President Trump Nominates Judge Amy Coney Barrett: Initial Observations
Legal Sidebari
President Trump Nominates
Judge Amy Coney Barrett:
Initial Observations
September 28, 2020
On September 26, 2020, President Trump announced the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court to fil the vacancy left by the
death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
This Sidebar provides a few initial observations from Judge Barrett’s appel ate decisions and academic
writings, focusing mainly on her general judicial philosophy. CRS is preparing products that discuss
Judge Barrett’s views on the law in greater detail, including her judicial opinions in cases involving such
topics as the Second Amendment and immigration.
Who Is Judge Barrett?
Judge Barrett has been a circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since
November 2017, having been nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate earlier that
year. Judge Barrett received her law degree from Notre Dame Law School, after which she clerked for
Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia. Following two years in private practice in Washington, D.C., Judge Barrett taught
as an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington University Law School. From 2002 to 2017,
Judge Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame Law School. Her scholarship has focused on topics such
as theories of constitutional interpretation, stare decisis, and statutory interpretation. If confirmed, Judge
Barrett would be the fifth woman to serve as a Supreme Court Justice.
During Judge Barrett’s September 26th Supreme Court nomination remarks, she paid tribute to both
Justice Ginsburg and her former mentor, Justice Scalia. “Should I be confirmed,” Judge Barrett said, “I
wil be mindful of who came before me,” stating that Justice Ginsburg’s glass-ceiling-breaking career in
the law “has won the admiration of women around the country, and indeed al over the world.” Judge
Barrett also described the “incalculable influence” that Justice Scalia has had on her life, remarking: “His
judicial philosophy is mine too. A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policy makers, and
they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold.”
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What Would Judge Barrett’s Appointment to the Court Mean?
History has demonstrated the difficulty of predicting how a Supreme Court nominee might affect the
Court’s jurisprudence based on his or her pre-confirmation writings and statements. As noted in a
previous post, Felix Frankfurter had a reputation as a “progressive” legal scholar prior to his appointment
to the Court in 1939, but disappointed some early supporters because he advocated judicial restraint and
caution when the Court reviewed laws that restricted civil rights and civil liberties during World War II
and the early Cold War era. Harry Blackmun, whom President Richard Nixon saw as a “strict
constructionist,” authored the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, holding that the Due Process Clause
protected the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy, and was general y considered one of the more
liberal voices on the Court by the time of his retirement in 1993. Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed by
President Ronald Reagan, joined the more liberal wing of the Court to provide the deciding vote in many
closely divided cases, including such decisions establishing the constitutional right to federal and state
recognition of same-sex marriage and barring the use of capital punishment against juvenile offenders.
Notwithstanding the difficulty of predicting how a nominee wil vote, a judge’s prior judicial decisions,
writings, and statements may provide some insights into how the nominee wil approach particular
matters. Such assessments may prove particularly chal enging with Judge Barrett: Because she became a
judge in 2017, she has written fewer decisions, concurrences, and dissents compared to other recent
nominees who served on the bench for several additional years. And although her scholarly publications
expound theories of constitutional and statutory interpretation, her engagement with these topics from an
academic standpoint does not necessarily predict whether she would adopt any particular methodology as
a Supreme Court Justice. With those caveats, the discussion below provides initial observations on how
Judge Barrett may approach matters involving constitutional interpretation, stare decisis, and statutory
interpretation.
Mode of Constitutional Interpretation
In her scholarly writings, Judge Barrett has evaluated common critiques of originalism, seemingly
exploring a pragmatic, originalist approach to constitutional interpretation. While originalism takes
different forms, Judge Barrett has described it as animated by “two core principles”: (1) that “the meaning
of the constitutional text is fixed at the time of its ratification”; and (2) that the “historical meaning of the
text” is legal y significant and general y “authoritative.” Under this brand of originalism, the “original
public meaning” of a constitutional provision is “the law.” Using this approach, one might first examine
the text of the Constitution, followed by its structure, and then English, colonial, and Founding-era
history.
