Amy Coney Barrett and Judicial Consequentialism

To be nominated to the Supreme Court is both a great honor and a terrifying prospect — the latter being particularly relevant if you happen to be nominated by a Republican president. Amy Coney Barrett, who already faced attacks and insinuations related to her Catholic faith during her confirmation hearing to the Seventh Circuit, has learned this in short order.

Already, Barrett is being critiqued, again, as a nominee because of her devout Catholicism. Senator Mazie Hirono — a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee best known for her embarrassing assertion that Brett Kavanaugh could not be afforded the presumption of innocence because of her own presumption that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade — has insisted that Barrett’s religious views will not be off-limits when she comes before the Judiciary Committee later this month. “Why should we say you get a lifetime appointment so that you can reflect your ideological agenda in your decision making?” asked Hirono.

Certified anti-racist Dr. Ibram X. Kendi has even gone so far as to attack Barrett for the two black children she has adopted from Haiti. Kendi suggests that Barrett’s decision to bring two more kids into the family in addition to the five she has birthed may not have been a selfless act of love, but an effort to use “them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.” He went on to backtrack somewhat, saying “whether this is Barrett or not is not the point.” His point was similar to Hirono’s: The presumption of innocence of racism should not be granted to people such as Barrett or Kavanaugh.