fortunately i got out. so now i call myself a recovering prosecutor. recovering because i still like to point my finger at the bad guy. i still get upset when someone holies somebody else. but what i said in the book is true. check out the prosecutor, the people who do the most bullying

because they have these very strict sentences and they go to people who are accused in say unless you plead guilty, i'm going to throw the book at you. you have some young people in those situations. they might think they have a case. they know about their famous constitutional right for every child. they may think okay, i want to have my day in court. but if you are the connect 20 years in prison, if you go to trial and lives versus five years if you just say you're guilty. sometimes that five years seems awfully attractive given what the alternative is. even some folks who are innocent. so lots of concerns that i developed as a prosecutor. didn't have a lot of time to think about it. that's one of the reasons i wanted to teaching and writing

and be more thoughtful about the fact i was having locking up all these people and especially all of these folks who look like me. i was a young black man locking up young black men. some of them deserve to be imprisoned. i don't want to have been a rose colored wrappers about that. but a lot of them really didn't. at the end of the day, i had to ask myself coming in now, did i go to harvard law school? was i paying back thousands of dollars in loans to put my people and present? the answer for me was no. >> host: was switched your opinion? with the switch? >> guest: there is a couple of lake developments just in terms of wondering why all of the defendants were black. if you go to a supreme court in d.c., you think why people don't

use rugs. they don't still turn their neighbors. they don't get into fights. they're just not present in criminal court in d.c., even though it is 50% way. so that was a problem. do you notice that? of course. african-american prosecutors talk about that? of course they do. at the end of the day, you know, you take the defendants and you have the ones that the police and fbi are into you and i said they were bringing to me. so i had concerns about that. when i became a prosecutor, i didn't start being paul butler. i didn't start being this kind of conscious brother who always knew about the reality of discrimination and equality. i was still that guy. but the main thing that happened that made me stop in a prosecutor was this very dramatic incident when i had the

most high-profile case and the department of justice. i was working public corruption cases and as prosecuting a united states senator. there were two guys on the team. as the junior guy, a baby lawyer at that point. it was a very high-profile case. david sternberg are or who was a republican senator from minnesota. when i was working in that case, i got arrested or prosecuted for a crime i didn't commit. people say it shouldn't have taken that to get you to see the inequities in the system and it probably shouldn't. but boy, did it. a lot of the things the defendants had that in many cases they happened to me. the police lie. now, my criminal defense attorney friend so francese villagers so surprised. the police lie all the time. we tell you that when you're prosecutor.

that's true. the fact this cop would come into court, raised his hand commiserated tell the truth and then just tell a bald-faced lie, it amazed me. defendants have it bear witness says that there who know what really happened, but they walk on the court. same thing in my case. the criminal prosecution was based little fred and barney dispute over a parking space and the judge in the child choked with the jury. this is a dispute about a parking space between two people and neither one of them have the car, which was true. i moved to the department and a parking space came a day. my bright idea, was to rent out the marking space so i can have a little money on the side. unbeknownst to me, my neighbor across the parking space is running out that space, to come only at the to me.

it didn't belong to her. so i rented it out. a woman who is perky manner stairs putting staff, notes on the car. i just decided that i am going to film her doing this. i'm going to prosecutor. thus we do. we investigate crimes. so she put something on the car. i go outside to see. she sees me out by, calls the policeman says that i pushed her. the police come. don't ask any questions. they see this black guy, wasn't dressed in a prosecuting suit. it was early in the morning. they hauled me off to jail. it was amazing. it was many years ago and i'm still angry, hurt, devastating.

