Hi and welcome to Amicus. I'm Dahlia Lithwick and I cover the courts and the law or what

we used to call the law for slate.com.

Now if memory serves, there was a time on this show not that long ago when we would have

to really think hard about some case that was interesting or important enough for accessible

enough to our listeners to cover on this show.

And so we're changing. Since President Donald Trump took office only three weeks ago, news

from the courts has been coming at us so fast and so furious we have no weekends anymore

at slate. And so we are coming at you today, Friday, on what in normal times would have been

an off week for this show. But there's a lot going on and so I am here with two of my

fellow court watchers at slate to try to take stock of this week's huge legal news,

the ruling that came down Thursday night from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

that extended a temporary restraining order on Donald Trump's immigration ban. Now this

was a perterium unanimous decision by three judges across the spectrum in favor of the

states of Washington and Minnesota who were challenging parts of President Trump's executive

order that ban travel from a handful of majority Muslim countries. The appeal was argued

at the beginning of this week over the old tiny phone. And it is worth mentioning that

people actually watched a YouTube video of nothing happening for an entire hour as judges

pummeled attorneys for both sides who ably tried to defend each of their own positions.

Again, over the phone, old timey, here's a little taste of what some of that sounded like.

Here we have Justice Department lawyer August Flenji who was defending the Justice Department's

stance on this case, being pounded by Judge Michelle Friedland of the Ninth Circuit on this

question of whether this was a Muslim ban or something else. Have a listen.

...