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From the Snapchat Cheerleader to Katie Porter’s Whiteboard

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.56K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2021

⏱️ 77 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dahlia Lithwick and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern offer analysis of the big decisions due from SCOTUS any minute, and Dahlia hosts a conversation with Rep Katie Porter about the need for laws to shore up toppled norms. 

In our Slate Plus segment, Mark returns to discuss the Stanford law student targeted by the Federalist Society. Nicholas Wallace nearly missed out on getting his diploma after fellow law students and the university mistook satire for defamation. Also Mark and Dahlia are getting “free speech for me but not for thee” tattoos.

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Political Gabfest—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work.

Podcast production by Sara Burningham.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Just a heads up that while amicus is generally not a super sweary show, one of the cases we're discussing this week does involve some strong language.

0:11.5

Was Congress wrong when it said that the mandate was the key to the whole thing, that we spent all that time talking about broccoli for nothing.

0:22.3

I'm not saying this is illegal.

0:24.3

I'm saying, did you do it?

0:26.4

And then that opens up the debate to citizens who care about responsibility and ethics

0:32.1

to advocate for a law change.

0:42.5

Thank you. law change. Hi, and welcome back to Amicus.

0:45.3

This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court and the Rule of Law.

0:50.6

I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover some of those things for Slate.

0:55.9

This past week has been a little calm before the stormish at the High Court, although that's going to change in the coming

1:01.5

days. In the U.S. Senate and the House, we're wrangling about the filibuster and the January

1:07.9

6th Commission and also about ethics reform.

1:11.3

And later on in this show, we're going to hear from Representative Katie Porter of California

1:16.6

about the connection between corruption and ethics rules and congressional oversight

1:21.8

and all the ways in which a failure to check basic corruption, self-interest, and self-dealing today really just invites a whole lot more of the same in the future.

1:32.9

But before that, back in Lawland, we find ourselves in the home stretch at the highest court in the land.

1:40.0

We're in the last few weeks of a Supreme Court term that feels like it opened a million years ago back when Ruth Bader Ginsburg still sat on the bench.

1:48.7

This term has seen some radical shifts at the court, Amy Coney Barrett replacing RBG, a raft of religious liberty cases that were decided on almost purely partisan lines.

2:03.4

The court is taking on some big, big cases for next term. It did step back from some of the most dramatic interventions this year,

2:09.7

which is my fancy way of saying, hey, the court didn't help steal the 2020 election for Donald

2:14.9

Trump. Today, we're going to kind of flip the show, and we're going to go first to our check-in with Slate's Mark Joseph Stern. He covers the Supreme Court for Slate.com. Mark and I usually chat for our Slate plus subscribers at the end of the show, but this week he needs to be the show because there's a whole host of cases that are going

2:34.8

to be decided in the coming weeks with arguments behind us, decisions right ahead of us.

...

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