Hi and welcome to a special emergency episode of Amicus.

This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law, the Supreme Court, the rule of law, I'm

Dahlia Lithwick. I cover some of those things for Slate, even as each and every one of them

continues to multiply like tiny little mushrooms in the forest in the rain.

We are bringing you this extra bonus episode so we might process together the not at all unexpected nine nothing decision that came down Monday morning,

holding that states may not remove Donald J. Trump from the ballot in Colorado or any other state under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

The decision in Trump v. Anderson functionally ends any attempt to bring about accountability for the events of January 6, 2021, at least by way

of ballot removal for a candidate.

Slate Plus members have access to the full version of this episode. If you are not a slate

plus member, we're going to share a little taste of that conversation. You can always head

over to slate.com slash amicus plus to become a member and to listen

to this episode in full that slate.com slash amicus plus.

Given the tenor of oral arguments in Anderson,

the Colorado ballot case last month,

the 9-0 result is of course unsurprising.

But while the opinion was styled as a per curiam, meaning that it was unsigned, we don't quite

know who authored it, there are two separate concurances that would have vastly limited the scope of the

court's ultimate conclusion that provides that only Congress can enforce Section 3 against federal office holders and only using some formula that

we don't get to understand. The caped crusaders of Slate's

jurisprudence team, that is senior legal writer Mark Joseph Stern, chief

law of Trump, T.M. correspondent Jeremy Stahl, are here with me, bless their hearts, to pick through this decision.

Welcome Mark, welcome Jeremy.

...