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Dahlia Lithwick is joined by environmental appellate lawyer Sean Donahue to discuss the far-reaching consequences of one of the biggest decisions so far this term. In Sackett v EPA,  the court decided that as many as 90 million acres of wetlands no longer qualify for environmental protection. Together, they trace the case’s history, its claims, and what tools are left for lawyers fighting to protect the environment.
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to answer listener questions, including how to counter dodgy originalism arguments, and whether there’s anything that could stop Donald Trump from running or even assuming office if he’s convicted of a crime
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SCOTUS Wants To Drain The Swamp, Too

A show about the law and the nine Supreme Court justices who interpret it for the rest of America.

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Justice Samuel Alito’s wife didn’t attend the January 6th 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally (unlike fellow SCOTUS spouse Ginni Thomas), but in January 2021, in a leafy Alexandria, Virginia cul-de-sac, the New York Times reports that the Alito household was engaged in a MAGA-infused front yard spat with the neighbors, even as the Justice was deciding  cases regarding that very election at the highest court in the land. Justice Alito told the New York Times his wife was responsible for the upside down stars and stripes flying from their flagpole and that it was in retaliation for an an anti-Trump sign.   

It’s unseemly. Undoubtedly unethical. But this intra-suburban squabble, and the very clear implications it has for a public already aware of the Supreme Court’s dwindling legitimacy, is unlikely to evoke shame, amends, or recusal from Justice Alito. On this week’s Amicus, American legal exceptionalism sliced three ways: Dahlia Lithwick on the Justice and the Flag, Slate’s jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl on how Donald J. Trump’s  criminal hush money trial ends, and Congressman Jamie Raskin on concrete steps to supreme court reform, how to get back the rights the Supreme Court has taken away, and what a binding ethics code would look like. 


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Alito’s Stars and Gripes

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In the second part of our series on Amicus and at Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are back on the originalism beat. This week they’re trying to understand the mechanisms of what Professor Saul Cornell calls “the originalism industrial complex” and how those mechanisms plug into the highest court in the land. They’re also asking how and why liberals failed to find an effective answer to originalism, even as the various “originalist” ways of deciding who’s history counts, what constitutional law counts, which people count, were supercharged by Trump’s SCOTUS picks. Madiba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap, highlights how the Supreme Court turned to originalism to gut voting rights. In 2022, the US Supreme Court’s originalism binge ran roughshod over precedent and unleashed Dobbs and Bruen on the American people - Mark and Dahlia talk to a state Supreme Court justice about what it’s like trying to apply the law amid these constitutional earthquakes. 
In today’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Dahlia talks to AJ Jacobs about his year of living constitutionally, and she confesses to an attempt to smuggle contraband into One, First Street. 
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How Originalism Ate The Law: The Trap

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In this, the first part of a special series on Amicus and at Slate.com, we are lifting the lid on an old-timey sounding method of constitutional interpretation that has unleashed a revolution in our courts, and an assault on our rights. But originalism’s origins are much more recent than you suppose, and its effects much more widespread than the constitutional earthquakes of overturning settled precedent like Roe v Wade or supercharging gun rights as in Heller and Bruen. Originalism’s aftershocks are being felt throughout the courts, the law, politics and our lives, and we haven’t talked about it enough. On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explore the history of originalism. They talk to Professor Jack Balkin about its religious valence, and Saul Cornell about originalism’s first major constitutional triumph in Heller. And they’ll tell you how originalism’s first big public outing fell flat, thanks in part to Senator Ted Kennedy’s ability to envision the future, as well as the past.
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How Originalism Ate the Law: The Trick

Get your tickets for Amicus Live in Washington DC here. 

This past week (that lasted about a year) at the Supreme Court began badly and only went downhill from there. By Wednesday, justices were trying to set aside the facts of women being airlifted out of states where they can no longer access care to protect their major organs and reproductive future, if that emergency healthcare indicates an abortion - in favor of pondering the spending clause. On Thursday, the shocking reality of the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6th 2021, and former President Trump’s many schemes to overturn the election and stay in power, were relegated to lower-case concerns as opposed to ALL CAPS panic over hypothetical aggressive prosecutors. 
On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by leading constitutional scholar and former assistant Professor Pam Karlan of Stanford Law School and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. Slate’s senior legal writer Mark Joseph Stern also joins the conversation about the MAGA justices flying the flag in arguments in Trump v United States.

In today’s bonus episode only for Slate Plus members, Jeremy Stahl gives Dahlia Lithwick a view from inside the courtroom of Donald Trump’s hush money trial. 

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Democracy Dies at SCOTUS

Listen to a preview of this urgent extra episode of Amicus. The full episode is available to our Slate Plus members. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes of Amicus, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.

Wednesday morning, the court heard arguments in Moyle v. United States, the consolidated case tackling what levels of care pregnant patients can be provided in emergency rooms in states with draconian anti-abortion laws. 
And on Thursday morning, the High Court will hear Trump v. United States, the case in which the former president - who is currently spending much of his time slouched at the defendant’s table in New York City - will claim a kind of vast sweeping theory of immunity that roughly translates as - “when you’re president, they let you do it. You can do anything”. In an extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern dig into what happened in the EMTALA arguments Wednesday morning and then look ahead to Thursday’s arguments in the immunity case. 
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SCOTUS Wants To Drain The Swamp, Too

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