Amy Coney Barrett Somehow Managed to Get the Law and the Bible Wrong in Her New Book (Slate.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Steven Lubet
Sept 05, 2025•11:24 AM

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new book, Listening to the Law, excerpted in the Free Press on Wednesday, features a discussion of King Solomon. Barrett believes that the biblical king’s ruling about two mothers fighting for custody of a child can explain the difference between “doing justice” and applying the law, with the latter being the proper role of an American judge, according to Barrett. Remarkably, the justice manages to get both the Bible and the legal system wrong.
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To Barrett, “Solomon’s wisdom came from within,” rather than from “sources like laws passed by a legislature or precedents set by other judges.” His authority was “bounded by nothing more than his own judgment.” In contrast, Barrett says, American judges, including Supreme Court justices, must apply the rules found “in the Constitution and legislation,” without consideration of their personal values, no matter how Solomonic they may seem.

That is a serious misinterpretation of the story. Solomon was neither making a moral judgment nor applying his own understanding of right and wrong. Instead, he was reaching a purely factual determination while carefully adhering to the background law.

The pure legal principle in the dispute, from which Solomon never strayed, was that the true mother must be awarded custody of the child. We might call that biblical common law, a rule beyond question. Thus, Solomon never considered the best interest of the child or the women’s respective nurturing abilities. He did not base his ruling on “innate wisdom or divine inspiration.” Factual parentage was all that mattered under the law.
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“If a judge functions like Solomon,” writes Barrett, “everything turns on the set of beliefs that she brings to the bench.” This is descriptively incorrect. Solomon’s beliefs played no part in his judgment, other than his conviction that he was called upon to award custody to the child’s own mother.
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more: https://archive.ph/cyVLQ#selection-1177.0-1177.300


RWNJs should avoid trying to present themselves as impartial, informed scholars. Their prejudicial ideological views manage to distort every situation under discussion away from the true facts, and then their obvious mistakes only discredit them.