What If I Don’t Believe in the Supreme Court? A Conversation with Dahlia Lithwick

The PoliticsGirl Podcast

MeidasTouch Network, Leigh McGowan

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.9 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This year Supreme Court issued decisions on birthright citizenship, nationwide injunctions, religious freedom, transgender rights, gender affirming care, gun violence, and the executive branch’s apparent authority to do whatever it damn well pleases. These justices act like they’re all powerful but are they. Join me and Supreme Court expert Dahlia Lithwick as we discuss what comes next for court and country. As always, if you find worth in what we do, please consider SUBSCRIBING to PoliticsGirl Premium. You’ll get this podcast ad free, along with a bunch of other perks, like the rants directly to your inbox and the knowledge that you’re making this kind of highly researched, factual information possible. If that interests you, please go to https://www.politicsgirl.com/premium and subscribe today!! Thank you so much! xoPG Guest social: https://www.dahlialithwick.com/ Amicus: https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus Slate: https://slate.com/author/dahlia-lithwick Lady Justice: https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Justice-Women-Battle-America/dp/0525561382 As always, please RATE and SUBSCRIBE so we can grow the show, open the dialogue, and inspire change moving forward! All show links here!: https://linktr.ee/politicsgirl This episode is sponsored by… https://mudwtr.com code: politicsgirl https://GoPure.com/politicsgirl code: politicsgirl https://honeylove.com/politicsgirl https://DeleteMe.com/politicsgirl code: politicsgirl

Transcript

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0:00.0	The court has no actual power. It is by design, right, it is the weakest branch of government.
0:08.1	Go back and read the Federalist Papers, my friends. It has neither the purse nor the sword.
0:13.4	It has no army. It has nothing except public reliance upon the court as an institution that does its job.
0:23.4	The power in here's not in nine justices who don't have an army and don't have a purse.
0:31.0	The power in hears in the sovereign citizens who can choose to say that court is vast
0:36.3	or who can choose to say we are vast.
0:51.9	Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host Lee McGowan. Let's get into it.
0:56.0	This year's Supreme Court term saw decisions on cases related to birthright citizenship
1:00.2	and nationwide injunctions, religious freedom and education, transgender rights and gender
1:05.2	affirming care, gun violence, and the executive branch as a parent authority to do whatever
1:09.9	damn well pleases at all times.
1:12.0	To discuss how the SCOTUS term played out this year, I am joined by my friend and brilliant
1:15.8	legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick. Dahlia is a senior editor at Slate, who has been writing about
1:20.5	the Supreme Court and jurisprudence for over 20 years. Dahlia is also the host of Amicus, the
1:25.9	award-winning podcast about the law and the Supreme Court,
1:28.9	and her work has appeared everywhere from the New Yorker to the New Republic.
1:32.3	A visiting professor at multiple universities, Dahlia is a graduate of Stanford and Yale,
1:37.2	has won a litany of journalism awards, and is the author of numerous books, including Lady Justice,
1:42.3	Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.
1:44.9	So without further ado, please welcome my guest, award-winning journalist, best-selling author,
1:49.7	and one of the nation's foremost legal commentators, Dahlia Lithwick.
1:53.0	Welcome back, Dahlia.
	...

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