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...
Sep 16, 2023•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, dependin...
Sep 09, 2023•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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
Aug 26, 2023•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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
Aug 12, 2023•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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
Jul 29, 2023•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 s...
Jul 15, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 columni...
Jul 08, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 29, 2023•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 cho...
Jun 27, 2023•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 tal...
Jun 24, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jun 21, 2023•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 bigges...
Jun 17, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Brackee...
Jun 15, 2023•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 14, 2023•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Presid...
Jun 10, 2023•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 d...
Jun 08, 2023•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Transg...
Jun 03, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, w...
May 27, 2023•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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
May 26, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 20, 2023•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 str...
May 13, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 i...
May 06, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Apr 22, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, an...
Apr 15, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Step...
Apr 08, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. A...
Mar 25, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Mar 11, 2023•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. S...
Feb 25, 2023•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 up...
Feb 11, 2023•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
