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

Slate Podcasts
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A show about the law and the nine Supreme Court justices who interpret it for the rest of America. Get more Amicus with Slate Plus. Join to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis—plus ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Bonus: Commerce Clause Freak

    15h ago ·  Bonus • Slate Plus Only

    Bonus: Commerce Clause Freak

    As we enter the final weeks of the term, the Supreme Court still has the capacity to surprise us. On this week’s Amicus Plus Bonus episode, cohosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern probe some of the strange bedfellows and weird wine pairings that can occur when nine justices encounter a case that raises new and unexpected clashes between basic constitutional values. First, they discuss the separate opinions in US v. Hemani, a decision that permits some marijuana users to retain their right to bear arms. Then they turn to Hunter v. US, a case raising questions about the legality of plea bargains and appeal waivers. Both decisions confirm that when he’s right about something, there is simply nobody righter than Justice Neil Gorsuch. This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock weekly bonus episodes of Amicus—you’ll also 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.

    17 min
  2. Guns, Weed, and the Forgotten Framers

    1d ago

    Guns, Weed, and the Forgotten Framers

    The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling this week in United States v. Hemani, holding that a marijuana user cannot be stripped of his Second Amendment right to own a firearm simply because he sometimes uses cannabis. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, leaning heavily on the founders' own well-documented love of alcohol to argue that responsible substance use has never historically disqualified Americans from bearing arms. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern unpack the ruling, note what it does not settle about the still-murky Bruen test, and reflect on how dramatically the justices’ posture toward marijuana has shifted since the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case they decided less than two decades ago. Then, Dahlia sits down with David Gans, director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center, to discuss his forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, Forgotten Framers: Black Conventions and the Second Founding. Between 1864 and 1869, Black Americans gathered in more than fifty conventions in packed churches and meeting halls across the country to demand equal citizenship, voting rights, bodily autonomy, protection from racial violence, and access to education. These conventions molded the Reconstruction amendments in ways that originalist jurisprudence ignores. Gans explains how the Roberts court's colorblind reading of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments distorts this history by ignoring the explicitly race-conscious vision the conventions—and the amendments themselves—championed. He also explains how the Guarantee Clause, long a "sleeping giant," could still offer a constitutional path to combat partisan and racial gerrymandering after Calais and Milligan. Gans wrote about this facet of the history recently in Slate. This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) 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. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 2m
  3. Bonus: Supplanting the Will of the People

    Jun 14 ·  Bonus • Slate Plus Only

    Bonus: Supplanting the Will of the People

    “A crock of sh*t” is how one grand juror described the Trump Justice Department’s case against the Broadview Six in newly released transcripts. Prosecutors dropped all charges against Chicago anti-ICE protestors a couple of months ago. Since then, a steady trickle of evidence of prosecutorial misconduct has turned into this week’s deluge in the form of the newly released grand jury transcripts. In this week’s bonus episode exclusively for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern talk about the damning transcripts that reveal a Justice Department gone rogue. Next, they turn to this week at the Supreme Court and a decision in a case that might not have made headlines but is an excellent primer for how the Roberts majority sees itself in the American constitutional firmament: always at the top. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent makes clear that she has fully clocked this power grab and she is sounding the alarm. This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock weekly bonus episodes of Amicus—you’ll also 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.

    26 min
  4. A Huge Shift is Underway at SCOTUS

    Jun 13

    A Huge Shift is Underway at SCOTUS

    The Second Reconstruction is being dismantled piece by piece, and this past month has seen that project attain terminal velocity. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick talks with Stanford law professor and leading civil rights lawyer and scholar Pamela S Karlan, about a series of quick-fire moves from the high court and the Trump administration that, taken together, reveal a rapid disassembly of a series of hard-won civil rights laws in place for the past 50 years, known as the Second Reconstruction.  From SCOTUS decisions in Callais and Milligan, to a new memo from the Justice Department revisiting equal employment protections, the United States’ framework for multiracial democracy and minority participation in civic life is being swept away. This is about more than redistricting, primaries and polls, midterms and horse races. It’s a wholesale reshaping of what––and who––America is for.  This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) 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. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    48 min
  5. Concrete Plans to Restore Law, after Trump

