Today, a frequent flyer who was booted out of his airline's program for complaining too much will get his day in court--the Supreme Court. What will the outcome mean for future relationships between airlines and their frequent flyers? Then, has the U.S. Constitution forced our government off course?? And how will the Trojan's new head coach fit in with the current team? Later, a new study finds some significant differences in how the brains of males and females are hard-wired. How will the findings help to treat certain neurological diseases? Then, are you more or less productive at work when your boss is watching? And we'll explore the importance of Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an.
The ultimate consumer provocateur gets his day in the Supreme Court
Can an airline boot you from its frequent flyer program for complaining too much? What sort of rights do frequent flyers have when it comes to disputes about club membership? These questions are before the Supreme Court today, as it hears the case of a Minnesota Rabbi who sued Northwest Airlines for terminating his frequent flyer status and confiscating his miles.
Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg was a frequent Northwest passenger with top Platinum Elite Status and 75 flights per year. According to Northwest, in just 8 months, Ginsberg registered 24 complaints—concerning things like late luggage and long delays on the tarmac. At first, Northwest offered the disgruntled customer travel vouchers and bonus miles, but then they removed him from the program, claiming he’d abused his frequent flyer status. Ginsberg is suing the airline for $5 million, saying his removal was a breach of good faith.
Northwest, which has become part of Delta Airlines, argues that it did not violate its contract and that Ginsberg’s case is invalid under the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, which prohibits any lawsuits regarding the “price, route, or service of an air carrier.”
Now the Court will address the validity of Ginsberg’s suit and the contractual responsibilities of the airline when it comes to miles programs.
Have you ever been penalized for complaining? What justifies an airline dropping a frequent flyer? What rights should frequent flyers have?
Guests:
Lisa McElroy, Associate Professor of Law, Earle Mack School of Law, Drexel University; Visiting Associate Professor , University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law
Jamie Court, President, Consumer Watchdog; Author of "Corporateering: How Corporations Steal Your Personal Freedom… And What You Can Do About It"
Has the U.S. Constitution forced our government off course?
Fights in the U.S. Senate over filibusters exploded into the nuclear option last month - when Democrats voted to change the threshold for passing political appointments from 60 votes to a simple majority. It was only the latest dispute in a hundreds-year old debate over the power and composition of the Senate.
Political pundits on both sides of the aisle argue Congress is broken, but some go further blaming the U.S. Constitution for Congress' failures. In the latest "New Yorker," legal writer Jeffrey Toobin speaks with conservatives and liberals about how the country's founders envisioned the structure of our government.
"This [the Senate] has never been a democracy," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told Toobin. "This is a representative republic with heightened democratic principles." That is one interpretation of many, which prompts the question of whether the Constitution is clear in its guidance on how best to run this country.
Does the current Senate serve its original role? If not, is debating the Constitution even an option?
Guest:
Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of many books, including “The Oath: The Obama White House and The Supreme Court” (Anchor, 2013)
USC hires Steve Sarkisian as coach; interim coach Ed Orgeron resigns
One thing that’s certain is that college sports are never lacking in drama. USC's announcement Monday that Washington Huskies coach Steve Sarkisian was hired to lead the school's beloved football team was met with shock for some, and with lukewarm excitement for others.
Interim coach Ed Orgeron had done a stand-out job as coach of the team, despite the team's loss to UCLA on Saturday, and many team members hoped he'd be given a shot at the big job. Orgeron abruptly quit when Sarkisian's hire was announced in the hunt for a head coaching job elsewhere.
What's behind the choice of Sarkisian? If the team would have won against UCLA on Saturday, would Orgeron have the job? How does Sarkisian's ties to USC factor into his hire? What obstacles and challenges does he face stepping into the current climate at USC's locker room?
Guest:
Gary Klein, USC Football beat writer for the L.A. Times
Andrew Zimbalist, Professor of Economics at Smith College and one of the country's top sports economists
Significant brain-scan study illuminates differences in male and female brains
According to a new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gender plays a big role in how the brain is hard-wired.
The study, "Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain," found that male brains exhibit stronger ties between action and perception, while female brains show more a more robust connection between reasoning and intuition.
The study has a sample size of close to 1,000 adolescents and young adults. The results could contribute to our understanding on how to treat certain neurological disorders like autism or alzheimer’s, which tend to affect one sex more than the other.
Guest:
Ragini Verma, Assistant Professor at the Department of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the study.
Does watching workers increase or decrease productivity?
When the boss is away, the workers will play, as the old saying goes, more or less. But new research out of Harvard Business School finds that productivity is actually increased when workers aren’t being closely monitored by managers.
Ethan Bernstein monitored a Chinese factory and found that when the bosses were watching, employees would do everything by the book to keep a low profile. But when the managers weren’t watching, the workers would use different tricks they had developed to work faster. In one study, using a curtain as a barrier between workers and managers increased productivity by 10 to 15 percent.
How much monitoring of workers is too much? Do you find that your work is more efficient when your boss isn’t hanging around?
Guest:
Ethan Bernstein, Assistant Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, Harvard Business School; lead researcher of the paper titled “The Transparency Paradox”
Islam & the Founders: Author posits the importance of ‘Thomas Jefferson’s Qur'an'
Of the thousands of books in Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, can any one account for the Founding Father’s seminal ideas about religious freedom and plurality? In her book “Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders,” author Denise Spellberg singles out an English translation of the Muslim holy book acquired by Jefferson more than a decade before he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Spellberg explores Islam’s role in the American model of religious freedom through the years, focusing on Jefferson’s 18th century notions. At a time when Islam and its adherents were viewed with suspicion by most Americans, Jefferson argued that America needed to make room for Muslim citizens in order for the religious liberty aspect of the American experiment to work.
Centuries later, as Muslims continue to face exclusion and discrimination in America’s post-9/11 era, Spellberg’s work takes a pertinent look back at America’s founding — and Jefferson’s enlightened case for Muslim inclusion within America’s definition of religious freedom.
Did you know that Jefferson had championed Muslim civil rights early on? Do you think Jefferson’s blueprint for religious pluralism is in place today? How do American perceptions of Islam and religious diversity today compare to those in place when the nation was founded?
Guest:
Denise A. Spellberg, author of “Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders”; Associate Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin