Ketanji Brown Jackson: Asked and Answered
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2022
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It was a week: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Justice Clarence Thomas in the hospital, Ginni Thomas’ tweets in the hands of the Jan. 6 committee, and an out-of-the-blue redistricting decision on the shadow docket.
First, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston University Law School, to discuss why the Senate Judiciary Committee is a terrible venue for a job interview and the ways in which Judge Jackson rose above it.
Next, Dahlia talks to Nate Persily of Stanford Law School about how the hearing interacts with the bigger picture of disinformation ecosystems, Ginni Thomas’ texts, and fills us in on the Wisconsin redistricting case. Finally, they discuss Prof. Persily’s almost 40-year friendship with Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In our Slate Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark Joseph Stern dig into judicial ethics and what shocked them this week.
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Podcast production by Sara Burningham.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why does American democracy look the way it does? |
| 0:02.8 | And how can we make it more responsive to the people it was formed to serve? |
| 0:06.8 | Democracy Decoded, a podcast by Campaign Legal Center, |
| 0:10.4 | examines our government and discusses innovative ideas that could lead to a stronger, more transparent, |
| 0:16.8 | accountable and inclusive democracy. |
| 0:19.4 | In season two, host Simone Leeper covers everything you need to know about voting in the US. |
| 0:24.9 | Listen to the latest season at democracydecoded.org or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:42.2 | Persevere. |
| 0:46.8 | I would tell them to persevere. |
| 0:48.4 | And I'm telling you right now, I'm not letting anybody in the Senate steal my joy. |
| 1:01.3 | Hi and welcome to Amicus. This is Slates podcast about the law, the courts, the rule of law, |
| 1:07.7 | the Supreme Court. I am Delia Lithwick. I cover some of those things for Slate.com. |
| 1:12.8 | And we have had quite a few days where to begin, where to begin, truly vicious confirmation hearings |
| 1:20.6 | for Katangi Brown, Jackson, wrapped up on Thursday afternoon. The Supreme Court handed down a major |
| 1:28.2 | elections case as those hearings were rolling on. Justice Clarence Thomas was in hospital all week |
| 1:35.4 | with an undisclosed infection that the court provided us no information, really. No information |
| 1:43.7 | after Sunday. And then some blockbuster end of week reporting from the Washington Post about a |
| 1:50.9 | tranche of text messages sent from Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginny Thomas to Mark Meadows, |
| 1:56.9 | Donald Trump's chief of staff, urging him to use all of his power and authority to set aside the |
| 2:03.5 | results of the 2020 election in texts that included words like Kraken and Guantanamo Bay. |
| 2:12.0 | Cool, cool, cool. Later on in the show, we are going to talk to Stanford Law School's Nate |
| 2:17.1 | Priscilla about the Jackson hearings, how misinformation can spread. And about that Wisconsin |
... |
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