The Roberts Court’s Internal Reckoning
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Supreme Court term has seen threats against the Justices – from the President, a slew of game-changing shadow docket opinions, justices sparring in public, and some of the most consequential cases of our lifetimes. If you’re feeling a little disoriented by it all, join Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern on this week’s show for a clearer understanding of what’s going on at One, First Street. They discuss the big immigration case the court took up just this week that will be crammed into the last week of arguments, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s courage at a public event, and what it means when a justice steps out of the four corners of her opinions to voice urgent concerns about the shadow docket in public, and why, when it comes to threats to judges, the Chief Justice is meekly asking Trump knock it off, while taking no responsibility for his court’s role in it all.
Supplemental reading:
The Constitutional Accountability Center on the history of mail-in ballots
This week’s Executive Dysfunction newsletter from Slate’s jurisprudence team is a must-read: slate.com/dysfunction
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. |
| 0:09.9 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick. |
| 0:12.0 | How do you handle criticism of your court for your opinions today? |
| 0:17.4 | Well, it does come with the territory. |
| 0:19.4 | He is trying to signal to the White House and to the |
| 0:23.5 | public. The White House won't get it. Maybe the public will. That something has gone awry and that there is |
| 0:28.8 | more than just the usual power struggle between the branches going on right now. Personally directed |
| 0:34.5 | hostility is dangerous and it's got to stop. |
| 0:40.1 | That the executive branch actually seems to be trying to make judges feel unsafe when they |
| 0:45.9 | rule against him, and that that crosses a line that even the Chief Justice wants to police. |
| 0:59.2 | Okay. Police. May we live in less interesting times. |
| 1:02.3 | This week, an unsettling realization occurred for somebody who's reported on the |
| 1:06.9 | Supreme Court for a quarter of a century. |
| 1:10.5 | A kind of disorientation has crept in this |
| 1:13.6 | term. And I confess this to reassure you that if you now find yourself just a little bit woolly-headed |
| 1:20.0 | about the comings and goings at the Supreme Court, you're not alone. And this is the show for you, |
| 1:25.7 | for us. Between continued shadow docket machinations, |
| 1:30.1 | the 11th hour decision to grant cert on yet another major case cramming blockbuster arguments |
| 1:37.5 | into the very last week of April, and the Chief Justice's gentle importuning this week to |
| 1:43.6 | kindly be kinder to judges and justices is easy to lose one's bearings. |
| 1:49.8 | But we are in the middle of an extremely consequential term. |
| 1:54.0 | The court is being whipsawed by Donald Trump's manic activities and insults. |
... |
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