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The Conservative Media Ecosystem Is Coddling Amy Coney Barrett - Balls and Strikes
Balls and StrikesIn September 2021, about a year after she joined the Supreme Court and six months before she cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, Justice Amy Coney Barrett attempted to assure anxious members of the public that the alignment between this seemingly inevitable result and the policy platform of the Republican Party was merely a coincidence.
“My goal today is to convince you that this Court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she told an audience at the University of Louisville. (An ambitious argument to make, given that Barrett was speaking at the McConnell Center, named for the Republican Senate Majority Leader who rammed through her confirmation just days before President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and who literally introduced Barrett prior to her remarks.) Barrett went on to complain about “hot takes on Twitter” that make Supreme Court decisions “seem results-oriented,” and she distinguished between the “judicial philosophies” that purportedly guide the Court’s work, and “political” considerations that ostensibly have nothing to do with it.
“Sometimes, I don’t like the results of my decisions,” Barrett said. “But it’s not my job to decide cases based on the outcome I want.”
Now, Barrett has written an entire book about the subject: Listening to the Law, which publishing industry sources described to Politico in 2021 as—I swear this is real—an exposition on her belief that “judges are not supposed to bring their personal feelings into how they rule.” As a Supreme Court justice, Barrett’s salary is around $300,000. For Listening to the Law, her publisher reportedly paid her a $2 million advance.
Earlier this week, CNN published the first details from Listening to the Law, which even by milquetoast Supreme Court memoir-adjusted standards does not appear to be groundbreaking stuff. Barrett warns readers from the jump that she will not discuss internal deliberations about specific cases, which is the sort of thing about which a person choosing to spend their valuable time on this earth reading a Supreme Court justice’s book might hope to learn. She apparently limits her discussion of her vote to overturn Roe to a high-level recap of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, in the classic style of middle school students straining by any means necessary to hit the page minimum on their book report. She sprinkles in bromides like “the job of every justice is to do his or her best by the law,” which is the jurisprudential equivalent of a “Live~Laugh~Love” shiplap sign covering up a hole in the drywall at your Airbnb.
“My goal today is to convince you that this Court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she told an audience at the University of Louisville. (An ambitious argument to make, given that Barrett was speaking at the McConnell Center, named for the Republican Senate Majority Leader who rammed through her confirmation just days before President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and who literally introduced Barrett prior to her remarks.) Barrett went on to complain about “hot takes on Twitter” that make Supreme Court decisions “seem results-oriented,” and she distinguished between the “judicial philosophies” that purportedly guide the Court’s work, and “political” considerations that ostensibly have nothing to do with it.
“Sometimes, I don’t like the results of my decisions,” Barrett said. “But it’s not my job to decide cases based on the outcome I want.”
Now, Barrett has written an entire book about the subject: Listening to the Law, which publishing industry sources described to Politico in 2021 as—I swear this is real—an exposition on her belief that “judges are not supposed to bring their personal feelings into how they rule.” As a Supreme Court justice, Barrett’s salary is around $300,000. For Listening to the Law, her publisher reportedly paid her a $2 million advance.
Earlier this week, CNN published the first details from Listening to the Law, which even by milquetoast Supreme Court memoir-adjusted standards does not appear to be groundbreaking stuff. Barrett warns readers from the jump that she will not discuss internal deliberations about specific cases, which is the sort of thing about which a person choosing to spend their valuable time on this earth reading a Supreme Court justice’s book might hope to learn. She apparently limits her discussion of her vote to overturn Roe to a high-level recap of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, in the classic style of middle school students straining by any means necessary to hit the page minimum on their book report. She sprinkles in bromides like “the job of every justice is to do his or her best by the law,” which is the jurisprudential equivalent of a “Live~Laugh~Love” shiplap sign covering up a hole in the drywall at your Airbnb.
In my view, Amy Coney Barrett kicking off her book tour by doing a sold-out event with Bari Weiss and publishing an exclusive excerpt in The Free Press should end the "Supreme Court justices are not motivated by ideology" discourse once and for all ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2025-09-04T16:28:38.131Z
1 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
gawd they are DISGUSTING 