Like Justice Scalia, however, Judge Barrett appears to believe that originalism must be tempered by
pragmatism. In a 2016 article co-authored with John Copeland Nagle, then-Professor Barrett argued that a
“commitment to originalism” does not require judges and Members of Congress to “strip every
constitutional question down to the studs” or revisit “super precedents” like Marbury v. Madison or
Brown v. Board of Education, regardless of what conclusion an originalist approach might yield. As a
practical matter, the authors wrote, the Supreme Court has institutional features that al ow it to avoid
difficult constitutional questions that an unwavering commitment to originalism may present: the Court
can narrow the questions it wil address in cases it chooses to hear. But acknowledging that the Supreme
Court has authority to control its docket does not inform what kinds of cases Judge Barrett might vote to
hear or which precedents she would consider sufficiently foundational to avoid.
Judge Barrett once observed that however elusive a nominee’s judicial philosophy may be “at the
nomination stage, her approach to the Constitution becomes evident in the opinions she writes.” Although
Judge Barrett encountered constitutional questions on the Seventh Circuit (to be explored in more detail
in later products), not al of her opinions involved a textual or historical analysis of the scope of the
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constitutional provision at issue—though in some cases, this may have been a function of lower courts’
adherence to Supreme Court precedent. For example, Judge Barrett wrote the panel opinion in United
States v. Terry, a case involving a warrantless search of a residence. In a three-page analysis based on
Supreme Court and circuit precedent, she concluded that it was unreasonable for police officers arriving
at the apartment of a man they had just arrested to assume that a woman who answered the door had
authority to consent to a search of the residence. In another Fourth Amendment decision, Judge Barrett
applied factors from the Supreme Court’s “most recent anonymous-tip case” to conclude that police did
not have “reasonable suspicion” to stop a car with four men sitting inside based on “an anonymous 911
cal ” from a borrowed phone describing “‘boys’ ‘playing with guns’” near the car. She opined that,
although the police “were right to respond” by coming to the location, neither the tip nor the individuals’
presence in the vehicle gave rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, adding that “citizens
should be able to exercise the constitutional right to carry a gun without having the police stop them when
they do so.”
Judge Barrett, however, used an originalist approach in her dissent to a Second Amendment decision in
Kanter v. Barr. Two of the three judges on the Seventh Circuit panel held that a federal law and a state
analog that prohibited felons from possessing firearms were constitutional as applied to the appel ant, an
individual convicted of mail fraud. Under the applicable Second Amendment test—which cal ed for a
“textual and historical inquiry”—the court first asked if “nonviolent felons as a class historical y enjoyed
Second Amendment rights.” Finding the historical evidence “inconclusive,” the majority moved on to the
test’s second step, asking whether the law was “substantial y related to an important governmental
objective,” and held that the government met this burden.
In dissent, Judge Barrett posited that the “best historical support for a legislative power to permanently
dispossess al felons would be founding-era laws explicitly imposing—or explicitly authorizing the
legislature to impose—such a ban.” While observing that “scholars ha[d] not been able to identify any
such laws,” Judge Barrett did not end her analysis with that conclusion, proceeding to survey “ratifying
conventions” and “English and early American restrictions on arms possession.” In Judge Barrett’s view,
this historical evidence led to the conclusion that the government can disarm “a category of people that it
deems dangerous.” She reasoned that the dispossession statutes at issue, however, were not tailored to this
interest, and that “[a]bsent evidence that [the appel ant] would pose a risk to the public safety if he
possessed a gun, the governments cannot permanently deprive him of his right to keep and bear arms.”
