Former President Donald Trump's final Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett is being hailed as the "new intellectual center of gravity on the Supreme Court."
Barrett's votes and writings in this June's decisions are giving left-leaning Axios hope for her separating from the most conservative flank of the Supreme Court as led by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
"Barrett is just as conservative as everyone knew she would be," Axios wrote in its analysis. "She joined the court's rulings overturning Roe v. Wade, expanding gun rights and curtailing the powers of the federal government.
"But she is beginning to separate herself from the pack in important ways.
"She seems less willing than some of her colleagues to fast-forward through parts of the legal process just to reach a particular outcome.
"She has explicitly criticized some of the ways other conservatives use historical analysis to solve modern questions. And in the term that just ended, her positions were significantly less favorable to former President Trump than those of any other Republican appointee."
Among them:
- Barrett sided with the liberal justices in dissent on the ruling supporting a Jan. 6 protester, saying it should have been an "open and shut" victory for government dictatorial power.
- In the unanimous decision to keep Colorado from blocking Trump from the ballot, "Barrett made a point to write that the conservative majority should have gotten there on narrower grounds than it did."
- And in permitting a president to retain immunity on official acts, Axios hailed Barrett's writings as suggesting the Biden administration cases seeking to jail Trump should have at least been permitted to go forward without throwing out evidence tied to presidential immunity.
Conservative justices tend to abide by the letter of the Constitution, forcing Congress to rewrite law, but Barrett appears to have some hope for left-leaning Axios in permitting the Supreme Court to weigh modern adjustments around that end.
"Tradition is not an end in itself — and I fear that the court uses it that way here," Barrett wrote in a Second Amendment case this term, Axios hailed.
"Evidence of 'tradition' unmoored from original meaning is not binding law," she continued in her ruling. "Historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold."
As the youngest conservative justice, Axios noted, Barrett can provide a "roadmap" to dissent from the majority, much like Chief Justice John Roberts has in becoming the most moderate voice on the Supreme Court.
"She is the youngest conservative on the court," Axios concluded. "She will still be there after Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito are gone and new, more junior justices cycle in.
"They're both adherents to a strict method of historical analysis, and they're both usually inclined to move quickly and rule broadly.
"And it helps to be aligned with the chief justice, which Barrett often is."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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