Michael is a law professor and scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Michael has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written/co-written/edited six books, including Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (co-written with his wife, Sherry Colb), as well as scores of law review articles about American constitutional law. He is also a columnist for Verdict. Michael is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Michael has appeared in American news media as a legal expert and has been interviewed by and/or quoted in, for example, The New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (another suspected sentientist).
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
02:02 Michael's Intro
- Studying physics, then the law
- Clerking then legal scholarship
- Blogging @ Dorf On Law
- #vegan since 2006
- Animal work in partnership with Mike's wife, Sherry Kolb "we agreed on nearly everything, but not quite everything"
04:44 What's Real?
- Growing up in New York, raised #jewish "but mostly culturally"
- "My father never went to synagogue unless it was somebody's wedding... he was not at all religious but he was the most ethical person I knew"
- "Religion is not necessary and certainly... not sufficient to make someone an ethical person"
- "That personal aspect... overshadowed anything I was being taught"
- Dad's library: "the answers that the religious folks were giving to deep philosophical questions... barely scratched the surface... whereas if I went into my dad's study... Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy"... Lao Tse..."
- Teaching: "what I really value is engagement with hard questions"
- "The sorts of answers that religion gives stop asking the questions just when they become interesting... god made the world... god thus commanded it... it leaves lots of further questions unasked"
- "Nearly all of the spiritual or supernatural beliefs I've encountered, whether religious or otherwise, strike me as ridiculous"
- "If that happens [god appearing] then I'll adjust my views... but that will be in response to evidence... that itself would be a kind of naturalism."
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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