Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, Justice, And The Courts

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

The incarceration of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans in the 1940s is one of the most shameful acts in American history. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Judge Edward M Chen and Don Tamaki, members of the legal team that worked to clear Fred Korematsu’s name almost 40 years after his conviction, to discuss the overlooked context, corruption, and cover-up that enabled the policy, and to examine how the Supreme Court has yet to fully contend with the legacy of Korematsu v United States. They also unpack the lessons the case offers for the present moment. The documentary discussed is Alternative Facts: The Lies of Executive Order 9066. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Joshua Matz to talk election lawsuits, Trump’s lawyers, Big Law, and whether the Biden administration will put “healing” ahead of justice in the post-Trump era.  In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to try to calibrate alarm about Michigan officials talking to the White House about certifying and uncertifying results. Plus, Amy Coney Barrett’s first SCOTUS vote on the death penalty and the State Supreme Court race in North Carolina that you might have missed, but has much to say about racism and the state of state of the judiciary. 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 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 Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern reports on the big case at the intersection of religious liberty and the right of LGBTQ people to become foster parents that was heard at the Supreme Court this week. And what, if anything, we can draw from Amy Coney Barrett’s first week on the bench (on the phone).  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

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 Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 worrying signals they send about what happens if the election results are contested.  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 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 support our show. Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 introduce a bill that would form a commission to rule on the president’s fitness for office.  In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on what you may have missed from the the start of the Supreme Court’s new term, the signal to LGBTQ people from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito this week, and the worrying federal court decision about voting in Wisconsin.  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 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

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 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/amicuspodcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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