Take, for instance, her thoughts on Dobbs<\/em>, the case that put her on the Court to the extent she\u2019s only there because Republicans wanted a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg when the time came to strike down Roe<\/em>:<\/p>\n Barrett writes that the \u201ccomplicated moral debate\u201d about abortion distinguishes it from other rights more traditionally recognized as fundamental that enjoy broad public support, including \u201cthe rights to marry, have sex, procreate, use contraception.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Who wants to break the news to her about the nation\u2019s traditional \u201cbroad public support\u201d for the right to marry and use contraceptives? <\/p>\n We don\u2019t know from the snippets in the CNN story if Barrett goes on to provide any evidence for this claim, but based on her record writing opinions, we\u2019ll safely assume she does not. If she did, she would have to deal with the fact that abortion was MORE BROADLY POPULAR when she voted to strike it down (62%-36%<\/a> approval) than interracial marriage was in 1967. A mere 5% of whites TOTAL <\/a>supported interracial marriage in the decade before the Loving<\/em> decision. In fact, interracial marriage didn\u2019t enjoy majority support in the United States until the LATE 1990s<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, Barrett doesn\u2019t really care about a constitutional right being \u201cdeeply rooted in US history.\u201d That\u2019s all puffery from an intellectually bankrupt movement. If \u201cthe rights to marry, have sex, procreate, use contraception\u201d remain constitutionally protected, it will be because they\u2019re convenient for her personal political mission\u2026 for now. There\u2019s no coherent argument for upholding these rights if she honestly believes that constitutional rights are truly contingent upon popular support. <\/p>\n When Alito strikes down Roe<\/em> and make asides about coming for marriage equality next, it\u2019s at least honest. So what\u2019s Barrett even trying to accomplish with this passage? Everyone who has ever interacted with a Federalist Society chapter knows exactly what she\u2019s going for.<\/p>\n Every Federalist Society happy hour has at least one student who gets off on telling people that they aren\u2019t really<\/em> in favor of mass suffering, they just care so much about judicial restraint. They\u2019ll take every opportunity to sigh about \u201chard cases\u201d and claim their \u201cpersonal sympathies\u201d lie elsewhere, and then cast the deciding vote to crush people anyway. As though it\u2019s the height of nobility to gloss over cruelty with bargain brand stoicism. <\/p>\n Apparently, Barrett wants to cast herself in this lazy, tired role as the reluctant executioner. These are the kids who go out of their way to separate themselves from the Alito trolls planning \u201cUpside Down Flag Day\u201d (catered by Chick-fil-a), hoping to convince the rest of the class that \u2014 deep down \u2014 they care about women\u2019s rights too, it\u2019s just that the courts aren\u2019t the proper<\/em> vehicle to protect them. Maybe, if the rest of the students are gullible enough to buy that, the reluctant conservative can still go to all the parties!<\/p>\n It\u2019s legal philosophy as self-flagellation cosplay.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all bullshit of course. If these people sincerely believed that they\u2019re just against involving the courts in an issue properly left to Congress, they\u2019d go home and vote for Bernie Sanders or something. But they don\u2019t. They strike down voting rights and turn around to vote for legislators pushing voter suppression laws. It\u2019s all a con.<\/p>\n After the\u00a0Dobbs\u00a0<\/em>ruling was\u00a0issued in June 2022\u00a0<\/a>and Barrett was on a family vacation, a brother-in-law arrived with a copy of the decision, saying he was following the justice\u2019s mantra to \u201cread the opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDobbs did not top the list of things I wanted to talk about on vacation,\u201d Barrett writes, referring to court tensions on the case, an investigation over a leaked draft, security threats, and protests at her house.<\/p>\n Still, she says, she hugged him.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Oh no! I\u2019m sure Chief Justice Warren always dreaded having to explain the \u201ctough choices\u201d involved in all those civil rights cases. Justices actually love<\/em> talking about this stuff, especially if they can cast themselves as the heroes of their own fight for justice. Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas plan whole vacations to talk about their opinions with the highest bidders!<\/p>\n In preparing a memoir, it\u2019s not just what the author writes, but also what stories they choose to include in the book. This anecdote about her brother-in-law doesn\u2019t add much, but she felt compelled to include it to demonstrate\u2026 what? That she is \u2013 at least occasionally \u2013 self-aware enough that she\u2019s making up indefensible bullshit that she squirms when talking to her own family about what she\u2019s doing to the country? <\/p>\n On the subject of conveying meaning through editorial choices, one thing I\u2019ve always appreciated about Joan Biskupic\u2019s writing is how she can deliver very pointed criticism even within CNN\u2019s stricter journalistic guidelines. She can\u2019t point out \u2014 like some outlets can<\/a> \u2014 that Barrett\u2019s infamous \u201cread the opinion\u201d remark is condescending nonsense that even the justice can\u2019t possibly believe. But Biskupic can juxtapose the brother-in-law story by immediately cutting to a reminder that Barrett is neck deep in the Supreme Court\u2019s shadow docket shenanigans.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as litigants continue filing emergency applications, the Court must continue deciding them,\u201d Barrett writes, minimizing the justices\u2019 control of the situation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Except one way \u2014 indeed, the proper way based on hundreds of years of Anglo-American jurisprudence \u2014 is to resolve the petitions by maintaining the status quo in advance of trial. The Supreme Court could respond to emergency petitions seeking a stay on arbitrarily and capriciously blowing up millions and millions of dollars worth of government research, setting back projects that could take years to fully restaff, by\u2026 granting the stay. Instead, and without explanation, the majority has greenlit the administration\u2019s violations of decades worth of administrative law while Barrett shrugs and declared \u201cwhat else could we do?\u201d<\/p>\n Though, in Barrett\u2019s defense, maybe she\u2019s better off not explaining her opinions. She recently attempted to counter a Justice Jackson dissent, resulting in a pouting concurrence that would\u2019ve failed 1L legal writing at every law school in the land. \u201cWe will not dwell on Justice Jackson\u2019s argument\u2026<\/a>\u201d she wrote before a conclusory and unsupported claim of \u201cnuh uh\u201d in legalese. As a rhetorical strategy, \u201cwe will not dwell\u201d simultaneously poisons the well and preemptively lowers expectations for her own attempted response. A more direct translation was \u201cI cannot defend the majority\u2019s opinion so don\u2019t expect to see any supporting evidence here, but, like, seriously, Jackson\u2019s crazy and I refuse to dignify her arguments with a response.\u201d But it was reluctant executioner rearing her head again, as the crux of her lament was that Jackson suggested courts have the power to protect rights \u2014 and courts simply aren\u2019t the right actor to do<\/em> anything. <\/p>\n At least until there\u2019s a Democratic president.<\/p>\n But for now, Barrett has a brand to sell and that brand is FedSoc\u2019s sad Hamlet: reluctant, powerless, oh-so-burdened. She wants you to know that she\u2019s not a troll taking aim at every key precedent of the last 70 years from Griswold<\/em> to Brown<\/em> \u2014 she\u2019s going to do it anyway, but she wants you to know she\u2019ll feel really bad about it. She\u2019s just the handmaiden of cruelty.<\/p>\n But she\u2019s not reluctant. She\u2019s not helpless. She\u2019s just as much of a troll, but she still wants to be invited to your party.<\/p>\n The post Amy Coney Barrett\u2019s Fetish For Phony Reluctance<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Amy Coney Barrett has written a book. She\u2019s the latest in a long line of Supreme Court justices supplementing their public service salary with millions of dollars \u2014 reportedly a $2 million advance worth, to be precise \u2014 despite her meager record as a milquetoast functionary for a reactionary project that she doesn\u2019t seem to understand.<\/p>\n And that seems to be the identity Barrett wants to cultivate. Diving into a copy of the manuscript, CNN\u2019s Joan Biskupic pulls out a series of passages<\/a> where Barrett tries to drape herself in the role of a powerless cog in the judicial process. Whether she\u2019s being honest with herself or this is just a bit is up for debate, but the memoir sections reveal Barrett is certainly not the proto-David Souter that liberals imagined her to be over the summer.