WASHINGTON – During his Senate confirmation hearingsSupreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett uttered a memorable phrase to describe her approach to cases: “It’s not Amy’s law.”
Barrett consolidated the Court’s position conservative absolute majority four years ago and has since voted to repeal the national right to abortion, eliminate affirmative action in college admissions and expand gun rights. Still, during the latest term which included sweeping blows to federal regulation and key victories for former President Donald Trump, his views reflected a willingness, at times, to move away from the conservative majority.
Barrett wrote scathing dissents in a case related to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and another on regulating downwind air pollution. Appointed by Trump, she differed on some points from the former president’s position historic immunity decision and criticized parts of the majority decision that kept him on the ballot.
“Although she is firmly rooted in the conservative bloc, she is not necessarily in lock step with the rest of the court’s conservatives. There are surprising glimpses of independence,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University.
In the Trump immunity case, Barrett joined the overall majority but disagreed with the conclusion that it restricted the evidence prosecutors can use in criminal cases against presidents. “The Constitution does not require juries to be blind to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which presidents can be held accountable,” she wrote.
And although the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts directed lower courts to consider whether Trump could be prosecuted over allegations that he participated in a scheme to recruit fake voters in swing states, Barrett wrote that she did not see “no plausible argument” to prevent the process. this part of the accusation.
“Her opinion is basically a roadmap for how the case could have gone,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University.
“I think we’re seeing the emergence of Justice Barrett as a principled voice in the middle of the court,” he said, adding, however, that the impact is mitigated by Roberts’s more rightward vote.
The two were on opposite sides of the Jan. 6 case, with Barrett writing in dissent that Roberts and the majority had done “textual back-and-forth” to arrive at the opinion that makes it more difficult for prosecutors to charge protesters with obstruction.
The court was unanimous in its decision to maintain Trump at the pollsbut Barrett wrote in concurrence that she thought the majority went further than necessary — while chiding the court’s liberal wing for the “stridentness” of its separate concurrence.
“She doesn’t always look at it from the same perspective as her colleagues on the left or the right, and I think we’ll see more of that uniqueness,” said Adam Feldman, scholar and creator of the blog Empirical SCOTUS.
It also differed with a suspension of decision an Environmental Protection Agency plan to combat air pollution. Joining the high court’s liberal justices, she wrote a dissent referring to the majority’s arguments as “weak,” saying they were based on “cherry-picked” data and downplayed the EPA’s role.
Roberts and Barrett joined a limited order allowing emergency abortions to resume by women in Idaho. Barrett, who was part of the high court majority that slaughtered Roe v. Wade in 2022, wrote an agreement saying the court was dismissing the case because the facts had changed since it decided to take it.
The order did not resolve key issues at the heart of the case, and the matter could be referred to the high court again soon, although only after November’s presidential election.
Although Barrett sometimes demonstrated a willingness to move away from the conservative majority, she joined it more often. Over the more than five dozen cases the court considered this year, Barrett joined the majority 92 percent of the time, Empirical SCOTUS found. She came in third most times, after Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She voted in favor of decisions that weakened federal regulatorsallowed more aggressive sweeps of homeless encampments in the West and overturned a federal ban on increase stocks, rapid-fire gun accessories were used in the nation’s deadliest mass shooting.
“I don’t know if it makes much of a difference in the direction of the court. It is an absolute conservative majority and she is part of that majority,” said Murray. “Most of the time she has the absolute majority and, even when she isn’t, she remains on the sidelines.”
