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'Read The Opinion' Urges Supreme Court Justice Constantly Ruling Without Written Opinions

Delightfully disingenuous!

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Senate Holds Confirmation Hearing For Amy Coney Barrett To Be Supreme Court Justice

A preview of the detailed opinions she wants us to read. (Photo by Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

When Amy Coney Barrett declared that she’s not a partisan hack at a Mitch McConnell event, it felt like the height of cynicism. But Justice Barrett was apparently just getting warmed up for a comfortable two or three decades of brazenly gaslighting the American public.

To wit, the next-day delivery justice rammed on the Court in record time to beat Donald Trump’s date with electoral humiliation attended another perfectly non-partisan function at *checks notes* the Ronald Reagan Library to bemoan those detractors suggesting that she’s just a political operative in a robe issuing rulings to cement policy results. She even has a message for anyone tempted to think that way that Politico helpfully and totally uncritically passed along:

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Monday that judges are not deciding cases to impose a “policy result,” but are making their best effort to determine what the law and the Constitution require.

In a nation splintered by partisanship and wracked by incivility, Barrett in remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library appeared to acknowledge that expected court decisions on reproductive rights and gun control would be seen through a political lens and lead to division. She urged Americans to “read the opinion” and consider the court’s reasoning before making judgments about the outcome.

Read the opinion? What an awesome idea!

If only she weren’t personally issuing rulings without written opinions from the nebulous shadow docket. Half the time the only opinions we get to read are the dissenters penning a few pages worth of “these people are totally issuing a policy result” dressed up in fancier language.

Remember when the Court rubberstamped Texas using vigilante litigants to perform an end run around a half century of Roe v. Wade? Judge the justice’s stance on that one on the strength of this unsigned single paragraph! ACB joined the Court’s ruling defending the DoD’s right to vaccinate its service members with this deeply illuminating paragraph. And to think the district court went ahead and chose to ignore that one. At least when the Court announced its latest assault on the Voting Rights Act it generously offered an unsigned seven-page shrug of an opinion, providing next to no guidance on how the case differed from this one-sentence opinion in a similar case.

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As UVA Law’s Lawrence B. Solum put it:

“In shadow docket cases, the Supreme Court frequently does not provide its reasoning — it simply announces its decision,” Solum said. “And even when the Supreme Court publishes a short opinion in a shadow docket case, that reasoning is frequently cryptic, sketchy and incomplete.”

Justice Barrett knows all this, of course. These remarks aren’t directed at lawyers, they’re meant to be picked up by mainstream outlets and disseminated to the general public. And she’s counting on no one ever bothering to follow up on her nonsense and just assume that the Court is issuing very detailed, very serious opinions for all of these judicial broadsides.

And, you know, mission accomplished. Because like clockwork, these remarks landed in the headline of a Politico piece for the general public to mindlessly lap up.

A Politico piece, we should note, that’s already longer than a lot of the Court’s most significant opinions this month.

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With divisive Supreme Court rulings coming, Barrett says: ‘Read the opinion’ [Politico]

Earlier: We’re Not ‘Partisan Hacks,’ Says Partisan Hack At Partisan Event

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