FILE PHOTO: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett before the luncheon in the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump's second Presidential term in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
When President Donald Trump appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, criticism of her came from both the left and the libertarian right. Liberals and progressives, along with some right-wing libertarians, saw Barrett — an admirer of the late Justice Antonin Scalia — as too socially conservative and were troubled by her involvement in the severe strict Christian group People of Praise. And in 2022, Barrett was among the five GOP-appointed justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling.
But in recent months, Barrett has been drawing her share of criticism from MAGA Republicans who believe that she isn't MAGA enough.
Far-right MAGA attorney and Trump ally Mike Davis attacked her as a "rattled law professor with her head up her a--." And MAGA conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called Barrett a "DEI appointee."
But Never Trump conservative and veteran Washington Post columnist George Will, in his September 26 column, argues that if Barrett's style of "originalism" is offending ideologues, that means she's doing her job well.
"Although Barrett is preternaturally nice," Will writes, "she irritates some people. The reason she does makes her an exemplary justice. It is her fastidious acknowledgment that certainty and precision are often elusive when construing, as an originalist, the Constitution's text — 'due' process, 'unreasonable' searches, 'cruel and unusual' punishments, etc. — in modern contexts. Awareness of uncertainties justifies judicious restraint: The duty to construe texts does not empower judges to try to discover — or guess — the purposes or intentions of those who wrote the words."
The conservative columnist and ex-Republican continues, "To put the point less gently than Barrett might: Some people with mind-closing jurisprudential orthodoxies are exasperated by the tentativeness inherent in originalism and textualism. Critics misperceive this as a lack of principled rigor. In judicial reasoning, however, the importance of living with the limited utility of principles is a principle."
Will stresses, however, that "Barrett's originalism is not so tightly tethered to the past that it cannot create rules implied by the Constitution's text, history and structure."
"Often, originalists resurface with differing conclusions," Will explains. "So, arguments continue. Get over it…. (President Abraham) Lincoln exemplified the painful patience sometimes demanded by what Barrett calls 'our constitutional culture.' Courts are secondary in maintaining this legacy of originalism. The public, inattentive and impatient, is primary."
George Will's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).