i didn't go to harvard law school to end up another in jail. that's it i felt like. people treated me during this one incident. i was actually locked up for a few hours. they treated me like garbage. it was humiliating. but at the same time to hunt all of this privilege. when i got my proverbial phone call, i had to think about these lawyers which ones do i want to call? i knew folks who'd be willing to help and they were. at the end of the day, things worked out fine for me. the reason they worked out fine was because i had status. people wanted to help me. the reason they were out fine was because i had money. i could afford the best lawyer in town. the reason why things worked out fine for me was because i have legal skills. i've literally prosecuted people

in the court room where i was being prosecuted. the other reason why things worked out fine for me was because i was innocent. what i thought about all those reasons, that doesn't seem like the most important one. again, there is this evolution might inking about the unfairness of what i was doing day to day. but then that one dramatic thing in the chapters of the book i talk about call of the hunter gets captured by the game because i got captured by the game. you know, maybe it was a come to jesus moment that i needed to make me change my life scores. so i wouldn't wish that on anybody. but you know, i learned from it. and made a man out of you. they made a black man out of me. >> host: you say after your child went home and cried. just go after that was arrested.

again, it was humiliating. i never thought i was going to be in that situation. i did everything right. and what do these great schools, got good grades, became a prestigious judge after i graduated and it prestigious job. i was just on this tribe. getting arrested and prosecuted was never part of the plan. but you know, as part of the reality now for one and three young black men in this country, this moment as a criminal case. they are either on probation or parole are locked in a period so one of the things hip-hop talks about his getting arrested is kind of a rite of passage. it is something that has been to statistically many, many people. >> host: paul butler, how much longer to service a prosecutor after the trial?

>> guest: for about another year. part of the reason i was being prosecuted was political because there had been some back-and-forth train my prosecuting office, which was made just as in the office is prosecuting me, which was the local d.c. prosecutor. so folks at my office while behind me. plus i was working. i still have this high-profile case against the senator. i went to trial. i was equated, found out guilty in record time. literally less than 10 minutes. so legally i could go on being a prosecutor for as long as they wanted. but i couldn't morally. i just couldn't do that anymore given what had happened to me. i would've felt like a hypocrite. >> host: you also write another chapter that people may not believe you. >> guest: i have a record. i'm not as innocent as it once

was. i understand that. through the timer was a prosecutor, you know, people who are arrested, police had credibility. there's a lot of can then case is, the police find drugs on someone in the issuing court is whether the police have legal access to these drugs. he said i could look and the bookbag announcer i found the drugs. the defendant always says no, i didn't then. judges have to decide do they believe. we can imagine who they believe. i most always they believed the police. they don't believe the accused person. so my case was called united states of america versus paul butler. when you're a good little guy with the most powerful nation in the road against you, you're in a tough position.

so i understand that when i was a prosecutor, i would say my name is paul butler. i represent the united states of america. those jurors would look at me like okay mr. united states, we'll do whatever you say. so when i was on the other side, i got the backend of that. so i understand how, when again you get that accusation is hard for a lot of people to think the government was wrong. >> host: back to "let's get free: a hip-hop theory of justice." you write the criminal justice system gives the state a monopoly of exercising retribution. if legal hate, probably paid is it's hard to contain. you punish out-of-control. >> host: when we look at who was locked up come we tend to imagine his hard-core thugs, folks who are like a menace to society. if you spend some time in a federal prisoners to a prison,

they're certainly some people like that. but most of them, a good house aren't. almost half of the people locked up are locked up for drug crimes, nonviolent drug crimes. for those folks, we have to wonder whether behemoth to this cage with these horrible conditions, subject to all kinds of violent and sexual abuse, oracle through, whether that is doing those folks any good, whether it is making them better, more responsible citizens when they get out. 90% of these people will return to the community. so we want them to return as people who make a contribution, who are better equipped to be members of our society. and that is not happening with the way that folks get punished now. so it is out of control.

