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

Enjoyed the discussion. just Friday, David French NYT, scoffed and ridiculed aesthetic injury calling bogus. So, what correct here … 50 year established standing principle or bogus?

Dahlia, stop your bad habit of nervous giggling through an important statement. meaning you can retrain your voluntary reflex to nervous laugh through statements that are very serious. just stop doing that. It is a very bad habit when you have the power of the truth yet giggle right through it which then lowers your believability in what you are saying. “you are old enough” to understand that and to stop your nervous laughter which only lowers your credibility that we should take you seriously in what you say.

Thank you both for making the subject of the law so relevant and interesting to me, a non-lawyer who loves fairness.

I have subscribed and followed just about every SCOTUS podcast there has been since the pandemic. Most were a flash in the pan. Most of the rest are so loaded with snark and attitude that it clouds the quality of the legal analysis. Amicus stands head and shoulders above the rest. Dalia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stearns have carefully laid exactly how the justices on this Supreme Court have stopped practicing law. 1) There has to be an actual controversy? No. 2) The plaintiff must have proper standing? No. 3) The plain meaning of the text of the law should be interpreted as the actual intent of the legislature when the law was enacted? No. 4) The actual facts of the case are pertinent to the case? No. 5) The plain meaning of the text of the Constitution and amendments should be understood as the meaning and intent of these passages? No. 6) Actual historical precedent at the time of the writing of the Constitution and subsequent laws are pertinent to an “Originalist” interpretation? Not if it contradicts the desired outcome. The only piece that is missing here is the trail of dark money from the Koch Brothers and fossil fuel interests to the Federalist Society that Senator Whitehouse has exposed; the litmus test of “absolutist anti-abortion” to identify True Believers who think the End Justifies the Means—such that all crimes and sins are forgiven in pursuit of advancing “Conservatism” and contracting “Progressivism”.