Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on 400 stations.  She is co-author of the national best-seller The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. Goodmans reporting on East Timor and Nigeria has won numerous awards: the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. She has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Project Censored.

Ruth Wedgwood is Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, and Director of the Program on International Law and Organizations at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. She has served on the U.S. Secretary of State?s Advisory Committee on International Law, and is a member of the Pentagon?s Defense Policy Board and the CIA Historical Review Panel. Wedgwood has served in Warsaw as U.S. public delegate to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She was also elected by 148 states parties as the U.S.member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.