Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett took the stage early Saturday morning at the National Book Festival to talk about her new book, “Listening to the Law: Reflection on the Court and Constitution,” to a crowd that filled a ballroom.
She was the first justice to speak at the book festival since Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the justice she replaced on the nation’s top court.
Interviewed onstage by festival co-Chairman David M. Rubenstein, Barrett said she wrote the book so that Americans could see how the court works and to “feel pride” as the nation approached its 250th birthday.
“The drafting of the Constitution has been called the ‘Miracle at Philadelphia,’” she said, referring to the city in which the document was debated and signed in 1787. “And I think it really was a miracle … it has lasted because each generation has taken it and made it its own.”
Barrett, 53, was a Notre Dame law professor and serving on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Indiana when she was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Trump in 2020, just weeks before the presidential election. (She had been a finalist in 2018, after the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy.)
Trump, when introducing her as his nominee, described her as “one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds.”
Born in New Orleans, she was the oldest of seven children and now has seven children with her husband, Jesse Barrett. She obtained her law degree at Notre Dame (meeting her husband in the process) and, she told the crowd, the family was happy there before her nomination.
“My husband and I have plots at Notre Dame in the cemetery there,” she said, “so I really thought that’s where we were going to stay.”
Her conversation Saturday morning touched on how she comes to her decisions, indicating it’s not a cut and dried process.
“I try to keep an open mind,” she said. “One thing I try to communicate in this book is that every step of the decision-making process is really important and it matters. So, I go into (judicial) conference knowing what I think, but I do listen to my colleagues, and I will adjust what I think about how we should approach the opinion based on what my colleagues say.”
Justice Barrett also provided the audience with details about the daily business of the court.
The justices do not discuss cases before oral arguments; sometimes the oral arguments are so good they can cause her to change her mind about at least part of her opinion; one of her four clerks writes the first draft of her opinions, then she rewrites and edits as needed; when her opinion is circulated among justices, sometimes a fellow justice will ask for a small change before signing on; and, finally, the most recent justice has to oversee the court’s cafeteria and open the door when someone knocks during their discussions.
Another book while she’s on the bench isn’t in the offing, she said, calling the publication a “one and done.” She had to find time over the past several summers to write while the court was in recess, she said, and free time is at a premium.
“It was an arduous process writing the book, to be honest,” she said with a smile, drawing a laugh from the crowd. “I’m not sure I would repeat it just because it did take so long. I have seven children and another job.”
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Comments (3)
Pablum
Your honorable Magistrate I pray that the president doesn’t try to stay after his four years are through
Thank You. Not a job just anyone can fill.