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

• This End Of Term At SCOTUS Is Unlike Any Other in History

  The end (of the Supreme Court term) is nigh. This week, Amicus goes into June Opinionpalooza mode with some meta-analysis of what to look out for as the Supreme Court delivers dozens of decisions over the next month or so. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern say this is a term-ending unlike any other, partly because the number of cases pinging onto the high court’s shadow docket means the term may never really, truly, actually, end. And even when the shadow docket cases are decided, there is no real law that emerges, just a few lines of unsigned chicken scratch. Beyond the big merits cases concerning everything from birthright citizenship to healthcare for trans minors to racial gerrymandering to defunding Planned Parenthood, and beyond the brief, unbriefed, unargued emergency docket cases, the Supreme Court’s conservatives are in a power struggle with the very president they crowned quasi-king.  In a conversation recorded live on Friday at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Mark is joined by Professor Jed Shugerman of Boston University Law School, where they discuss the bad originalism and poor judgment that led to the Roberts’ court’s embrace of a little something called unitary executive theory that has become the Trump administration’s carte blanche.  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. Get Slate’s latest coverage of the courts and the law straight to your inbox. Delivered every Tuesday. https://slate.com/legalbrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• The Two Tracks of Justice

  This week’s episode attempts to understand the ways in which the law of Trump unfolds along two tracks at the same time. First, Mark Joseph Stern joins us to talk about the Supreme Court’s decision to let Trump fire the heads of independent agencies, undermining a 90-year-old precedent in an unsigned, two-page decision on the shadow docket. This is a case in which Donald Trump’s agenda perfectly aligns with the wishlist of the conservative supermajority that controls the court. But if the court keeps giving Trump free passes to break the law now, why should we expect him to respect the court when it tries to draw the line later? Then Dahlia Lithwick talks to the University of Chicago’s Aziz Huq about the idea of a “dual state,” a legal arrangement in which seismic changes happen in ways that are not perceptible to the bulk of the citizens. Drawing from the work of a Jewish lawyer who witnessed the dual state operate in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Huq explains that authoritarians can seize the levers of the law to persecute disfavored groups, without disturbing the idea of the rule of law for the great majority of the nation. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• SCOTUS Is About to Suffer Buyers Remorse, Again

  Our eyes this week were trained on the arguments over birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court on Thursday. While Solicitor General John Sauer advanced wild arguments on behalf of the Trump administration, four of the justices (hint: the women) seemed extremely suspicious of his motives. The five men? Not so much. Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia Lithwick to break down Trump v. CASA Inc. and the growing  divide on the court between those who trust this president and those who don’t. Although Thursday’s arguments touched on fundamental rights, SCOTUS made the strange choice to largely avoid the constitutional question and focus on a different one: Whether district courts have the power to issue “universal” injunctions that apply nationwide, as multiple courts did in order to protect birthright citizenship from the president. Judges have issued an unprecedented number of these orders against the Trump administration—in response to Trump’s unprecedented barrage of lawless executive orders. Some conservative justices seem perturbed by the explosion of universal injunctions. But it became clear on Thursday that this is the worst case for the court to use to rein them in.  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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• SCOTUS, Meet The Broligarchs

  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, and deregulation. Kara Swisher joins Dahlia Lithwick on this week’s Amicus to highlight the dangers of tech giants' encroachment on government oversight and the implications of AI and cryptocurrency.  This week’s episode concludes with a heartfelt tribute to Justice David Souter who died on Thursday. Dahlia and former Souter Clerk Mary-Rose Papandrea reflect on the late Justice’s humility, judicial philosophy, and the profound loss felt by his former clerks and the legal community. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• The Un-American Project

  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 explains the landmark ruling from a Trump-appointed judge in the southern district of Texas that declared the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act is unlawful. Next, Amanda Frost, University of Virginia law professor and author of  You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers, joins Dahlia to explain what Birthright Citizenship really means, and all the ways Trump is working to redefine what it means to be an American, including stripping citizenship from children and denaturalizing adults.  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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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