Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

The Supreme Court just wrapped one of its most consequential terms in decades—and Amicus brought together three heavyweight legal experts to break down the damage. Their conversation centers on the biggest themes of the recent term: Congress has been sidelined completely; the Court is the final arbiter of all things; hubris has become the methodology, and the midterms should worry us all. &nb...

The Supreme Court just wrapped the term with a blitz of extremely consequential decisions, and the smoke hasn’t cleared yet. (In fact, it’s looming like a dark storm cloud over our Fourth of July and America 250th festivities…) In this week’s episode, cohosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern focus on two of the term’s bleakest legacies: first, the court’s catastrophically bad use of history a...

It was a weird and wild ride as the Supreme Court handed down the last decisions of the term that started all the way back in October of 2025. We were so much younger then. After 58 argued cases and a steady, sneaky stream of shadow docket orders, the court issued its final four decisions Tuesday, and one justice was retired and unretired in short, confusing order.  The headline win: The cour...

The end is nigh! Or, the end of this Supreme Court term is nigh, at least.   On the second to last day of this term, the court’s right wingers delivered a sweeping ruling that will reshape the federal government for years to come. In Trump v. Slaughter , the conservative supermajority voted 6-3 to allow the president to fire members of independent regulatory agencies—overturning Humphrey...

Donald Trump ran for office threatening to use mass deportations, closed borders, and emergency wartime powers to “clean up” American immigration. On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority gifted him with two stunning victories in that crusade—effectively reshaping life for more than a million people living in the country with temporary protected status, or TPS, and forcing asylum...

In this exclusive Opinionpalooza extra, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern take stock of today’s truly horrendous decisions handed down by a right-wing Supreme Court supermajority that’s marching in perfect lockstep on immigration, gun rights, and almost everything else. Dahlia and Mark sort through the brutalizing, even lethal implications for asylum seekers and more than 1 million recipients...

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling this week in United States v. Hemani , holding that a marijuana user cannot be stripped of his Second Amendment right to own a firearm simply because he sometimes uses cannabis. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, leaning heavily on the founders' own well-documented love of alcohol to argue that responsible substance use has never histo...

The Second Reconstruction is being dismantled piece by piece, and this past month has seen that project attain terminal velocity. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick talks with Stanford law professor and leading civil rights lawyer and scholar Pamela S Karlan, about a series of quick-fire moves from the high court and the Trump administration that, taken together, reveal a rapid disasse...

One of the challenges of modern legal journalism is recalling that case law, doctrine, and Supreme Court decisions aren’t a complete picture, without including the lived realities of the people whose lives and communities are often turned upside down by changes in the law. On Tuesday night, the Supreme Court’s far-right flank vastly expanded its holding in Louisiana v. Callais to make it harder, i...

The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices seem to be in a big rush to dismantle voting rights for non-white people. On Tuesday night, the right-wing supermajority handed down an unsigned shadow docket order that greenlights racial gerrymandering in Alabama and dramatically undermines voting rights protections nationwide. In this Opinionpalooza bonus episode exclusively for Slate Plus membe...

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate’s dynamic legal duo, preview the final weeks of the Supreme Court term. It’s a “three-ring circus”: the merits docket, the shadow docket, and the justices’ increasingly public intramural snipings and gripes. Dahlia and Mark take a look back at the major decisions the court has issued so far this term on global tariffs, conversion therapy for LGBTQ minor...

Donald Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" settlement fund has stunned legal experts—not just because it's corrupt, but because of how skillfully and transparently it is designed to protect the Trump Family and reward loyalists. On this week's Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick brings together two of the sharpest observers of Trump-era lawlessness to map exactly what this is and why it matters. J.P. Co...

This week on Amicus, hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern break down a whirlwind stretch of reproductive rights legal battles, from the Fifth Circuit's sweeping nationwide ban on telehealth medication abortion, to the Supreme Court's emergency order blocking it. Madiba Dennie (Deputy Editor, Balls and Strikes; and author of The Originalism Trap) joins to explain what the furious dissents fr...

Over the last few years, there’s been an undeniable uptick in threats against American judges and their families: they’ve been doxxed, swatted, even killed. Many jurists are not all that comfortable having conversations around these threats. This reluctance to respond publicly is understandable, but it’s also depriving us of a critical perspective from the very people this affects. This week on Am...

Dahlia Lithwick reviews what has been an “exceptionally bad week” for American democracy. Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade explains why the charges against former FBI director James Comey, rooted in the claim that he threatened to kill President Trump – via the medium of seashells on Instagram – are unlikely to stick, no matter how hard Trump’s Acting (and actively auditioning) Attorney Genera...

On Wednesday, Justice Samuel Alito delivered the latest, probably lethal  blow in the Supreme Court’s decades-long campaign against multi-racial democracy in America, with a  6-3 majority opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v Callais . In this special extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick talks with Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the Le...

As journalists, a-listers, and some of the most vociferous critics of journalism from  the Trump administration gather for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Dahlia Lithwick tackles the president and his allies’ tactics to chill the press and undermine the First Amendment.  In conversation with Guardian columnist and former New York Times public editor, Margaret Sullivan she explore...

Hungary’s autocratic creep was turned back at the ballot box last weekend, in a stark rebuke to the forces of illiberalism and to the American conservatives who invested so heavily in former Hungarian leader Viktor Orban’s mission. It’s good news. But it’s not the end of the story. It behoves pro-democracy forces in the United States to move past the example of democratic resilience in Hungary to...

The events of the past week have revealed a terrifying disconnect between the constitutional remedies available to us and the gravity of the threats posed by an utterly unfit President with his finger on the nuclear button. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick turns to two experts on impeachment and the 25th Amendment: Rep. Jamie Raskin, and Professor Michael Gerhardt. Each has been at the very...

It was a rough week for two of the top lawyers in the Trump administration, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer pair ... Ever since Donald Trump’s return to office and the installation of his (second choice) Attorney General, we’ve been tracking the toxic combination of incompetence and cruelty at the Department of Justice. Pam Bondi, Trump’s hand-picked attack dog for Attorney General, finally reac...

This bonus episode of Amicus, with full access exclusive for Slate Plus members, is a comprehensive exploration of Wednesday’s arguments in the Trump v. Barbara case on birthright citizenship. This landmark case challenges the executive order aimed at denying citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders, potentially affecting millions of individual...

On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick checks in with Protect Democracy co-founder Ian Bassin about the United States’ speedy retreat from democracy, and how lawyers seeking to protect the constitution are adapting their strategies for Trump 2.0. While Trump’s second term is following an authoritarian playbook, some courts are acting as speed bumps, while others (we’re looking at you, SCOTUS), are...

This Supreme Court term has seen threats against the Justices – from the President, a slew of game-changing shadow docket opinions, justices sparring in public, and some of the most consequential cases of our lifetimes. If you’re feeling a little disoriented by it all, join Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern on this week’s show for a clearer understanding of what’s going on at One, First Street...

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara . It’s still somewhat unbelievable that the high court will entertain arguments in favor of gutting an utterly clear constitutional commitment. Nonetheless, our motto on Amicus is “legal knowledge is power , ” and in this case, historical understanding of legal knowledge … is power. On this week’...

On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick explores the rise of Christian nationalism in America, its influence on the Supreme Court , and the implications for democracy and civil rights. Featuring Rachel Laser, CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, their discussion delves into the historical roots, recent legal cases, and the ongoing fight to uphold the separation of church and...