SCOTUS Wants To Drain The Swamp, Too
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2023
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. We consider this coverage so essential that we’re taking down the paywall for all of it. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. And sign up for the pop-up newsletter to see the latest every week in your inbox.
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by environmental appellate lawyer Sean Donahue to discuss the far-reaching consequences of one of the biggest decisions so far this term. In Sackett v EPA, the court decided that as many as 90 million acres of wetlands no longer qualify for environmental protection. Together, they trace the case’s history, its claims, and what tools are left for lawyers fighting to protect the environment.
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to answer listener questions, including how to counter dodgy originalism arguments, and whether there’s anything that could stop Donald Trump from running or even assuming office if he’s convicted of a crime
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | That's what we're talking about is putting dredged and filled material like dirt in wetlands |
| 0:06.1 | so there are no longer wetlands or part of them aren't changing them a lot. |
| 0:14.2 | Hi and welcome back to Amicus. |
| 0:16.2 | This is Slates podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court and it has been |
| 0:20.4 | a busy and important week again at the highest court in the land. |
| 0:23.5 | We've been covering it like mad things in all sorts of extra episodes in our opinion |
| 0:29.8 | Paloza initiative here at Slate. |
| 0:32.5 | You can go to slate.com slash opinion Paloza to make sure you're all caught up. |
| 0:38.2 | But with the court headed into Juneteenth weekend with 18 cases left to go, I can pretty |
| 0:44.6 | much promise that the next two weeks are going to be all kinds of maim. |
| 0:50.0 | This past Friday the court handed down two decisions with justices Samuel Alito and |
| 0:55.0 | Neil Gorsuch skipping the session altogether. |
| 0:58.4 | I think it's becoming clear and clear that my friend Mark Joseph Stern's quote soft pants |
| 1:03.8 | theory of why it is that the justices just don't like to go in and read opinions. |
| 1:09.4 | Really is fully operative even in these last weeks of June. |
| 1:14.0 | Looks like the next day for decisions will be Thursday so do stay tuned. |
| 1:19.8 | In the meantime, today felt like a really good day to cover one of the cases we blew |
| 1:24.0 | past on the show while the voting rights act case knitted out to no big change to section |
| 1:30.1 | two of the VRA. |
| 1:32.5 | And while the Indian child welfare act case that came down this week also makes no huge |
| 1:39.0 | difference other than not doing something awful. |
| 1:43.1 | The second case that was decided two weeks ago actually made very consequential changes |
... |
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