Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

Listen to a preview of this urgent extra episode of Amicus. The full episode is available to our Slate Plus members. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes of Amicus, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Wednesday morning, the court heard arguments in Moyle v. United States, the consolidated case tackling what levels of care pregnant patients can be provided in emergency rooms in states with draconian anti-abortion laws.  And on Thursday morning, the High Court will hear Trump v. United States, the case in which the former president - who is currently spending much of his time slouched at the defendant’s table in New York City - will claim a kind of vast sweeping theory of immunity that roughly translates as - “when you’re president, they let you do it. You can do anything”. In an extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern dig into what happened in the EMTALA arguments Wednesday morning and then look ahead to Thursday’s arguments in the immunity case.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get your tickets for Amicus Live in Washington DC here.  The first criminal trial of Donald Trump is finally here. This week, hundreds of possible jurors filed through Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom in lower Manhattan. The selection process was a preview of some of the challenges and pitfalls in the first ever criminal trial of a sitting or former President. On this week’s show, Slate’s senior legal writer Mark Joseph Stern sits down with Slate jurisprudence editor and Chief Law of Trump™ correspondent Jeremy Stahl to discuss what we learned this week, and what we can expect when the trial truly gets underway next week.  In today’s bonus episode only for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern welcome Justice Clarence Thomas back from his long weekend, with a close listen to the January 6th case that was argued before the court on Tuesday. Fischer v United States  is raising more alarm bells about the conservative justices’ posture toward armed insurrection. They also dig into  Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion in a potentially tricky TitleVII case that, miraculously for this court, went pretty well in terms of civil rights protections in the workplace. Listen now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes of Amicus, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get your tickets for Amicus Live in Washington DC on May 14th here. We shouldn’t be surprised that we have to keep saying it, but here we are: the Supreme Court (notably trained as lawyers) will soon make decisions about how doctors (notably trained as doctors) can treat pregnant patients in the emergency room. Moyle v. United States - consolidated with Idaho v. United States - is the result of an Idaho lawsuit challenging EMTALA, a federal law requiring hospitals to do whatever they can to stabilize whoever comes through their ER doors with a medical emergency. Sometimes this requires abortion care, and for a faction of conservative advocates, this cannot stand. Ahead of oral arguments the week after next, we wanted to get a sense of what healthcare looks like for pregnant women experiencing medical emergencies now, and how this case threatens to undermine that care in the future. This week, Dahlia Lithwick speaks with Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency medicine physician, about what EMTALA was built to do, what ER physicians are being asked to do, and what will happen should Idaho prevail in this case. Later in the show, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern joins to discuss the hullabaloo over when, if, and how Justice Sotomayor should be made to retire and the very gendered work of keeping SCOTUS from going off the rails (any more than it already has). In today’s bonus episode only for Slate Plus members Dahlia and Mark discuss the outrageous ruling that creates (but really, revives) a de facto total ban on abortions in Arizona. They also explain why the EMTALA case from the show isn’t being talked about as much as the recent mifepristone case was. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes of Amicus, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After weeks of the Trump trials (and the run-up to the Trump trials) becoming ever more engrossing spectator sports, both the public and the media may have lost sight of some of the stakes. They also may have lost sight of the truth of what the legal system can actually deliver in terms of protecting democracy from Donald J Trump.  On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Juliette Kayyem to dissect Trump's impact on legal, national security, and ideological fronts. Kayyem brings her national security expertise to discuss the evolution of Trump's tactics from stochastic terror to direct incitement. Together, they explore the implications for democracy of a presidential campaign where one candidate issues violent threats and tries to intimidate judges. Kayyem lays out in stark terms the kinds of focus and planning needed in the coming months. Juliette Kayyem is a national security expert, Harvard lecturer, CNN analyst, Atlantic contributor, and author of 'The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters.' Avowedly not a lawyer, she approaches America’s political predicament using counter-terrorism approaches to Trump’s movement and preparations for the 2024 elections.  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s not quite red-yarn-on-a-corkboard, but given how often we’ve been thinking about the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) over the years, it may as well be. The group has become a vital component of the conservative legal movement, with pay-to-play access afforded to corporate donors to boot. Despite all the money changing hands and obvious conflicts of interest, few have heard of them - and that’s very intentional. This week we’re joined by Lisa Graves of True North Research to talk about how an organization representing the chief legal officers in half the states in the union has become a national policy juggernaut, pushing legislation and litigation to assist polluters, harm women and LGBTQ families, torment immigrants and even steal elections, all absent any significant oversight or consequences.  In this week’s bonus plus segment, Slate’s very own Mark Joseph Stern joins to discuss coverage of the oral arguments in the mifepristone case (including the hugely significant takeaway most of the analysis missed), and the reasons Neil Gorsuch hates nationwide injunctions.  And finally, following on from last week, thinking about the language we use to describe first trimester abortions. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, it happened again. The hIgHeSt CoUrT will hear arguments Tuesday in a case based on made up facts! This time it’s mifepristone, the abortion drug at the center of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v FDA.  The claim was that the FDA approval process (three decades ago), for mifepristone, one of two medication abortion drugs, was haphazard and slapdash.. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine also argued that the FDA’s 2021 decision to allow telemedicine abortion and mailing of abortion pills violates a 19th-century anti-vice law called the Comstock Act. This week on the show Dahlia Lithwick speaks with Carrie N. Baker, Smith College professor and author of the forthcoming book Abortion Pills: US History and Politics. Baker says taking away the rights to access abortion pills in the mail could have catastrophic consequences for pregnant people, drug development, and privacy for all Americans. In this week’s subscribers-only segment, Slate’s Trump Law correspondent Jeremy Stahl gives us the updates on some of the cases against the former president - including the “a lot ton” of money he owes in New York, like starting on Monday.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While all eyes and brains are on what SCOTUS thinks about making Trump emperor-king, a lesser known case will be heard Monday that could have a huge impact on how social media can (or cannot) keep election workers safe this year. Murthy v. Missouri arrives at the high court as the result a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, along with a group of social media users—including some doctors and right-wing commentators—who argued that officials in the Biden administration censored their online speech about COVID-19, the 2020 election, among other issues The plaintiffs don’t claim that the administration directly silenced their speech. Instead, they argue that, by working with social media companies to limit the spread of misinformation, the government unlawfully chilled the free expression of their ideas. Gowri Ramachandran serves as deputy director in the Brennan Center’s Democracy program.The amicus brief filed by her team from the Brennan Center in Murthy draws the Justices attention to another aspect of election disinformation . Ramachandran explains to host Dahlia Lithwick that combating election disinformation has always been important, but it is especially critical now, as  election workers struggle to keep on top of voting issues. Later in the show for Slate plus subscribers, Mark Joseph Stern joins to talk about  the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals taking a swing at teens’ access to contraception, and a new effort to combat the scourge of judge-shopping.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s not just the justices on the Supreme Court who can’t seem to agree with each other anymore. As we slide into Trump v. Biden 2 (The Second One), it seems like voters can’t seem to come to a consensus on just about anything either, including the facts they are arguing over. Author and superstar litigator Barbara McQuade argues in her new book Attack From Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America the information we consume is crucial to the health of our democracy. She speaks with Dahlia Lithwick about America’s problems with dis- and mis-information, and how we can solve them. In this week’s Amicus Plus members-only segment, Dahlia is joined by her co-pilot in the jurisprudence news cockpit, Mark Joseph Stern to talk about President Biden's SOTU SCOTUS FU, why Alabama's legislative quick fix for its theocratic state supreme court's  IVF decision is unlikely to hold, and the meta story of the meta data in the liberal justices’ concurrence in Monday’s Supreme Court decision to restore former President Trump to the Colorado primary ballot.  This segment is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes of Amicus, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and extended episodes of Amicus, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. ROTATING RED LIGHT!!! The Supreme Court ruled early Monday that alleged insurrectionist Donald Trump can remain on the Colorado republican primary ballot, and that no state may remove him, even if they want to. That’s Congress’ job. The 9-0 decision wasn’t unexpected, but the broad reasoning used by five of the court’s conservative justices certainly was, to the chagrin of the liberals and Amy Coney Barrett.  In this special emergency episode, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s very own pocket justice league, Mark Joseph Stern and Jeremy Stahl, to discuss what this blockbuster result in Anderson says about the court’s consolidation of power and how it has helped Trump in so many ways.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was a wild week at the High Court (another seven days crammed with a year’s worth of news). SCOTUS heard cases about bump stocks, and how Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would do as Facebook content moderators. The Supreme Court also finally found the time to put a thumb on the scale for serially indicted alleged insurrector-in-chief former President Donald J Trump. We’ll talk about all those things with Slate’s very own Mark Joseph Stern. But what we’re really focused on this week is the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent decision finding that frozen embryos are children, and the unshakeable sense that the coverage of this so far has had a slightly myopic quality, as though this case is purely about IVF, and carving out IVF, when in fact the entire movement for fetal personhood sweeps in many more people and rights than just those seeking assisted reproductive technology. We’re joined by a preeminent expert on matters of law, medicine, reproductive health, and biotechnologies, Dr. Michele Goodwin. Dr. Goodwin is the author of  Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood. She explains (again) why we should have seen this decision coming from miles (and centuries) away.  