Judge Amy Coney Barrett has lost the support of Notre Dame’s librarians.
She will never recover from this.
“BREAKING,” MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter breathlessly reported Tuesday afternoon, “Eighty-eight of Amy Coney Barrett’s faculty colleagues at Notre Dame have released a letter saying she should withdraw from consideration for the Supreme Court.”
As of this writing, more than 16,000 social media users have shared Alter’s breaking news alert. The faculty letter even came up Tuesday afternoon during Day Two of the Senate’s confirmation hearings for Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Though the open letter does indeed sound newsworthy, it is important to note upfront that not a single Notre Dame Law School faculty member signed it. Not a single professor or former work colleague. Indeed, the petition boasts of signatures from basically every department but the one that is relevant to Barrett’s qualifications and her nomination to the Supreme Court.
The letter bears the signatures of seven librarians, four gender studies professors, four peace studies professors, and six professors of anthropology. The letter includes signatures from Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, its East Asian languages and cultures department, its music department, and its Center for University Advising, among others. But the one department whose members had any sort of daily and professional interactions with Barrett, the one where she studied and then later taught law, is conspicuously absent. As if this did not already undercut the seriousness of the petition, there is the content of what it says. In a word, it is laughable.
“It is vital that you issue a public statement calling for a halt to your nomination process until after the November presidential election,” the group states, listing three reasons for why Barrett should withdraw.
First, the group says, the “rushed nature of your nomination process, which you certainly recognize as an exercise in raw power politics, may effectively deprive the American people of a voice in selecting the next Supreme Court justice.”
They add, “We ask that you honor the democratic process and insist the hearings be put on hold until after the voters have made their choice. Following the election, your nomination would proceed, or not, in accordance with the wishes of the winning candidate.”
That is not how this works. The president has the authority to nominate at any time a candidate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Senate has the authority to give its advice and consent. Further, nothing is “rushed” about Barrett’s nomination. You would think that at least one among the 88 faculty signatories would know this, but then you would be wrong.
If you can believe it, it gets sillier from here.
“The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish was that her seat on the court remain open until a new president was installed,” they write.
Oh, God. Here we go. The “dying wish” appeal to emotion.
“Your nomination just days after Ginsburg’s death was unseemly and a repudiation of her legacy,” the group says. “Given your admiration for Justice Ginsburg, we ask that you repair the injury to her memory by calling for a pause in the nomination until the next president is seated.”
Lastly, the letter concludes, the “politics” of the nomination will “further inflame our civic wounds.”
Barrett’s nomination, the signatories say, will “undermine confidence in the court, and deepen the divide among ordinary citizens, especially if you are seated by a Republican Senate weeks before the election of a Democratic president and congress.”
Well, someone is confident about Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s odds of winning.
“We’re asking a lot, we know,” the group concludes. “Should Vice-President Biden be elected, your seat on the court will almost certainly be lost. That would be painful, surely. Yet there is much to be gained in risking your seat.”
They add, “You would earn the respect of fair-minded people everywhere. You would provide a model of civic selflessness. And you might well inspire Americans of different beliefs toward a renewed commitment to the common good.”
“Respect” is a funny word to drop in their closing. Because this calculating, ahistorical appeal to an obvious agenda is anything but respectful. It is as nakedly manipulative as it is partisan. If this is the best that Barrett’s opposition can come up with, then she is well on her way to becoming the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