<\/p>\n Take, for instance, her thoughts on Dobbs<\/em>, the case that put her on the Court to the extent she\u2019s only there because Republicans wanted a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg when the time came to strike down Roe<\/em>:<\/p>\n Barrett writes that the \u201ccomplicated moral debate\u201d about abortion distinguishes it from other rights more traditionally recognized as fundamental that enjoy broad public support, including \u201cthe rights to marry, have sex, procreate, use contraception.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Who wants to break the news to her about the nation\u2019s traditional \u201cbroad public support\u201d for the right to marry and use contraceptives? <\/p>\n We don\u2019t know from the snippets in the CNN story if Barrett goes on to provide any evidence for this claim, but based on her record writing opinions, we\u2019ll safely assume she does not. If she did, she would have to deal with the fact that abortion was MORE BROADLY POPULAR when she voted to strike it down (62%-36%<\/a> approval) than interracial marriage was in 1967. A mere 5% of whites TOTAL <\/a>supported interracial marriage in the decade before the Loving<\/em> decision. In fact, interracial marriage didn\u2019t enjoy majority support in the United States until the LATE 1990s<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, Barrett doesn\u2019t really care about a constitutional right being \u201cdeeply rooted in US history.\u201d That\u2019s all puffery from an intellectually bankrupt movement. If \u201cthe rights to marry, have sex, procreate, use contraception\u201d remain constitutionally protected, it will be because they\u2019re convenient for her personal political mission\u2026 for now. There\u2019s no coherent argument for upholding these rights if she honestly believes that constitutional rights are truly contingent upon popular support. <\/p>\n When Alito strikes down Roe<\/em> and make asides about coming for marriage equality next, it\u2019s at least honest. So what\u2019s Barrett even trying to accomplish with this passage? Everyone who has ever interacted with a Federalist Society chapter knows exactly what she\u2019s going for.<\/p>\n Every Federalist Society happy hour has at least one student who gets off on telling people that they aren\u2019t really<\/em> in favor of mass suffering, they just care so much about judicial restraint. They\u2019ll take every opportunity to sigh about \u201chard cases\u201d and claim their \u201cpersonal sympathies\u201d lie elsewhere, and then cast the deciding vote to crush people anyway. As though it\u2019s the height of nobility to gloss over cruelty with bargain brand stoicism. <\/p>\n Apparently, Barrett wants to cast herself in this lazy, tired role as the reluctant executioner. These are the kids who go out of their way to separate themselves from the Alito trolls planning \u201cUpside Down Flag Day\u201d (catered by Chick-fil-a), hoping to convince the rest of the class that \u2014 deep down \u2014 they care about women\u2019s rights too, it\u2019s just that the courts aren\u2019t the proper<\/em> vehicle to protect them. Maybe, if the rest of the students are gullible enough to buy that, the reluctant conservative can still go to all the parties!<\/p>\n It\u2019s legal philosophy as self-flagellation cosplay.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all bullshit of course. If these people sincerely believed that they\u2019re just against involving the courts in an issue properly left to Congress, they\u2019d go home and vote for Bernie Sanders or something. But they don\u2019t. They strike down voting rights and turn around to vote for legislators pushing voter suppression laws. It\u2019s all a con.<\/p>\n After the\u00a0Dobbs\u00a0<\/em>ruling was\u00a0issued in June 2022\u00a0<\/a>and Barrett was on a family vacation, a brother-in-law arrived with a copy of the decision, saying he was following the justice\u2019s mantra to \u201cread the opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDobbs did not top the list of things I wanted to talk about on vacation,\u201d Barrett writes, referring to court tensions on the case, an investigation over a leaked draft, security threats, and protests at her house.<\/p>\n Still, she says, she hugged him.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Oh no! I\u2019m sure Chief Justice Warren always dreaded having to explain the \u201ctough choices\u201d involved in all those civil rights cases. Justices actually love<\/em> talking about this stuff, especially if they can cast themselves as the heroes of their own fight for justice. Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas plan whole vacations to talk about their opinions with the highest bidders!<\/p>\n In preparing a memoir, it\u2019s not just what the author writes, but also what stories they choose to include in the book. This anecdote about her brother-in-law doesn\u2019t add much, but she felt compelled to include it to demonstrate\u2026 what? That she is \u2013 at least occasionally \u2013 self-aware enough that she\u2019s making up indefensible bullshit that she squirms when talking to her own family about what she\u2019s doing to the country? <\/p>\n On the subject of conveying meaning through editorial choices, one thing I\u2019ve always appreciated about Joan Biskupic\u2019s writing is how she can deliver very pointed criticism even within CNN\u2019s stricter journalistic guidelines. She can\u2019t point out \u2014 like some outlets can<\/a> \u2014 that Barrett\u2019s infamous \u201cread the opinion\u201d remark is condescending nonsense that even the justice can\u2019t possibly believe. But Biskupic can juxtapose the brother-in-law story by immediately cutting to a reminder that Barrett is neck deep in the Supreme Court\u2019s shadow docket shenanigans.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as litigants continue filing emergency applications, the Court must continue deciding them,\u201d Barrett writes, minimizing the justices\u2019 control of the situation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Except one way \u2014 indeed, the proper way based on hundreds of years of Anglo-American jurisprudence \u2014 is to resolve the petitions by maintaining the status quo in advance of trial. The Supreme Court could respond to emergency petitions seeking a stay on arbitrarily and capriciously blowing up millions and millions of dollars worth of government research, setting back projects that could take years to fully restaff, by\u2026 granting the stay. Instead, and without explanation, the majority has greenlit the administration\u2019s violations of decades worth of administrative law while Barrett shrugs and declared \u201cwhat else could we do?\u201d<\/p>\n Though, in Barrett\u2019s defense, maybe she\u2019s better off not explaining her opinions. She recently attempted to counter a Justice Jackson dissent, resulting in a pouting concurrence that would\u2019ve failed 1L legal writing at every law school in the land. \u201cWe will not dwell on Justice Jackson\u2019s argument\u2026<\/a>\u201d she wrote before a conclusory and unsupported claim of \u201cnuh uh\u201d in legalese. As a rhetorical strategy, \u201cwe will not dwell\u201d simultaneously poisons the well and preemptively lowers expectations for her own attempted response. A more direct translation was \u201cI cannot defend the majority\u2019s opinion so don\u2019t expect to see any supporting evidence here, but, like, seriously, Jackson\u2019s crazy and I refuse to dignify her arguments with a response.\u201d But it was reluctant executioner rearing her head again, as the crux of her lament was that Jackson suggested courts have the power to protect rights \u2014 and courts simply aren\u2019t the right actor to do<\/em> anything. <\/p>\n At least until there\u2019s a Democratic president.<\/p>\n But for now, Barrett has a brand to sell and that brand is FedSoc\u2019s sad Hamlet: reluctant, powerless, oh-so-burdened. She wants you to know that she\u2019s not a troll taking aim at every key precedent of the last 70 years from Griswold<\/em> to Brown<\/em> \u2014 she\u2019s going to do it anyway, but she wants you to know she\u2019ll feel really bad about it. She\u2019s just the handmaiden of cruelty.<\/p>\n But she\u2019s not reluctant. She\u2019s not helpless. She\u2019s just as much of a troll, but she still wants to be invited to your party.<\/p>\n Amy Coney Barrett has written a book. She\u2019s the latest in a long line of Supreme Court justices supplementing their public service salary with millions of dollars \u2014 reportedly a $2 million advance worth, to be precise \u2014 despite her meager record as a milquetoast functionary for a reactionary project that she doesn\u2019t seem to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/10\/GettyImages-1229052145-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
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\n![\"Headshot\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/Headshot-300x200.jpg?resize=189%2C126&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"