Everyone who's putting their faith in justice Kennedy to say voting rights in this country

is putting a lot of weight where it might not be warranted.

Hi and welcome back to Amicus Leite Supreme Court podcast.

I'm Daly Lathwijk and I cover the courts and the law for slate.com.

With only a few short weeks to go before the first Monday in October,

it seems like a pretty good time to come back from our summer hiatus

and deal with that little thing we call the 2017 term.

No lot has happened since we left you in June.

And as the justices make their way back from their summer vacations,

we're headed into what may well be the blockbusterist term in a very long while.

And no issue is more complicated and more urgent this term than voting rights.

It's an issue that tends to either glaze you over or make you set your own hair on fire.

And so our guest today is more likely to steer you.

We hope toward the latter of these two options.

Rick Hassan is the Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California Irvine.

He's the curator of the Must Read election law blog.

He has an upcoming book about Antonin Scalia that will be out in the spring.

And hopefully here to give us a lay of the voting rights land

and talk us through some big cases on the docket this term.

So Rick Hassan, welcome back to the show.

Thank you so much for having me on again.

So I want to start where I started in the intro,

...