Just as Brennan said, it was one of the very few geniuses he ever met.

It was definitely a genius.

And that permitted him to do all of his court work and have this second life.

Welcome back to Amica's Slates podcast about the courts and the law.

I am Dahlia Lithwick and I cover these things at Slate.

This is our very last in the summer book series featuring writers and books.

We may have missed in the hustle and bustle of the daily news cycle all year.

When next we meet, we will be on the downhill run to the first Monday in October

and a brand-spanking new Supreme Court term.

Thank you for hanging out with us and with some really cool books and guests this summer.

And thank you to our Slate Plus members who support all the work that we do

and who have only a couple of weeks to go until they get more awesome Amicus exclusive bonus segments

with me and Mark Joseph Stern.

And if you are not a Slate Plus member yet, you can find out more at Slate.com slash Amicus Plus.

But back to the business of our annual Summer Book Club.

Today's guest is Judge Margaret McEwan.

Her new book is Citizen Justice, the Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas.

Judge McEwan profile Justice Douglas in part because he was the most controversial member of the Supreme Court.

The guy survived two impeachments married four women, lived larger than life and spent 36 years on the bench.

But he was also a crusader for environmental rights in ways that blurred all sorts of lines between judging and lobbying and political activism.

It feels wonderfully on the nose to be thinking about some of these issues right now, but we wanted to be clear.

We'll be talking about those issues by sticking to the history because though we sometimes forget when we're talking about the Supreme Court,

...