Amy Coney Barrett Offers Some Advice to Judges

Newsweek

6 hours ago

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett offered advice to judges and others in the legal community during an address at the Seventh Circuit Judicial Conference on Monday night.
Newsweek reached out to the Supreme Court's public information office for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Barrett has emerged as a swing vote on the nation's highest court. Although she was appointed by President Donald Trump, she has at times shown a willingness to break from the court's conservative majority.
Americans' confidence in the judiciary has fallen in recent years, according to Gallup, which in December 2024 found that only 35 percent of Americans have confidence in the judicial system and courts. The pollster's latest survey on Supreme Court approval yielded similar skepticism from Americans, with only 39 percent approving of the High Court.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in Washington on October 21, 2020.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in Washington on October 21, 2020.
Sarah Silbiger-Pool/Getty Images
What To Know
Barrett addressed hundreds of judges and other legal professionals during a brief address at the conference in Chicago. She urged courts to maintain a sense of "camaraderie and professionalism," Fox News reported.
She acknowledged that there are disagreements in the legal field, Bloomberg reported.
"Law is a profession that, unlike some others, operates continually under the strain of disagreement," she said, according to Bloomberg. "Doctors cooperate and coordinate to deal with patients. Engineers work together to build a bridge. But litigants and their lawyers are pitted against one another on opposite sides."
While this may sound "bleak," it allows attorneys too learn how to argue "without letting it consume relationships," she said.
"I'm grateful to the way our bar conducts itself in that regard, because that is what enables the judicial system to work well, that collegiality," she said.
During the most recent Supreme Court term, Barrett sided with liberal justices on some issues, including a key deportation case in which she opposed the Trump administration's use of wartime legislation to deport civilians, or a case in which she rejected efforts to freeze foreign aid funding. She has also given the Trump administration wins, including in her ruling on a major birthright citizenship case.
What People Are Saying
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in May, per NBC News: "In our Constitution...the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president. And that innovation doesn't work if...the judiciary is not independent. Its job is to, obviously, decide cases but, in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence."
Gallup, in December 2024: "Few countries and territories have seen larger percentage-point drops in confidence in the judiciary [over a similar four-year span] than the U.S. These include Myanmar [from 2018 to 2022] overlapping the return to military rule in 2021, Venezuela [2012-2016] amid deep economic and political turmoil, and Syria [2009-2013] in the runup to and early years of civil war, and others that have experienced their own kinds of disorder in the past two decades."
What Happens Next
Supreme Court terms begin on the first Monday of October. This year, it's October 6.