Justice Amy Coney Barrett is charting her own path on the bench

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Justice Amy Coney Barrett is charting her own path on the bench
With piercing questions and a willingness to break ranks with fellow conservatives, the justice played a new role in her fourth term.

By Ann E. Marimow
July 4, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. EDT



Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor, not pictured, participate in a discussion at the Civic Learning Week National Forum at George Washington University in March. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

The dissent was biting, accusing the Supreme Court’s conservative majority of “feeble” and “cherry-picked” arguments that inaccurately downplayed the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in protecting air quality. … Of course, all three liberal justices signed on.

But the writer was a conservative nominated by President Donald Trump: Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who charted a distinctive path during her breakout fourth term on the high court.

With piercing questions from the bench, and a willingness to break ranks with other Republican nominees in an era of conservative dominance on the court, Barrett played a new role this term — calling for a pragmatic, incremental approach to some cases in which her colleagues wanted to move more aggressively.

{snip}

Barrett, who at 52 is also the youngest justice, pushed back openly against other conservatives this term on the proper role of tradition and history in deciding cases. She did so most notably in her concurrence when the court upheld a federal gun law that takes guns from people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders.

{snip}

By Ann Marimow
Ann Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2005, and has spent a decade writing about legal affairs and the federal judiciary. She previously covered state government and politics in California, New Hampshire and Maryland. Twitter https://x.com/amarimow

[elleng]

1. (She) pushed back openly against other conservatives this term on the proper role of tradition

and history in deciding cases. She did so most notably in her concurrence when the court upheld a federal gun law that takes guns from people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders.'

[Ocelot II]

2. Interesting.

Maybe she'll turn out to be the one the GOP will wish they hadn't chosen. Sometimes SCOTUS appointees don't deliver what their appointing presidents had hoped for (e.g., T. Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Eisenhower and Earl Warren, Truman and Tom Clark, Bush I and Souter). We can only hope that she doesn't always drink all the conservative Kool-Aid. Kavanaugh, surprisingly, also seems to leave the fold once in awhile. On the other hand there's the most recent 6-3 disasters, so who knows?

[elleng]

3. I think she MAY be one of 'those' truly independent thinkers, and they'll wish they hadn't chosen her.

I certainly hope so.

[travelingthrulife]

4. Oh please! she thinks she is subservient to her husband

Will she have to divorce with this new radical swing to independence?

[lees1975]

5. In critical cases, especially immunity for the President, she was a predictable partisan.

As she was with the Dobbs case.