Verdicts and Voices

A chat with Margaret Satterthwaite, UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers

Episode Summary

How can we recognize and address threats to the rule of law? And how can lawyers persuade the public that judicial independence is everyone’s concern? UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Satterthwaite has some ideas.

Episode Notes

NYU professor Margaret Satterthwaite has been monitoring threats to the rule of law on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council since 2022. She has seen autocrats around the world unleash assaults on their legal systems, but now she finds herself writing to the government of her own country about attacks on judges and lawyers in the United States. And she has plenty of advice for Canadians and people everywhere about how to identify and respond to early warning signs that the rule of law may be at risk.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada. For more Canadian legal news, read CBA National, the CBA's bilingual online magazine.