Lady Justice and Charlottesville Nazis
Slate Books
Slate Podcasts
3.8 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Roberta Kaplan, who along with co-counsel Karen Dunn brought a successful civil suit against twenty-four neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders responsible for organizing the racial- and religious-based violence in Charlottesville in August 2017. They discuss how the KKK Act of 1871 applied to discord channels and now January 6th defendants. And they explore the complicated relationship women find themselves in with the law in this moment, as defenders of rights but also as constitutional afterthoughts. Dahlia Lithwick’s new book is Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Amicus. Sign up now at slate.com/amicusplus to help support our work.
Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Something had to be done to deal with this. |
| 0:07.0 | This was a terrible crossing of the line in terms of our society. |
| 0:12.0 | The Department of the Government that should have been doing that, |
| 0:16.0 | the Civil Rights Division of DOJ, I knew wasn't going to do it. |
| 0:19.0 | And it's this kind of crazy thing, well, I guess if no one else will, I will. |
| 0:26.8 | Hi, and welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the rule of law. |
| 0:33.2 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I'm coming to you on this off week because, surprise, the book I've been working on for the past four years is finally here, very nearly here. |
| 0:45.0 | Lady Justice, Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America is available for pre-order now. |
| 0:51.0 | It will drop on September 20th. |
| 0:55.0 | One of the things that I note toward the beginning of the book is that at one point a very, |
| 1:00.6 | very smart male constitutional law professor asked me why I was wasting my time writing |
| 1:07.7 | a little pink book about the law. But actually, I think Lady Justice is by design, |
| 1:14.5 | a great big pink book about the law. It's almost a romance novel about women and the law and |
| 1:23.3 | the law and democracy itself. So if you followed my writing and my podcasting through the Trump years and |
| 1:28.4 | beyond, through the Muslim bans, the Nazi rallies, the violence, the child separation, |
| 1:33.9 | threw me to, this whole book is my tribute to the women who held the line, who defended |
| 1:40.6 | and expanded rights against the odds who fought for the vulnerable and the invisible, |
| 1:46.1 | and those who didn't even really register to a reality TV president. |
| 1:51.3 | And having covered their cases, their battles, and their triumphs, |
| 1:55.9 | I came to the realization that, well, women plus law equals magic. And one of the chief conjurers of legal |
| 2:06.6 | magic is my guest today, Roberta Kaplan. She's at the center of the fourth chapter of Lady |
| 2:13.6 | Justice. And over the writing of this book, she also became pretty central to my life as a close friend in counsel. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.