Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
A show about the law and the nine Supreme Court justices who interpret it for the rest of America. 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.
Episodes
May 10, 2025 • 68 mins
After Silicon Valley’s yeet to the right after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, and the DOGE-ification of the federal government (read: chaos and abuse as the driving ethos of HR), it felt like high time to delve into the evolving relationship between tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the U.S. government. Their influence has massive implications for core constitutional issues such as mass surveillance, privacy, ...
Mark as Played
May 3, 2025 • 80 mins
Whether it’s attempting to overturn birthright citizenship, effectively stripping citizenship from American children, or claiming Alien Enemy Act war powers under an imaginary invasion, Trump’s anti-immigrant moves are outlandishly unconstitutional. They are also being met with significant pushback from judges, even conservative ones. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern who expl...
Mark as Played
April 26, 2025 • 75 mins
As we approach President Trump’s 100th day in office (this time around) this Wednesday, Dahlia Lithwick checks in with one of the key architects of the litigation strategy that is successfully confounding the administration’s most exorbitant executive overreach. After almost 140 executive orders and scores of associated lawsuits, it’s hard to keep track of the state of play. But Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward is on hand to help...
Mark as Played
April 19, 2025 • 77 mins
Ever since March 15, when three flights carrying hundreds of men who had been afforded zero due process left United States airspace and landed in El Salvador, American democracy has been hurtling toward an internal conflict that the federal judiciary would very much prefer to avoid, but just keeps getting more unavoidable. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Mark Joseph Stern is joined by Leah Litman for the first half of the show. They...
Mark as Played
April 12, 2025 • 62 mins
On this week’s Amicus, autocratic creep in high and low gear. In high gear: The Supreme Court finally issued its order in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, requiring that the government “facilitates” Abrego Garcia’s return from the El Salvadoran prison to which he was illegally and accidentally reditioned, but also recognizing the limits on its authority to direct the executive branch. Dahlia Lithwick talks to Slate senior writer Mark ...
Mark as Played
Here’s a question for you. If you are scooped up by ICE (masked, covering badge numbers), then moved from one detention center to another in quick succession, before being hastily forced onto a flight to El Salvador where you are imprisoned in a “terrorism confinement center” beyond the jurisdiction of the United States –– at what point in that process could you access some kind of adjudicatory review? In this bonus episode of Amic...
Mark as Played
April 5, 2025 • 54 mins
The US government’s use of a prison in El Salvador as an extra-judicial due-process free black site has been rendered starkly visible by the story of one man they tried to disappear. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick interviews Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, lawyer for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, husband and father, who was illegally deported to El Salvador in March due to what the government admits was an ...
Mark as Played
March 29, 2025 • 75 mins
The Trumpian inversion of reality was threaded into so many areas of the law and active litigation this week.
Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia Lithwick to discuss the apparent evaporation of judicial patience for Trump lawyers simultaneously claiming that a signal chat was not classified or subject to record preservation rules, AND the flights to El Salvador that were filmed for posterity on arrival at a prison...
Mark as Played
March 22, 2025 • 79 mins
If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of lawless acts, constitutional crises (we count five), and huge Trump administration losses in court this week - honestly, same. But if anyone can render this swirling storm of lawsuits and orders and injunctions legible, and put them in terms that can help make sense of this moment, it’s Dahlia Lithwick. On this week’s show, Dahlia is first joined by Quinta Jurecic, a fellow in Governance...
Mark as Played
March 18, 2025 • 9 mins
In this urgent extra episode of Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick and Slate's senior writer Mark Joseph Stern discuss the unfolding constitutional crisis triggered by the Trump administration's defiance of a court order to halt flights carrying Venezuelan migrants to be delivered to El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center - a vast foreign prison that could be described as a labor camp. Lithwick and Stern explore the tim...
Mark as Played
March 15, 2025 • 42 mins
Donald Trump continued his almost uninterrupted losing streak in the courts. Across the country we saw federal judges openly criticizing his Administration officials and their lawyers for overreach, bullying and misrepresentations about not only their cases, but about norms and values. But Trump has both judges and law firms in his crosshairs. On this week’s show, former US Attorney Preet Bharara joins Dahlia Lithwick to discuss th...
Mark as Played
March 8, 2025 • 65 mins
Elon Musk’s moves at DOGE have been legally dubious from the start. And the more we learn, the more questions we have about this not-an-agency helmed by Musk –– who is apparently both in charge, and also not in charge. That’s why we wanted to talk with Kate Shaw, University of Pennsylvania law professor and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, about the very real constitutional issues raised by DOGE and Musk and his minions. Sha...
Mark as Played
March 5, 2025 • 7 mins
On Wednesday morning the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Trump administration's effort to withhold $2 billion promised for foreign aid work. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss the Court’s decision to reject the Trump administration's request to halt a lower court's order, by a five to four vote, compelling the State Department to resume payments. While Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett sided with the cou...
Mark as Played
March 1, 2025 • 51 mins
This past week has seen firings at the Pentagon, an Executive Order targeting a private law firm, the installation of a podcaster and January 6 denialist as #2 at the FBI, and an incident in which an audience member at an Idaho townhall was wrestled to the ground and led away in zip ties by private security that answer to no lawful police entity. Is this what happens when the lawyers, police officers, military officials and other l...
Mark as Played
February 22, 2025 • 58 mins
President Donald J Trump’s administration has been invoking a conservative legal theory as justification for his claim to possess king-like presidential powers. This new supercharged version of the “unitary executive theory” may just be extreme enough to stick in the craw of some conservative judges, but will it find a warm welcome when it inevitably lands at the Supreme Court, and should we brace for the overturning of 90 years of...
Mark as Played
February 15, 2025 • 78 mins
On Monday, President Trump’s personal lawyer and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to drop federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been courting President Trump for weeks, including with a pre-inauguration visit to Mar A Lago, but the shape of the deal struck between the accused Mayor and the incoming administration came into clear view with a flurry of Department of J...
Mark as Played
February 8, 2025 • 62 mins
DOGE is running wild in the District of Columbia. Chaos reigns supreme. Trump 2.0 has been frightening and it’s all been happening so fast. But there are lots of people fighting back, as they try to slow the damage. And the courts are exactly where the pushback has been most fierce. One of the teams of people leading the charge includes former Judge Nancy Gertner, one of the many legal professionals suing the Trump administration. ...
Mark as Played
February 1, 2025 • 59 mins
If you’re punch-drunk and disoriented this week, come on in. Donald J Trump’s second administration is materializing at frightening speed and recklessness and it is hard (and stressful) to keep up with it all. Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International affairs at Princeton University, explains that the speed and viciousness of the legal orders in Trump 2.0 are evidence that America swit...
Mark as Played
January 28, 2025 • 42 mins
Amicus is coming to you with an extra episode because of the five-alarm threat to the balance of power in the wake of Monday and Tuesday’s memos from the White House Office of Management and Budget freezing vast tranches of federal funding. As agencies, states, and nonprofits scramble to figure out if they can make payroll or even keep the lights on, a hugely significant legal battle is brewing over what, if any, actual restraint r...
Mark as Played
January 25, 2025 • 65 mins
It’s barely been a week and the torrent of horrible coming from the pens and mouth of President Trump is staggering. Many of the executive orders signed this week focus on immigration, and that is where we have our eyes trained as well. This week, to help us make sense of the whirlwind that threatens to upend the lives of millions of people Dahlia Lithwick talks to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow and former policy director at...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com