Hi and welcome to Amicus Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court.

I am Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover the High Court for Slate.

Well, it's been another relatively quiet week at the highest court in the land, with the exception of a tiny administrative snafu on Monday,

where the justices were briefly a little confused about which part of a tiny administrative snafu on Monday, where the justices were

briefly a little confused about which part of a case they had in fact agreed to decide next

term. And while usually this time of year, June before the end of the term, is hopping and crazy,

it's been quiet enough that we thought maybe we'd take a little time to reflect on history.

So later in the show, we're going to speak with the National Constitution Center's Jeffrey Rosen

about his wonderful new biography of Louis Brandeis.

But we wanted to start the show with one more current event.

And for the most part, much of the legal world's attention

has been focused this week on Donald Trump and his attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal

judge who is currently presiding over the Trump University fraud cases in California.

Trump somehow managed to offend surprising numbers of establishment Republicans and no small

number of everybody else when he said last week that Judge Curiel was biased and should

be bumped off the cases because Judge Curiel is Mexican.

He isn't.

And then later, he said he should be bumped off the cases

because he is of Mexican descent and thus predisposed to rule against Trump because of Trump's

plans to, well, build a huge wall. Joining us to discuss the ethical problems surrounding

judicial recusal is Professor Deborah Rody, for whom I have

tremendous personal bias as she teaches at my alma mater, Stanford Law School, where she is founding

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