Hi, and welcome to Amicus.

This is Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, the Supreme Court.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick.

I cover some of that stuff for Slate.

And we are here in your ears outside our regular schedule because we want to try to figure out Friday's Supreme Court decision.

I'm saying Z decisions in the Texas abortion SB8 cases that came down on Friday morning.

When I say we, I mean me and Slate's own wonderful Mark Joseph Stern, who is joining me.

The ink is not yet dry on either of our pieces, and we're trying to thrash out the scope of the thing.

So we're going to do that in real time in your earbuds.

Welcome back, Mark.

Thanks for making time.

Hi, happy to be here.

So let's do the basics. Tell us about SB 8, Mark. Thanks for making time. Hi, happy to be here. So let's do the basics. Tell us about SB8, Mark.

So SB8, as almost everyone now knows, is a law passed by Texas this year that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and that has a rather novel enforcement structure.

So it does not task most government officials with enforcing its terms.

So it doesn't say, you know, the attorney general can file a suit against abortion clinics or whatever.

Instead, it empowers private individuals, essentially bounty hunters, to sue any abortion provider or anyone who aids or abets an abortion provider

for a minimum of $10,000 in Texas state court because of their complicity in performing or facilitating an abortion after six weeks.

The Supreme Court in early September allowed this law

to take effect on the shadow docket, then moved the cases to the rocket docket and heard two

challenges, one brought by abortion providers, one brought by the United States Department of

Justice, both of which asked the Supreme Court to

...