The Democrats are furious — and terrified — that the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett would “move the high court in a far more …
The Democrats are furious — and terrified — that the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett would “move the high court in a far more aggressively conservative direction,” as NPR’s Nina Totenberg put it, but that characterization is neither correct nor entirely honest. Barrett is not a conservative. Judge Barrett is, like her mentor, the late Antonin Scalia, an adherent of what is sometimes known as “textualism,” the belief that judges are constrained by what the law actually says rather than empowered to read their own morality, political preferences or social sensibilities into the law. It is a testament to the unseriousness of the times in which we live that this belief — that, when it comes to the law, we put it in writing for a good reason — is some species of right-wing radicalism. Textualism is a turn away from progressive activism, to be sure. But it is not a turn toward right-wing activism: It is a turn toward the rule of law. The Supreme Court in the past 50 years has simply invented new “constitutional rights” that are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, accomplishing in the courtroom what progressive activists could not at the ballot box. Prominent among these manufactured mandates are the right to abortion and to homosexual marriage.
