

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
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A show about the law and the nine Supreme Court justices who interpret it for the rest of America.Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 13, 2021 • 1h 15min
“An Injury To Their Electoral Prospects”
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

Feb 27, 2021 • 45min
First Amendment Fallacies
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

Feb 13, 2021 • 1h 25min
Impeachment’s Message and Meaning
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

Jan 30, 2021 • 55min
Inside Impeachment
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

Jan 16, 2021 • 44min
The Domestic Terror Arm of MAGA
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

Jan 9, 2021 • 54min
The Predictability is Part of the Tragedy
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

Jan 2, 2021 • 1h 7min
Truth, Reconciliation, and Korematsu v. United States
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.

Dec 22, 2020 • 6min
Justice Breyer, In His Own Words
Dahlia Lithwick talks to Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court for a Slate Plus exclusive, as part of Slate’s 80 over 80 coverage. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dec 19, 2020 • 56min
How Amy Coney Barrett is Already Making a Mark on the Court
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to talk about lessons learned from this election cycle, and what it’s like to be in the eye of the “unleash the kraken” storm. Next, Dahlia talks with Professor Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law about Bill Barr’s departure from the Justice Department, and they try to shed some light on the latest signals emerging from the Supreme Court’s shadow docket. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia for all the Supreme Court news we couldn’t cram into the main show, including analysis of the Covid closure cases and Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented lame-duck judicial appointment spree. 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

Dec 5, 2020 • 57min
Trump’s Pardonpalooza
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jack Goldsmith, Harvard Law professor, senior Hoover Institution fellow, co-founder of the Lawfare blog, and co-author (with Bob Bauer) of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency. They unpack the presidential pardon power and try to figure out what Attorney General Bill Barr is up to with John Durham’s investigation of the investigation into the 2016 election. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to analyse what’s been happening at the Supreme Court in the last 14 days, including last week’s religious freedom decision weighing public worship in the pandemic, the latest Census case, and Justice Samuel Alito’s eagerness to hear from Pennsylvania. 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