Amy Coney Barrett and the Meaning of Free Will

 

 

People speak of Amy Coney Barrett as if she were a Buick being chosen and driven off a dealership parking lot. She’s been identified, selected, and put on the road to the Supreme Court. But there’s an enormous flaw in this reasoning: she’s neither an inanimate object, nor a pawn. She is being chosen—presumably—for her stature as a jurist. A conservative jurist, to be sure. But still, a sentient being, an intelligent jurist who understands the significance of her nomination in this time and place. She must also understand what her nomination would mean to the legitimacy of the Court in these contentious times.

 

Today’s nomination stinks of rank partisanship, anti-democratic court-packing, and the danger of utterly destroying the legitimacy of the Supreme Court for decades—if not forever. If she is seen as a convenient place marker—an inanimate object—who can be relied on to rubber stamp the President as the winner of a contested election, Coney Barrett will be the destruction of the Court and of her own stature as a credible jurist.

 

Coney Barrett is only 45, with plenty of time to be considered for a seat on the Court in the future. The best thing she could do now—for the reputation of the Supreme Court, and for her own place in history—is to decline the nomination. And she should do so publicly and loudly, with a clear statement that three weeks before the election is not the time to rush through a nominee.