    Jun 6

    Concrete Plans to Restore Law, after Trump

    One of the challenges of modern legal journalism is recalling that case law, doctrine, and Supreme Court decisions aren’t a complete picture, without including the lived realities of the people whose lives and communities are often turned upside down by changes in the law. On Tuesday night, the Supreme Court’s far-right flank vastly expanded its holding in Louisiana v. Callais to make it harder, if not impossible, to challenge racist voting maps designed to suppress Black votes. The shadow-docket decision misrepresented its own holding in Callais and discarded a case it had already decided. With the conservative supermajority tossing a lower-court panel’s finding in Allen v. Milligan and further erasing voting rights for Black Americans across the country, Amicus revisits our 2022 conversation with Evan Milligan, the named plaintiff, at the time the case first came to the high court. Milligan explained what’s at stake for the very real people living in gerrymandered districts in Alabama’s Black Belt region; a gerrymander blessed this week that was forbidden just three years ago. Later, Dahlia Lithwick talks with Andrew Weissmann, an MS NOW legal analyst, NYU law professor, and veteran federal prosecutor who served as lead prosecutor under special counsel Robert S. Mueller and as chief of the DOJ’s Fraud Section. Even with Opinionpalooza heating up at the high court, Weissmann pauses to analyze a busy week in democratic dismantling at the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill. And, Weissmann proposes something truly shocking— real accountability for public officials who lie, as laid out in his new bestselling book, Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America.  This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) 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. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 4m
  6. Preview: A Shattering Blow to Fair Elections

    Jun 3 ·  Bonus

    Preview: A Shattering Blow to Fair Elections

    The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices seem to be in a big rush to dismantle voting rights for non-white people. On Tuesday night, the right-wing supermajority handed down an unsigned shadow docket order that greenlights racial gerrymandering in Alabama and dramatically undermines voting rights protections nationwide. In this Opinionpalooza bonus episode exclusively for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern examine the details of the case. They also explore how we got here, and what this court’s jurisprudential arrogance and voracious appetite for power means for democracy itself. By approving racially discriminatory maps, the high court’s MAGA wing has exposed its willingness to rewrite long established legal rules in darkness—without transparency or accountability. This order also reveals a disturbing disregard for extensive factual findings from lower courts—and flips the legal terrain for voting rights from protection to peril. This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock weekly bonus episodes of Amicus—you’ll also 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. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    13 min
  7. Extra: A Shattering Blow to Fair Elections

    Jun 3 ·  Bonus • Slate Plus Only

    Extra: A Shattering Blow to Fair Elections

    The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices seem to be in a big rush to dismantle voting rights for non-white people. On Tuesday night, the right-wing supermajority handed down an unsigned shadow docket order that greenlights racial gerrymandering in Alabama and dramatically undermines voting rights protections nationwide. In this Opinionpalooza bonus episode exclusively for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern examine the details of the case. They also explore how we got here, and what this court’s jurisprudential arrogance and voracious appetite for power means for democracy itself. By approving racially discriminatory maps, the high court’s MAGA wing has exposed its willingness to rewrite long established legal rules in darkness—without transparency or accountability. This order also reveals a disturbing disregard for extensive factual findings from lower courts—and flips the legal terrain for voting rights from protection to peril. This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock weekly bonus episodes of Amicus—you’ll also 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.

    33 min
  8. Bonus: BLM Brett is Back

    May 31 ·  Bonus • Slate Plus Only

    Bonus: BLM Brett is Back

    Ahoy, Amicus Pluskateers! On this, the first Opinionpalooza bonus episode of 2026, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern break down a quartet of decisions, including some bad news for criminal justice reform—and a pleasant surprise from Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Later: Looking beyond the walls of One First Street, Dahlia and Mark discuss a court order pausing President Donald Trump’s rollout of his $1.8 billion slush fund. They also unpack some confusing headlines about the Trump DOJ’s on-again, off-again, real or maybe imagined investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who won a pair of cases against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, with total damages of almost $90 million. This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. 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.

    21 min
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A show about the law and the nine Supreme Court justices who interpret it for the rest of America. Get more Amicus with Slate Plus. Join to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis—plus ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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