Interviews with Supreme Court Justices are rare because they come up with guardrails that must be respected. After interviews with Justices Stephen Breyer, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and now having kept Amy Coney Barrett, it is useful to set up those rules for future interviewers. It is a very good thing that sitting judges write books, especially if they are accessible to lay people like the new “Listening to the law” of Justice Barrett and Justice Gorsuch’s “rejected” of both last year.
Justice Breyer’s “Making Our Democracy Work” was an excellent argument for his approach to assessment. “The son of my grandfather” was an eye-open report of the life of Justice Thomas, of the incredibly challenging start and of the path he followed by his radical days to one first street. (The books of Justice Sotomayor have not crossed my desk with a request from her publisher for an interview, so I did not talk to her, but joys her variety of titles.)
Justices must be discreet about their public performances, because the parties are entitled to open spirits when their affairs are heard by the highest court. We really do not want to afford to have a court full of experts who have held in the controversies of the day in such a way to convince an honest observer that one of their nine spirits is being made up.
Barrett says that the judges are ‘black, not red or blue’ in response to partisan critics in Fox News Interview
It is fine for the political branches to weigh every question of the day, but not the case that the court is charged with making definitive and binding opinions about questions that are discussed all over the country.
Whatever your opinion is about the decisions of the court, which are declared decisions through the opinions they give and most of them can at least largely be absorbed by laymen. Lawyers and professors can guess how certain questions that reach the court are decided, but suspects are not votes by judges and even 500 or 5,000 guesses do not form for the five votes needed for a majority inspection. (There are around 9,000 full -time professors in the United States. There are often many more than 500 guesses and sometimes more than 5,000 when journalists and experts pick up.)
How to know how the court works without spending a year with courses for constitutional law? Starting with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s “Listen to the law” is a great place to start. She starts with the assumption that the reader is clear, but not learned in the law. It is an excellent starting point for even law students, but especially for the public.
The Supreme Court and, indeed, all federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. The Supreme Court was called by the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the lower federal courts by different congress acts that return to the very first judicial law that arrived in 1789.
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But Article III makes it clear that the Supreme Court only hears “things” and “controversies” that come for it. The court does not have a roaming constitutional committee to look for and remedy what a majority of its nine judges thinks that one requires. Justice Barrett emphasizes this point in “Listening to the law”, as well as other large doctrines that limit the reach of the court, as well as the diversity of “Canons” that arrange the deliberations. She is also specific about the procedures of how the court continues its work and in a wonderfully charming, enlightening way.
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She arrived, first at the seventh circuit and then at the Supreme Court, with a reputation for sparkle and collegiality and both virtues are shown in “listening to the law”.
In our recent conversations, Justice Barrett and me Discussed Courteness in Society And the descent from the public discourse to the lowest cellars of the internet. Justice states considerably in her book. We must hope that her example is contagious.
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