I’m grateful to have been a guest last week on Yale law professor Akhil Amar’s “Amarica’s Constitution” podcast. The podcast was recorded on the day that the Court decided the Texas Heartbeat Act cases, and much of my discussion with Professor Amar (roughly in the 32-59 minute range) is about the Court’s rulings in those cases. You can listen to the podcast here.
The podcast is titled “The Court Astonishes,” and the promotional summary states that “the opinions contained sentences that shocked Professor Amar.” I’ll highlight that those shocking—“astonishingly troubling,” as Amar puts it—sentences were entirely in the dissents of the Chief Justice and of Justice Sotomayor and involved their mistaken invocations of Marbury v. Madison and of the pernicious myth of judicial supremacy. The listener will discover that Amar’s assessment is deeply compatible with my recent posts on “Sotomayor’s ‘Analogous Sentiments’” and “John Roberts vs. John Roberts on Marbury and Judicial Supremacy.”
I’ll also highlight Amar’s preceding podcast episode titled “Roe Roe Roe: Stare and Stenchy,” in which Amar strongly criticizes the stare decisis contentions made by the liberal justices during the oral argument two weeks ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “Read more!,” he exhorts Justice Sotomayor, and learn about Lincoln and Dred Scott.