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

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the women who went to law school with her knew something of what it had taken to get there. In the second part of this special series, Dahlia Lithwick talks to Justice Ginsburg’s classmates about their lives in the law after Harvard, and to Justice Ginsburg herself about what women in the law today can take from their stories.  Read Slate’s full i...

Dahlia Lithwick goes back to where one of the most influential legal careers in US history began—Harvard Law School, September 1956—to find out what we can learn from the other women of the class of 1959, and their notorious classmate.  Read Slate’s full interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about her own time at Harvard Law School and her memories of her female classmates here. Read the full stories of each woman’s life here.  Podcas...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley Law, associate law professor Zephyr Teachout of Fordham University, and Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern to rake over the end of the Supreme Court term, taking a close look at the Trump financial records cases, the ministerial exception cases, and a landmark decision about tribal lands in Oklahoma.   Podcast production by Sara Burningham. Learn more about your ad choices...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law and Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker for a round table discussion of the big abortion case of the term, why Chief Justice John Roberts chose to strike down the Louisiana abortion law in June Medical Services LLC v Russo, and why opinion about Roberts’ opinion seems to be divided along very gendered lines. In the Slate Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark Joseph Ste...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Luis Cortes Romero, the attorney and DACA recipient who was part of the team that prevailed in this week’s DACA ruling. He will restore some of your faith in the American courts. And then Dahlia talks to Professor Pam Karlan about this week’s landmark LGBTQ employment rights case, in which she argued successfully for Title VII protections to apply to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees. In...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig of Boston University School of Law to share the feelings and thinking behind her letter to her students reflecting on recent protests and killings. (Also mentioned, the letter from the Washington State Supreme Court and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.) Next, Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of the Civil Rights Divi...

A big show for the long weekend. First, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Leah Litman of the University of Michigan Law School to discuss oral arguments in the Trump financial records cases, and to get granular with the question of who gets interrupted most in oral arguments over the phone. (Guess what? It’s gendered.) Next, a big picture conversation about the rule of law and global justice before, during, and after COVID-19, with Dav...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Susan Hennessey, national security analyst and executive editor of Lawfare to discuss the ramifications of the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against Michael Flynn. Later in the show, Lithwick is joined by veteran Supreme Court watcher Linda Greenhouse to unpack the new format for Supreme Court arguments: a teleconference carried live on C-SPAN, with a close look at the birth control cas...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Colorado State Attorney General Phil Weiser to talk about how states’ rights fit into the picture of America that’s emerging in this pandemic.  In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia to talk about the big decisions that came down from the high court this week and what they mean for other, even bigger, decisions yet to come this term. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support ou...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Marc Elias, chair of Perkins Coie’s Political Law Group, he represents the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Together, they reconstruct how the Supreme Court stepped into Wisconsin’s April election, and what the path to that decision—and the fallout from it—can teach us ahead of November.  In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern talks about Mitch McConnell’s cont...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ian Bassin, former associated White House counsel from 2009-11 and co-founder of Protect Democracy for a look at the pain points, tensions, and glimmers of hope in how this constitutional democracy is handling the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19.  In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on why Justice Elena Kagan is voting with the conservatives, the unanimous decision in Comcast Co...

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Professor Michele Goodwin, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California Irvine School of Law. Professor Goodwin unpacks the oral arguments in this term’s big reproductive health case, June Medical Services, and delves into the history of racism and civil-rights trampling in the name of public health.  For plus member...

Dahlia Lithwick asks the new president of the American Constitution Society, Russ Feingold, if it’s too late for progressives to respond to the conservative steamroller that is the Federalist Society.  Slate Plus members have access to a bonus segment in which Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern breaks down the headlines, cases, cert grants, and conundrums from the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts. To start your free two-week tria...

In the fifth and final part of this special series of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined live on stage in Washington by former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, MacArthur fellow Professor Danielle Citron of Boston University law school, director of the ACLU’s voting-rights initiative Dale Ho, and election law professor Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine. Together, they pick themselves up from the rug of ...

In the fourth part of this special five-part series of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by election law professor Rick Hasen and Professor Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of  One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. Together, they try to sort through the rhetoric and the reality of “stolen” elections.  Rick Hasen’s new book ...

In the third part of this special five-part series of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by election law professor Rick Hasen to unpack the bag of dirty tricks that may be deployed in 2020’s election, and to examine the debris of the Iowa caucus debacle to find clues to what’s coming.  Rick Hasen’s new book Election Meltdown forms the basis for this special series of Amicus.  Join Slate for the Election Meltdown live show on Feb. ...

In the second part of a special five-part series of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by election law professor Rick Hasen to take a close look at what happened with Michigan’s failed recounts in 2016, exploring how small mistakes can cause big problems in elections, and why democratic areas seem much more prone to incompetence in election administration.  Rick Hasen’s new book Election Meltdown forms the basis for this special se...