In recent years, book bans have swept the nation. According to PEN America, more than 4,000 books have been banned in some capacity in public schools since July 2021. Books that discuss topics like racial justice or have characters that identify as LGBTQ+ are just some of the examples that have received widespread attention. While book bans are not a new phenomenon, parents rights groups have accelerated their attacks on what books can be put on school's shelves, leaving a bigger question up...

As kids, we all heard someone tell us that it's wrong to lie...but as we grew older, we realized that people lie all the time. Politicians, presidents, and even executives at corporations tell lies—big and small. As citizens, there are obvious exceptions where lying is wrong, for instance; perjury, lying on your employment application, or lying to get a bank loan. But do we have a right to lie? And if so, what are the boundaries? On this episode, we speak with UCLA Professor of Philosophy...

We’re doing something special for this month’s episode. In October of 2023, we hosted a live recording here at the University of Chicago. Tom Ginsburg was joined on stage by renowned scholar Genevie Laikier to have a conversation about free speech on social media. In other words, it was very relevant to our current season about the right to free expression. We’re going to share that recording with you this month. We hope you enjoy and thanks to everyone who listened to our podcast this year.

Some might say one of the most important ways we exercise the right to free expression is through protests. And we’ve certainly seen groups all over the world using that right in the last few years, from the George Floyd protests in the U.S. to democratic marches in Hong Kong to demonstrations in Chile, Venezuela, Iran and Peru. On the surface this right may seem straightforward, but there are many thorny questions to grapple with: when does a protest become a violent violation of other...

We all know the phrase: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But is that actually true? Recent research in psychology has shown that words can cause a plethora of different harms. Should this make us re-think our approach to hate speech? In the US we’ve been hesitant to regulate hate speech, while other countries have been incredibly stringent. Which approach is right, and why? And, how do we even define what hate speech is anyway? To get some answers we...

On the third season of Entitled, we're circling back to the first fundamental right: the freedom of speech. Lawyers and law professors Claudia Flores and Tom Ginsburg begin this season by peeling back the curtains of how this right is currently playing out at universities across the country. In recent years, there have been tensions — and intense clashes — around speakers invited to campus, what professors are allowed to say in the classroom, and what subject matter should even be allowed to...

On our last season, we focused entirely on the idea of equality from an international perspective. But when it comes to domestic questions of equality, or equity, they often focus on an important and specific topic: race. And one of the leading voices in that conversation is Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi is most famous for his 2019 book "How To Be An Anti-racist". The book argues that the opposite of racism isn’t “not racist” but anti-racist. Meaning, rather than just being neutrally against...

For the first time in decades, the future of abortion rights in the US is uncertain. With the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, The Supreme Court has forced Americans to reconsider and fight for a new vision of a right to abortion should be. But it’s important to remember that debates about abortion don’t end at our borders. The end of Roe will have global ramifications for how other countries think about abortion rights but, as the US re-enters this international debate, are their lessons...

In a world with personalized laws, each person would be subject to different legal rules and their own personally-tailored laws. For example, if you're a good driver, you could be rewarded for that good behavior with less stringent laws. Through this idea, and the acceleration of AI, technology could be used to comprehend our data from various places to create laws individual to us. These are some of the ideas that Omri Ben-Shahar writes about in his book, Personalized Law: Different Rules...

More than half a million people are currently homeless in the United States. It's a crisis that extends beyond California and is trending upwards in other states, too. Most jurisdictions in the US have no right to shelter, and the right to have a home at all is not a guarantee. But just across the border, Canada recognizes the right to adequate housing as a fundamental human right affirmed in international law. In this episode, we speak with Canadian lawyer Leilani Farha, the former Special...

Animals suffer at the hands of humans every day. Not just in factory farms, but also in our homes, where pets don’t receive enough attention or exercise, and in our oceans, where humans disrupt their habitats and ecosystems. To what extent should animals have rights? In this special episode, we speak to world-leading philosopher Martha Nussbaum, professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, and author of Justice for Animals. Nussbaum expands her theory into why politics and law...

Artificial intelligence is all around us—it listens to us, even watches us, and waits for our daily demands. From Alexa to Siri, to Sophia, the social humanoid robot, AIs want to be our companions (at least, the companies who build them want us to think so). However, some people fear that the more sentient AIs become, the more they will have to be treated with basic rights. Do AIs deserve rights? And if they do, what would those rights entail? In this episode, Tom and Claudia imagine a...

