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A Series of Lawsuits That We Call an Election

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.56K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary


Dahlia Lithwick is drinking from the firehose of legal news again and this week is joined by election law professor Rick Hasen to figure out why we’re all still hanging on for the Supreme Court to make a call in former President Donald J Trump’s sweeping claim to immunity from prosecution over the events of January 6th, how Americans could actually achieve a real right to vote, and why no-one’s paying attention to a pair of incredibly consequential social media cases being argued at SCOTUS next week. 


In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia and Slate’s own Mark Joseph Stern discuss the bonkers but very very real implications of the Alabama Supreme Court decision to bestow personhood on embryos being used in fertility treatment, creating an impossible legal landscape for clinics and those struggling to become pregnant. Next, they sift through Justice Samuel Alito’s grievance debris in a recent dissent to find the deeply worrying signposts toward overturning equal marriage rights. Finally, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court pleads with SCOTUS to clear up the mess it made of gun laws with its decision in Bruen.

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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 law and the Supreme Court and also the law of Donald

0:16.8

J. Trump.

0:18.2

And also, it's podcast about what happens when each and every one of those subjects is a full-time raging house

0:25.2

on fire.

0:26.2

I'm Dahlia Lithwick.

0:27.2

I cover the courts in the law for slate and this week was busy at the Supreme Court in a dozen small ways, but at least as of this particular

0:36.3

taping, not in the big trumpy ways we've been looking out for. This week we wanted to lift our necks out of at least some of the

0:46.5

rising quicksand and talk to one of our favorite experts on the twin topics of democracy and despair.

0:54.0

Professor Richard Hasen's latest book,

0:57.0

A Real Right to Vote,

0:58.0

How a Constitutional Amendment

1:00.0

can Safeguard American Democracy

1:02.0

was published this past week by Princeton Press.

1:06.2

In it he argues for enshrining an affirmative and immutable right to vote in the Constitution

1:11.8

itself. Rick has been more or less on the Friends and

1:16.0

Family Plan here at Amicus from the jump, including his stint as co-host of Election Meltdown,

1:24.4

a series we did dedicated to imagining what could possibly go wrong

1:29.3

in an upcoming presidential election year

1:32.2

all those centuries ago back in 2020.

1:35.2

Rick is here today to discuss constitutional amendments, the Trump cases at

1:40.1

Scottis, and to preview the forthcoming social media cases that will be heard at the court next week.

1:47.0

Later on in the show, Slate Plus Subscribers are going to get a chance to hear our

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