Good evening and welcome to this evening's episode of the Mary Trump show with I'm so I'm so happy I get to say this with my guest

Daniela Wick who is the senior legal analyst for slate also proprietor of the excellent podcast Amicus and author most recently just came out this Tuesday of lady justice and for my purposes I am very grateful to be able to say my friend and for our purposes

fellow nerd Avenger dollia is so good to have you who are especially since it's such a quiet news week and we can just focus on your

Yeah, good thing that is happening that's good yeah, so I guess you've just been kicking back and taking advantage of how quiet every time I had a spray

well first of all congratulations on the book it is it's an excellent necessary book that I mean this should this doesn't come as a surprise anybody because it's you but it's it's

not a lot of that phenomenally well written and I think it is an amazing compendium of narratives that that locate us very clearly in confusing times

and so much of the narrative arc of the story that takes place from 2017 on it definitely grounds us in the history of how we got here and one of the things I most love about the book is the way you

know this just kind of happened naturally because of of the stories you focus on and the protagonist of each story we get this incredible insight into how power works both within

the outside of institutions and how both of those things can work concurrently can work against each other how both are important in their own ways so how did how did you get the idea for the book and how did you decide to focus on the particular narratives you

and how was it was it was it protect track and sorry protagonist driven if you know what I'm saying can I just before I answer you I just want to say when my older son went to sleep away camp for the first time and I had my younger son who was probably like I don't know seven or eight

and I realize like he was a whole fully realized person who like lived in the shadow of his big brother I'm so excited to be one on one with you and not have to like you know kind of like scrabble for attention and be like no watch I'm talking so I just want to say for folks who don't understand that incredibly complicated sibling relationships that exist in the competitive propensity to like seek attention on the Nerd Avengers family

I just want to say like I completely feel like I'm basking in the glow of your time and I just say that not to suck up but just because none of them are here to defend themselves

so now I want to answer your incredibly serious question with some sobriety and seriousness I think Mary by the way just I just want to make it clear you've totally sticked out your climb on the Nerd Avengers so I wouldn't worry but I'm completely I'm so psyched I have you all to myself

okay question seriously to be answered starting now I think look this book evolved a lot when I started writing it I was it was really the depths of 2017 I think like a lot of people it felt as though this guy was falling in that it could not get any worse imagine

and these were a lot of these were just stories that I had covered right I had covered Becca heller and the Muslim ban I had covered you know the Brigida Mary's chapter on you know the ways in which

immigrant and migrant teens and the silent seekers at the border weren't unable to get abortion care that they were legally entitled to have so I covered these cases and I knew these characters but I certainly had a list of you know 20 30 people that I would have happily talked about but I think two things happened one is I was so worried and I know I say this a lot when we talk about the crumbling confidence in institutions

that one of the things I really wanted this to be was sort of making the claim that institutions are not broken they're just being abused and that if you say there's no point in my voting because my vote doesn't matter or if you say you know there's no point in my engaging with the media because everybody in the media is lying or if you say any of the things that the nihilists want you to say then Steve ban and wins right because the whole project is

to completely foment mistrust of all institutions and I'm you know I frequently say Mary I'm the most small sea conservative radical you'll ever meet because I actually believe in an independent justice department I believe in an independent Article 3 judiciary and so some of this was conceived as a kind of creed occur to say the law isn't what's broken lawlessness is broken and that the law can be used to affect huge, huge change and that's not the right thing to do is to do that.

So I think that's a huge change and progress and I think one of the things I really wanted to point out this is around the time that we noticed that Donald was losing all the freaking lawsuits right I mean he had the losingest record of any president in history just presumptively president's win most of the time and he kept losing and he lost because he was walless and even Trump judges and even bush judges and Reagan judges acknowledged that and so I think a big thing I wanted to do was I think I wanted to do that.

I wanted to do was a you know as you say tell stories because I think these are amazing stories these are incredible characters I want people to see themselves in these different lawyers and say oh you know maybe I'm a big firm lawyer but I could do this like Robbie Kaplan maybe I'm you know an organizer like Vanita Gupta I can do this.

There was that there was the stories and the characters but I really think the arc of this thing is it kind of at least an opening argument for the power of the law in the hands of good people to do good things.

Definitely and and we see that in the subjects you picked I mean these are dedicated people coming at issues from very different places and perspectives but with the same goal in mind which is and I believe it it was Vanita Gupta who said this and I kind of see her as a central character or her narrative is central or as maybe the center.

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