Sixty-one million adults in the United States live with a disability — that's one in four adults, a staggering number when you consider how widespread ableism is. In a society that largely operates without adequate infrastructure, accommodations, and services for disabled people, what does the right to equal opportunity look like? In this episode, Tom and Claudia explore this question through the perspectives of three disabled individuals. Michael Stein is the executive director of the...

While borders have the ability to divide countries both politically and socially, wealth drives an even bigger wedge between us. How do we make sense of the fact that the wealthiest country in the world, the United States, borders one of the poorest countries: Mexico? Despite efforts to mitigate this, global wealth inequality still appears to be growing. According to the World Inequality Report, the poorest half of the global population owns just 2% of the total global wealth. In this...

Fixing discrimination isn't as easy as putting anti-discrimination laws on the books. But, there is a tool that can at least chip away at the effects of discrimination: quotas. Over 130 countries have adopted gender quotas…and around one-quarter of the world uses some form of affirmative action programs. So, do quotas actually work at creating more diverse and equitable societies? In this episode of Entitled, Claudia and Tom learn how quotas are working—or not working—around the world. They...

There are two words that sound pretty similar, but they're not synonyms: equality and equity. While equality means that everybody should be given the same resources or opportunities, equity recognizes that we live in an unequal system, so we need to allocate more resources and opportunities to people without equal access. So, what does it really mean to live in an equitable society? In this episode of Entitled, Claudia and Tom zoom out on what equity practices look like around the globe,...

After years of community protests, and months of legal work, Chile finalized a draft of a brand new constitution this summer. Chileans will vote to pass or reject this constitution in a few days. In this episode of Entitled, Claudia and Tom head to Santiago, Chile! We hear their conversations with local Chileans, from musicians and taxi drivers to the lawyers who helped draft this new constitution, like Ricardo Montero Allende and Isabel Aninat, and Mapuche linguist and Indigenous rights...

Would you put a price tag on your rights? If you had to choose between your socio-economic rights or your freedom to peacefully protest, what would you choose? It’s a question that might get a lot of mixed responses, but some might argue you can’t have one without the other. In this episode of Entitled, Claudia and Tom discuss these two groups of rights: socio-economic rights and civil and political rights. They take a deeper look at the United States with Margaret Huang, president and CEO...

Lawyers and law professors Claudia Flores and Tom Ginsburg kick off the second season of Entitled — and this time, they’re focusing on one human right (and not just any right) — the right to equality. In the first episode, they explore what equality means in different contexts and to different people. Is it possible or even preferrable for every person to be equal in every way? When do we want equality? How do we get it? And what do we mean when we ask for it? This episode they speak with...

The rights of nature are enshrined in a number of constitutions around the world, and there is a growing movement to extend rights to nature as it faces increasing threats. The extension of rights to nature prompts fundamental questions about the nature, enforcement and evolution of rights. Does nature have rights, or do they belong only to humans? Are the rights of nature human rights in disguise? Is the extension of legal rights to nature enough to ensure its protection? In the final...

Today, medical advances make it possible for a woman to have a baby on behalf of someone else. This has given many people – including many in the LGBTQI community – the exciting possibility of founding a family of their own. But this incredible medical technology raises new questions about rights: how far do reproductive rights go? How do you establish the rights of a parent or citizenship? Who has a right to found a family? In this episode of Entitled, we explore reproduction and bodily...

The right to bear arms is an American touchstone, found in very few other countries. Many think it should not be a right at all, and the debate over it is highly polarized. This episode broadens the lens to show how other countries handle guns, and suggests ways to cut through the charged discussion here at home.

The collapse of the Afghan government has raised grave concerns for the future of the country, particularly for women. Exit is not a generally available option, but should it be? On this episode, we continue our conversation about migration, and the limits of the current human rights system for protecting the rights of women.

The right to seek and enjoy asylum has never been more important than in today’s global landscape. At the same time, countries have never been more committed to finding increasingly creative ways to avoid having to take in refugees. Today on Entitled, we discuss the right to asylum and what our rights are at the border of another country. We know the movement of distressed migrants at sea and nations’ borders is the cause for a lot of human tragedy. Are borders necessary – can we conceive of...