From Advisory Opinions, Judge Patrick Bumatay interviews Justice Amy Coney Barrett at SCOTUSblog’s On the Merits summit at the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center: here.
RELATED: In the Washington Free Beacon, Ed Whelan reviews Justice Barrett’s new book: Justice Barrett Makes Her Case. From the introduction:
Barrett marks her fifth anniversary as a justice later this month. During her tenure, Scalia’s legacy has already flourished far beyond what seemed possible when he died. Consider some major examples. Over 30 years ago, Scalia vigorously dissented from the Court’s refusal to overturn Roe v. Wade. In her first full term on the Court, Barrett provided the decisive fifth vote to restore policymaking on abortion to the democratic processes. Scalia condemned the Court’s allowance of racial preferences in university admissions. Barrett was part of the majority that ruled racial preferences are impermissible. On the Establishment Clause, Scalia lamented the Court’s failure to repudiate the so-called Lemon test, which he colorfully compared to “some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.” Three years ago, a majority that included Barrett pronounced the death of Lemon.
It’s no surprise that the political Left isn’t happy with Barrett. What’s far more puzzling are the vitriolic attacks that some on the Right have leveled against her. To be sure, Barrett has occasionally parted ways with some of her conservative colleagues on how far and how fast the Court should move to correct unsound precedents and to reverse bad lower-court decisions. Differences in temperament and experience can lead to such divisions among like-minded justices, and there is plenty of room for reasonable disagreement in this realm.
Barrett directs her new book, Listening to the Law, to the general public rather than to her critics on either side of the ideological spectrum. In clear prose with occasional gentle humor and homespun analogies, she provides a very accessible primer on how the Court operates and on how she understands her role. …
(Via Bench Memos.)
Posted at 6:23 AM