Judge Amy Coney Barrett is everything that a good judge should be: independent-minded, brilliant, and committed to the text of the law rather than judging its downstream consequences —which is exactly why Democrats fear her.
Democratic opposition to Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court has nothing to do with her qualifications or individual beliefs, and everything to do with her judicial philosophy. She believes the judicial branch is an independent entity that exists not to make laws or change the Constitution but to interpret them. As she put it during her first confirmation hearing on Monday: “The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people. The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.”
Democrats disagree. They seem to believe that the Supreme Court is a vehicle they can use to advance their political agenda. Several Democratic senators admitted as much during the first confirmation hearing. They spoke of future policy debates, such as healthcare and environmentalism, that will surely appear before the Supreme Court, and argued that Barrett’s nomination would stack the bench against liberal policies. But the court is not supposed to be a policy-making body.
That is the entire point of originalism: Judges must make decisions based on what people actually agreed to when they passed the law. This means that they might have to uphold or even impose policies they personally disagree with or rule against policies they support. Barrett spoke about this on Monday and said she learned the importance of textualism by following the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s example.
“His judicial philosophy was straightforward,” she said. “A judge must apply the law as written, not as the judge wishes it were. Sometimes that approach meant reaching results that he did not like. But as he put it in one of his best-known opinions, that is what it means to say we have a government of laws, not of men.”
Democrats do not care about this reasoned form of jurisprudence. They care about whether Barrett supports Roe v. Wade, whether she would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and whether she would rule against several other policies that were only possible because the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds. Democrats depend on judicial activism to advance their agenda, and that’s why Barrett is a threat.
However, recent weeks prove that Barrett’s confirmation is more important than ever. Incensed at the idea of losing the Supreme Court to a 6-3 conservative majority, many Democrats are now openly advocating for court-packing, a radical policy that would allow them to add seats to the Supreme Court that they could then fill with liberal justices. The goal is obvious: If Democrats can put liberals back on the bench, they can continue to push liberal policies through the judicial branch. And they’re willing to upend and delegitimize an entire branch of government to do it.
The public should reject Democrats’ radicalization of the Supreme Court and support Barrett, an honest, straightforward judge who will treat every case before her with the constitutional scrutiny and impartiality it deserves. She will be a great justice. And if Democrats cared more about our constitutional system than their own politics, they would vote to confirm her.