so yeah, i am the first person when i see in the news some creep stole an old lady's pocketbook and push her down, i might put him under the jail. but that is a feeling that can kind of created some momentum and that is what happened in our criminal justice system now. we start with the murderers and and lock those folks out way longer than any other country in the world. that wasn't enough. this rush to punishment could be can change. folks don't believe this when i say it, but there is literally some people in this country serving life sentences for marijuana offense is. i mean, come on. that just shows you how this rush to incarcerate, this great urge to punish. part of it is our culture, rules that i've always been

hypocritically apart because we know that lots of people, 95% of people using drugs are not getting caught. sometimes i joke. we talk about whether drugs should be legal. for white people, their legal right now. by and large they're not going to get caught. so it is a way -- one of the things i wanted to do in this book was to think about ways to make punishment more equal, more just. and again, computer recovery so i'm very cute earned about public safety. one of the concerns they had is when when you take these nonviolent offenders come usually young men between 17 and 30 and you lock them up with the guys who are hard-core violent

criminals, that is like sending these young guys to finishing school for a crime. so when they come out, they're often worse, not better. so one of the things that we've seen in jurisdictions like new york and california that have safely reduce their prison population, violent crime has gone down. if you look at the effect to present, that is very pretty to pull. again, not a place where you send people to make them better. >> host: you write in 2009. 2.3 million people are in prison in the u.s. i% of the world's population. 25% prisoners. 60% were people in u.s. prisons than in the u.s. military. the state of california alone has more prisoners than do france, great britain, germany, japan, singapore netherlands combined. in baltimore, maryland,

population 650,000. 115,000 people arrested in one year it under the 15 state he could be sentenced to life in prison for first-time nonviolent marijuana offense. by 2011, the number of americans under criminal justice supervision will be nearly 8 million. that is equal to the combined population of l.a., chicago and philadelphia. finally in the u.s., when their prison or jail opened every week. >> guest: so come the start of good news. we are getting a little bit better now. for the last couple of years, so if the number of people being admitted to praising his going down. part of it is you guessed it, economic. this financial crisis we are trying to work our way out of. it turns out it's awfully expensive to lock up 2.5 million people. that place is $25,000 the

airport in may. if you do the math, lots of folks are asking what is he took this money on schools, health hh care, job training. would not be a better suggestion. in the air, blacks cussed million-dollar blocks. you would think, but they are million-dollar blocks because that's the money the government's been slacking the resident. so again, lots of folks have imagined better, more efficient in the work has to take you of those bonds. it is slowly getting to some states where you wouldn't expect. in criminal justice and economic reasons i thinking about ways to

reduce the number of people they locked out. so that the good news and we see that over time we are hope dean this trend will continue and even fewer people will be admitted to prison. we have to go a long way to get down to where countries are usually compare ourselves to, countries in western europe, japan, so many fewer people in those places. it's not because their citizens are law abiding. people think there's something different about the united states. in lots of those countries there some crimes like assault that people commit more than they do here. it is just that for virtually every crime committed citizens are a lot lower than stuff we sent folks to prison for that they don't. they average person is just as safe walking the streets of paris or london or berlin and

especially tokyo to chicago, new york or l.a. they are doing something right that were not. there's a lot less money on punishment or prison for criminal court. they're getting the same return on their dollar. so we've been thinking, how can we be more like them quite >> some people may take issue with this. we tolerate a minimum level of risk. after the horrible day of september 112,001. some people have asked, is there a trade-off between liberty on the one hand and security on the other the politically correct

answer is no, there's not a trade-off. i didn't write let's be politically correct. i read it to think about ways we can be safe and free. there some law enforcement not to get guns off the street, that wicked drugs out of people's pockets and cars. for example, stop everybody in the street and search them to see what they have. communities in new york that under the stop and frisk regime opposed to that. the point is the bill of rights, the great fourth amendment that says we have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and teachers, the wonderful privilege against self-incrimination that says government can't make make us on ourselves the right to a jury

trial. none of those are intended to make it easier for the police. in fact, they make it harder for the police. the men who wrote the constitution, they understood that there is something essential to democracy about being left alone by the state unless you're going to hurt someone, about the police not being able to march in and do stuff that you don't want to do unless there's a very important public safety reason for that. now there's lots of concerns. everyone's talking about the national security contacts. a lot of those issues are domestic homeland security people scared to death about crime and willing to tolerate

