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

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Brennan Center fellow and professor at Stetson University, to discuss how, when it comes to corporate influence over politics, money talks - but should it actually speak? From Georgia boycotts to campaign finance, and Mitch McConnell’s apparent new take on Citizens United. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to discuss Justice Clarence Thomas’ anti-big-tech energy, why progressives need to stop pressuring Justice Stephen Breyer to retire, the rising tide of anti-trans bills around the country, and Joe Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.  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 Adam Cohen to talk about Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, and whether Merrick Garland should heed calls to reinvestigate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid, the big union case before the court this week, guns at the 9th Circuit, and Georgia’s vote-suppression legislation push. 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 Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon to discuss voting rights, democratic reform, and what it will take to get the For the People Act through Congress. This conversation was recorded as part of this year’s SXSW.Slate Plus members have access to the whole interview. 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 Jessica Ring Amunson, who argued Brnovich v DNC at the Supreme Court this month, to take us inside the arguments and the key questions, and also to look at the wider landscape for voting rights. Then Dahlia’s joined by Jamal Greene who says Americans’ thinking about rights is all wrong, as they discuss his new book How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession With Rights Is Tearing America Apart.In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to thrash out the major issues of the week we couldn’t get to in the main show, including racism at Georgetown University Law Center, Chief Justice John Roberts’ lone dissent, and the last of the kraken election cases batted away from the high court. 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 Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, to try to unpack how the First Amendment has become the answer to everything and yet actually applies to so few of the speech issues we face. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern takes a look at Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent this week that sounded a lot like an endorsement of the Big Lie of 2020: Just because there’s no evidence of voter fraud, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.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 renowned communications researcher and campaign adviser Anat Shenker-Osorio to talk about the messaging of impeachment outside the lens of the law. Then, Bob Bauer, former White House counsel under President Barack Obama and senior adviser to the 2020 Biden campaign, joins Dahlia to discuss the significance of this impeachment as a legal matter, and the next steps needed when the trial ends (in acquittal). In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on the guessing-game that is the law of Covid and death-penalty protocols in late-night SCOTUS orders.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 Daniel Goldman, who spearheaded the first round of impeachment hearings in the House in December 2019 as the senior adviser and director of investigations for the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They examine what impeachment last time can teach us about impeachment this time, and why we’ve got to stop thinking like lawyers when it comes to the Senate trial.In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to discuss the attempted sub-coup at the Justice Department, the first Biden-era sightings of the long tail of Trump’s judicial appointments, and the conservative legal establishment’s choice to embrace Trumpists after Jan. 6. 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 Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, currently serving as the faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to look at the violent extremist elements of the MAGA movement and how counterterrorism tools can inform the response to the attack on the Capitol and President Trump’s “stochastic terrorism.”In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to discuss developments in the judiciary in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the high court’s decision to greenlight more federal executions in the last days of the Trump administration, and the first abortion case of the Amy Coney Barrett era. 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 Joshua Geltzer, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama and the founding executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. He also wrote this piece in February of 2019. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Judge Edward M Chen and Don Tamaki discuss the shameful Japanese American internment during WWII, the corruption of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court's struggle with Korematsu v United States. They examine racism against Asian Americans, legal challenges, unjust treatment, and the role of the courts in addressing historical injustices.