You know, it's not that the arguments change.

It's also not that the Supreme Court somehow got way more liberal.

You know, what change was the world changed?

Hi, and welcome to Amicus Slates Podcast, but the Supreme Court and the law.

I'm Dylith Wake.

I cover the courts for slate.

And this coming week brings the opening of the 2017 term at the highest court of the land.

This is a term that promises to be one of the most consequential we've seen in a long,

long time.

On the docket, we have cases that will determine the future of our voting rights, partisan

gerrymanders, class action lawsuits, the civil rights of gay couples, the president's

travel ban, future of public sector unions, and more.

So at a speech last month, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg used the word momentous to describe

what's coming down the pipe, and I don't think she was exaggerating.

So it is with some delight that this week we turn to David Cole, he's the legal director

of the American Civil Liberties Union, and I think the busiest man in America, and he's

here with us to preview some of these cases and to give us a little bit of a sense of the

state of civil liberties in the country in Trump's America.

Over the cases on the terms docket so far, the ACLU is already involved in five.

That number is likely to grow, and David's fantastic book, Engines of Liberty, The Power of

Citizen Activists, Make Constitutional Law, is just now out in paperback.

It serves as a bracing reminder that the courts alone do not make law.

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