In Defense of Justice Barrett

The thunder on the right directed toward Justice Amy Coney Barrett is something to behold. One of President Trump’s legal advisers, Mike Davis, calls her “a rattled law professor” and “weak and timid,” our A.R. Hoffman reports. Legal sage Joshua Blackman suggests that she resign. In a particularly nasty jibe, some activists ridicule the justice as a “DEI appointee.” One critic posted online a photo of her family, including two adopted Haitian children. The vitriol stems from concerns, as these critics see it, that Justice Barrett is insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump. Never mind that at her confirmation hearing she spoke of being lashed to the mast of the Constitution. Yet will the left’s crusade during the Biden years against the high court’s legitimacy — joined by attacks on the integrity of the members of its conservative majority — be reprised under President Trump by the right?The condemnation of Justice Barrett crested this week in the aftermath of the high court’s ruling against Mr. Trump in a dispute over federal foreign aid spending. Mr. Trump, under the aegis of the Department of Government Efficiency, had sought to freeze an array of pending federal payments. In the case of some $2 billion in already-authorized State Department spending, the high court largely upheld a district judge’s demand that the funds be released.That five to four ruling in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition was noteworthy in part because it arrayed Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett, along with the court’s three liberal justices, against four of their conservative colleagues. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote a dissent against the decision, allowed that he was “stunned” by the majority’s action. Justice Barrett in turn was scored by Mr. Trump’s backers for “apostasy,” as Politico put it. She “had already managed to get on the wrong side of” Mr. Trump’s camarilla “by siding against Jan. 6 defendants last June,” Politico adds. That’s when the Nine nixed President Biden’s use of a law against accounting fraud to prosecute some Capitol rioters. Justice Barrett, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. The law, they reckoned, allowed prosecuting rioters for “obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding.”That issue was mooted, in the event, by Mr. Trump’s pardon. Before that, Politico says, Justice Barrett’s concurrence in Trump v. U.S. “was seen as heresy.” She had singled out some of Mr. Trump’s alleged misconduct after the 2020 election as falling outside of his duties as president, and therefore fair game for prosecution. Yet Justice Barrett’s most egregious offense, per her critics, was her apparent “disdain” for Mr. Trump at Tuesday’s speech in Congress.Politico’s Kyle Cheney calls that petty criticism “a sign of just how much the MAGA right measures officials in fealty rather than principle.” He also points to “frustration among the MAGA faithful about their inability to cow the courts the way they can often spook Congress.” Yet could the personal attacks on Justice Barrett prefigure a broader attack on the high court’s legitimacy — or even the prospect of defying an order by the Nine?That warning could be premature, despite what Politico calls “talk among Trump allies about ignoring court orders.” Mr. Cheney cautions that “such talk has not been endorsed by the White House.” Yet, he adds, “every time we see an adverse ruling, the drumbeat becomes a clamor.” A similar mentality is afoot in talk of impeaching federal judges. It all reflects the same spirit animating liberal denials of the court’s “legitimacy” if it ruled against the left.Feature, say, Speaker Pelosi’s claim that the high court was “on trial” over its handling of the presidential immunity case. Or mark Justice Sotomayor’s detecting the “stench” of politics at the court, or Senator Schumer’s warning that the justices had “released the whirlwind.” Or Senator Whitehouse’s Javert-like crusade against Justice Clarence Thomas’s personal integrity. Talk of that ilk is no better when it comes from the right.

In Defense of Justice Barrett

In Defense of Justice Barrett

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