Expert reveals why this Trump-appointed SCOTUS justice could be liberals’ 'last best hope'

08 November 2024

With President-elect Donald Trump preparing to enter the White House for four more years, it's likely he'll get to make additional appointments to the Supreme Court. One legal expert thinks one of his justices could end up being a friend to the Court's liberal minority in the years to come.

In a recent article for CNN, Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic explained that Justice Amy Coney Barrett — whom Trump appointed to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after she died in 2020 — may be liberals' "last, best hope" in the next four years. This isn't due to her voting record, as she's sided with the conservative majority roughly 90% of the time, but with her judicial philosophy and unique approach to interpreting the Constitution.

"[Barrett] is the only one of the conservatives who never served in the top echelons of a Republican administration," Biskupic wrote. "She is less likely to echo the GOP political agenda in her questions during oral arguments or reasoning in her written decisions. Her views of executive power, as in Donald Trump’s immunity case last July, are tempered."

"Liberals on and off the bench see Barrett as someone who may provide some equilibrium to a court remaking the law in America, possibly able with her legalistic ways to secure a cross-ideological majority for moderation," Biskupic added, comparing Barrett to other Republican-appointed justices who sometimes frustrated the conservative movement, like Sandra Day-O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy.

On Friday, Biskupic further explained her reasoning in an interview with CNN hosts Boris Sanchez and Briana Keilar. Because Trump has already appointed a third of the Supreme Court, and may get to appoint two or more new justices due to the Court due to the advanced ages of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

Biskupic noted that while she previously believed the next generation of children would have to live under a Trump Supreme Court, she now believes "our grandchildren will be living with Donald Trump's court." As such, she opined that it was important to see how a more moderate subset of the Court is starting to emerge in the form of Barrett, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She argued this is what makes Barrett and her background compelling for the three-member liberal minority.

"The three liberals left there — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson are desperately looking for anyone at the center. And so far, Amy Coney Barrett has offered them the best chance," Biskupic said. "She's even made gestures towards the center... She's only 52 years old, she's the youngest justice on the Court. And, you know, it's a bit of hope springs eternal. You never know where someone's going to go."

Even though she sided with the Court's other conservatives in monumental decisions like in Trump v. United States, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (which overturned Roe v. Wade) Barrett – who was a former law professor at the University of Notre Dame before being appointed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals — demonstrated her willingness to occasionally go against her colleagues in other decisions.

Earlier this year, she sided with the Court's liberals in the Rahimi v. United States decision, which concerned the 2nd Amendment rights of people under domestic violence restraining orders. That 8-1 decision had Justices Alito, Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Roberts on the side of the three Democratic SCOTUS appointees, while Thomas was the lone dissenter.

Watch Biskupic's interview below, or by clicking this link.

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