Throwing Away the Key

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Lee Epstein, who studies judicial behavior using empirical legal research, to try to figure out what’s unprecedented partisanship and what’s clumsy PR from the justices as we embark upon a hugely consequential new Supreme Court term.  In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to talk about Justice Alito’s press-baiting speech last week, what’s happening with SB8, and to discuss whether we’re seeing some signs of accountability for some of the legal architects of former President Trump’s attempt to subvert the election.  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

9 Okt 202149min

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Melissa Murray, Leah Litman, and Kate Shaw of the Strict Scrutiny podcast for a special Supreme Court term kick-off panel recorded at the Texas Tribune Festival. They tackle the big-ticket items facing the high court: abortion, guns, and maybe affirmative action. They also discuss the court’s struggle to shore up its legitimacy in the middle of a hard-right turn.  In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to thrash out what on earth is going on in all the various courts with Texas’ abortion law SB 8, how on earth the author of the how-to-do-a-coup memo is still a welcome after-dinner speaker in legal land, and what is Justice Stephen Breyer thinking, Part 483.  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

25 Sep 202139min

This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and as the withdrawal from Afghanistan dominates the headlines, so does the conversation about the forever war and its implications. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Azmy has been challenging the U.S. government repeatedly over the past two decades, litigating matters from the rights of Guantanamo detainees, to discriminatory policing practices, to government surveillance, to the rights of asylum seekers and accountability for victims of torture. Azmy is also the author of the chapter "Crisis Lawyering in a Lawless Space: Reflections on Nearly Two Decades of Representing Guantánamo Detainees" in the Crisis Lawyering collection from NYU Press. In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about a case concerning religious freedom in the execution chamber, which made it off the shadow docket and into the light of day. They also explore who on earth has standing in Texas’ SB 8 anti-abortion law.  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

11 Sep 202155min

Urgent times call for urgent conversations as Professor Michele Goodwin and Rebecca Traister join Dahlia Lithwick for an emergency Amicus to discuss what’s new and what’s very old about SB 8, the law that allowed Texas to functionally overturn Roe v Wade. They also unpack what it really means when five justices on the Supreme Court hold up their hands as if to say “nothing we can do.”  Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3 Sep 20211h 3min

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by My Name Is Pauli Murray directors, Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and by Professor Patricia Bell-Scott, a consulting producer on the film and professor emerita of women’s studies and human development and family science at the University of Georgia. Professor Bell-Scott’s biography, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice,won the Lillian Smith Book Award. In our Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to discuss this week’s terrible shadow docket decisions. 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

28 Aug 20211h 3min

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Michael Heller, one of the authors of Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives, for the latest installment of Amicus’ summer season of episodes exploring books and films about the law.  Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

14 Aug 20211h 2min

Continuing Amicus’ summer season of deep dives into books, films, and ideas beyond the confines of the Supreme Court chamber, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by historian and chair of African American studies at Emory University professor Carol Anderson to talk about her book The Second. They discuss the long anti-Black history of gun laws in the United States and how race defines gun rights today.  Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

31 Juli 202155min

In the first of Amicus’ summer season of conversations, Dahlia Lithwick tackles one of the major challenges of this moment: how to fix American democracy.  Dahlia is joined  by the Nation’s Elie Mystal and former chief of staff for Sen. Harry Reid and author of Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson. In a discussion that was taped as part of the Crosscut Festival, they discuss the filibuster, voting rights and court reform––and whether the Biden administration has left it too late to tackle all three.  Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17 Juli 202152min