The Letter of the Law
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2015
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act -- King v. Burwell -- Dahlia Lithwick hears from experts on both sides of what could be the most important case in the Court’s entire term.First, she speaks with Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a one of the lawsuit’s chief architects. Then she hears from Abbe Gluck, a professor at Yale Law School and a co-author of an amicus brief submitted in the case.**************This week’s episode is sponsored by HBO. Its new documentary series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” airs Sundays at 8. We’re also sponsored by the Great Courses. Save up to 80% off their most bestselling courses here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Amicus is sponsored by HBO and the new documentary series The Jinks, The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. |
| 0:07.1 | Four decades, three murders, and one very rich man who refused to speak until now. |
| 0:12.6 | The Jinks airs Sundays at 8, only on HBO. |
| 0:15.3 | And by The Great Courses, engaging audio and video lectures taught by top professors. |
| 0:20.3 | Courses like privacy, property, and free speech, law, and the Constitution in the 21st century. |
| 0:25.5 | Get 80% off the original price when you visit the greatcourses.com slash amicus. |
| 0:36.8 | Hi, and welcome to Amicus, Slate Supreme Court podcast I'm Dahlia Liffwick, Slate Supreme Court |
| 0:41.7 | correspondent, and we've been on a little hiatus for the past few weeks, due to an injury, but we're back, |
| 0:46.7 | we're better than ever. And this week, we want to preview what may turn out to be one of the |
| 0:51.0 | sleeper cases of the term, a case scheduled for oral argument this |
| 0:54.8 | Wednesday. King v. Burwell is a challenge to the Affordable Care Act that could, at least in the |
| 1:00.2 | view of some court watchers, cut out the heart of Obamacare and leave millions of newly insured, |
| 1:05.8 | low- and middle-income Americans uninsured. But unlike the last big challenge to the ACA in 2012, in which the court |
| 1:13.1 | saved the president's signature legislation by one vote, the King case has just not captured |
| 1:18.3 | the public imagination. And that's probably because it's just so technical. In fact, some people |
| 1:23.9 | say the whole case turns on the definition of just four or five or seven words in this 900-page statute, and it raises incredibly arcane questions about how judges read the words in a bill. |
| 1:36.4 | So we thought we would devote the entire show this week to trying to understand what this case is about and why it even matters. |
| 1:43.2 | The issue in King, in its simplest terms, |
| 1:45.9 | is this, whether those 34 states that declined to create their own state exchanges |
| 1:51.7 | and whose citizens therefore signed up in the federal exchange are going to be unable to get |
| 1:57.9 | tax subsidies that are a central component of the ACA and which make their |
| 2:02.7 | health care affordable to them. |
... |
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