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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.
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The podcast where Amicus Productions are dug up and dissected by two overzealous individuals, Gabriela and Cev.
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If you had forgotten the chaos of Trump 1.0, the frenzied first two weeks of transition to Trump 2.0 has surely been a stark reminder. A pair of random billionaires are claiming in advance that SCOTUS will back their extra-governmental plans for a slash and burn policy for federal agencies; accusations of sexual misconduct swirl around cabinet pick…
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Trump’s announcement of Matt Gaetz as his pick to head the Justice Department was met with gasps around the Capitol. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s senior legal writer Mark Stern to, yes, gasp together, but also to dig into what this stunt Attorney General appointment means for the law and the rule of law. Next, Dahlia talks to Dr. Mary Anne …
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We are, most of us, still very much in the post-election fog. It’s early days and while the fog persists, some of the shape of the future is very clear: despite his felonies, his lies, his promised mass deportations and threats of vengeance, President Donald J Trump will re-enter the White House in 2025 better organized, with a clearer mandate, and…
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In this extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wade through the immediate aftermath of the election. Will splitting the ticket on abortion protect abortion rights nationally? (No) What will the federal government look like at 12:02 pm on January 20th, 2025? (very different than at 11:58 am that day) Are all of Brett Kavanaug…
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This week’s show is unapologetically long, deep, and hopeful. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder to talk about his new book, On Freedom, and to have the audacity to re-imagine freedom on the precipice of an election that could turn the United States hard right into tyranny. Next, Dahlia is joined by Rick Hasen, Direc…
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It’s easy to dismiss nativist rhetoric as mere Trumpy “locker room talk.” But when it comes to immigration, deportation and even detention, rhetoric about foreigners and violent invaders is actually a legal long game. Toward the end of the summer of 2023, Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, …
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You’re nervous. We’re nervous. As we stop for gas with almost two weeks to go before November 5th, we’re kicking the tires of American democracy to see if it’s roadworthy. On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Matthew Seligman, one of the authors of How to Steal a Presidential Election, to examine the legal avenues available to Donald J…
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“Prosecutors elicited perjury and a man's gonna go to his death. We can't allow that to happen.” – Paul Clement, October 9th, 2024. This week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest chapter in the complex and prolonged legal battle involving Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma's death row since his conviction for a 1997 murder-for-…
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Democracy had a pretty rough ride at the Supreme Court last term. Presidents have criminal immunity now! Agency experts aren’t the experts anymore! Sure, you can convert that rifle into an automatic weapon! And guess what? More horrors await us this term. But we are not going to spend this last episode before the start of a new term dispassionately…
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State Supreme Courts are vital to the functioning of American democracy. They are also where voting rights are enforced or eviscerated. This is especially true of North Carolina’s State Supreme Court, a battleground court in a battleground state. On a special bonus episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Stern (your Amicus Plus dream team) are …
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In this week's Amicus, Mark Joseph Stern steps in for Dahlia Lithwick to preview the upcoming Supreme Court term and dive into the high-stakes case of Garland v. VanDerStok. This critical case examines the legality of 'ghost guns'—untraceable firearms that can be assembled at home from kits bought online. Stern talks with Eric Tirschwell, executive…
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Chief Justice John Roberts has been labeled by some as the serious centrist at the court, and he seemed to embrace and internalize that. But the New York Times’ revelations about behind-the-scenes maneuvers favoring Trump in last term's insurrection cases shattered that illusion once and for all. The Chief’s stance in these cases surprised the Robe…
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Republicans from Ohio to Arkansas, from South Dakota to Florida and from Nebraska to Missouri have been throwing everything at trying to keep abortion ballot measures from actually reaching voters. In this week’s Amicus - a deep look at efforts to stifle and chill direct democracy in the states, post Dobbs. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Jessica Vale…
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The 2024 election is already underway, with some states already sending out ballots for mail-in voting. But as democrats are basking in the waning glow of their brat summer, the republican party spent the summer on a “protect the vote” tour, spearheaded by RNC co-chair and DJT daughter-in-law Lara Trump. It’s a pretty clever step — from “Stop the S…
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In the last episode of our series The Law According to Trump, we try to figure out what it all means. In the months since SCOTUS gave Trump even more immunity than he asked for, the people prosecuting the former president are finding themselves in uncharted waters. How are they doing? Slate’s Jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl talks with host Andrea…
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Former President Donald J Trump keeps figuring out ways to escape criminal liability. The Supreme Court has thrown a wrench into the insurrection case and delayed sentencing in the campaign finance hush money case, while a Florida judge helped him slip out from under charges of recklessly mishandling classified documents… at least, for now. But Tru…
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The power of the presidential pardon is a holdover from America’s colonial roots. But no one had used it like former President Trump. Over and over he kept pardoning his allies, and then, he’d welcome them back into the fold. . It seemed like he was rewarding these criminals for their loyalty, and belittling whole categories of crime, like fraud, c…
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Even before he was president, Donald Trump was known for stiffing his lawyers. But considering how the stakes changed once he took the Oval Office, not getting paid seemed like a pleasant option. During and after his presidency, lawyers who represented Trump have pleaded guilty in election fraud cases, campaign finance cases and more. So why do the…
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In the first in a new series, The Law According to Trump, Amicus begins an extensive exploration of Donald Trump's tumultuous relationship with the courts and legal system, focusing on Trump's use of lawyers and lawsuits to enhance his brand, wealth, and power. In the past few months, attention has rightly been on several blockbuster federal cases …
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It’s not just us feeling exhausted right? It’s been a totally wild past few weeks. That’s why we are taking off the next few weeks to bring you a special series we’re calling “The Law According to Trump.” Andrea Bernstein, the host of WNYC’s Trump Inc., will be stepping into the host chair for Dahlia Lithwick in the month of August to explain how t…
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So President Biden finally signaled an openness to maybe possibly thinking about Supreme Court reform. Too little, too late, perhaps - but also, desperately needed, certainly. The US Supreme Court views itself as separate and apart from all other courts - including international counterparts. What could Americans learn from other courts? One of the…
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The judge overseeing the stolen classified documents case at former President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Club has dismissed the case, ruling that Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. This decision will likely be appealed. It’s a big swing, on a Trump trial question that’s very possibly heading on a fast track up to the United S…
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Opinionpalooza: This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought
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Administrative law may not sound sexy. And maybe that’s because it truly isn’t sexy. But it is at the very center of the biggest decisions this past Supreme Court term, and also widely misunderstood. In this week’s show, we asked Georgetown Law School’s Professor Lisa Heinzerling to come back to help hack through the thorny thicket of administrativ…
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Apart from charcter names and a slightly tweaked finale, "I, MONSTER" remains the most faithful interpretation of Stevenson's 1886 novella. Cev & Gabriella explore this, the novella and a few of the notable silver screen adaptations along with a cat, a mouse, Victoriana and a new superhero... Edit & Music By Cevin Moore Contact:Twitter: @AmicusHere…
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What just happened??? Despite going into June clear-eyed and well informed about the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, the number of huge cases before it, and the alarming stakes in so many of those cases…we are, nonetheless, shocked. The October 2023 term came to a shuddering end on Monday July 1st and Dahlia Lithwick, Mark Joseph Stern,…
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The Supreme Court’s conservative majority rounded out the term by gifting massive unprecedented power to commit criminal wrongdoing to presidents. A court that already put a thumb on the scale for former President Donald J Trump by slow talking and slow walking the immunity case in exactly the way he hoped, has now thrown out the scale in favor of …
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