all kinds of deprivation of liberty in order to feel safe. frankly, a lot of white people are willing to tolerate because they know they're not that it didn't so this deprivation. they know that occurs in measures like stop and frisk are mainly applied to poor people, to emigrate, to a community. people perceived as the other. >> host: that's about the fourth or fifth time the product the topic of race in this discussion. race in the law. just goes to which type about how many people are locked up. it's not like our prisons look like america and her glorious diversity. we have one african-american president in 1 million african-americans in prison. the numbers have actually gone up during the last century and

the 21st century as well. if you look at this verities, like the 1920s and 30s and 40s, data summary of the segregated lunch counters, research heaven and for latinos and african-americans couldn't live in certain neighborhoods and in the 40s when japanese citizens were sent to the concentration camps. those spirits of the good old days for criminal is because then the disparities were only two to one. now they are eight to one. what happened? did something happen? that one started going up in the 70s and 80s. we have just the question, what happened? did something happened that made african-americans make that turn up a study committing all these crimes? of course not.

the most important thing that happened was the war on drugs. it started out by president nixon and his main component was he understood at the beginning that the main problem that people think about what drugs is really a problem with addiction. the way to cure diseases to punish the sick to treat them to make them better. but then, politics bird its ugly head. he had the strategy that required a great space. the war on drugs is one of the tools to basically re-create a kind of inequality to make some folks feel better about themselves. so what that is african-american

don't use drugs more than anybody else. you can go to the national institute of health. buckley about 13% of folks who use drugs are black. we don't have statistics about folks who sell, but almost everything we know, people report time from folks at the same race. about 13% of sellers are black, too. okay, so 13% of people who do the crime go real closely here. 60% are black. 13% of people who do the crime, 60% of people who do the time. so that is just unfair. that is just selective law enforcement and has led to the ever growing disparity at times when the ink black folks were getting fairer, more equal.

the president of the united states. we've got these 1 million souls in prison. it's not a covert than that as a result of this war on drugs. i mentioned earlier is debate about whether drugs should be legalized. i like to say we legalize. because for most of american has area, you could go to the equivalent of the supermarket, radiator cbs. in the 1880s, by some of the other kids it wasn't the folks that it was great for your body, but the idea is that's what she wanted to, go ahead and do it. just like now we would end up walking him a not for eating prime red. if that's what they wanted to, that was the idea about drugs. when drug started getting

criminalized, it was never about public safety. it was about race. the first drug to be criminalized with that opium drug in san francisco in the 1880s. the concern was that china men were using opium to seduce white women. you can pretty much go down the line. than blacks in the south. you can just trace the ethnic group and the drug and its history of criminalization. if you just think about it, the idea of this little tiny thing you can hide almost anywhere. they get a reward. to get an arrest and you get in

trouble. at the same time, lots of people are using these drugs. we never found a way to prevent people from using it toxicants. we learnt that would be an experiment with trying to stop people from using alcohol in the 1920s. they use their discretion with african-americans. >> host: ending the war on drugs right is the best way to stop us incarceration in make neighborhoods safer. >> guest: it's an important way to start. again, part of i'm an intellectual, professor and it's important to learn from history. it is so instruct his. when we experimented with locking people up for supplying

alcohol, what did we do? we created this illegal market by violent. so how kebab is nothing but a drive-by shooter. when we made it legal for people to sell alcohol, we got rid of the violent that is associated with the market. the same would happen with other drugs. i'm not saying you should want to whole foods and bikers will not. i think the government has a role. punishment just doesn't work. it's much better to use. it said that her destructive drug, but the way to stop people from using it isn't to lock up the poor souls that become addicts. we have to have more responsible policies. so we are getting there now.

everyone knows there is a support debate about marijuana. we started with medical marijuana. folks who have constrictions can help with the hummus is. and now were seen in a couple states are durational marijuana be legalized. in a few months to be able to go into the stores in washington state and colorado and purchase small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption. it is going to be a lot better than when people go to bars now and get drunk. better thought out that people ask more responsibly on marijuana and alcohol. the point is to have lied policy that keeps it real as hip-hop artists like to say.

