Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett is unqualified: she doesn't respect the Constitution

Amy Coney Barrett is unqualified for her Appeals Court position. If she joins the Supreme Court, it must be radically reformed.

When asked whether the Constitution allows the President to delay the election, she replied that she'd have to consider matters “with an open mind." At greater length: "I would need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process." 

This is like being open-minded about whether murder is legal. The Constitution allows only Congress to change election dates, which are set by Title 3, Section 1, Chapter 1 of the U.S. Code. 

When asked, "Under federal law, is it illegal to intimidate voters at the poll?" she replied, "I can’t apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts." But hypotheticals are irrelevant. Federal law bans even attempted intimidation, requiring some combination of fines or prison for "whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote."

If these are sincere statements of her beliefs, she doesn't know vital parts of American law. This renders her incompetent to be any sort of federal judge.

But I expect she knows election law perfectly well. She just doesn't care. Her policy preferences would be promoted by undermining elections so her allies could hold power. She will happily support voter intimidation to achieve that end.

Barrett describes herself as an originalist about Constitutional interpretation. Yet her answers violate the Constitution. This reveals the point of originalism -- to defend gruesome prejudices that society mostly surpassed by summoning them back from the 1700s in their full monstrous form.