Trials That Shaped Us

Judge Stephen Sfekas

Created and hosted by Maryland Judge Stephen Sfekas, Trials That Shaped Us examines the courtroom moments that defined justice through the centuries. From the Salem Witch Trials to Brown v. Board of Education and the Nuremberg proceedings, Judge Sfekas brings decades of legal insight to the stories behind the world’s most consequential trials — exploring how they reshaped law, society, and human rights.

  1. 5d ago ·  Bonus

    Bonus: The Judge Behind the Trials

    In this bonus episode, Judge Stephen Sfekas shares the life and work behind Trials That Shaped Us. Recorded at the Robert H. Jackson Center, the conversation follows his path from a Greek American family of lawyers and judges to the Baltimore bench, and the legal history lectures for Maryland judges that became this podcast. Revisiting Nuremberg, the New Deal and other familiar subjects, he explains how he researches historic trials and explores the gap between what happened in court and how it is remembered. He also reflects on Robert H. Jackson and Thurgood Marshall, the moral choices facing lawyers and judges in unjust systems, and the surprising, sometimes funny stories that come with being a trial judge.

    Bonus: The Judge Behind the Trials

  2. Oct 9

    What Is Justice? From the Declaration of Independence to Nuremberg

    In a lecture at the Robert H. Jackson Center, Judge Stephen Sfekas explores what justice means and where our rights come from. He follows ideas of equality, human dignity and unalienable rights from the Declaration of Independence through the struggles over slavery and women’s rights to Nuremberg and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also considers the pursuit of happiness, the American dream and our responsibility to act against injustice. Recorded September 9, 2026, with audience questions.

    What Is Justice? From the Declaration of Independence to Nuremberg

  3. Oct 2

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 4: The Long Road to Redress

    The camps closed, but the fight for justice was far from over. In the fourth and final part of this series, Judge Stephen Sfekas follows the long aftermath of Japanese American incarceration. Beginning with Mitsuye Endo’s successful challenge to her detention, he examines wartime draft resistance and attorney Wayne Collins’s decades-long campaign to restore citizenship to people who had renounced it under the pressures of confinement. Newly uncovered evidence of government misconduct brings Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi back to court to challenge their convictions. Sfekas traces those efforts alongside the movement for an official apology and compensation, culminating in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. He then examines the Supreme Court’s repudiation of Korematsu in 2018’s Trump v. Hawaii, even as it upheld the travel ban, and considers the lasting consequences when national security is used to justify the denial of civil liberties.

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 4: The Long Road to Redress

  4. Sep 25

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 3: A Loaded Weapon

    The government defended the forced removal of Japanese Americans as a military necessity while withholding evidence that undermined its case. In Part 3, Judge Stephen Sfekas examines the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision upholding Fred Korematsu’s conviction, the government lawyers who challenged the official account, and the justices who dissented. The episode culminates in Justice Robert Jackson’s warning: by giving racial discrimination constitutional approval, the Court had left a “loaded weapon” for future leaders to use in the name of national emergency.

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 3: A Loaded Weapon

  5. Sep 18

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 2: The Four Test Cases

    As Japanese Americans are forced from the West Coast and incarcerated in camps, few major institutions are willing to stand in the government’s way. Judge Stephen Sfekas follows four people whose cases challenge different parts of the wartime policy: attorney Minoru Yasui, University of Washington student Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu and California civil servant Mitsuye Endo. Their paths to court are sharply different, but each raises the same constitutional question: How far can the government restrict the rights of American citizens in the name of military necessity? Part 2 ends with the Supreme Court’s 1943 decisions in Hirabayashi and Yasui, which upheld the curfew imposed on people of Japanese ancestry while leaving the broader questions of forced exclusion and incarceration unresolved.

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 2: The Four Test Cases

  6. Sep 11

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 1: Fear, Prejudice and Executive Order 9066

    Korematsu v. United States became one of the Supreme Court’s most condemned decisions. But long before Fred Korematsu’s challenge reached the Court, decades of anti-Japanese discrimination and the fear that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor had already set a sweeping government policy in motion. In Part 1, Judge Stephen Sfekas traces the growth of Japanese American communities on the West Coast, the intelligence assessments that undercut claims of a widespread security threat, and the fight within the Roosevelt administration over how to respond. He examines the political and military pressure behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the law Congress passed to enforce military restrictions, and the curfews and exclusion orders imposed on people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens. The episode ends as plans for resettlement give way to forced removal and mass incarceration.

    Korematsu v. United States, Part 1: Fear, Prejudice and Executive Order 9066

  7. Sep 4

    The New Deal, Part 7: Remaking the Supreme Court

    In the final installment of The New Deal, Judge Stephen Sfekas examines what happened after the Supreme Court upheld a state minimum-wage law and the Wagner Act, weakening the case for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s court-packing plan. The proposal failed, but Justice Willis Van Devanter’s retirement soon gave Roosevelt his first opening on the Court. He chose Alabama Senator Hugo Black, whose confirmation was followed by revelations of his former membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Black resisted calls to resign and later became a leading defender of civil liberties and joined the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Between 1937 and 1941, retirements and deaths allowed Roosevelt to appoint seven justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, James F. Byrnes and Robert H. Jackson. Roosevelt also elevated Harlan Fiske Stone to chief justice. Without adding a single seat, he had helped create a fundamentally different Supreme Court. The series concludes with the political and constitutional legacy of the fight. The court-packing battle helped strengthen the alliance between conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats, even as Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum-wage protections, agricultural subsidies and labor reforms became lasting parts of American life. Judge Sfekas also weighs the enduring debate over the “switch in time that saved nine”: Did political pressure change the Court, or did better-drafted laws, stronger legal arguments and evolving constitutional doctrine drive its historic turn?

    The New Deal, Part 7: Remaking the Supreme Court

  8. Aug 28

    The New Deal, Part 6: The Constitutional Revolution of 1937

    In Part 6 of our series on the New Deal, Judge Stephen Sfekas examines the dramatic shift at the Supreme Court that transformed American constitutional law in 1937. In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the Court upheld Washington State’s minimum wage law, signaling the end of the Lochner era and a new willingness to defer to legislatures on economic regulation. Just two weeks later, the Court handed down a series of decisions upholding the National Labor Relations Act, led by the landmark NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., and greatly expanded the federal government’s power to regulate economic activity affecting interstate commerce. The episode explores Justice Owen Roberts and the famous “switch in time that saved nine,” the carefully constructed legal strategy behind the Wagner Act cases, and the Court’s subsequent approval of key provisions of the Social Security Act in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis and Helvering v. Davis. From United States v. Carolene Products Co. to Wickard v. Filburn and United States v. Darby, Judge Sfekas traces how the constitutional revolution of 1937 reshaped the balance between the Supreme Court, Congress, and the federal government, clearing the way for the modern regulatory state.

    The New Deal, Part 6: The Constitutional Revolution of 1937
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
19 Ratings

About

Created and hosted by Maryland Judge Stephen Sfekas, Trials That Shaped Us examines the courtroom moments that defined justice through the centuries. From the Salem Witch Trials to Brown v. Board of Education and the Nuremberg proceedings, Judge Sfekas brings decades of legal insight to the stories behind the world’s most consequential trials — exploring how they reshaped law, society, and human rights.

Information

  • Creator
    Judge Stephen Sfekas
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    48
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Trials That Shaped Us

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