The Washington Post reports today what any user of anti-social media would readily discern: that the Court’s 5-4 decision on Wednesday denying the Trump administration’s request that it block a district-court order “unleashed a torrent of vitriol from the president’s supporters largely aimed at a single justice—Amy Coney Barrett.”
I’m racing to get things done before I head away on vacation today, so I’ll just say that I thoroughly agree with this excellent Corner post yesterday by Charlie Cooke in defense of Justice Barrett. One excerpt:
Barrett is a terrific justice, and, in most cases, those who are criticizing her are forgetting the proper role of the judiciary…. Barrett is extremely intelligent, and she has a coherent and thoughtful approach toward the law. There is precisely no evidence that she is motivated by hostility (or obsequiousness) toward Donald Trump or that she’s a coward or a squish, or that she’s “evolving” in office toward a living constitutionalist (read: completely made-up) position.
Barrett voted with the majority in overturning Roe, in killing affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., and in upholding the Second Amendment in Bruen (she has some quibbles with the methodology in the lattermost case, as is her right). She’s been terrific on issues concerning separation of powers and freedom of religion, and on protecting the authority of the legislature. She is a solid originalist, and, on that score, she is better than all but a handful of the justices who have served in the modern era….
To … complain that the problem with Barrett is that she does not automatically vote with the Trump administration strikes me as corrupt. Barrett is an excellent justice who takes her job seriously. Sometimes, her attachment to her prerequisites is going to benefit the team that appointed her, and sometimes it is not. Which is the whole point of the judiciary — or at least ought to be.
I’m a great admirer of Justice Alito and the other justices in the dissent, and it might well be that they are right. But not one in a thousand of Barrett’s attackers has read a word of the competing briefs on the Trump administration’s request. Nor, given the hasty nature of emergency proceedings, do we have the benefit of a response from the majority to Alito’s dissent. Further, there is no reason to think that the majority’s order is its final word on this matter. (Read Dan McLaughlin, Andy McCarthy, and Jack Goldsmith for more.)