False Friends of the Court: Why Every Rightwing Think Tank Has an Amicus Program, with Senator Whitehouse

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I have been wondering for months what possible sense it makes for every right-wing think tank to have an amicus program. I mean...is any judge really surprised to learn that the Cato Institute is against regulation? But these are not folks who spend money on things for no reason, and the presence and size of amicus programs at conservative "public interest" law firms and think tanks have been growing exponentially over the years, so I reached out to the only person I've ever seen mention this in public: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He had all the answers I was looking for and then some.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. As you've heard me say a few times now,
0:06.2	we launched a spin-off podcast called Damages. It's following all of the climate litigation
0:13.7	that's happening all over the world right now. There are over 1800 climate cases in courts
0:20.8	all over the world at the moment. So obviously we're not keeping tabs on every single one of them,
0:26.4	but we are trying to follow quite a few. And we're doing a season right now that turned out to be
0:33.3	pretty timely. We're explaining a lot of different kind of ins and outs of the legal system
0:40.1	and the various strategies that are being used both to try to further climate action and to try
0:46.5	to block it. So go check that out, especially as we all prepare for the ruling in West Virginia versus
0:56.3	EPA. I'm still hoping the court will say we don't actually need to rule on this. There's no problem
1:02.4	that we can solve here, but you know, probably wishful thinking. At any rate, today's episode of
1:10.8	Damages is one that I think is so important I wanted to bring it to you in full here. It is about
1:18.1	Amicus briefs. I know sounds very legal and wonky, but these are briefs that are prepared by
1:26.6	lawyers who are quote unquote friends of the court. This idea came about, you know, in the days when
1:34.5	the internet didn't exist and libraries weren't even all that accessible and the court could look
1:40.7	to experts in different fields or, you know, folks who had worked on similar cases for insight into
1:48.0	how to rule on a particular case. I've been noticing a huge increase in these. I've also noticed
1:54.4	that lots of different right wing organizations have very well funded Amicus brief programs,
2:00.5	and I've been wondering why that is because, you know, is any judge really surprised to hear that
2:07.2	the Cato Institute is anti-regulation? Probably not. I wanted to figure out what was going on here,
2:13.2	and so I talked to the person who knows the most about it and has been trying to really get on
2:19.3	top of this issue, and that is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from the state of Rhode Island. He joins
2:25.2	me in this episode today to explain why there's been an increase, why that matters, and how it impacts
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