Approach to Stare Decisis
With respect to stare decisis—the doctrine suggesting that courts should general y adhere to prior
decisions—Judge Barrett has indicated in some of her writings that the Court does not have an
unqualified duty to follow precedents that it thinks were wrongly decided. For the Supreme Court,
deciding whether to overturn a prior decision involves consideration of multiple factors, including the
“quality” of the opinion’s reasoning, the “workability of the rule it established,” and “reliance on the
decision.” Judge Barrett has advocated for a “flexible” or “relaxed” approach to stare decisis in which
“reliance interests count,” but hold less weight if a decision is inconsistent with the Constitution or a
federal statute. In discussing competing views over the “legitimacy” of overruling precedent, Judge
Barrett wrote in 2013: “I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and
that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a
precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it.” The former professor has also written that one virtue of a
“weak presumption of stare decisis in constitutional cases” is that it respects pluralism in society, al owing
controversial disputes to “be aired” whether or not they “should succeed.”
Judge Barrett’s approach to stare decisis was a frequent topic of questioning by both Democratic and
Republican Senators during her 2017 confirmation hearing, with some Senators asking about her position
on Roe v. Wade or substantive due process (the underlying constitutional doctrine in Roe). Judge Barrett
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committed to following al Supreme Court precedents, including Roe, as an appel ate judge, but did not
comment further on whether she agreed with the Court’s approach to substantive due process or whether
any particular case should be overruled.
The Court’s approach to stare decisis wil be relevant across al areas of the Court’s jurisprudence. The
Court only issued one decision overruling a Supreme Court constitutional precedent last term, but in its
October 2018 term, the Court overruled four cases spanning a variety of legal issues. This upcoming term,
the Supreme Court is set to hear argument in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The Fulton appeal asks the
Court to revisit Employment Division v. Smith, a foundational free exercise case that has, in recent years,
been applied by lower courts to reject claims by religious entities seeking religious exemptions from
antidiscrimination laws. To take one more example, in recent Supreme Court terms, some Justices have
cal ed for the Court to reconsider administrative law cases instructing courts to defer to executive
agencies’ interpretations of statutes and regulations under certain circumstances.
Theory of Statutory Interpretation
Judge Barrett’s scholarship includes a nuanced look at theories of statutory interpretation. She has
observed that the two primary theories—textualism and purposivism—“have moved closer together in the
decades since Justice Scalia launched his campaign for textualism,” resulting in a “general consensus that
the text constrains.” Textualist judges rely primarily, if not exclusively, on a statute’s language to discern
its meaning, while purposivist judges may account for the law’s purpose or history, in addition to its text,
in seeking to determine Congress’s goal in passing the law.
In a 2017 essay, Judge Barrett discussed how jurists’ frame of reference may influence their decisions,
with some accounting for “the realities of the complex legislative process” by placing themselves in the
shoes of a “hypothetical legislator—a congressional insider,” and others “approach[ing] language from
the perspective of an ordinary English speaker—a congressional outsider.” The former professor cited
King v. Burwell as an example of the congressional insider approach. In that decision, a Court majority
interpreted the Affordable Care Act’s reference to health care exchanges “established by the State” as
including federal exchanges, observing that the complexity of the act and “several features” of its passage
produced a bil with “more than a few examples of inartful drafting,” making it difficult to rely solely on
the text. Judge Barrett’s article concludes that “textualists would reject” the “congressional insider”
approach. According to Judge Barrett, textualists “consider themselves bound to adhere to the most
natural meaning of the words at issue because that is the way their principal—the people—would
understand them.” Asked during her 2017 confirmation hearing about her approach to statutory
interpretation and when a judge should consult legislative history, she testified that “al nine justices are
clear that you begin with the text of the statute, and when the text of the statute is clear, that the text of the
statute controls,” and that “when the text is clear, I would see as a judge no reason to consult [legislative
history].”
Judge Barrett has taken a textualist approach to interpreting and applying federal law as a circuit judge,
which at times has resulted in vivid critiques of congressional enactments. In one opinion, she remarked
that the wording of a provision in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act was “enough to make a
grammarian throw down her pen.” In a 2020 opinion, she analyzed whether employment contracts for
“food delivery drivers for Grubhub” fel within the Federal Arbitration Act’s residual exception for the
contracts of “any other class of workers engaged in . . . interstate commerce.” The judge began by
observing that the statute’s reference to a “class of workers” meant that a driver might fal within the
exception even if her individual routes did not cross state lines. The court ultimately held that the drivers
in the case had not shown that “the interstate movement of goods” was “a central part of the job
description.”
