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“Is This How We Do Law Now?”

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The highest court in the land has ignored the need for standing, the trial record, and of course precedent this past year––and it matters. 

Host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation. They discuss Sherrilyn’s thought-provoking piece this month in the New York Review of Books, which opens out into a big-picture discussion of what this Supreme Court’s tendency to reach out and grab cases, and erase trial records, or fill in the blanks on standing, even on claims, means for whose voices are heard at the highest court in the land, and who merits consideration in its decisions.  

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about oral arguments in the big elections case concerning the Independent State Legislature Theory (Moore v. Harper), and in the Oregon wedding website case that threatens civil rights public-accommodations law (303 Creative), plus the Washington right-wing party circuit’s special guest du jour, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 


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Want a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the show? Check out Slate's Pocket Collections for research and reading lists, as well as additional insights into how we think about the stories behind the episodes. 

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Is there a whole new, you know, way of doing law that you and I are unaware of, but

0:12.3

it's just kind of happening in real time without our profession taking much notice or

0:17.2

being aggressive about calling it out?

0:22.7

Hi, and welcome back to Amicus.

0:27.0

This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the rule of law in the Supreme

0:31.0

Court.

0:32.0

I am Dahlia Lithueck.

0:33.0

I cover the courts for Slate and this week the justices are launching into their holiday

0:37.8

breaks and we hope you are doing some version of the same in good health.

0:43.4

We're going to spend some time on this episode of the podcast contemplating a worrying new

0:48.4

phenomenon at the High Court and in its jurisprudence, the slow evaporation of both parties

0:54.5

to a dispute and also of fact-based trial court records.

0:59.8

A court that is inventing disputes to create enduring doctrine is not a phenomenon that

1:05.7

should go unremarked or unnoted, at least according to Sheryl and Eiffel, today's guest

1:11.4

on the show.

1:12.4

Now, later on, Slate Plus members are going to get to hear from Mark Joseph Stern about

1:17.6

what was different about the 303 Creative Oral Arguments last week.

1:23.1

You're also going to get to hear a little bit of optimism in the more versus Harper

1:27.1

Independent State legislature arguments of course when a case threatens American democracy

1:33.0

as we know it, the bar for hope and optimism is pretty low.

1:38.2

Plus, all the latest from the election denier coup backing Christmas Party Circuit in DC,

1:45.0

if you are not a Slate Plus member but you'd like to be, not least to hear bonus segments

...

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