Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Amicus’ election law whisperer, UC Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen, to sift through the results, the non-calls, and the many, many lawsuits of this post-election moment. Then, Dahlia is joined by Jim Zirin, former federal prosecutor and author of Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits, to map out the playbook the president is pulling from today and always--from his Supreme Court picks to all-caps claims of voter fraud. In our Slate ...
Nov 07, 2020•55 min
Episode Notes: Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to discuss voting and the crisis of legitimacy facing a Supreme Court embroiled in politics, the election, and an epochal shift to the right. In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Brian Fallon of Demand Justice to discuss the whys and the wherefores of court reform. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sa...
Oct 31, 2020•1 hr 8 min
Regardless of the outcome of the election, the Supreme Court has already entered a new era. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Heather Cox Richardson for a big-picture conversation about what that means: minority rule and the court’s role, past and present, in changing visions of democracy. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern updates us on all the election-law cases. OK, not all of them—there are more than 300 cases going on in 46 states—but Mark brings us up to speed on the key cases and the...
Oct 24, 2020•52 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the author of The Lie that Binds to discuss the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett and what her nomination to the Supreme Court means for reproductive rights. In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School to discuss all the other questions that went unanswered at the hearings. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and s...
Oct 17, 2020•49 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Robert Raben, a former senior Hill staffer, former assistant attorney general in Bill Clinton’s Department of Justice, and founder of the Raben Group, for some real talk about next week’s Senate confirmation hearings. Next, Brian Kalt, Michigan State University College of Law professor and author of Unable: The Law, Politics, and Limits of Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, joins Dahlia to clarify what’s really on the table as Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jamie Raskin...
Oct 10, 2020•1 hr 9 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by election law professor Rick Hasen of UC Irvine, author of Election Meltdown, for an update on the state of the election given the president’s COVID diagnosis. They are joined by Professor Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler professor of African American Studies at Emory University, to discuss the president’s undermining of the election. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 03, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by the Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern for some hard truths about the future of the Supreme Court and what, if anything, Democrats can do about it. In this week’s Slate Plus segment, Mark sticks around to delve into the worrying news coming out of Pennsylvania and other adventures in pre-election litigation. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Slate’s Amicus on Faceboo...
Sep 26, 2020•55 min
Marking the passing of a constitutional titan, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Columbia Law professor and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gillian Metzger. And a special remembrance from Justice Ginsburg’s law school classmates Flora Schnall and Judge Carol Brosnahan. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 24, 2020•41 min
This is a replay of a special bonus live episode from the National Constitution Center. Dahlia Lithwick in conversation with Jeffrey Rosen about his 2019 book Conversations With RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsberg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. Podcast production by Sara Burningham, with thanks to the National Constitution Center. Slate’s Amicus on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/amicuspodcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 21, 2020•1 hr 6 min
In January, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the women of Harvard Law School’s class of 1959. Slate Plus members heard the interview in August as part of our feature on the women of Ginsburg’s class. We’re now making it publicly available for the first time. Go to Slate.com/RBG for more on all the women of the class. To support our work, join Slate Plus at Slate.com/amicusplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 19, 2020•44 min
What is Bill Barr doing, and why is he doing it? Donald Ayer, former U.S. attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, on the attorney general’s ideology, how it predates Trumpism, and why it’s so dangerous. In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern breaks down the latest voting breakdown in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, the latest Census case dead end, and the stupidity of Trump’s latest SCOTUS list. Sign up for...
Sep 12, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Professor Samuel Bagenstos of the University of Michigan School of Law, to discuss the status of voting rights litigation as we count down to November’s election. Then Dahlia is joined by Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the alarming developments in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In this week’s Slate Plus segment, Mark sticks around to explain the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, and why...
Aug 29, 2020•1 hr 7 min
In July, Slate published "The Class of RBG,” a print piece and two podcast episodes about the nine other women in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Harvard Law School class. June Thomas talked to Dahlia Lithwick and Molly Olmstead about the making of the package on the July 26 episode of Working, Slate’s podcast about the creative process. We thought Amicus listeners would enjoy a slightly extended version of that interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 15, 2020•29 min
Exclusive to Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick’s January interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the women of Harvard Law School’s class of 1959. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen to the full interview and support our show. Go to Slate.com/RBG for more on all the women of the class. Find the print version of this interview here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 01, 2020•9 min
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the women who went to law school with her knew something of what it had taken to get there. In the second part of this special series, Dahlia Lithwick talks to Justice Ginsburg’s classmates about their lives in the law after Harvard, and to Justice Ginsburg herself about what women in the law today can take from their stories. Read Slate’s full interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about her own time at Harvard La...