we are getting there with marijuana. again, doesn't mean the same response for every drug. i think the more astute policy of would just make better sense. >> host: who was grandma johnson in atlanta, the story you tell? >> guest: the outcome of such a tragic story. she was an old woman who lived in a bad neighborhood in atlanta, who is scared to death to leave her house. in fact, she almost never did. she had folks deliver groceries because she couldn't go out. eee or sold. one night -- late one night she heard this knock, knock, knock at her door.

of course she was scared to death. who's fair she said. the better open up this story. like lots of folks, especially in the south, she had begun to issue a to get her gun. she didn't get a chance to use it because these guys rammed down the door, came in and shot her many times. these guys it turned out for the police and they received a tip from a snitch that somebody was selling drugs out of grandma's house. turned out it was the wrong house and it that point it was too late for grandma. so, it is a tragic story that i recount to make a point about niches. there has been this famous debate in hip-hop about snitches

and the concern lots of folks have because of stories like that. the people who know about crime, criminal informant usually know because they are participating in these crimes and the police over rely on these paid informant to know what's going on and offer information to the police for good citizenship. if there's better relations between police and citizens, they're more likely to cooperate. and here is for grandma johnson lives, folks don't cooperate with the police unless there's something in her then. it would've been it for snitches is often cash money or break in their own prosecution. so the police say if you tell us what's happening over there, then we'll stick up for you when you go to court. does that take people tell it to

it doesn't. didn't make the snitches who lied about what was going on in grandma johnson's house. so if we use informant responsibly, the argument isn't that people who know about crimes shouldn't report it to the police. it's about the police piedmont fault about how they assessed the evidence to make sure it's in credible, to make sure it's responsible and to make sure folks don't have him in tentative july. if we use informant testimony more responsibly, will all be safer and prevent tragedies like what happened to that world women. >> host: in your book, "let get free" come you write the extraordinary power drug gives you please consider how accommodating course had been to

allow cops to detain them to investigate the drug crimes. courts have ruled the following behavior is quote, unquote suspicious, enough to support a police investigation for carrying drugs on a plane. number one, arriving late at night. number two, writing early in the morning. one of the first of the plane, one of the last of the plane. using a one-way ticket, using a round-trip ticket, caring brand-new thuggish, carrying a small tin bag. traveling alone, traveling with a companion. acting too nervous, acting to calm, wearing expensive clothing or jewelry, dressed in a black quarter is, loosefitting sweatshirts, walking rapidly. et cetera. >> guest: i wish i could claim credits. that came from thurgood marshall in an opinion that he wrote where he was obviously having fun. although they look at a bunch of cases about what the police said was suspicious.

if you get off first, middle, last, that suspicious and police can stop you. the concern is police have all this discretion, so much power. but they are exercising at electively. we talked about race early. i want to be careful to say i don't take this as ray says. i have lots of friends who are cops and prosecutors, including african-american law enforcement officers. they say paul, part of what you're saying is right. we do selectively enforce the drug laws in the african-american community. though we do that because that is the community we care most about. that is the community that is the protection. what other folks say, some academics have at this point as well, but for talking about crime, for a long time coming

problem was under enforcement of law in communities of color. you call the police and they didn't come because he was just too black folks getting into a fight or using drugs they didn't care. so if it fully, we are not at that anymore. but some of these african-american law enforcement officers say is we are actually now focusing on the black community. we are trying to make up for that that history. in this view, it is a public good. it's like a park, in school. you shouldn't complain if you have to match. the problem with that point of view is there is this opportunity cost when you lock up so many people. people say what the blackening me look like if it's drug users lockstep here they say would look like the white community because most white folks don't get locked up for those kinds, even though they commit them

just as much. so again, lots of friends who are police if i feel like i'm in trouble, the first people i am going to call it the police. they have some of the toughest jobs in the world. some of what they do, you couldn't pay me a million dollars to do. i have a profound respect for the police. again, i just want them to do their jobs in ways that are most distant with our dna deals. >> host: to nsa state? >> guest: we are getting there. lots of folks see now with what is going on with the nsa and how they are attracting lots of stuff we did know they were tracking, for folks in the hood, that is always been their experience. gc has this lyric where he says