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Later, in the Slate Plus segment, Mark returns to discuss this week’s SCOTUS arguments and the big news that legislative turtle and legal hellscape architect Mitch McConnell will be stepping down from his role as leader of Republicans in the Senate later this year.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is drinking from the firehose of legal news again and this week is joined by election law professor Rick Hasen to figure out why we’re all still hanging on for the Supreme Court to make a call in former President Donald J Trump’s sweeping claim to immunity from prosecution over the events of January 6th, how Americans could actually achieve a real right to vote, and why no-one’s paying attention to a pair of incredibly consequential social media cases being argued at SCOTUS next week.  In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia and Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern discuss the bonkers but very very real implications of the Alabama Supreme Court decision to bestow personhood on embryos being used in fertility treatment, creating an impossible legal landscape for clinics and those struggling to become pregnant. Next, they sift through Justice Samuel Alito’s grievance debris in a recent dissent to find the deeply worrying signposts toward overturning equal marriage rights. Finally, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court pleads with SCOTUS to clear up the mess it made of gun laws with its decision in Bruen. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The future of the Fulton County, Georgia election subversion case against Donald J. Trump and many many accused co-conspirators was cast into doubt this week as the court saw evidentiary hearings in the defence’s motion to disqualify Fulton County AG Fani Willis. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s chief Law of Trump correspondent Jeremy Stahl to discuss why, even with a very high bar for removing Willis from the case, the court was dragged through some tawdry details that are bound to come back to hurt the prosecution, one way or another. Later in the show, executive director and co-founder of Court Accountability, Alex Aronson, talks with Dahlia about what could possibly be done to make Supreme Court justices follow reasonable recusal guidelines (we’re looking at you, Justice Thomas), and whether the American electorate might at last be finding an appetite for court reform.  In the Slate Plus segment, Jeremy returns to the podcast martini lounge to discuss what might be the first Trump case to reach a criminal trial. They also discuss the latest on Trump’s claim of blanket immunity.  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. To catch up on the ever-breaking Trump trial news, check out https://slate.com/news-and-politics/jurisprudence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oral arguments at the Supreme Court Thursday in Trump v. Anderson revealed a lot about some of the justices’ commitment to the primacy of originalism. Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, joins Dahlia Lithwick to discuss why his organization took up and pursued the long shot case to try to keep former President Donald J Trump off the ballot in Colorado. While the Supreme Court appeared to have little appetite for taking the big swing to find that Trump had disqualified himself from office when he engaged in an insurrection, Noah insists the case is far from having been in vain - eloquently highlighting the dangerous potential consequences of inaction. It's a chilling reminder of what’s at stake. Next, Dahlia is joined by slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern to discuss whether the liberal justices have some grand bargain in mind as they offered multiple off-ramps for Trump’s side, despite dozens of bipartisan briefs arguing for Trump to be kept off the ballot, the court’s originalist’s sudden concern for consequences in this case, when they have had no interest in weighing the life and death consequences for ordinary people in cases concerning guns and abortion. Finally, they tackle a worrying undercurrent to Thursday’s arguments: an apparent capitulation to threats of chaos and violence as a basis for deciding constitutional cases.  In our Slate Plus segment, Mark sticks around to discuss a landmark gun decision out of the Hawaii Supreme Court, and why it’s a problem that DOJ’s special counsel, Robert Hur, issued a report declining to prosecute, but affirming that Joe Biden is old (hint: the problem isn’t that he’s old).  Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock the full version of this emergency episode. After weeks of waiting, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down a decision in Donald J Trump’s appeal for sweeping immunity from prosecution for any of his actions while in office on grounds of a kind of post-presidential enduring presidenty-ness. The panel of three judges wrote: “We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results,”  In this extra episode of Amicus, exclusive to our Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern and Slate’s jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl to answer the huge questions this decision now sparks - will the Supreme Court step in? If so, when? Are there votes to stay the decision while the court mulls, or to expedite a hearing? All of this, of course, is set against the countdown to November 2024 and whether Donald Trump will be tried for alleged criminal acts to overturn the 2020 election before the American People go to the ballot box this time.  To subscribe on Apple Podcasts, just click “Try Free” at the top of the Amicus show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. As a Slate Plus member, not only will you unlock exclusive, subscriber-only Amicus content, but you’ll also get ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts—shows like Political Gabfest, Slow Burn, and What Next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There haven’t been that many insurrections in the United States, which means the case law ahead of next week’s arguments in Trump v. Anderson (the 14th Amendment, Section 3 disqualification case) is pretty thin. And so we, and presumably the justices, must rely on text and history to understand the intent of the drafters of the Reconstruction Amendments. Civil war and reconstruction historian Professor Manisha Sinha, signatory of one amicus brief and cited in another, explains that the history is crystal clear. Trump must be disqualified from the ballot. After weeks of discussing concerns about the strategic, political implications of this case, this week Dahlia Lithwick tackles the text and the history head-on, in a case that’s almost a natural experiment in applying originalism on its own terms. See also:   Amicus Brief signed by 25 civil war and reconstruction historians (including Professor Sinha) Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address Sean Wilentz: The Case for Disqualification, New York Review of Books Jamelle Bouie: If It Walks Like an Insurrection and Talks Like an Insurrection... NY Times In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s judicial diviner Mark Joseph Stern joins to talk about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on abortion that really took both text and history and human rights seriously. Also, an 8th circuit decision that could put a stake in the heart of what remains of the voting rights act. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite Donald Trump’s efforts, there will be a significant cost for his continued defamation of E. Jean Carroll (And it’s $83.3 million!!). For much of the proceedings he sat behind Carroll muttering under his breath and posting three-dozen times on Truth Social in one night about the unfairness of the judge and the court. But zoom out, and Trump’s actions at the trial and toward women generally have far bigger implications than the size of the check he’ll have to write. This week, Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast joins Dahlia Lithwick to explain how Trump has fanned the flames of GOP misogyny playing out in every aspect of our politics, from the GOP primary to the leadership in the House of Representatives to women who have been raped in states with no access to abortion. And she asks what it ultimately says about our justice system that 80-year-old E. Jean Carroll is the one prepared to take the stand against the man who assaulted her. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern discusses the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision that kinda sorta resolved the battle between federal immigration authorities and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and the horrifying turn the conservative turn has taken on capital punishment this week. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The immigration fight on the U.S. - Mexico border keeps getting uglier - not between the U.S. and its southern neighbor, Mexico, but between the federal government and a Texas administration apparently unconcerned by constitutional supremacy. Earlier this month, members of the Texas Military Forces took over a public park in Eagle Pass, TX at the behest of Gov. Greg Abbott. The park, on the banks of the Rio Grande, is near a frequently used border crossing. Last weekend, Texas forces blocked Federal Border Patrol agents from reaching a woman and two children who had drowned trying to cross the river into the United States.   The move by Abbott is certainly shocking, but it’s an example of ways the state is trying to intervene in federal police powers and responsibilities. In a series of increasingly urgent filings, the Justice Department is pleading with the Supreme Court to intervene to let Federal agents enforce Federal laws.  Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, joins the show to discuss how the cruelty of Abbott’s approach is undermining Texas communities and creating a constitutional crisis that may originate in Texas, but will not remain there.  Dahlia is joined by SCOTUS-whispering wingman Mark Joseph Stern in today’s Slate Plus segment to discuss why the High Court’s response to Texas’ game of chicken with the Feds is so dangerously sluggish. Next, they explore the oral arguments in the big Chevron-overturning vehicle that is Loper Bright, a case that was supposed to be about fishermen but is actually about overturning tens of thousands of agency law decisions and grabbing power from the elected branches and handing it to the judiciary.   Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s an ever-growing queue of cases concerning Donald Trump headed for the Supreme Court that threaten to further dent the legitimacy of an institution that has tumbled in the public’s estimation in the last few years. This week’s show examines some of the interlocking issues raising the already sky-high stakes at One, First Street. First, Dahlia Lithwick kicks off the show with an update from Slate’s Law of Trump chief correspondent Jeremy Stahl about arguments in Trump’s immunity appeal at the DC Circuit Court this week. Next, we turn to a conversation with Professor Ben Johnson, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He recently wrote about the very long history of how the Supreme Court granted itself vast power to shape the law and policy by picking and choosing not only which cases it would hear, but also which questions it would answer when it hears those cases. Next week’s arguments in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimundo are a case in point, and the question of questions also poses a conundrum for a court in a downward legitimacy spiral, as a parade of Trump cases head toward the High Court.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Jeremy Stahl to discuss the bread and circus of closing arguments in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York, and the next phase of litigation involving the former President and E Jean Carroll that gets underway next week.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald J Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building hoping to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. Three years later, a quarter of Americans believe the FBI instigated the events of that day.   