Hi and welcome to Amicus. This is Slates Podcast about the US Supreme Court. I am Dialithmic

and I cover the Supreme Court and other courts for Slate. And it was a busy week at the

High Court, although the justices appear to be passing around a wicked winter cold.

I should note that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sniffles triggered widespread hysteria

and panic among liberal court watchers and I am here to assure you that it really was

just a cold. The court heard arguments in several cases this week and handed down some

opinions a few of them notably were unanimous. Because this seems to be a thing now. We're

in a new era where the court in its eight justice period comes down unanimously or in

4-4 splits or terrified of future 4-4 splits which may partially explain the three cases

the court has already agreed to here but still hasn't put on the calendar for this term.

Now we're coming at you today just over a month after the election but voting is not

fading into the background for court watchers far from it. In part that's because of the

recounts that are happening in various states that we've been hearing about. It's also

partly because there are voter ID laws working their way up through the judicial system and it's

also because we are now in the lead up to the next decennial census and all the legislative

redistricting that will follow that census. Later on in the show we're going to talk a little bit

about the electoral college and specifically about a small revolt that is underway on the part

of a few members of that college but first we're going to turn to the subject of redistricting

which was the topic to Jormunday at the Supreme Court. The justices heard not one but two arguments

in cases involving the drawing of district lines at the state level one out of Virginia the other

from North Carolina. Both of these cases are challenges to district maps drawn by Republican

legislatures. The challengers argued that by intentionally creating several majority African

...