A February 28, 2026 episode of Slate’s legal podcast Amicus features former U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. in conversation with host Dahlia Lithwick about the Supreme Court’s tariff dispute and broader questions about executive power, including what the episode describes as the Justice Department’s shifting relationship with facts.
The Feb. 28, 2026 episode of Slate’s Amicus, titled “Chief Justice John Roberts’ take on tariffs,” features Slate courts writer Dahlia Lithwick interviewing Donald Verrilli Jr., who served as U.S. solicitor general under President Barack Obama and previously clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. in the 1980s.
In the episode description distributed via podcast platforms, the discussion centers on a Supreme Court tariff fight and what it suggests about limits on presidential power. The description says Lithwick and Verrilli discuss whether Chief Justice John Roberts is “at last” signaling skepticism about President Donald Trump’s policymaking, how the Justice Department’s handling of facts may affect its credibility, and what it can cost when the Court issues delayed or fractured opinions in major executive-power cases.
The episode description also says Verrilli reflects on his decades of Supreme Court litigation experience—spanning his Brennan clerkship, his government service during the Obama administration, and later arguments before the Court—and argues that confronting present-day rule-of-law pressures requires what it calls a “hard-nosed faith.”
The same description introduces Executive Dysfunction, described as a new newsletter from Slate’s jurisprudence team focused on under-the-radar legal developments tied to Trump’s actions and the legal system’s response.
Amicus is Slate’s podcast about the law and the nine Supreme Court justices, hosted by Lithwick.