This week on Amicus, we’re trying to understand the myth-making that helped foment the riot, and the religious fervor that binds and buoys Trump’s supporters today. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War” to explore the stories and symbols that are shaping Trump’s march toward fascism, and to figure out what place the rule of law has in this struggle.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s dynamic legal duo of Mark Joseph Stern and Jeremy Stahl break down the latest in Trump’s cascading court cases, and the Texas abortion case that’s on a fast track to the Supreme Court.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the Chief Justice seeing the funny side of stalking and harassment, to Justice Samuel Alito’s tiny violin, to fighting in the footnotes and a bench dissent snapback, to THAT painting, it’s been quite a year at One, First Street. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Stern are back with their bottom 10 picks for the Supreme Court’s worst moments of 2023. But don’t despair, there is a glimmer of hope, one part of the SCOTUS beat sucked less this past year… Stay tuned to hear Dahlia and Mark reveal what facet of the Supreme Court multiverse actually improved in 2023.  Sign up for Slate Plus to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the Colorado Supreme Court determined in a pivotal decision that Donald J Trump should not appear on the ballot in the state's Republican primary. Meanwhile the high court is already involved in the possible briefing of another Trump case (about presidential immunity) and has agreed to docket another involving the obstruction of the vote certification on Jan 6 2021. And we haven’t even mentioned the Georgia case. Basically, Trump is going to have a very lawyer-y 2024. So where do all these cases sit right now? Slate’s Jeremy Stahl joins Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick to give us an update. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern joins the show to talk about Rudy Giuliani’s defamation lawsuit and the $150 million he owes election workers. Mark and Dahlia also discuss the latest in ProPublica’s continued deep dive into the finances of Clarence Thomas.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, the Texas Supreme Court said Kate Cox couldn’t have an abortion.Cox’s doctors had diagnosed the fetus with Trisomy 18, an almost certainly fatal genetic condition. On top of that, there were concerns about whether or not Cox would be able to have children again in the future if she continued with this pregnancy. None of this was enough for nine judges in Texas to allow Cox to have an abortion. Cox’s story isn’t unique. Amanda Zurawski almost died after a Texas court said she couldn’t have an abortion. Today, she’s the lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. State of Texas. She joins Amicus this week to show the real, human effects of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Zurawski is joined by one of the lawyers representing her in the case, Jamie Levitt. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern talks about another made-up case that this time, won’t make it to SCOTUS.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Moore v United States landed on the Supreme Court docket, it threatened to take a big swing at any future wealth tax and maybe cut the legs out from under the government’s ability to collect a lot of other tax. But as arguments unfolded Tuesday at One, First Street, it became clear that some of the Justices had studied up on the tax code and were cooling on blowing a big hole in it.  To understand why Moore made it all the way up to SCOTUS in the first place, and why the facts don’t match claims from the plaintiffs, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by law professor and author of Big Dirty Money, Professor Jennifer Taub. Together they talk about the billions behind the case, the tax law, and the arguments inside the chamber.  Next, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Stern, who covered Moore for the magazine, to discuss Justice Alito's non-recusal from the case, his BFF David Rivkin Jr., and why the plaintiffs Mr and Mrs Moore bear a striking resemblance to some other, recent, fabled SCOTUS plaintiffs.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Mark Stern hangs on to talk about the Title VII case this week that didn’t go *that badly*, and why that’s still not good, and to explain why Justice Elena Kagan has had it up to here with false first principles.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died Friday at the age of 93. Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by former O’Connor clerk and renowned First Amendment scholar RonNell Andersen Jones to talk about the Justice’s trailblazing career, her judicial philosophy, and the combination of humility and strength that marked her time on the court, and away from it.  Later in the show, Dahlia celebrates the joyous return of Mark Joseph Stern to share some big announcements AND to discuss SEC v Jarkesy. As Mark explains, the conservative justices seemed ready, willing, and able to take another swing at the administrative state (AKA functioning government). Mark Stern stays with us for this week’s Amicus Plus segment, taking us through some good ol’ vote suppressing stuff from MAGA-stacked lower courts choosing to ignore last term’s big voting rights decision in Allen v Milligan. Remember that time Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanagh saved voting rights? Turns out these lower courts are saying - not so much.   Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While Amicus takes a break to digest turkey and count our blessings, we're sharing this episode of The Political Scene from our friends at The New Yorker. In recent weeks, Americans have begun to get a clearer picture of what a second Donald Trump Administration could look like. Some clues have come from organizations like the Heritage Foundation, which has laid out policy proposals for the Trump campaign. Others have come from the former President himself. Trump has said he would appoint a prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and his family; on Veterans Day, this past weekend, he pledged to root out opponents and critics who he said “live like vermin within the confines of our country.” “Trump wants to get rid of all of these guardrails that protect the government from becoming a spoil system,” the staff writer Jane Mayer says, including by firing members of the federal civil service. Ultimately, how different would a second Presidency be from the last time that Trump was in the White House? “There are two words that I would say really underscore the difference this time, and why Trump in 2024 is arguably a much bigger threat in many ways than he was even eight years ago,” the New Yorker staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. “The two words are ‘retribution’ and ‘termination.’ ” The staff writer Evan Osnos joins Mayer and Glasser to weigh in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald J Trump is signaling a split with the conservative legal movement’s kingmakers, The Federalist Society. Instead, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee is planning a radical (and radically lawless) remaking of American government in his image.  On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Amanda Hollis Brusky, professor of politics at Pomona College and author of  Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society & the Conservative Counterrevolution, and coauthor of Separate But Faithful: The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture. Together, they explore what the split between the right’s legal project of 40 years and the man who hopes to be the next Republican President means for the law, the rule of law, and the U.S. Supreme Court.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes to discuss the Supreme Court’s new ethics code. Spoiler: It’s not really new. As Jay says, think of it more like frat house rules published for the benefit of naive parents.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book  Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If we are to take Donald J. Trump seriously (and at this stage it’s surely a fool’s errand not to), then the rule of law and democracy are on the line if (when) he becomes the Republican nominee for 2024. What role will the former President’s many many legal woes play in the coming months? A clearer picture is emerging after testimony for the prosecution wrapped in the civil fraud trial against Trump and his adult sons in their roles at the helm of the Trump Organization in New York City this past week. That picture is of a political candidate claiming to be the victim of an unprecedented legal witch hunt. In other words, as the trials proceed within the courts, a political trial is underway on the courtroom steps, at campaign stops, and in the media. On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Eric Posner, of the University of Chicago Law School, author of The Demagogue's Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump, to discuss political trials - their history and their risks.  Next, Dahlia is joined by Madiba Dennie - attorney, columnist, professor, and deputy editor at Balls and Strikes - to recap oral arguments in United States v Rahimi, the big gun case considering whether adjudicated domestic abusers have a right to keep and bear arms.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, listeners will have access to an extended version of Dahlia’s interview with Madiba Dennie, analyzing whether election results are moving some of the justices away from the all you can eat originalism buffet.   Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in one of the most significant—and potentially deadly—cases of the term - United States v Rahimi. The case, a follow on from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, has the potential to weaponize the court’s Second Amendment extremism against victims of domestic abuse and protect adjudicated abusers. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by gun safety advocate Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, to find out the potential real life-and-death consequences of pursuing originalism literally back to when women were property and muskets were muzzle-loaded. They also discuss why the right is so keen to pursue gun rights through the courts, rather than through the democratic process.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Jay Willis, editor in chief of Balls and Strikes, to discuss oral arguments in a pair of cases concerning First Amendment concerns when politicians block dissenting voices on social media, the Trump-related trademark t-shirt dispute that is barely SFW, and Justice Clarence Thomas’s personal luxury RV loan forgiveness program.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Jurisprudence Editor, Jeremy Stahl. Jeremy is also the lucky person tasked with helming Slate’s coverage of the many many criminal and civil trials of Donald J Trump and Amicus listeners can expect to hear a lot from Jeremy over the next year. After a week of big news across a number of the former President’s courtroom battles, Jeremy gives us a survey of the legal landscape and some vital pointers about what really matters, what’s nonsense, and what we should be watching and listening for in the coming weeks. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Jeremy Stahl sticks around to have a behind the scenes chat about how Slate’s jurisprudence team is tackling the thorny issue of reporting on the Trump trial - sorting wheat from chaff and stakes from horse race.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As MAGA Republicans engage in extremist arm wrestling in the House Speaker race, and the sins of the 2020 election subversion scheme catch up with Donald Trump’s closest allies, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by brand new MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy to take a look at the stakes of this moment for American democracy. An attempt to walk and chew gum at the same time, Protect Democracy’s work focuses on the incremental ways the law can be applied to protect election workers and inhibit disinformation, while also looking to the big constitutional and cultural questions we have to answer if we’re going to reject authoritarianism. Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s big voting rights case, Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning whether to uphold a South Carolina congressional map that is avowedly partisan (everyone agrees it favors Republicans, but partisan gerrymanders are A-OK under SCOTUS precedent). What is disputed here is whether the mapmakers relied on race to reach their partisan aims. A three-judge panel in South Carolina found it to be a racial gerrymander, and threw out the map. In arguments on Wednesday, it became clear that the high court’s conservatives would rather toss out the evidence the lower court used to reach its decision, an unusual move for the highest court in the land, but perhaps the bed it’s made for itself after ruling partisan gerrymanders non justiciable in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019. And so SCOTUS cos-played as a trial court for two hours on Wednesday. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Leah Aden, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who argued the case on behalf of the South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, and Taiwan Scott - a South Carolina voter and individual plaintiff in the case, who says the electoral power of his Gullah Geechee community is suppressed by the gerrymander.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following oral arguments in a case aimed at demolishing Senator Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Senator Warren to talk about how far this Supreme Court is prepared to go to fulfill right wing deregulatory fantasies.  Next, Dahlia talks to investigative reporter Andrea Bernstein, part of the team behind We Don’t Talk About Leonard, a new podcast collaboration between ProPublica and On the Media. Andrea explains the mechanisms developed by Leonard Leo that have reshaped the courts over the past two decades, drawing a line from Leo’s state-level judicial influence campaigns, to that Alaskan fishing trip involving Justice Samuel Alito, to this week’s arguments in the payday loan case CFPB v CFSA. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Andrea Bernstein sticks around to talk us through this week in court in New York City, in former President Donald Trump’s business fraud trial. Why did he choose to sit and glower and what did the limited gag order tell us about what the former President can rant about online and outside the court?  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Refusing to play the traditional first Monday in October game, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern squint through the cloud of ethics scandals enveloping the High Court to see a docket aimed squarely at unfettering commerce from outside supervision, with a side order of second amendment extremism. What could possibly go wrong? Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ryan Busse, a former gun-industry executive turned gun-safety advocate, who is now running for governor in his home state of Montana. As the right to bear arms for domestic abusers is set to be argued at SCOTUS this term, Dahlia and Ryan discuss how gun culture has been radicalized in order to… sell more guns. They also examine how that radicalization has reached the Supreme Court, and threatens our safety, and our democracy.  Next, Dahlia is joined by Alison Block MD, a family doctor and abortion provider who is also executive producer and host of The Nocturnists podcast’s Post-Roe America season. The season lifts the voices of healthcare workers and abortion providers around the country, scrambling to survive in the confusing legal landscape created by Dobbs. The conversation highlights the impossible bind for red state abortion providers forced to choose between caring for patients and criminalization, and how providers in neighboring states are trying to keep up with unquenchable demand for care.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss why they never ever want to go to the all-male rich dude Lord of the Flies camp that is Bohemian Grove, why it’s pretty shocking that Justice Clarence Thomas did, and how the latest Propublica reporting shows the scheme in sharp relief: interest groups founded and funded by billionaires wanted to end the regulatory state, and they found a justice ready to change his mind and do just that. Dahlia and Mark also discuss why the abortion pill banning Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is all of a sudden so worried about misogyny.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is now out in paperback. It is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by award-winning documentarian and lawyer Dawn Porter for a conversation about two projects shining a light on the law and how we can shape it: Porter’s new Showtime documentary series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, and the paperback release of Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.  Together they trace the political shifts and cultural earthquakes from the Warren Court to the Burger, Rehnquist and now Roberts Court, and they discuss how the courts current crisis of legitimacy cannot be cured with a moratorium on criticism. In both Lady Justice and Deadlocked a truth surfaces: when it comes to the rule of law, there is no “plan b”, so the challenge to Dawn’s audience, Dahlia’s readers and Amicus listeners is the same: to use the law as a tool for progress and justice.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book  Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is now out in paperback. It is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Marc Elias, who has litigated more election and voting cases than almost anyone, to talk about Alabama’s disregard for SCOTUS’ decision in the big Voting Rights Act case of last term, and why the lawlessness is the point. They also delve into the dangers of tying the disqualification of former President Donald J Trump from office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the outcomes in his criminal trials. And why, when it comes to defending democracy, depending on the courts may make sense in the short term, but faces serious problems in the long term. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss Justice Samuel Alito’s chosen venue to publish a love letter to Senator Dick Durbin, Chief Justice John Roberts’ chosen venue to publish a love letter to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and why a major religious freedom case is looking more and more like a fake spike.   Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Amicus’ summer series of conversations about books that expanded our thinking about justice and the courts, beyond the churn of headlines, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Judge Margaret M McKeown of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth CIrcuit, to discuss her book Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas―Public Advocate and Conservation Champion Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Amicus’ summer series of conversations about books that expanded our thinking about justice and the courts, beyond the churn of headlines, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Joshua Prager to discuss his book The Family Roe: An American Story, about the unknown lives at the heart of Roe v Wade.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Amicus’ summer series of conversations about books that expanded our thinking about justice and the courts, beyond the churn of headlines, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by death penalty lawyer, professor and author Stephen Bright to discuss his new book, The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first of Amicus’ summer series of conversations about books and podcasts that have helped us look at the Supreme Court from a different angle, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Joel Anderson, host of Season 8 of Slate’s Slow Burn podcast: Becoming Justice Thomas. They talk about the experiences and people who helped shape Justice Thomas’ worldview and how deeply his jurisprudence is rooted in a kind of “cruel to be kind” ethos from his childhood. And why he was so blind to the challenges and suffering of so many Black women in his life.  Next, Dahlia talks to Heather McGhee, Author The Sum of Us: WHAT RACISM COSTS EVERYONE AND HOW WE CAN PROSPER TOGETHER, about her books and podcast, and what they can teach us about a Supreme Court that is inclined to frame the world as zero-sum. Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus.  In our final Opinionpalooza episode of 2023, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern host the Amicus annual “breakfast table” round-up at the end of the Supreme Court term, and they’re joined by:   Jamelle Bouie, former chief political correspondent at Slate and current New York Times Opinion columnist and political analyst for CBS News.  Sherrilyn Ifill, former President and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and newly appointed head of Howard University’s inaugural Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights.  Professor Stephen Vladeck, the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law, author of the New York Times bestselling book, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic." --- In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark loosen their ties, pour a snifter of brandy and hit the cigar bar of jurisprudence for a final discussion of the term that was; why progressives are still struggling to find an answer to the court’s torque to the right, and resisting the media’s urge to put a moderate bow on each extreme term. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. We consider this coverage so essential that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter to see the latest every week in your inbox. As the Supreme Court’s June term wraps up with a slew of awful decisions, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern to analyze 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, a case with startling implications for the dignity and equal treatment of LGBTQ couples and families. They also discuss the new reporting that shines light on the hall of mirrors that brought the case to court. Then, Dahlia and Mark are joined by Dalié Jiménez, Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and Director of the Student Loan Law Initiative at UCI Law to discuss the court’s decision to strike down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program. Finally, Dahlia turns to Michaele Turnage Young of the NAACP LDF to take a closer look at Thursday’s affirmative action decision, which outlawed race-conscious admissions in most higher education contexts.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to answer a listener question about something that has us all scratching our heads in the wake of Moore v Harper, and look ahead to some gun safety litigation that’s winding its way up to the High Court. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. Thank you to our Slate Plus members for making this episode available to all listeners. The full version of this episode is now exclusively available to our Slate Plus members. If you want to have access to bonus content like this, go to slate.com/amicusplus to become a member. In an emergency episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern to analyze SCOTUS’ decision to wipe out affirmative action in college admissions. They find Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion has some curious carve-outs that will keep lawyers busy, and college admissions tutors and applicants… baffled.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. Thank you to our Slate Plus members for making this episode available to all listeners. The full version of this episode is now exclusively available to our Slate Plus members. If you want to have access to bonus content like this, go to slate.com/amicusplus to become a member. In deciding against the bonkers (technical legal term) “Independent State Legislature Theory” in Moore v Harper, the Supreme Court chose not to take a wrecking ball to American democracy. Judge Michael Luttig, a counsel of record in the case, is relieved but not surprised. In this emergency episode of Amicus, Judge Luttig tells Dahlia Lithwick that Tuesday’s decision may have big repercussions at the Department of Justice, in Jack Smith’s investigation of former President Trump’s role in January 6th. Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions, and the other legal happenings in June. We consider this coverage so essential that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter to see the latest every week in your inbox. On this one year anniversary of Dobbs, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Anat Shenker Osorio to talk about how the political class still hasn’t found a way to communicate or act toward the court that delivered this suffering.  Next, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern to talk about two important decisions that came down this week, one concerning the rights of criminal defendants and another about the U.S. President’s right to set immigration policy.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark tackle more questions from the Slate Plus listener mail bag about the tension between establishment clause and equal protection claims in suits brought to fight back against Dobbs on religious grounds, and how to impeach terrible awful no-good judges. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. Thank you to our Slate Plus members for making this episode available to all listeners. The full version of this episode is now exclusively available to our Slate Plus members. If you want to have access to bonus content like this, go to slate.com/amicusplus to become a member. Amicus is coming at you again with an emergency episode. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to process ProPublica’s latest reporting on a growing theme of conservative supreme court justices with a penchant for luxury travel at the expense of billionaires (who also happen to be close friends with Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society). Dahlia and Mark also examine Justice Samuel Alito’s eye-popping pre-buttal of ProPublica’s piece about his Alaskan fishing trip with billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer, which Justice Alito chose to publish in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. We consider this coverage so essential that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter to see the latest every week in your inbox. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by environmental appellate lawyer Sean Donahue to discuss the far-reaching consequences of one of the biggest decisions so far this term. In Sackett v EPA,  the court decided that as many as 90 million acres of wetlands no longer qualify for environmental protection. Together, they trace the case’s history, its claims, and what tools are left for lawyers fighting to protect the environment. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to answer listener questions, including how to counter dodgy originalism arguments, and whether there’s anything that could stop Donald Trump from running or even assuming office if he’s convicted of a crime Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. Thank you to our Slate Plus members for making this episode available to all listeners. The full version of this episode is now exclusively available to our Slate Plus members. If you want to have access to bonus content like this, go to slate.com/amicusplus to become a member. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern join forces for this Opinionpalooza extra episode of Amicus where they discuss Haaland v Brackeen, a case that could have upended Indian Law, but didn’t. The case concerned the Indian Child Welfare Act, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion also reveals some tensions among the Supreme Court’s conservative justices. Together, Dahlia and Mark assess what another unexpected win can tell us about the shape of the current court.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. Thank you to our Slate Plus members for making this episode available to all listeners. The full version of this episode is now exclusively available to our Slate Plus members. If you want to have access to bonus content like this, go to slate.com/amicusplus to become a member. An extra episode of Amicus as the former President of the United States, Donald J Trump, is arraigned in federal court in Miami on 37 counts, entering a plea of not guilty. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ryan Goodman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, a distinguished fellow at the National Institute of Military Justice, and former special counsel at the Department of Defense. Together, they step back from the spectacle to examine the challenge of prosecuting a former President over things that were supposed to be state secrets, and whether Trump can use politics to outrun justice this time.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. We consider this coverage so essential that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter to see the latest every week in your inbox. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern join forces again for an urgent look at Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of former President Donald J Trump. Trump is facing 37 counts in seven charges in the case concerning his mishandling of classified documents, and trying to cover up that mishandling.   Then, Dahlia is joined by Amicus’ election law guiding light, Professor Richard L Hasen, for a close look at the big and shocking voting rights case decided at the Supreme Court this week. Professor Hasen takes us through the fascinating backstory of the case and what Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Allen v Milligan can tell us about another big elections case Moore v Harper,  and what we might be able to expect in the affirmative action decision that will also be coming down in the next couple of weeks.  Finally, Slate Plus members will have a chance to hear Dahlia and Mark answer listener questions, such as…. What is the progressive answer to originalism?   Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. Thank you to our Slate Plus members for making this episode available to all listeners. The full version of this episode is now exclusively available to our Slate Plus members. If you want to have access to bonus content like this, go to slate.com/amicusplus to become a member. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern join forces for this Opinionpalooza extra episode of Amicus discussing a seismic Supreme Court decision on voting rights. In his majority opinion in Allen v Milligan, Chief Justice John Roberts pushes back against his own long-standing stance on voting rights. Join Dahlia and Mark in this bonus episode to find out why.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. We consider this coverage so essential that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter to see the latest every week in your inbox. On this week’s Amicus, a sobering interview between Dahlia Lithwick and the ACLU's Chase Strangio. Chase is deputy director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project and a nationally recognized expert on trans rights. . The sheer number and breadth of proposed new laws targeting trans people is breathtaking, and they are coming from some familiar quarters if you follow the Supreme Court and abortion law. This conversation helps to set the stage for the end of the Supreme Court’s term by looking beyond the cases being decided this month at One, First Street, and toward the legal landscape, and the systems and groups that are shaping that landscape for the rest of us. In the second half of the show, Dahlia is joined by her jurisprudential co-pilot Mark Stern. They talk about why everyone on Twitter hates Mark (hint: people have strong feelings about Justice Alito’s recusal ethics), the labor case that was not as bad for unions as maybe could have been (but is still NOT GREAT), and Mark floats his theory that Supreme Court Justices just don’t want to go back to the office full time and that’s why we’re getting a dribble of decisions now… And might get a firehose of them later this month.   In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, we return to Washington DC and our Full Court Press live show at Sixth and I, where Mark and Dahlia were joined by Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia’s 4th District. Rep. Johnson is the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. They talk court reform and modernizing the judiciary, and why term limits and court expansion are vital to both.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Take your seats for a live show from Washington DC this week. This live show is part of Slate’s Full Court Press coverage, a provocation for the fourth estate to hold the third branch of government to account. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, Elie Mystal of The Nation, and Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes. As we perch on the precipice of another slew of catastrophic decisions this June, they unpack how Supreme Court reporting has failed to meet the moment - and crucially, what to do about it.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, listeners will hear the question and answer segment of the live show - with piercing audience questions such as: "Why do so many Democrats fail to take the court seriously?, and some vital advice for law students from Elie Mystal and Jay Willis. (Spoiler: Don't be Tom Cotton) Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this bonus episode for Amicus Plus listeners, Dahlia Lithwick and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern discuss the latest biggest Supreme Court decision: Sackett v EPA. It’s good news for developers and polluters, bad news for the rest of us. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get your tickets for Amicus Live in Washington DC on May 24th here: https://slate.com/live/amicus-live-may-24-in-washington-d-c-full-court-press.html Dahlia Lithwick is joined by a pair of legal history-makers, E Jean Carroll and Roberta Kaplan. They discuss the landmark defamation and sexual abuse case they won against former President Donald J Trump; how the case came together, what tipped the balance in court, if vindication lasts, and what happens when the defendant won’t stop doing the same defamation over and over again. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the Mifepristone arguments at the 5th Circuit, North Carolina’s abortion ban, and why Justice Kagan and Sotomayor are duking it out in the footnotes over Andy Warhol.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get your tickets for Amicus Live on May 24th.  On this week’s Amicus, we head to Seattle for a live taping of the show at the Cross Cut Festival with guest Michael Waldman, President of NYU Law School’s Brennan Center. Dahlia Lithwick asks him about his new book, THE SUPERMAJORITY: How the Supreme Court Divided America, and what the ongoing ethics scandals and plummeting public approval for the court mean for our democracy. They also look ahead to next month when the court’s legitimacy may be stretched even further by major decisions that fly in the face of the majority of public opinion. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the decisions that came out this week concerning pork producers and public corruption, which delivered some surprising and depressingly unsurprising opinions. They also try to figure out how many more times E Jean Carroll might have to sue Donald Trump to halt his defamation demolition derby. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After weeks of controversy, piled upon intrigue, heaped with scandal and topped with crisis at the Supreme Court, it can be hard to get your bearings. What’s illegal, what’s unethical, what’s just a bit hinky? And what does it really mean for an institution that is about to hand down decisions that reach into every part of our lives, from justice to climate, from youtube to universities? On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Lisa Graves from True North Research. Lisa ia a veteran investigator of the dark money spigot that has been flooding the Supreme Court and rewarding some of the justices, and the causes and people close to their hearts. If you can’t see the woods for the trees, Lisa will paint you a picture. And that painting will, of course, include; Clarence Thomas, Leonard Leo, Harlan Crow and Mark Paoletta.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the possible end of Chevron deference the impacts for the administrative state, the Texas abortion case that is a case study in SB8 working exactly as it was intended, and why it is so puzzling that the Justices won’t rescue themselves from the ethics quagmire that’s sinking trust in SCOTUS. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As laughter ricocheted around the Supreme Court chamber Wednesday, Professor Mary Anne Franks wondered if she could quite believe her ears. The matter of some hilarity, it seems, were messages sent by a convicted stalker to his victim. Individual messages that were among what one detective estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands - possibly as many as one million messages - sent by Billy Raymond Counterman to singer Coles Whalen. Counterman’s campaign of harassment drove Whalen away from performing, indeed drove her away from her home state. She moved across the country to get away. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Mary Anne Franks to discuss Counterman v Colorado and how the details of a cyber-stalking case were lost to free speech concerns about trigger warnings and "sensitivity". You can read Prof. Franks’ powerful piece on this here.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss the big fat settlement Dominion got in its defamation case against Fox News, and why it feels so unsatisfying, the religious liberty case you probably missed at the court this week, Groff v DeJoy. They also talk about how Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s continued absence from the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Democrats’ workarounds for it, are like bringing a bubble blower to a knife fight.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a terrible legal Easter egg in Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s ruling on the abortion medication, Mifepristone. And that same Easter egg makes an appearance in the Fifth Circuit’s partial stay. It’s the Comstock Act - a mostly forgotten 19th century vice statute that is suddenly the anti-abortion movement’s favorite zombie legislation. On a special extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Mary Ziegler, an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. Together, they tackle the chaos upon chaos of the past week’s medication abortion cases, and take a long hard look at the next steps in the anti-abortion movement’s fight for a nationwide ban.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss the “quid pro Crow” of Justice Clarence Thomas’ real estate deals with GOP mega donor, and avid court-watcher, and amicus-brief-funder Harlan Crow.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s Amicus Dahlia Lithwick is first joined by Sherrilyn Ifill, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to talk about Tennessee and the mounting evidence of Republican state houses and governors finding novel (but also depressingly old) ways to disenfranchise voters and subvert democracy. Ifill sounded the alarm about all of this in a prescient piece in Slate last month that deserves your attention. Next, Dahlia is joined by Professor Stephen Vladeck on the opaque, unquestioned and largely unquestionable Supreme Court processes that undergird conservative contempt for the rule of law. Professor Vladeck’s book, The Shadow Docket -  How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic is out in May. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern. There was, categorically, Too Much News this week, so Dahlia turned to Mark for an exclusive conversation for our Slate Plus members about all the stuff we couldn’t cram into an already jam-packed main show. They start with what’s really not happening, and that is Supreme Court decisions. It’s April and there has been a mere smattering of decisions from the High Court. Mark and Dahlia try to figure out what the looming logjam might mean. Next, they talk yacht etiquette, gift grift, and Justice Clarence Thomas’ law breaking. And… Hey! Remember Wisconsin? It’s a big deal - Mark and Dahlia delve into why. Finally, the Supreme Court may not be issuing decisions, but it did deny a petition to overturn a stay of West Virginia’s extreme trans athlete ban. Mark has more on that decision and the shortcomings of a new Biden regulation about trans athletes.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick talks with Andrew Weissmann, former lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office and former Chief of the Fraud Section in the Department of Justice from 2015 - 2019. Together, they tackle the tangled web of investigations into the former President, and the trajectory of possible indictments. And Andrew helps us hone in on some crucial details we may have missed in the fog of building barricades outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. Andrew Weissmann’s book, Where Law Ends, was published by Random House in 2021 In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to understand how Trump judges could tank the economy, the latest on abortion in states trying grapple with the (entirely predictable) deadly consequences of the Dobbs decision, and why all this underlines why the Wisconsin Supreme Court election really matters.   Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by political analyst Michael Podhorzer (ex AFL-CIO, now newly-minted substacker). Michael was one of the all-hands-on-deck responsible for shoring up the 2020 election against subversion, he’s a political data geek,  and for Amicus’s purposes - he’s someone with a fascinating take on the Supreme Court, and all the ways we fail to truly understand it. Hear why Michael doesn't care about Leonard Leo, the lessons learned in the Trump years that we should be applying to the court, and the overarching agenda that both motivates and shapes the court’s jurisprudence.   In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern is away, so Dahlia is joined by the Award Winning™  Leah Litman to talk about loan forgiveness and major questions, the Texas suit being brought by women seriously harmed by the state's abortion ban, and the alarming implications of an amicus brief in an Indiana abortion case that questions the religious sincerity of, well, anyone who backs abortion rights. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For every person screaming about Section 230 (looking at you, Ted Cruz), there are approximately 0.0000001 Danielle Citrons, i.e. folks who actually understand it, what it does, and how it might be tweaked or interpreted to do better. Luckily, we have a whole Professor Danielle Citron on this week’s show. Professor Citron not only manages to make sense of Section 230 for us, she also takes us through this week's internet cases involving Twitter and Google, and content moderation and liability. She explains how eight out of nine justices apparently failed to read the briefs, instead deciding on an "it's so hard" shruggy head-scratch strategy instead. Danielle Citron’s latest book is The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to look ahead to next week’s arguments about the Biden administration’s student debt forgiveness program, and to romp through some of the decisions that came down from the Supreme Court this week. Finally, Mark and Dahlia reflect on the results of the primaries in the race to elect a new Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. Could it be a Mark and Dahlia Amicus plus segment that is not all bad news?  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court heard one of the landmark cases of the 2020 presidential election. During oral arguments in Trump v Biden in December 2020, Justice Jill J Karofsky participated in proceedings via Zoom from her office inside the state capitol in Madison. Outside her office window, she could see armed protesters gathered in what she later viewed as a dry run for January 6th. In a 4-3 decision, with one Republican justice siding against Trump, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to uphold Biden’s victory in the state. On this week’s Amicus, Justice Karofsky speaks for the first time about the fallout from that case: Fallout in her personal life, for herself and loved ones. Fallout in her professional life, with an investigation and the threat of sanction for her line of questioning in oral argument. And beyond all that, the fallout for democracy—and for the role of jurists within that democracy.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss the originalist Second Amendment ruling that puts women’s lives at risk, the looming prospect of a potential nationwide ban on a widely used, FDA-approved, abortion pill, and how the future of jurisprudence appears to be competing time machines.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First, there was the Dobbs case. Then there was the leaked opinion in the Dobbs case. Then there was the investigation into the leaked opinion in the Dobbs case. Then there was the report on the investigation into the leak. Then there was the supplemental report from the Marshal on the report on the investigation into the leak. AND THEN there was the revealing reporting from the NY Times’ Jodi Kantor on a court roiled by reports and investigating and leaks. This week, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jodi Kantor to dig through the reports, reporting and repercussions for the people who are inside One, First Street, and for the baffled majority who aren’t. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to try to figure out why it’s taking so long for SCOTUS to hand down opinions this term, and to examine the very first decision of the term, disappointing in its unanimity and its negative impact on veterans.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amicus is sponsored by Betterhelp. The Supreme Court of the United States got back into the swing of things its first week back after New Years, with a case about cement workers and the rights of organized labor. The “swing” the court was getting “back into” with this case was potential precedent-busting. Dahlia Lithwick is joined on this week’s show by Terri Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy, to discuss what this case could mean for worker’s rights, and for democracy more broadly.  Next, Dahlia is joined by Brad Meltzer, a serial best selling author of so many kinds of books. This week Brad has two books coming out, I Am John Lewis for the kids, and The Nazi Conspiracy - The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. Brad and Dahlia discuss legal writing, book bans, and what these two seemingly very different books have in common.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern for an update on abortion legislation at the state and national level. They discuss the smoke and mirrors of the new republican house majority’s “Born Alive” Bill, and the devastating fallout if Virginia’s 15 week ban gets passed.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some, 2022 was the year Roe v Wade was overturned. For millions more, abortions rights had been functionally inaccessible for decades. Beyond shaky precedent, Roe was a vessel into which America threw all sorts of hopes, beliefs and fears. But how did this legal decision become a symbol of so much? On this week’s show, host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by abortion law expert Mary Ziegler, who’s new book, Roe: The History of a National Obsession, tries to find the roots of Roe’s incessant pull, and to unpack the meaning from the meta.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment - the worst of jurisprudence 2022. In a year marked by quite a few legal gut punches, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to run through the most bonkers rulings from the most out-of-control federal judges. They also find a path to hope for justice in 2023.   Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Want a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the show? Check out Slate's Pocket Collections for research and reading lists, as well as additional insights into how we think about the stories behind the episodes.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The highest court in the land has ignored the need for standing, the trial record, and of course precedent this past year––and it matters.  Host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation. They discuss Sherrilyn’s thought-provoking piece this month in the New York Review of Books, which opens out into a big-picture discussion of what this Supreme Court’s tendency to reach out and grab cases, and erase trial records, or fill in the blanks on standing, even on claims, means for whose voices are heard at the highest court in the land, and who merits consideration in its decisions.   In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about oral arguments in the big elections case concerning the Independent State Legislature Theory (Moore v. Harper), and in the Oregon wedding website case that threatens civil rights public-accommodations law (303 Creative), plus the Washington right-wing party circuit’s special guest du jour, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Want a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the show? Check out Slate's Pocket Collections for research and reading lists, as well as additional insights into how we think about the stories behind the episodes.