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

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.
Andrew Weissmann’s book, Where Law Ends, was published by Random House in 2021

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to understand how Trump judges could tank the economy, the latest on abortion in states trying grapple with the (entirely predictable) deadly consequences of the Dobbs decision, and why all this underlines why the Wisconsin Supreme Court election really matters.  

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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 court, and the overarching agenda that both motivates and shapes the court’s jurisprudence.  
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern is away, so Dahlia is joined by the Award Winning™  Leah Litman to talk about loan forgiveness and major questions, the Texas suit being brought by women seriously harmed by the state's abortion ban, and the alarming implications of an amicus brief in an Indiana abortion case that questions the religious sincerity of, well, anyone who backs abortion rights.
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Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice
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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. She explains how eight out of nine justices apparently failed to read the briefs, instead deciding on an "it's so hard" shruggy head-scratch strategy instead. Danielle Citron’s latest book is The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age.
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to look ahead to next week’s arguments about the Biden administration’s student debt forgiveness program, and to romp through some of the decisions that came down from the Supreme Court this week. Finally, Mark and Dahlia reflect on the results of the primaries in the race to elect a new Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. Could it be a Mark and Dahlia Amicus plus segment that is not all bad news? 
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Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout.
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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 uphold Biden’s victory in the state. On this week’s Amicus, Justice Karofsky speaks for the first time about the fallout from that case: Fallout in her personal life, for herself and loved ones. Fallout in her professional life, with an investigation and the threat of sanction for her line of questioning in oral argument. And beyond all that, the fallout for democracy—and for the role of jurists within that democracy. 

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss the originalist Second Amendment ruling that puts women’s lives at risk, the looming prospect of a potential nationwide ban on a widely used, FDA-approved, abortion pill, and how the future of jurisprudence appears to be competing time machines. 

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First, there was the Dobbs case. Then there was the leaked opinion in the Dobbs case. Then there was the investigation into the leaked opinion in the Dobbs case. Then there was the report on the investigation into the leak. Then there was the supplemental report from the Marshal on the report on the investigation into the leak. AND THEN there was the revealing reporting from the NY Times’ Jodi Kantor on a court roiled by reports and investigating and leaks. This week, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jodi Kantor to dig through the reports, reporting and repercussions for the people who are inside One, First Street, and for the baffled majority who aren’t.
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to try to figure out why it’s taking so long for SCOTUS to hand down opinions this term, and to examine the very first decision of the term, disappointing in its unanimity and its negative impact on veterans. 
Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. 
Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First, there was the Dobbs case. Then there was the leaked opinion in the Dobbs case. Then there was the investigation into the leaked opinion in the Dobbs case. Then there was the report on the investigation into the leak. Then there was the supplemental report from the Marshal on the report on the investigation into the leak. AND THEN there was the revealing reporting from the NY Times’ Jodi Kantor on a court roiled by reports and investigating and leaks. This week, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jodi Kantor to dig through the reports, reporting and repercussions for the people who are inside One, First Street, and for the baffled majority who aren’t.

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to try to figure out why it’s taking so long for SCOTUS to hand down opinions this term, and to examine the very first decision of the term, disappointing in its unanimity and its negative impact on veterans.

Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.
Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout.