Listening to the Law Quotes

“One who follows the Court casually might be under the impression that practically every case is decided with the appointees of a Republican president on one side and appointees of a Democratic president on the other. While that breakdown sometimes occurs, presenting it as the norm grossly distorts the Court’s work. The statistics of the Court’s 2022 and 2023 Terms, during which there were six Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees, offer a snapshot. In the 2022 Term, the Court was unanimous in about 47 percent of argued cases.[53] That’s in line with the average rate of unanimity over the last decade, and significantly above the average percentage of unanimity over the last seventy-five years.[54] About another 9 percent were almost unanimous, decided with only a single justice in dissent.[55] So more than half of the cases on the Court’s docket were decided in total or almost total agreement. In the non-unanimous decisions from that term, there were twenty different lineups. Only five of the Court’s fifty-eight decisions broke down by party of the appointing president.[56] In the 2023 Term, the Court was unanimous in about 45 percent of argued cases.[57] That’s also in line with the average rate of unanimity over the last decade, and again above the average percentage of unanimity over the last seventy-five years. What’s more, about another 9 percent were almost unanimous, with only one or two justices in dissent.[58] That means that more than half of the cases were decided in total, or near total, agreement. In the non-unanimous decisions from that term, there were nineteen different lineups, and only eleven cases broke down by party of the appointing president.[”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution

“Justice Hugo Black, a member of the Warren Court, endured a venomous response to his vote in Brown v. Board of Education. As a former senator for the state of Alabama and a past member of the Ku Klux Klan, Justice Black shocked his home state by joining the Court’s opinion, which held that racially segregated schools are unconstitutional.[27] After his vote, Justice Black was ostracized by his fellow Alabamans, who called him a “renegade” and “Judas Iscariot.”[28] The Secret Service gave him a bulletproof vest to wear when walking the streets of Birmingham. His law school classmates did not invite him to their class reunion. The state legislature passed a resolution recommending that Black not be buried in the state, and for several years afterward, the legislature passed resolutions condemning him.[29] On top of this, the justice’s son, Hugo Black, Jr., who still lived in Alabama at the time, experienced so much harassment that he eventually gave up his law practice and moved to Florida.[30] After a while, Justice Black decided to stop returning to Alabama altogether, though the decision caused him great sadness.[31]”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution

“But as hard as it may have been, appeals to the American ideal that all people are created equal and have a right to participate in self-government ultimately won out, time after time.”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution

“The success of a multi-member court rides on the ability to disagree respectfully. The success of a democratic society does too.”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution

“It may sound counterintuitive, as it did to my aunt, but making judgments about what the law requires isn’t always the same thing as deciding what is just. In the Boston Marathon bombing case, the Court held that there was no legal impediment to executing Tsarnaev, not that executing him was moral. In Terry v. United States, the Court held that the law did not permit resentencing, not that Terry’s original sentence was fair. And in the flag-burning case, the Court held that the First Amendment protected that act of protest, not that flag burning is virtuous. In a system where judges are not Solomons, their role is limited. They are referees, not kings, because they decide whether people have played by the rules rather than what the rules should be. As much as some people might admire Solomon, he wouldn’t make it through a confirmation hearing if he proposed to decide cases in accordance with his own conscience. That’s as it should be under our Constitution.”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution

“An Anti-Federalist who called himself “Federal Farmer” characterized the framers themselves as “the consolidating aristocracy” whose proposed system concentrated power “in a few hands,” rendering a “strong tendency to aristocracy now discernable in every part of the plan.”[117] In another tract, he warned that the capital city of the proposed republic would “be the great, the visible, and dazzling centre, the mistress of fashions, and the fountain of politics” that housed the equivalent of a royal court, complete with its hangers-on.[118]”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution

“My writing tends to be spare, perhaps to a fault. When I was a law clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman, he once called me into his office and barked, “Amy, don’t be afraid of the adverb!” I’ve tried to take his advice. Still, I favor brief, clean sentences without extra words. My (obviously unattainable) target is more Hemingway than Dostoyevsky.”
― Amy Coney Barrett, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution