Strict Scrutiny

I love explaining to people who ask me what originalism is by telling them that originalism is the world's best lawyer joke.

I feel like a lot of us have known for a while that originalism is trash.

what really gave me the impetus that sort of pushed me over the edge and like, OK, I need to say something about this at length and for a hopefully mass audience was when the Dobbs decision was leaked.

they are really going to use this notion that we can't have rights now, that we didn't have then to chain women to the past and revoke our constitutional rights.

all versions of originalism can be boiled down to a central thesis...which is the idea that the meaning of the Constitution is fixed in time.

What Melissa just outlined is essentially the premise of our current Strict Scrutiny Summer Read Until Justice Be Done, America's first civil rights movement. By Kate Mazur, a professor of history and the Board of Visitors Professor at Northwestern University.

In this Pulitzer nominated book, Mazur traces an underexplored period in the fight for black civil rights, that is the period following the American Revolution and leading up to the American Civil War.

there was an ongoing debate about whether and how to vindicate the civil rights of free blacks in these jurisdictions.

And so you have on that petitioning side is like that the process of creating the petitions and sending them in is also a mobilizing process.

The book is called Until Justice Be Done America's first civil rights movement and it is available at all major booksellers including bookshop.org a strict scrutiny sponsor.

On April 5th, 2021, I hosted a conversation with Ian Milheuser of Vox about his new book, The Agenda, how a Republican Supreme Court is reshaping America.

Yet your book sketches an almost dystopian future in which these gains are ephemeral, the calm before the storm.

Ian's book The Agenda How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America Is Available At Most Popular Book Outlets.

It's like the MST 3000 of The Trump Indictments with you and Andrew in the backs of your heads just like giving us running commentary.

So we're trying to contextualize trying to explain and this book is going to come out in the end of February right before the first trial is supposed to start.

They include a book called Anti-Racist Baby by Ibram Kendi. And there are portions of this book that I find really quite remarkable. One portion of the book says babies are taught to be racist or anti-racist. There is no neutrality.

Another portion of the book, they recommend to babies confess when being racist.

But first I am excited to welcome to the podcast Michael Waldman, author of the new book The Supermajority.

the full title of which is The Supermajority, How the Supreme Court Divided America.

Well, I'm really excited to talk about this great new book with you.

So as the title suggests, the book details the rise of the current Supreme Court, which is now under the control of a rock-solid supermajority of rock-ribbed conservatives.

and The Second Amendment, A Biography, which is one of the best popular books out there on The Second Amendment.

Listen to "What's next in a post-Roe world," our episode with Diana Greene Foster, author of The Turnaway Study

The turn away study whose author Diana Green Foster we've had on the show is one of the many refutations of that especially when you compare outcomes in terms of mental health.

Ari is also writing a book called Minority Rule, The Right Wing Attack on the Will of the People and the Fight to Resist It, which sounds like something both we and our listeners are going to be super interested in when it is out.

We're really really excited about the Minority Rule Your Fourth coming book so we'd love to have you back to talk about that book What's the public is it coming out next year is that the plan? April 2024 is the publication date

and he said because of you John David Remnick tells that story in his book The Promise but I just think people don't really think a lot about what was behind the voting rights act and how much it meant for so many people...

But I would also say, and I spoke with Leah Wright Rigger, who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and wrote the great book The Loneliness of the Black Republican.

Lililene McEwen's book is called DC Unmasked and Undressed. So give you a little flavor.

And so, you know, you ask me like what did, what were the revelations? I mean, the thing is about the depths of the self loathing and self pity of Clarence Thomas.

historical fiction sells if you look at, you know, New York Times bestseller lists. Outlander. You know, the New York Times bestseller claims, you know, like always up there.

If you haven't read it, there was a great book by David Enrich called Servants of the Damned and it's all about Jones Day and a couple of other law firms but mostly Jones Day.

Justice Sotomayor had written the majority opinion. Justice Kagan wrote a dissent and the dissent described the majority's made up sentence as proving the dissent's point and encouraged readers to quote pick up a journal or a book or for that matter a Supreme Court opinion to see why the dissent was right.

And I don't know about you but I used to love that book, The Love Languages. Did you ever read this book about five love languages? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay. Like words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts. I think Justice Thomas' love language is like private school tuition or maybe just cold hard cash. Or is that Crowe's love language?

I read that Kermit Hall book, The History of the Supreme Court one summer when I was in high school. I thought that was super fun. It's basically like an encyclopedia with little entries that are alphabetized.