Live from New York, it's Strict Scrutiny! Elie Mystal guest hosts with Kate and Melissa in front of a sold-out crowd at the Tribeca Festival to break down opinions, perform dramatic readings of the secret Alito recordings, and imagine some end-of-year yearbook pages for the justices. Plus, New York Magazine's Irin Carmon joins to talk about the practical effects of the Supreme Court's ruling in the mifepristone case.
To watch the full episode, complete with Martha-ritas and yearbook superlatives, head to our YouTube channel
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Several years ago, Christopher Rufo created a bogeyman that rallied the Right across the United States to seek bans in educational environments of "divisive concepts" such as Critical Race Theory. Since the entire effort was obviously... racist, the CRT bans themselves are just perfect for a CRT analysis, and Caroline Mala Corbin is here to lead us in a classic OA Deep Dive!
Caroline is a law professor at the University of Miami, focusing on the First Amendment's speech and religion clauses, reproductive justice, and the principle of equality that should run through it all. Be sure to check out the full article that was published recently in the UC Irvine Law Review!
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A bump stock is an attachment that converts a semi automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire as many as 800 rounds per minute - an intensity of gunfire matched by machine guns. The deadliest mass shooting carried out by a single shooter in US history - the October 2017 Las Vegas massacre - was enabled by a bump stock. On Friday, the US Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era bump stock ban introduced in the wake of that tragedy, in which 60 people were killed and hundreds more injured. Writing for a perfectly partisan six to three majority, gun enthusiast and ultra conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, decided the administration had overstepped its authority enacting the ban, and based the decision in a very technical, very weird reading of the statute. On this Opinionpalooza edition of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate’s senior writer on the courts and the law - Mark Stern, and David Pucino, Legal Director & Deputy Chief Counsel of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Together, they discuss the careful reasoning and research behind the ban, Justice Thomas’ self-appointment as a bigger gun expert than the agency charged with regulating guns - the ATF, how the gun industry used its own “amicus flotilla” from extreme groups to undermine the agency, and how the industry will use this roadmap again. But, please don’t despair entirely, you’ll also hear from David about hope for the future of gun safety rules.
This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. We kicked things off this year by explaining How Originalism Ate the Law. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!) Plus listeners have access to all our Opinionpalooza emergency episodes.
In an emergency episode, Leah and Melissa break down the Court's 6-3 decision to strike down a ban on bump stocks, attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at machine gun-like rates. It's bad, people.
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NY defense attorney Liz Skeen is here to break this decision down. Did the Court mess it up? Or is something more complicated and unexpected happening? The answer might surprise you.
Content note/trigger warning. For exactly what you'd think.
If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!
What do you call a case where there’s no standing and yet the lawsuit is still standing? FDA v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine AKA the mifepristone case, AKA the case that tried to raise a zombie law from the dead, and will now continue to roam the lower courts in search of a national abortion ban.
While the Comstock Act was not mentioned in the US Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to maintain the legal status quo on abortion pills, the overton window just got wedged open a little wider.
In this Opinionpalooza extra episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss SCOTUS’ abortion pill decision in depth and explore the consequences of a case that was doomed to fail before eventhis Supreme Court, but is also doomed to return to haunt us.
This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. We kicked things off this year by explaining How Originalism Ate the Law. The best way to support our work is by joining Slate Plus. (If you are already a member, consider a donation or merch!)
This episode is member-exclusive. 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.
The answer for T3BE27 is coming your way, and we launch our next Bar Prep question with Heather! Right now, the best place to play (if you aren't a patron...) is at reddit.com/r/openargs!
If you’d like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!
The Court is taking its time on major opinion, which gives us a moment to turn to other matters. Ethics remain in the news; the Court’s annual financial disclosures contain a number of surprises - maybe not so surprising. There’s a lot to say there, and we have some proposals to improve the situation. President Biden takes a position on a pardon, and we take a position on that. Our listeners continue to provide great input on an ongoing conversation, and we take it seriously. CLE is available after listening from podcast.njsba.com.
Melissa and Kate talk to Molly Duane, lawyer from the Center for Reproductive Rights, about the disheartening outcome in the Zurawski case in Texas. Plus, they recap recent opinions in cases about bankruptcy, tax law, and health care on Native American reservations.
To hear more about the Zurawski case, including the stories of the women who testified, listen to our episode "A Code of Misconduct" from November 2023
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
We begin in Florida with yet more of Judge Aileen Cannon's efforts to delay Donald Trump's federal case, including a demand for Jack Smith to be nicer to Trump's lawyers and her decision to allow non-parties to join the fun and make arguments in an upcoming hearing about whether Smith was properly appointed to prosecute Trump at all.
Hunter Biden's federal trial began this week in Delaware on charges relating to his purchase and possession of a gun which he owned for 11 days in 2018. Matt breaks down the history of this investigation, the charges, and how this case ended up going to trial before a quick time jump in which we return to review what we know one week into these proceedings. How does this trial compare to the one which concluded a week earlier with the conviction of a former President Donald Trump--and would these charges ever have been brought against someone whose last name wasn’t Biden?
