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“Is This How We Do Law Now?”

“Is This How We Do Law Now?”

What happens when the Supreme Court decides to ignore precedent and trial records––and the need for actual cases, controversies, or even standing.

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts · Slate Audio

December 17, 202253m 11s

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Show Notes

The highest court in the land has ignored the need for standing, the trial record, and of course precedent this past year––and it matters. 

Host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation. They discuss Sherrilyn’s thought-provoking piece this month in the New York Review of Books, which opens out into a big-picture discussion of what this Supreme Court’s tendency to reach out and grab cases, and erase trial records, or fill in the blanks on standing, even on claims, means for whose voices are heard at the highest court in the land, and who merits consideration in its decisions.  

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Mark Joseph Stern to talk about oral arguments in the big elections case concerning the Independent State Legislature Theory (Moore v. Harper), and in the Oregon wedding website case that threatens civil rights public-accommodations law (303 Creative), plus the Washington right-wing party circuit’s special guest du jour, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 


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Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout.


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