Columbia University Law School professor, and columnist for The Nation magazine, Patricia Williams discusses the difficulties when perceptions of threats are protected under the law--in the context of the Trayvon Martin case and the Stand Your Ground law in Florida as well as in the Dharun Ravi conviction. 

Twenty years ago the country watched a political drama unfold onscreen. Clarence Thomas, then a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush in July of 1991. He went through the usual battery of Senate questioning in September. His confirmation seemed controversial but likely, until a young law professor named Anita Hill changed him with sexual harassment. The Hill-Thomas hearings riveted the nation.

Earlier on today's show, Dahlia Lithwick described how, in Elena Kagan, President Obama chose someone with a "judicial temperament," that it's "not in her nature to be a fighter, she's not a swing-for-the-fences liberal."  Patricia Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University who writes the Mad Law Professor column for The Nation magazine, joins us to take your calls.  

What do you make of this question of temperament vs. politics? What matters more? Judicial temperament or swinging-for-the-fences politically? Let us know!

• MONEY TAKEOUT: The Labor Department released new inflation figures last Friday, and it appears that the economy is experiencing moderate deflation. New York Times finance reporter Louise Story talks to us about the effects this deflation could have on ordinary Americans.
  
• SPORTS TAKEOUT: We check in with Takeaway Sports Contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin about last weekend's NFC playoffs and talk about the Cinicinnati Bengals' Marwin Lewis, who just won the NFL's Coach of the Year award.
• MLK TAKEOUT: This weekend, WNYC hosted a Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday celebration at the Brooklyn Museum, co-hosted by our own Celeste Headlee. Celeste and Femi Oke spoke with Columbia law professor Patricia Williams about the future of the civil rights movement.

Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University, who writes the Diary of a Mad Law Professor column for The Nation magazine, discusses President Obama's Supreme Court justice pick Sonia Sotomayor's history of legal opinions.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, Nation magazine columnist and Columbia law professor Patricia Williams and Katha Pollitt, Nation magazine columnist and author of Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Random House, 2007 talk about Hillary Clinton's Saturday speech and her campaign's impact on women ...

Guests, including: Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University, writes the Mad Law Professor column for The Nation magazine, Eugene O'Donnell, professor of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, WNYC’s Arun Venugopal and Cindy Rodriguez, Richard Aborn, president of ...

Global financier and philanthropist George Soros joins Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University, and Farnaz Fassihi, senior Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, to discuss what George Orwell would think about the state of political discourse in 2007.

What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and ...

Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University, writes the Mad Law Professor column for The Nation magazine, comments on the apparent hate crime at Teachers College, Columbia University and the wider picture of race and academia. Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College, Columbia ...