Today’s podcast guest is Hon. Lise Pearlman (ret.), a former California trial lawyer and first Presiding Judge of the California State Bar Court. Following her retirement from the bench, Judge Pearlman has become a best-selling author and nationally recognized speaker on famous 20th century trials whose books have won multiple awards in the categories of law, U.S. History, and multicultural nonfiction.
In this episode, we discuss her book With Justice for Some: Politically Charged Criminal Trials of the Early 20th Century That Helped Shape Today’s America and a few of the significant cases detailed within, and delve into the injustices surrounding each trial and how they have impacted the American legal system.
Listen now; link in bio.
Ten years after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2286 to protect healthcare in war zones, hospitals, clinics, doctors, and aid workers remain under attack. Most alarming, both the United Nations and human rights organizations report that state actors are responsible for many of these violations. Protecting medical workers and patients must become a global priority.
I am proud to introduce the inaugural issue of the Journal for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution, a platform dedicated to exposing injustice, amplifying courageous voices, and inspiring action. In a world where war, authoritarianism, displacement, gender-based violence, climate catastrophe, and digital oppression devastate millions, indifference is complicity. This issue brings together leading scholars, humanitarian experts, and frontline advocates whose work confronts the greatest moral challenges of our time and refuses to look away. More than a collection of essays, this Journal is a call to conscience. It gives voice to survivors, challenges impunity, names those responsible, and insists that behind every statistic is a human life deserving of dignity, justice, and hope. Read it. Reflect on it. Share it. Then act. Because awareness is the first step toward accountability, and lasting change begins only when silence ends.
Read now; link in bio.
For years, US law recognized that abusers often weaponize immigration status to silence victims. Human rights advocates warn that targeting survivors not only endangers vulnerable women and children, but also weakens accountability for domestic violence and trafficking throughout society.
Iraq’s new government is being urged to confront a legacy of serious human rights abuses that have left thousands of victims and families waiting for justice. For years, Iraqis have faced enforced disappearances, torture, unlawful killings, repression of peaceful protests, and restrictions on freedom of expression, while many of those responsible have avoided accountability. Amnesty International is calling on the government to investigate abuses committed by security forces and armed groups, reveal the fate of missing and disappeared people, protect journalists and activists, and strengthen women’s rights. The message is clear: Iraq’s new leadership has an opportunity to change course. Political promises must now translate into justice, accountability, and genuine protection of human rights. The Iraqi government can do that; let us now see if they act.
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Under Trump's tragic misguidance, America’s social fabric frays from within: threads of trust snap in quiet neighborhoods. The poor sink deeper into invisible pits; discrimination multiplies like shadows at dusk. White supremacy crawls out of the basement, no longer ashamed of its reflection. What was once a quilt of many colors is scorched by resentment, leaving voids where empathy once stitched us together. The press, the unruly guardian of light, is battered as an enemy, its ink demonized, its questions cursed. Free expression stands in the dock, accused of treason for telling the truth. When words are gagged, lies become the loudest language. A democracy without a free tongue is a body without breath, an echo chamber where truth is drowned, and silence wears the crown.
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Across Europe, Roma communities continue to face a level of discrimination that should be unacceptable on a continent that presents itself as a global defender of human rights. Forced evictions, police violence, segregation, racist political rhetoric, and attacks against Roma are not isolated incidents. They reveal a deeper failure by European governments and institutions to confront systemic anti-Roma racism. Recent cases—from discriminatory evictions in Italy to violence and institutional discrimination elsewhere—show how easily prejudice becomes policy when authorities fail to act. Europe cannot credibly champion equality abroad while one of its largest ethnic minorities continues to experience discrimination and exclusion at home. Governments must move beyond inclusion strategies and symbolic commitments. Protecting Roma requires enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, accountability for abuses, and political leaders willing to confront racism rather than exploit it.
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Today’s podcast guest is Hon. Lise Pearlman (ret.), a former California trial lawyer and first Presiding Judge of the California State Bar Court. Following her retirement from the bench, Judge Pearlman has become a best-selling author and nationally recognized speaker on famous 20th century trials whose books have won multiple awards in the categories of law, U.S. History, and multicultural nonfiction.
In this episode, we discuss her book With Justice for Some: Politically Charged Criminal Trials of the Early 20th Century That Helped Shape Today’s America and a few of the significant cases detailed within, and delve into the injustices surrounding each trial and how they have impacted the American legal system.
Listen now: soundcloud.com/alon-ben-meir/on-the-issues-episode-161-lise-pearlman
Full bio
Hon. Lise Pearlman (ret.) was the first Presiding Judge of the California State Bar Court and a former California trial lawyer. Following her retirement from the bench, Judge Pearlman has become a best-selling author and nationally recognized speaker on famous 20th century trials whose books have won multiple awards in the categories of law, U.S. History, and multicultural nonfiction. Pearlman’s latest book, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No.1 — The Man Who Got Away was Amazon’s #1 Best Seller in Criminal Evidence in December 2021.
Judge Pearlman is also the author of four other critically-acclaimed history books published by Regent Press: Call Me Phaedra: The Life and Times of Movement Lawyer Fay Stender, winner of the 2018 International Book Award for biographies; With Justice for Some: Politically Charged Criminal Trials of the Early 20th Century That Helped Shape Today’s America (2017); The Sky’s the Limit: People v. Newton: The REAL Trial of the 20th Century? (2012); and American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton (2016) which is also a companion to the nonprofit documentary of the same name which won a Civil Rights award from the Berkeley Film Foundation and had its world premiere in April 2022 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Pearlman serves as its Producer.
Pearlman was in the first class of undergraduates at Yale University to include women (1971). After moving to the California Bay Area, Pearlman graduated Order of the Coif from Berkeley Law (1974), clerked for California Chief Justice Donald Wright and was a Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School before joining a San Francisco Bay Area firm as a litigator where she was named managing partner in 1984–the first established firm in California headed by a woman. In 1989, Pearlman was selected by the California Supreme Court as the first Presiding Judge of the State Bar Court. After retiring, Judge Pearlman served as mediator and arbitrator with Alternative Resolution Centers, Chair of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission, President of Women Lawyers of Alameda County and on the Board of California Women Lawyers.
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