(Oct. 12) One important, under-noticed part of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s opening committee-hearing statement shows an admirable humility and empathy that puts to shame most of the bloviating senators opposing her.
Judge Barrett’s whole statement was a model of decorum. Still, one passage was unusual and unusually good.
“When I write an opinion resolving a case,” she said, “I read every word from the perspective of the losing party. I ask myself how would I view the decision if one of my children was the party I was ruling against: Even though I would not like the result, would I understand that the decision was fairly reasoned and grounded in the law? That is the standard I set for myself in every case, and it is the standard I will follow as long as I am a judge on any court.”
For all of the caterwauling from liberal senators absurdly predicting particular, unwanted political results from the decisions Barrett might join or issue as a Supreme Court justice, none of them has shown much interest in whether the losers from their favored cases feel as if they had a fair hearing. When lower courts ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor, I don’t remember hearing Sen. Kamala Harris worrying about the impoverished elderly people who would have lost their housing and care if the Sisters had to close their ministry.
When the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could seize the small family home of Susette Kelo so a private developer could use her land, then-Sen. Joe Biden was nowhere to be found in lamenting the injustice for Kelo. Indeed, Biden was on record rejecting claims of small private homeowners….
[The full column explaining the admirable humility of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is at this link.]