Jul 25, 2020•34 min
Dahlia Lithwick goes back to where one of the most influential legal careers in US history began—Harvard Law School, September 1956—to find out what we can learn from the other women of the class of 1959, and their notorious classmate. Read Slate’s full interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about her own time at Harvard Law School and her memories of her female classmates here. Read the full stories of each woman’s life here. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. ...
Jul 21, 2020•39 min
Who were the nine other women of Harvard Law School's class of 1959? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remembers them all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 18, 2020•2 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley Law, associate law professor Zephyr Teachout of Fordham University, and Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern to rake over the end of the Supreme Court term, taking a close look at the Trump financial records cases, the ministerial exception cases, and a landmark decision about tribal lands in Oklahoma. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 10, 2020•54 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law and Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker for a round table discussion of the big abortion case of the term, why Chief Justice John Roberts chose to strike down the Louisiana abortion law in June Medical Services LLC v Russo, and why opinion about Roberts’ opinion seems to be divided along very gendered lines. In the Slate Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark Joseph Stern break down the other big opinions of the week and their implic...
Jul 04, 2020•45 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Luis Cortes Romero, the attorney and DACA recipient who was part of the team that prevailed in this week’s DACA ruling. He will restore some of your faith in the American courts. And then Dahlia talks to Professor Pam Karlan about this week’s landmark LGBTQ employment rights case, in which she argued successfully for Title VII protections to apply to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees. In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern tries to help Dahlia f...
Jun 20, 2020•1 hr 25 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig of Boston University School of Law to share the feelings and thinking behind her letter to her students reflecting on recent protests and killings. (Also mentioned, the letter from the Washington State Supreme Court and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.) Next, Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in the Obama administration discuss...
Jun 06, 2020•57 min
A big show for the long weekend. First, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Leah Litman of the University of Michigan Law School to discuss oral arguments in the Trump financial records cases, and to get granular with the question of who gets interrupted most in oral arguments over the phone. (Guess what? It’s gendered.) Next, a big picture conversation about the rule of law and global justice before, during, and after COVID-19, with David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee. In the Slate Pl...
May 23, 2020•1 hr 4 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Susan Hennessey, national security analyst and executive editor of Lawfare to discuss the ramifications of the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against Michael Flynn. Later in the show, Lithwick is joined by veteran Supreme Court watcher Linda Greenhouse to unpack the new format for Supreme Court arguments: a teleconference carried live on C-SPAN, with a close look at the birth control case you might have missed. In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph S...
May 09, 2020•1 hr 5 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Colorado State Attorney General Phil Weiser to talk about how states’ rights fit into the picture of America that’s emerging in this pandemic. In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to talk about the big decisions that came down from the high court this week and what they mean for other, even bigger, decisions yet to come this term. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about yo...
Apr 25, 2020•45 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Marc Elias, chair of Perkins Coie’s Political Law Group, he represents the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Together, they reconstruct how the Supreme Court stepped into Wisconsin’s April election, and what the path to that decision—and the fallout from it—can teach us ahead of November. In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern talks about Mitch McConnell’s continued campaign to stack the judiciary, the dissonance between conse...
Apr 11, 2020•54 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ian Bassin, former associated White House counsel from 2009-11 and co-founder of Protect Democracy for a look at the pain points, tensions, and glimmers of hope in how this constitutional democracy is handling the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19. In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on why Justice Elena Kagan is voting with the conservatives, the unanimous decision in Comcast Corp. v. National Association of African American Media and what it m...
Mar 28, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Michele Goodwin, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California Irvine School of Law. Professor Goodwin unpacks the oral arguments in this term’s big reproductive health case, June Medical Services, and delves into the history of racism and civil-rights trampling in the name of public health. For plus members, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia with what to expect from a SCOTUS...
Mar 14, 2020•57 min
Dahlia Lithwick asks the new president of the American Constitution Society, Russ Feingold, if it’s too late for progressives to respond to the conservative steamroller that is the Federalist Society. Slate Plus members have access to a bonus segment in which Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern breaks down the headlines, cases, cert grants, and conundrums from the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts. To start your free two-week trial go to slate.com/amicusplus Podcast production by Sara Burningham....
Feb 29, 2020•49 min
Brendan Nyhan is a political science professor at Dartmouth College who focuses on misinformation and so-called fake news. His views on how fake news affects election outcomes might surprise you. Try Slate Plus free: slate.com/amicusplus Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 26, 2020•14 min
In the fifth and final part of this special series of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined live on stage in Washington by former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, MacArthur fellow Professor Danielle Citron of Boston University law school, director of the ACLU’s voting-rights initiative Dale Ho, and election law professor Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine. Together, they pick themselves up from the rug of despair with a pile of can-do fixes for the stress points threate...
Feb 22, 2020•1 hr 13 min
