A powerful Christian nationalist judge goofs the Bible, the law and the Constitution

Among the main strains of authoritarianism vying to kill American democracy and its rule of law is Christian nationalism (CN). CN elites are in the process of building federal government and social infrastructure to transition the US from a pluralist secular democracy to a harsh, bigoted, Christian fundamentalist theocracy. Under the CN vision of America, the law comes from God. CN elites will tell us what laws God wants and who those laws will target for righteous discrimination and sacred oppression. Existing evidence indicates that the CN wealth and power movement is one of the most likely contenders to dominate the federal government once djt is dead and gone. 

USSC justice Amy Coney Barrett is a Catholic zealot. Her book will be released tomorrow. It is entitled Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, which is an oxymoron as discussed below. Barrett reportedly received a $2 million advance for the book. She has been doing promotional events and interviews about the book, including appearances at Lincoln Center and the National Book Festival. Barrett was (presumably still is) a member of an extremist Catholic group called the People of Praise. 

Reporting by multiple outlets comment on her book. Major MAGA judicial traits exemplify her use of law for political ends. For radical MAGA judges like Barrett, the law is just a means to MAGA's authoritarian political ends.

• Misconstruing the Bible: Barrett mischaracterizes the biblical King Solomon narrative to support her judicial philosophy. She falsely claims that Solomon's wisdom came from internal judgment rather than legal adherence. This interpretation is incorrect. Solomon was not exercising personal moral judgment but conducting factual investigation to determine biological parentage according to the then established legal principle that the true mother deserved custody. The biblical text itself contradicts Barrett's interpretation: Solomon explicitly prayed for "an understanding mind to judge" and received divine wisdom, not personal intuition. His threat to divide the child functioned as a credibility test to reveal the true mother by her reaction. Solomon was applying biblical common law, an unwavering rule (precedent) that custody belongs to the biological mother. He used normal investigative methods to establish facts. He did not impose his own subjective preferences. 

• Laws as just a means to an end: Barrett has a telling but dangerous blind spot about gathering and assessing evidence. She has essentially no academic or appellate court experience with fact-finding.[1] All she has is a paltry three years in private practice and no trial court experience. Barrett has never examined witnesses or conducted fact investigations. Her inexperience shows in her Solomon interpretation, where she portrays factual investigation as personal judgment rather than recognizing it as essential, neutral evidence-gathering. Given their experience, Sotomayor (a former prosecutor) and Brown Jackson (a former public defender) would not have made this same mistake. Their extensive trial court experience pounded home the idea that justice involves more than merely reviewing appellate records. Without reliance on credible evidence, Barrett's assertion that "judges resolve disputes according to the rules established by the people" is meaningless. Her partisan vision of judges more or less unburdened by inconvenient facts contradicts the fundamental pro-democracy principle that legal application first requires rigorous investigation to determine facts and truth before applying law second.

The evidence strongly supports this very ugly bottom line: Barrett's self-described textualism, i.e., allegedly strict adherence to original text meaning, is contradicted by her willingness to misinterpret even biblical scripture to support predetermined MAGA dogma. Her judging is the epitome of unprincipled partisanship. With Barrett and the other six MAGA judges on the USSC, the law is a means to MAGA outcomes. Inconvenient facts and precedents are not significant judicial constraints. Barrett's fake originalism or textualism, like that of the other five MAGA judges on the USSC, is authoritarian constitutionalism disguised as principled law. 

Footnote:

1. Evidence of Barrett's heavy partisan bias include her 100% conservative voting record in contract and intellectual property cases on the 7th Circuit. That suggests she has predetermined ideological positions and does not rely on case-by-case fact analysis. She had a 76% MAGA voting record from her first Supreme Court term compared to Ginsburg's 4%. That shifted the Court from 48% to 62% MAGA outcomes. That was a dramatic change. It very likely reflected partisan legal reasoning, not judicial neutrality. 

Finally, Barrett's record shows that her approach is systematically anti-factual rather than merely inexperienced. That is particularly true where the fact record is unfavorable to MAGA's ends. For example, in her nomination hearings, Barrett falsely claimed that she had always followed or applied precedent on the Seventh Circuit: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that I’ve been unwilling to follow or apply circuit precedent.” However, in the case FTC v. Credit Bureau, Barrett voted to overturn a 30-year-old Seventh Circuit precedent that prevented the Federal Trade Commission from seeking restitution for victims of consumer fraud. She voted to protect the special interests over the public interest. That is pure authoritarian MAGA tactics, inconvenient facts and precedent be damned.