"Thank You," Not "Please"
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2015
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dahlia Lithwick talks to Andrew Pincus, the lawyer who brought a Supreme Court challenge this week to a law banning fundraising by judicial candidates. And she hears from the NAACP’s Sherrilyn Ifill on the latest challenge to the Fair Housing Act.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the law and the courts that interpret it. |
| 0:08.8 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Supreme Court correspondent. |
| 0:11.6 | It's been a huge week at the Supreme Court. |
| 0:14.5 | Anniversary of Citizens United, anniversary of Roe v. Wade, acceptance of the same-sex marriage cases last week. |
| 0:22.4 | And thank you to a bad back injury. I missed all of it. But we have on our podcast today two people who were there this |
| 0:28.1 | week, and they're going to help fill us in on some of the action. In a few minutes, we're going to |
| 0:32.4 | discuss a case that was argued on Wednesday that considers a challenge to the Fair Housing Act, |
| 0:37.2 | a crucial civil rights law that barred discrimination in the housing market. |
| 0:41.0 | But first, we're going to dive into a case that was argued one day earlier on Tuesday. |
| 0:45.2 | It's called Williams-Yuley versus Florida Bar, and it centers on this foundational question. |
| 0:50.5 | When it comes to the First Amendment, should elected judges be considered regular people or special |
| 0:55.5 | judicial people, at least when it comes to asking for money? Here's the background. Thirty-nine states |
| 1:00.9 | elect their judges for at least some offices, and 30 of those 39 states have some kind of law or |
| 1:06.5 | ethics provision that prohibits judicial candidates from personally asking for campaign donations. |
| 1:12.2 | Now, this is supposed to discourage that awkward practice of judges seeking campaign contributions from those who will argue the case before them or parties who may appear before them. |
| 1:20.9 | The paradox in Florida is that a judge can't personally ask for a contribution. |
| 1:25.7 | Her campaign can, however. She can find out who contributed |
| 1:29.1 | and she can send a thank you note. In 2009, one Florida lawyer, Lanale Williams-Eulie, |
| 1:35.0 | sent out a mass mailing declaring that she was running for county judge and saying, quote, |
| 1:39.5 | I want to bring fresh ideas and positive solutions to the judicial bench. She wasn't asking for a lot, |
| 1:45.8 | contributions of $25, $50, $500, but she did run afoul over the Florida ethics rule. |
| 1:53.0 | Williams Yuley challenged that rule on free speech grounds, resulting in the case now before the court. |
... |
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