A Monumental SCOTUS Term Begins: Our Reluctant Curtain-Raiser
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Refusing to play the traditional first Monday in October game, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern squint through the cloud of ethics scandals enveloping the High Court to see a docket aimed squarely at unfettering commerce from outside supervision, with a side order of second amendment extremism. What could possibly go wrong?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the Supreme |
| 0:08.2 | Court and the rule of law. I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover these things at Slate magazine. |
| 0:14.2 | And today we are mourning the death of Senator Diane Feinstein, who died this week at the |
| 0:18.8 | age of 90. Feinstein won her US Senate seat in 1992 in what would become known as the |
| 0:25.8 | Year of the Woman, an election that sent 24 new women to the House of Representatives and brought |
| 0:31.6 | the total number of female senators up to six. After a horrified nation watched how Anita Hill was |
| 0:38.2 | treated during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Senator Feinstein was a trailblazer on |
| 0:44.7 | efforts to regulate guns to expand LGBTQ rights and to oppose US government torture policies. |
| 0:54.4 | She was also an unerring defender of women's reproductive freedom and dignity. She was the first woman |
| 1:01.6 | on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first woman to share that committee, and as such she was a |
| 1:06.8 | powerful voice for changing the federal bench to make it more inclusive and more reflective of a |
| 1:13.0 | diverse population. This only just scratches the surface of her achievements and the scope of her |
| 1:19.5 | influence. My colleague Slate's political writer, Alex Sam, and is sharing more reflections on |
| 1:25.1 | Diane Feinstein's life and career on our sister podcast, The Waves. I have had in my lifetime the great |
| 1:32.9 | pleasure of meeting Senator Feinstein on several occasions. I am so grateful for her service and |
| 1:39.9 | so inspired by the path she created for the women who followed. May her memory be a blessing. |
| 1:47.5 | Senator Feinstein cast her final vote in the Senate at around 12.50 pm on Thursday afternoon on the |
| 1:55.4 | continuing resolution to keep the government open. That looming government shutdown still very much |
| 2:01.4 | in the cards at the time of this taping will, among other things, have huge repercussions on the court |
| 2:07.8 | and the justice system. But this week's show is about what is definitely |
| 2:15.0 | on the docket at one first street because we are about to head into yet another first Monday and |
| 2:21.2 | another monumentally important term at the U.S. Supreme Court. Here on Amicus, we find ourselves |
... |
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