I'm Elizabeth Lattery and welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court,

what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

The court is in its summer recess, but I have a special interview to share with you that couldn't wait until next season.

Today I'm joined by the authors of a fantastic new book called Justice on Trial, the Kavanaugh Confirmation, and the future of the Supreme Court. The authors are the lovely and talented Carrie Severino and Molly Hemingway. Carrie is Chief Counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network and Molly is a senior editor at the Federalist. Ladies, welcome to Scotus 101. It is great to be here with you. And I think, Carrie, you've been on, what, three times now? A few times, yeah. A few times. You're a regular here. So the book is not your typical summer beach read, but I have to admit I couldn't put it down. And even though I was here in Washington, I lived through the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

I found the retelling of the story riveting.

So first up, why did you decide to write this book and why now?

Both of us knew that this was really one of the most important things to happen to the country this past year.

As you said, we felt like we lived through it and it wasn't just us.

It was the whole nation watching this happen before us. And it wasn't really just Brett Kavanaugh,

who was on trial. In many ways, it was justice itself on trial as we debated concepts of the rule

of law and the presumption of innocence and how due process should work. And so we decided we wanted

to tell the full story of what happened because

there were, we knew a lot of people who involved in it. Molly is in her capacity as a

journalist. Me is in working for the confirmation. We knew there were a lot of stories

that had not gotten out there yet. So we went through talk to over a hundred different

people from the president, the vice president, people in the White House counsel's office, several members of the Supreme Court. We had dozens of senators and their

staff. And then people who knew the Kavanaugh's or who knew Christine Blasey Ford back in high

school, of course, with all the relevant times. So we wanted to get a full picture of what happened

last year and really in the hopes that when

people understand what happened, we can learn how to prevent this kind of a debacle surrounding

a confirmation from repeating itself.

So as you mentioned, you interviewed numerous people in and out of government who were

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