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Judge Barrett has sometimes parted ways with her Seventh Circuit colleagues over matters of statutory
interpretation. In Cook County v. Wolf, the panel majority upheld a preliminary injunction against a Trump
Administration rule concerning the “public-charge” provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act
(INA). (Circuit courts have divided over the validity of the rule, with some lower courts issuing
preliminary injunctions that the Supreme Court or appel ate courts have stayed pending resolution of the
appeals.) The INA provision deems “inadmissible” “[a]ny alien” who, “in the opinion of the Attorney
General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status,” is “likely at any time to become
a public charge,” based on a non-exhaustive list of factors. In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) issued a rule defining “public charge” as “an alien who receives one or more” specified “public
benefits,” including Medicaid and subsidized housing assistance, for “more than 12 months in the
aggregate within any 36-month period,” with the receipt of multiple benefits in a single month counting
as separate months.
Applying the Supreme Court’s two-step Chevron framework for analyzing agency rules, the circuit panel
held that, although DHS was authorized to interpret “public charge,” its rule was not a reasonable
interpretation of the INA. The majority reasoned that the rule “penalize[d] disabled persons in
contravention of the Rehabilitation Act” and “conflict[ed] with Congress’s affirmative authorization for
designated immigrants to receive the benefits the Rule targets,” adding that “it does violence to the
English language and the statutory context to say that [public charge] covers a person who receives only
de minimis benefits for a de minimis period of time.” Judge Barrett dissented from the panel opinion. In
her view, the majority understood “public charge” to “mean something only slightly broader than
‘primarily and permanently dependent,’” but her review of the provision’s history and the statutory
scheme led her to conclude that it was “a much more capacious term”—broad enough to justify the rule’s
definition.
Judge Barrett also dissented from an en banc opinion in United States v. Uriarte, involving what one
judge later described as “a difficult question of statutory interpretation” about whether the revised
penalties under the First Step Act apply to resentencing. Enacted in 2018, the First Step Act provided that
contemporaneous convictions for using a firearm during a crime of violence no longer triggered a twenty-
five-year mandatory minimum sentence. The amendment applied retroactively “if a sentence for the
offense has not been imposed as of such date of enactment.”
A majority of the Seventh Circuit sitting en banc held that the defendant, who was initial y sentenced
before the First Step Act became law, was “entitled to be sentenced under the provisions of the Act”
because he was awaiting resentencing on the date of enactment. Writing for the three dissenting judges,
Judge Barrett reasoned that the “more persuasive” reading of Congress’s “use of the present-perfect tense
in the phrase ‘has not been imposed’” was that a sentence is “imposed” when the district court hands
down the initial sentence, even if that sentence is later reconsidered, vacated, or appealed. Judge Barrett
relied on the “specific words” used in the statute, including its reference to “‘a sentence,’ not ‘the
sentence.’” Judge Barrett also faulted the majority for leaning too heavily on its view of what Congress
must have considered in passing the law, rather than “the plain text of the statute.”
Opinions such as these suggest that while Judge Barrett may consult history as part of a constitutional
analysis (e.g., from the Founding-era or the relevant ratification period), she may take a more strictly
textualist approach to statutory interpretation, focusing on the language and structure of the law at issue.
Additional CRS Resources on the Nomination
CRS is preparing additional products related to the nomination. For a discussion of Justice Ginsburg’s
legacy and what her vacant seat could mean for the Supreme Court, see this post, along with this report on
cases where Justice Ginsburg cast a deciding vote for the majority in closely divided cases. Additional
reports discuss the appointment process: in particular, the President’s selection of a nominee and
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consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee, as wel as procedural issues related to an eight-member
Court.
Author Information
Victoria L. Killion
Legislative Attorney
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