the police were al qaeda black men. the idea is that constantly watched, there is this great sociologist at university of california has less than the government abandoned due, and never leaves you alone. for a lot of people in low-income communities of color, that's been their experience. they feel constantly watched by the police. in fact, the criminal justice system is the main way takes iran's government. it is their primary manifestation of the state in their lives. folks getting stopped, folks getting arrested, folks getting lots of. that's not obviously a positive encounter. so certainly they feel like they

live. >> host: paul butler come you graduate from harvard law in 1986. as you overlap with president obama? >> guest: i didn't. i overlapped for one year with the first lady. she is a wonderful person. even then, she had a lot of charisma. she's beautiful. i'm proud to say that i knew her in law school. >> host: what was your path from chicago? for part of chicago we raced in? what was your path to college and law school clinics >> guest: i was raised in all-black neighborhood in chicago. when he came to our city in the 1960s, said it was the most segregated city he'd ever seen. we are more than birmingham. so i didn't know any white folks in chicago.

i could ride my bike for bcks and really never see any of them. but to public schools in the area. when it was time to go to high school, my mom made me go to this just in the school that was in a different part of town. so my mom was like you are going here, too. i didn't want to go because it was an all boys school and it was different from where my friends for a elementary school were going to. i got an amazing education. i do and i had better teachers at yellow or harvard law school than i had at saint ignatius college prep. i am grateful to that system. the catholic education system. i got to give credit for getting me excited about learning. so between the gist of it and

even more emphatically, my mom pushing me the rough american american education that is to edit the hood. i'm just an example among many others at that story. i was fortunate enough to get into a good college and a good law school. i wanted to make a difference. you know, i wanted to kind of live because that the ethics i got from my mom for the churches i grew up in and from the gist of it who gave a great high school education. yale undergrad and then i went to harvard law. >> host: after harvard, where did she wear? >> guest: my first job was for a judge in a federal court in the federal trial court in manhattan. she was the second african-american women federal judge in new york. her name was mary johnson road. she was a feisty lady who had

been a criminal defense attorney in the bronx before she became first a state judge and then a federal judge. she had seen it all from both police, prosecutors and also from thence. she was a very effective judge. she got tough breaks. she was in a court to consider wall street's court. the southern district of new york. i think a lot of lawyers who are practicing that harper representing the top corporations. they weren't used to taking orders from this black woman. so she didn't have the pc and mac court. she gave them how. >> host: you served as a defense attorney as well? >> guest: i did. after an laughter stopped being

a clerk was one year opportunity i joined a law firm here. here in washington is associate. for a few years i took litigation, including them defense work. >> host: how long have you been teaching? >> guest: almost 20 years i've been teaching. it's the best job i ever had. i get to work with young all to help them think about criminal law, help them think about the wonderful bill of rights, the constitution. one of the courses we think a lot about a brief and crime especially. so part of my job is this wonderful opportunity to work with folks, especially young people. the other great part of my job is to work on books and articles.

when i was writing musketry, again, it's about criminal justice policy overall. i will listen to snoop dogg and will cam and then start writing. i thought i've got the best job in the world. >> host: this is paul butler spoke, "let's get free: a hip-hop theory of justice." is there going to be a follow-up? >> guest: there is. another book right now i expect to be this coming fall that is going to think a lot about what we've learned fanatics earrings. >> host: you've also contributed an essay to this book that came out. the new black. and if you talk about the president and the supreme court justice. you call them post blackbeard >> guest: so, then the two most powerful african-american men in the country you think are

opposites if you think about what you know about barack obama, the president and justice merits comment -- clarence thomas who sits on the supreme court it politically they are very different. the president says he is a feminist and clarence thomas got into a news despite what i see compelling evidence that he harassed anita hill. so with some weight at different. ..