Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has come under increasingly vitriolic criticism from the right in America for voting against Republican- or Trump-backed positions in a number of cases, with some accusing her of being a “simp” for the left or a “DEI hire”.
This is despite the fact that Barrett was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term and was part of the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling that established federal constitutional protection for abortion.
However, since then, the Catholic judge has shown she is not willing to be swayed by political allegiance or pressure. Although she has voted in favor of cases that expand religious and gun rights, as well as backing Republican-led congressional redistricting efforts, her voting record suggests she has sometimes sided with the liberal bloc against her conservative colleagues in America’s highest court.
For instance, she voted to uphold birthright citizenship, shooting down Trump’s effort to end the right of anyone born on US soil to be automatically considered an American citizen.
Before that, Barrett and her colleagues rejected Trump’s appeal against a $5m verdict in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll concerning her claims of defamation and sexual assault. She also authored a decision upholding a Mississippi mail-in ballot law that has been attacked by conservatives.
Criticism from the Right
As a result, she has been heavily criticized by President Trump and his allies, as well as a swath of conservative voices online.
There is nothing wrong with criticism in and of itself – it is part of a healthy democratic culture to debate and dissect decisions.
However, rather than engaging with the substance of her arguments, the right has attacked her character and her motives. Prominent conservative commentator Megyn Kelly accused her of being a “turncoat”, while the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh called her a “DEI hire”, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion policies criticized by the right.
Others suggest she is benefiting materially from “simping” for the Democrats on issues some Republicans argue are “fundamental”.
After Barrett spoke about security threats facing her and her fellow justices, some figures on the right suggested that concern for her safety was influencing her rulings and called on her to step down.
These attitudes start at the top, with Trump repeatedly complaining about Barrett and other Supreme Court justices he appointed when they vote against his cases, calling them “an embarrassment to their families” and accusing them of voting against the Republicans “almost every single time”.
This type of behavior from Trump and prominent right-wing commentators goes against the values that conservatives are meant to be upholding, such as the ability of independent minds to reason to a conclusion based on the evidence before them.
The Left Abandoned Reason
The criticism so often leveled by conservatives against liberals is that they do not believe in reason or objectivity anymore – all they believe in is the covert or overt action of the will to power.
The left is always finding ulterior motives to attack decisions they do not like or to defend those they take themselves. If they are not blaming a capitalist hegemony, they hide it under the cloak of defending the world from racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia or whatever else they can think of.
The right, by contrast, is supposed to believe in objective truth and the capacity of men and women to make independent, rational decisions. It is expected to defend the institutions that instantiate this worldview, especially the independence of the judiciary and the press.
If they were true to their values, then conservatives would respect – possibly even champion – Barrett for being willing to move beyond the partisan divide, while also subjecting her decisions to reasonable criticism.
Instead, they are playing the thin-skinned, wokist game of finding excuses for decisions that they do not like, whether by pointing to the gender of the justice or some hidden ulterior motive.
In doing so, they are playing right into the hands of the left and undermining the right’s claim to be the defender of common sense.
Defending Judicial Independence
This is particularly the case when they attack figures like Barrett, given the role she holds as a Supreme Court justice. When she took up her lifetime appointment, Barrett swore that she would do her job “without fear or favor”, “independently of the political branches and of my own preferences”.
This is the purpose of the Supreme Court: to be entirely independent of political control. That is the rationale behind lifetime appointments, so that the government cannot attempt to pressure or influence judicial decisions.
But for many on the left, what she is saying is an impossibility – we cannot make decisions without consulting our preferences and there are always political pressures at work, even if they are “unconscious biases”.
This is the ultimate justification for the Democrats’ use of “lawfare” – the practice of weaponizing legal decisions for explicit political purposes. All decisions, from a left-wing perspective, are implicitly examples of lawfare, so why not do so explicitly?
Right-Wing Justification for Lawfare
Now it seems that significant figures on the right are in agreement. When you disagree with us, it is a sign that you are actually being influenced by motives other than truth and reason. You no longer deserve respect, only vilification.
This is not across the board. A number of conservative figures have defended Barrett’s decisions and her right to independence, while her decisions have also been subjected to extensive and fact-based scrutiny.
But these voices of reason are largely being drowned out by President Trump, his administration and right-wing influencers whose rhetoric is increasingly similar to that of the woke left.
The next obvious step down this road would be to emulate the disrespect liberals have shown for the independence of the judiciary and the press. Recent incidents – including Trump’s threat to revoke the broadcast licenses of stations that do not air his speeches – suggest that this possibility is fast becoming a reality.
