Amicus: Billionaires Had a Bad Week at the Supreme Court

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4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

When Moore v United States landed on the Supreme Court docket, it threatened to take a big swing at any future wealth tax and maybe cut the legs out from under the government’s ability to collect a lot of other tax. But as arguments unfolded Tuesday at One, First Street, it became clear that some of the Justices had studied up on the tax code and were cooling on blowing a big hole in it. To understand why Moore made it all the way up to SCOTUS in the first place, and why the facts don’t match claims from the plaintiffs, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by law professor and author of Big Dirty Money, Professor Jennifer Taub. Together they talk about the billions behind the case, the tax law, and the arguments inside the chamber. Next, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Stern, who covered Moore for the magazine, to discuss Justice Alito's non-recusal from the case, his BFF David Rivkin Jr., and why the plaintiffs Mr and Mrs Moore bear a striking resemblance to some other, recent, fabled SCOTUS plaintiffs. In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Mark Stern hangs on to talk about the Title VII case this week that didn’t go *that badly*, and why that’s still not good, and to explain why Justice Elena Kagan has had it up to here with false first principles. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi and welcome back to Amicus this is Slate's Weekly,
0:17.0	Weekly, it's now Weekly podcast about the courts and the law and the US
0:21.4	Supreme Court and I'm Dahlia Lythwick.
0:24.0	And look between the various Trump lawsuits, the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote last
0:28.9	week to authorize subpoenas for Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow, plus the launch of Donald Trump's
0:35.0	fantastic new reality show called dictator for a day. It's been a brisk little
0:40.9	week for your friendly rule of law types and if your heart beats just a little bit
0:47.2	faster at the mention of oligarchy, well this was a busy week at the High Court too, with the justices on Monday reviewing
0:56.1	the bankruptcy reorganization of opioid maker Purdue Pharma in a way that would protect the Sackler family, Purdue's owners, from future liability.
1:07.0	Then on Tuesday, the court heard another big billionaire Boondoggle case of the long awaited more versus
1:15.2	United States. This case challenges a provision of the 2017 tax cuts and jobs
1:21.7	act that required a one-time-only tax on previously
1:26.3	untaxed foreign profits. The case did not go well for the billionaire
1:31.6	boondoglers. Now I know what you're thinking you're thinking
1:35.0	come on Dahlia how can the justices continue to fly around on private jets and
1:39.9	stay at luxury resorts and catch and release their 1% salmon if they aren't going to keep throwing
1:46.0	cases for their rich monopoly man buddies? It's a good question. Lawyer and corporate governance
1:52.4	professor Jennifer Taub will be joining us on the show this week to discuss where a case like more comes from and how the oral arguments went down inside the courtroom.
2:02.0	Then my trustee colleague Mark
2:04.4	Joseph Stern is going to hop on to unspool another thread of the backstory in the
2:09.0	Moore case including why Justice Samuel Alito even participated in a case in which David Rifkin was a prime mover.
2:17.5	Rifkin, of course, is Alito's ride or die.
	...

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