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

Amicus presents a preview of Slow Burn, an eight-episode miniseries about Watergate. People called her crazy, and to be fair she must have seemed crazy. But she was onto something. How Martha Mitchell, the celebrity wife of one of Nixon’s closest henchmen, tried to blow the whistle on Watergate—and ended up ruining her life.Find out more at slate.com/slowburn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the high court continues through its unprecedented session, Dahlia speaks with Adam Liptak who covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times and knows the ins and outs of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. And he gives his insight on what a jaw-dropping brief from the Solicitor General's office means for relations between the Court and the Trump administration. Plus, a look into how the Supreme Court Justices seem to be the last grown-ups left in Washington.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of another American mass shooting, Dahlia speaks with Adam Skaggs, Chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence about the Second Amendment. And as this week marks the one year anniversary of Donald Trump’s election to office, Becca Heller, co-founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project, joins to talk about how her job changed after the election.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia Lithwick speaks with Representative Jamie Raskin about the Republican remedy for Trump's unfitness for office: The 25th Amendment. Plus, she speaks with ProPublica's Ryan Gabrielson about his recent reporting which revealed that the high court tends to make staggering errors of fact in opinions.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dahlia is joined by Kristen Clarke, President & Executive Director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to talk about the federal judiciary and how Donald Trump is speedily filling the vacancies on the federal bench.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As next week marks the opening of the 2017 term at the high court, Dahlia Lithwick speaks with David Cole, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, about some of the cases in this upcoming term, including Trump's travel ban, a civil rights case of gay couples versus those of religious dissenters and more. Cole also discusses how citizen activism is more alive than he's seen is his lifetime, something he illustrates in his new book, now out in paperback, Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the Supreme Court term opens next month, perhaps no issue will be more urgent – and more complicated – than voting rights. One of the first cases the justices will hear is Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to the 2011 redrawing of district lines in Wisconsin. While the Court has struck down racially-motivated gerrymanders in the past, no election map has ever been rejected as a purely partisan gerrymander. And recent developments have some court watchers concerned that Justice Anthony Kennedy may still not be ready to do that. Our guest this episode is Richard Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, and curator of the must-read Election Law Blog. Please let us know what you think of Amicus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Our email is amicus@slate.com. Podcast production by Tony Field.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court’s 2016 term may not have contained the usual number of blockbuster cases, but it did have its fair share of drama. Between the stonewalling of Merrick Garland, the filibustered confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, rumors about Anthony Kennedy’s possible retirement, and in the background, the White House offensive against the federal judiciary, court-watchers had no shortage of things to keep them up at night. And so this week on Amicus, we pour a couple of our favorite court-watchers a big cup of coffee and plop some microphones down at Slate’s annual “Breakfast Table.” Mark Joseph Stern and Pamela Karlan join us to discuss what we learned about the justices this term and what we can expect from them in the fall.   Transcripts of Amicus are available to Slate Plus members, several days after each episode posts. For a limited time, get 90 days of free access to Slate Plus in the new Slate iOS app. Download it today at slate.com/app. Please let us know what you think of Amicus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Our email is amicus@slate.com. Podcast production by Tony Field.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his much-anticipated testimony on Capitol Hill this week, former FBI Director James Comey described several uncomfortable interactions with President Trump that preceded his firing. The big question for all watching was: could any of those interactions be considered “obstruction of justice?” On this week’s episode, we put the question to Stanford Law School Professor Robert Weisberg. We also discuss the ongoing litigation around President Trump’s executive order on immigration with Kate Shaw, an associate professor at the Cardozo School of Law and a Supreme Court analyst for ABC News. Shaw is the author of a new article in the Texas Law Review that considers what sorts of presidential speech is and isn’t admissible in a court of law. [Read Shaw’s recent New York Times op-ed on the subject here.] Transcripts of Amicus are available to Slate Plus members, several days after each episode posts. For a limited time, get 90 days of free access to Slate Plus in the new Slate iOS app. Download it today at slate.com/app. Please let us know what you think of Amicus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Our email is amicus@slate.com.Podcast production by Tony Field.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that caught some Court-watchers off-guard. It ruled that North Carolina lawmakers had violated the Constitution by using race as a proxy for divvying up voters along partisan lines. And it was surprising because the swing vote invalidating the gerrymander came from none other than Justice Clarence Thomas. On this week’s episode, we parse the outcome of Cooper v. Harris -- and what it portends for future redistricting litigation -- with Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern. We also sit down with Jorge Barón, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Each year, that group provides assistance to thousands of immigrants threatened with deportation. But last month, the NWIRP received a strange cease-and-desist letter from the U.S. Department of Justice, threatening its ongoing legal work and raising some concerns that the group is being singled out for its defense of immigrants caught up in the first iteration of President Trump’s travel ban.  Transcripts of Amicus are available to Slate Plus members, several days after each episode posts. For a limited time, get 90 days of free access to Slate Plus in the new Slate iOS app. Download it today at slate.com/app. Please let us know what you think of Amicus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Our email is amicus@slate.com. Podcast production by Tony Field.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices