I believe this is the most important case for American democracy literally since the founding of the nation.

Hi and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slates podcast about the courts and the law, the rule of law, the US Supreme Court.

I'm Dalia Lithueck and I cover those things for Slate.com. On today's show we are hoping fingers crossed to have the definitive conversation about more versus Harper.

That is arguably the most important case of the Supreme Court that everyone is talking about but not many of us fully understand.

And so to walk us through the ins and outs of the independent state legislature theory, our guest is an icon. Judge Michael Ludig announced this week that he will be serving as co-counsel in the case alongside Neil Cadiall representing the voting rights groups in Morvy Harper, which has just been added to the Supreme Court calendar for December 7th.

Judge Michael Ludig, a decades-long luminary in conservative legal circles, ended up playing a central role in forstalling Donald Trump's 2021 bid to have Vice President Mike Pence simply set aside the electoral college tallies and block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Judge Ludig later testified about that effort before the January 6th committee.

Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.

And now the man who keeps insisting that he really is retired has thrown in with the voting rights groups arguing in opposition to the so-called independent state legislature doctrine.

It is a theory of constitutional governance that gives state legislatures unreviewable unchecked plenary power to, well, we're going to sort that out, but to do something in administering elections.

Later on in the show, slate plus members will get to hear from our very own Mark Joseph Stern, who will fill us in on a challenge to President Biden's student debt relief plan, gun regulations, and the 5th Circuit's recent decision to effectively strike down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

If you are not a slate plus member, but you'd like to hear bonus segments and listen to our shows at free, hang on because I'm going to tell you about how to sign up and take advantage of a special promotion at our next break.

But first, Judge Michael Ludig served as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in George H. W. Bush's Justice Department.

He was sworn in to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit at the age of 37 at the time, the youngest federal appellate judge in the country.

He served on that court for 15 years, earning a reputation as one of the nation's most important conservative jurists and thinkers.

He was often mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee himself in the Bush administration and he sent more than 40 clerks, they were known as ludigators, into Supreme Court clerkships, 33 of whom clerked for justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Among those former clerks, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Dr. John Eastman, both of whom were instrumental in attempts to throw the 2020 election to Donald J. Trump.

Judge Ludig broke with the party or parts of the party and with some elements of the conservative legal movement over those events of January 2021, and again over this litigation in Morby Harper, which is, as he put it this week, to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer,

quote, without question the most significant case in the history of our nation for American democracy, and in case that wasn't clear enough, he added, quote, legally, it's the whole ballgame.

Judge Ludig, I cannot overstate what an honor it is and what a thrill it is to talk to you about a case that I feel like I've been discussing on this show for a full year and I still can't completely wrap my brain around, welcome.

Well, thank you, dolly, it's actually my honor to be on with you today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the invitation to be here with you today, but I will say it's possible that you know more about this than I do, dolly.

You know, I find myself so tangled up and I'm so glad you're here because you know, we have two different constitutional provisions. We have Dicta from Bush v. Gore, we have, you know, an array of kind of interpretations of this.

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