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Christian conservatives lost in Masterpiece Cake Shop back in 2018, they regrouped and picked up the trail of breadcrumbs from Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent that suggested a freedom of speech approach. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in 303 Creative v Elenis - another case that takes aim at Colorado’s anti discrimination laws. This time, arguments about whether a website designer has the right to advertise that she will not design websites for same-sex weddings, will be focused on freedom of speech. But as this week’s guest, Hila Keren, argues, excluding people from the marketplace and humiliating them in the process is not a matter of free speech, and it is a matter progressives have been largely silent about. Together, Dahlia Lithwick and Professor Keren dig deep into a case that hasn’t been given the attention its potential wide-ranging consequences demand.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about another big case - this past week’s arguments in US v Texas, including brazen judge-shopping, nationwide injunction-slapping, and President Biden’s immigration policy. Then Mark explains exactly what is - and isn’t - in the same sex marriage bill that’s making its way to President Biden’s desk.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Want a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the show? Check out Slate's Pocket Collections for research and reading lists, as well as additional insights into how we think about the stories behind the episodes.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the New York Times built on previous reporting in Politico and Rolling Stone  about an evangelical christian ministry that sought to sell access to and influence Supreme Court Justices with fancy dinners and donations, the Hobby Lobby leak dominated the headlines. But there is so much more to this story. To discuss how the headlines fit into a larger narrative of dark money and a captured court, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Senator Whitehouse is Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights and co-author of The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court. See also: The Supreme Court Ethics and Recusal Transparency Act.  Want a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the show? Check out Slate's Pocket Collections for research and reading lists, as well as additional insights into how we think about the stories behind the episodes.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“A Kitchen Sink Approach to Constitutional Claims” On this week’s Amicus, - the case that threatens the Indian Child Welfare Act, but also threatens domino effects on tribal sovereignty and land rights. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Rebecca Nagle, a Cherokee writer, advocate & language learner. Nagle is host of This Land podcast. Season 2 of the podcast was a deep and broad investigation into the background of the case at hand. Maggie Blackhawk also lends her expertise to the discussion, Professor Blackhawk (Find du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is professor of law at NYU and an award-winning interdisciplinary scholar and teacher of constitutional law, federal Indian law, and legislation, Together, they delve through a veritable grab bag of constitutional challenges from the plaintiffs in Brackeen v Haaland. Listen up, you’re about to learn a lot, we did.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about how a Georgia judge overturned that state’s abortion ban, President Biden’s record and prospects for confirming judges, and death penalty cruelty on the shadow docket again.    Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Want a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the show? Check out Slate's Pocket Collections for research and reading lists, as well as additional insights into how we think about the stories behind the episodes.  Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Cara McClellan, former counsel at NAACP LDF, and founding Director of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic, at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Professor McClellan takes us through an extensive trial record largely ignored in oral arguments at SCOTUS this past week.  Then, Dahlia is joined by David Rothkopf whose book, American Resistance: The inside story of how the deep state saved the nation, details the folks who stuck around and tried to hold the line during the Trump years, and what we can learn from them.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the judges pushing back in gun cases post Bruen, and the lower courts defying Supreme Court precedent as they seek to curtail LGBTQ rights.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Judge Michael Luttig for the definitive conversation on a giant elections case now on the calendar at the Supreme Court. Moore v Harper is a North Carolina redistricting case that is also a vehicle for the Independent State Legislature Theory - a so-called doctrine that could radically re-order democracy in America. Judge Luttig - a stalwart of conservative legal circles for decades - will argue the case as co-counsel alongside former Acting Solicitor General under Obama, Neal Katyal.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the blossoming of bonkers gun cases in the wake of last term’s SCOTUS decision in Bruen, a big case concerning consumer protections and much more…  Dahlia’s new book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is on the road with Amicus and Lady Justice. In this bonus episode, she’s joined by Loyola Law Professor, legal commentator and columnist Jessica Levinson for a conversation about what we can learn from the women lawyers who held the line during the Trump years, and how to respond to the steady drum beat of “Lock Her Up” threatening women around America today.  The conversation is available in full for Slate Plus members.  Dahlia’s new book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America,  Lady Justice is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. :https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by two key players from this week’s consequential voting rights cases at the US Supreme Court. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s senior counsel Deuel Ross argued part of Merrill v Milligan at the High Court on Tuesday, and Evan Milligan of Alabama Forward is the named plaintiff in one of a pair of cases that argued that Alabama’s congressional maps are racially gerrymandered in violation of Section II of the Voting Rights Act. They take listeners inside the arguments, and provide vital context for the challenges faced by residents of Alabama’s Black Belt in accessing healthcare, infrastructure and not coincidentally, political representation.  Next, Dahlia is joined by Sam Sankar, Senior Vice President of Programs at Earth Justice to discuss what went down in Sackett v EPA, a case argued Monday that could have wide-ranging effects on the waters and wetlands of the United States.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the new dynamics of arguments with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson taking her seat at the High Court, the conservative reaction to their favorite text and history rubric being applied by the first African American woman on the court (huh, they don’t love it?), and what to expect from a new filing in the Mar A Lago investigation that’s on its way to 1, First Street. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Dahlia’s new book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern and Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes for a preview of the big cases headed our way this Supreme Court term. They tackle cases concerning voting rights, indigenous rights, environmental protection and affirmative action, before turning their attention to the tricky business of covering a court that is radically changed and how the traditionally deferential Supreme Court press corps needs to update its methods and reporting in response. Dahlia’s new book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by going to slate.com/justice and entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick’s new book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, tells the story of the women lawyers who stood up to Trump and stood up for those unseen and unrepresented by a brutal presidency, and the stories of the women who will fight on in the wake of life-altering decisions from a radicalized Supreme Court. Lady Justice is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Mark Joseph Stern for a romp through the jurisprudential headlines. It’s been a week. Highlights include: Donald Trump’s legal woes in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation, and at the hands of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil suit.  Then, we’re live at Politics and Prose in Washington DC, with a conversation between Dahlia Lithwick and Professor Michele Goodwin about women, the law and the rule of law. They discuss Dahlia’s new book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, the day Dahlia decided to stop covering the Supreme Court from the inside, what the law can do for justice, and what it can’t. Lady Justice is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25% discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. :https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern also delve into retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s comments about Dobbs and the court’s legitimacy, and the death penalty decision that came down Thursday and what it tells us about Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s jurisprudence.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Roberta Kaplan, who along with co-counsel Karen Dunn brought a successful civil suit against twenty-four neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders responsible for organizing the racial- and religious-based violence in Charlottesville in August 2017. They discuss how the KKK Act of 1871 applied to discord channels and now January 6th defendants. And they explore the complicated relationship women find themselves in with the law in this moment, as defenders of rights but also as constitutional afterthoughts. Dahlia Lithwick’s new book is Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia is joined by Mary Trump and Norm Ornstein to discuss how a single Trump-appointed judge’s attempt to stick a fork in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into potential mishandling of classified materials is part of a systemic story about American justice. And they discuss the kinds of reform needed to protect democracy and repair the judiciary. And how to handle our collective trauma so we can get it all done. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about lawlessness at Mar a Lago, whether lawlessness at Mar-a-Lago, the Texas judge whose order this week nominally aims to cut access to HIV preventative medications, but is also setting his sights (again) on cratering the Affordable Care Act, and they probe if the current outbreak of reckless judging can be inoculated or will continue to spread unchecked. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Law Professor and former journalist Amy Gajda joins Dahlia Lithwick to discuss her latest book, Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy. They chart a course through early conceptions of privacy to today’s fraught battles over privacy and dignity in the age of surveillance capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The quality of dignity is not strained. Judge Victoria Pratt presided for years over Municipal Court in Newark, New Jersey. Her experiences form the foundation of her book, The Power of Dignity: How Transforming Justice Can Heal Our Communities. In the third of Amicus’ summer season of big-picture conversations, Dahlia Lithwick and Judge Pratt explore what everyone, up to and including Supreme Court Justices, can learn from procedural justice, also known as procedural fairness. You can watch Judge Pratt’s viral Ted Talk here. Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second of Amicus’ Summer Series of interviews that step out of the day to day of jurisprudence to look at justice and the Supreme Court through a wide-angle lens, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by actor and playwright Heidi Schreck. Schreck created and starred in the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award - nominated “What the Constitution Means to Me” and is a fierce advocate for abortion rights. Together, they try to locate the spot at the intersection of politics, law, culture, media and art that might provide a space to adequately describe the impacts of the Dobbs decision. And that is where they find the galvanizing forces and creative feats of imagination that have served previous generations in the fight for equal rights, and that will fuel the fight to come.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by former Attorney General Eric Holder as Amicus begins its summer season while the Supreme Court is in recess. General Holder describes his feelings when, as President Barack Obama’s Attorney General, he realized he could not in good conscience take part in the long-held tradition of the AG arguing an “easy case” before the Supreme Court. The issue? That same court had just eviscerated the Voting Rights Act in a case that will forever bear his name: Shelby County v Holder. General Holder wants us to take the steps beyond anger at the assault on voting rights, and move forward with joy toward action. His book, Our Unfinished March, is both a history of how voting rights became broken, and an action plan for delivering the promise of democracy: that the people pick their leaders. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia L​​ithwick hosts Amicus’ annual term-ending breakfast table conversation, featuring Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern, Professor Katherine Franke and Professor Nikolas Bowie. They dig into the biggest decisions of the term, and step back to survey where the court is headed, and where it’s already been.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The term is over, and the ground upon which all Americans stood, has fundamentally shifted. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Dorothy Roberts to discuss the reality of forced birth and family separation upon marginalized peoples in America. Dorothy is the author of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, and of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Then, Dahlia talks to Amy Westervelt of Drilled podcast to find out what West Virginia v EPA means for climate action, and the places the Biden Administration could still make progress.  For a behind the scenes look into some of the articles we read when we create the show, check out our Pocket collection at http://getpocket.com/slate.  Slate plus listeners will also have access to Dahlia’s conversation with Mark Joseph Stern, where they dig into some of the cases we couldn’t reach in the main show, including the Remain in Mexico decision and the alarming implications of the court taking up Moore v. Harper, which is all about the Independent State Legislature theory.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern on Kennedy v Bremerton School District: a referendum on the status of truth at the high court, and another nail in the coffin of the establishment clause.  Slate Plus members have access to the whole interview.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well it happened, Roe v Wade has been swept away and Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and the author of “Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment.” And then we turn to the other blockbuster decision this week, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen. Dahlia talks to the Duke Center for Firearms Law, Joseph Blocher. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern process more of the fallout from Dobbs and Bruen, and also examine the other blockbuster-in-normal-times case that almost escaped notice. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern react to the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson v Makin, a blockbuster religious liberty case that sees the court traveling a long way in a short time, and trampling the establishment clause along the way,  Slate Plus members have access to the whole interview.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic and election law Professor Richard Hasen for what could be called “Amicus: Wheels Coming Off Edition”. We’re still waiting for a bevy of blockbuster decisions, and despite Chief Justice John Roberts’ solemn wish to steady the ship, events at the January 6th select committee seem destined to scupper it. Joan, Rick and Dahlia talk about what’s to come in the most unusual last two weeks of June at the court that any of them can remember.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern on why everybody needs to stop saying “today is the day we get Dobbs” (and why that day is likely to be the last possible day this term), on how this court overturns precedent without overturning precedent, plus Justices Barrett and Gorsuch go at it - some of the time.   Find the What Next episode Mark mentions with Leah Litman here. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ryan Goodman, professor of Law at NYU and co-editor-in-chief of Just Security. While we wait for the High Court to release opinions in a heaving pile of cases, the main constitutional action of the week was in Congress. Ryan Goodman has been piecing together the events of January 6th, and what led to it, for the past year and a half with colleagues at Just Security and Protect Democracy. Goodman leads Dahlia through what we heard from the January 6th select committee on Thursday night: what was new, what was big, and the emerging roadmap for Attorney General Merrick Garland.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern run down the SCOTUS decisions we got this week - including a stunning decision this week allowing border agents almost limitless protection from lawsuits for bad behavior. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to tee up the final weeks of the Supreme Court term. Several blockbusters are still to come, from abortion to gun rights to religious liberty to climate action—and then there’s the shadow docket. Mark and Dahlia break it all down with insights into what to expect and what to watch for.  Dahlia also spoke with former Attorney General Eric Holder this week, and he made the clear and urgent case that if you want gun reform, you need to work on democracy reform. Attorney General Holder will be back on Amicus in July to talk about his book for our summer reading series.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, as the Supreme Court investigates clerks over the Dobbs leak, and in the wake of the revelations of Ginni Thomas’ involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Dahlia is in conversation with Noah Bookbinder of CREW about how to fix judicial ethics.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In light of the Uvalde school shooting, we’re rebroadcasting a special audio presentation from Amicus that originally aired in 2018. Dahlia Lithwick spoke to three educators who survived gun violence at their schools. Heather Martin was a student at Columbine during the 1999 mass shooting; Mary Ann Jacob was library clerk at Sandy Hook at the time of the 2012 shooting; and Ken Yuers was a teacher at Rancho Tehama Elementary School when it suffered a school shooting in 2017. They discussed what they experienced, what it was like going back to the classroom, and what they want changed.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ambassador Norm Eisen to discuss The Big Picture: democracy, the Rule of Law and the new volume he has co-written and edited, Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy. Norm and Dahlia look back to January 6th 2021, and ahead to the coming hearings and the midterms.  In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about Ted Cruz’s victory at the Supreme Court, and what it means for what’s left of campaign finance law, the stunning decision out of the 5th circuit that questions the constitutionality of, well, pretty much the whole of the civil service… And Oklahoma’s new abortion ban law that picks up Texas’ vigilante reproductive regulation and runs with it. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.  We'll be back with another episode of Amicus on June 4th, when we’ll start coming to you weekly as the Supreme Court’s term hurtles to its conclusion and we are deluged with consequential decisions. Hoping you can join us to try to navigate the last few weeks of the term, and its fallout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a special live panel discussion in partnership with the Crosscut Festival, this week’s Amicus tackles the post-leak landscape and potential post-Roe fallout from Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs. An all-star panel, featuring law professor and podcast host Melissa Murray, journalist and bestselling author Jessica Bruder, and Slate’s news director Susan Matthews—host of the upcoming Season 7 of Slow Burn focusing on the road to Roe v Wade—get together to discuss the past, present, and future of reproductive liberty.  Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a special episode for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern for in-depth analysis of the stunning leaked draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, the abortion case that is poised to overturn 50 years of jurisprudence and Roe v Wade. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Amicus – in studio edition! – host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor  Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of global health law, at Georgetown University, among many other things. They talk about the federal district court in Florida’s decision to lift the mask mandate for public transportation. While it may seem like a small deal given that the mandate was set to expire in a few weeks anyway, the decision was built on a very labored and tortured interpretation of the word “sanitation.” Professor Gostin explains that this case could have a chilling effect on government agencies. They also discuss why the decision by the Biden administration to appeal involved a lot of political calculous. In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about a death penalty decision at the Supreme Court and an upcoming case about school prayer.   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the great legal history episode of Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick is joined first by David Gans, director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center. While GOP Senators used the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings to take potshots at important ideas like unenumerated rights and substantive due process to score points with their base, the talking points became entrenched in political discourse. Does it matter? Of course it does. Later in the show, Dahlia is joined by Rund Abdelfatah co-host and producer of NPR’s podcast Throughline. The podcast explores the history behind current events. Dahlia and Rund talk about Throughline’s episode Pirates of the Senate to take a closer look at the history behind the filibuster, and explore why so many of our ideas about the filibuster are just plain wrong.  In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern on the Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation, a case creating a new constitutional bar against malicious prosecution, and more shadow docket shenanigans.  Podcast production by Sara Burningham and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was a week: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Justice Clarence Thomas in the hospital, Ginni Thomas’ tweets in the hands of the Jan. 6 committee, and an out-of-the-blue redistricting decision on the shadow docket.  First, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston University Law School, to discuss why the Senate Judiciary Committee is a terrible venue for a job interview and the ways in which Judge Jackson rose above it.   Next, Dahlia talks to Nate Persily of Stanford Law School about how the hearing interacts with the bigger picture of disinformation ecosystems, Ginni Thomas’ texts, and fills us in on the Wisconsin redistricting case. Finally, they discuss Prof. Persily’s almost 40-year friendship with Ketanji Brown Jackson.  In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark Joseph Stern dig into judicial ethics and what shocked them this week.  Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices