The "Stop the Steal" Fight That Never Ended
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court heard one of the landmark cases of the 2020 presidential election. During oral arguments in Trump v Biden in December 2020, Justice Jill J Karofsky participated in proceedings via Zoom from her office inside the state capitol in Madison. Outside her office window, she could see armed protesters gathered in what she later viewed as a dry run for January 6th. In a 4-3 decision, with one Republican justice siding against Trump, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to uphold Biden’s victory in the state. On this week’s Amicus, Justice Karofsky speaks for the first time about the fallout from that case: Fallout in her personal life, for herself and loved ones. Fallout in her professional life, with an investigation and the threat of sanction for her line of questioning in oral argument. And beyond all that, the fallout for democracy—and for the role of jurists within that democracy.
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to discuss the originalist Second Amendment ruling that puts women’s lives at risk, the looming prospect of a potential nationwide ban on a widely used, FDA-approved, abortion pill, and how the future of jurisprudence appears to be competing time machines.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the law and the rule of |
| 0:17.6 | law and the courts. I'm Dahlia Lequick, and I write about these things for Slate magazine. |
| 0:24.0 | The high court is in the midst of its long break this week, so aside from a little depressing |
| 0:28.8 | revelations about the spouses of justices who evidently make some bank off relationships |
| 0:35.2 | to their partners last week in a little ethics reform news this week, things are relatively quiet |
| 0:41.6 | at the Marble Palace. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Biden |
| 0:47.2 | largely forgot to mention the court, or the EPA, or the Clean Water Act, or the loss of abortion |
| 0:54.8 | rights for half of the population. All that happened kind of in a blur, but given that justice |
| 1:00.4 | is clearance Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Neil Gorsuch all took a pass this year anyhow, |
| 1:06.0 | maybe it doesn't really matter. I just want to take a break for a moment to remember that when |
| 1:11.5 | Justice Clarence Thomas stopped attending the State of the Union back in 2010, he explained his |
| 1:17.3 | reasoning to students at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida by saying this, quote, |
| 1:23.6 | I don't go because it has become so partisan and it's very uncomfortable for a judge to sit |
| 1:28.7 | there. Thomas went on, quote, there's a lot that you don't hear on TV, quote, the cat calls the |
| 1:34.9 | whooping and hollering in the under the breath comments, well that was 2010. Happily in 2023, |
| 1:42.0 | scarcely any under the breath comments anymore under all the cat calls the whooping and the hollering, |
| 1:49.3 | maybe it's just as well that the justices don't attend. |
| 1:54.8 | They lose an election, they take it to the courts, they lose in the courts, and what do they do next? |
| 2:00.4 | They intimidate the judges or justices who ruled against them, who were doing their job, |
| 2:06.0 | who were following the rule of law. For today's show, we are turning to a layer of the US |
| 2:10.9 | constitutional fabric that was once largely taken for granted, but now finds itself under intense |
| 2:17.7 | scrutiny, and the subject of threats both extra legal and really systemic. We are focusing on the |
... |
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