Justice Barrett: ‘We All Wear Black Because Judges are Nonpartisan’
“And the idea is that we are all listening to the law. We’re all trying to get it right. We’re not playing for a team.”
United States Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett sat for an interview with Bret Baier of FOX News this week, in part to promote her new book.
Baier is an excellent interviewer, and one of the best exchanges comes when he asks her to explain why the court needs to keep stepping in to rule on judgments from lower courts.
Justice Barrett says that this happens under all presidents and reminds Baier that these are rulings that will apply to all presidents, years from now.
FOX News has more details:
Barrett says justices ‘wear black, not red or blue’ in response to partisan critics in Fox News interview
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett pushed back against partisan portrayals of the Supreme Court, telling Fox News’ Bret Baier that justices “wear black, not red or blue” and follow the Constitution, not politics.
She appeared on Fox to promote her new book, “Listening to the Law,” and to address public perceptions of the Court’s work and independence.
Barrett stressed that the Court is not divided into partisan teams. She also defended its approach to presidential power, clarified misconceptions about the Dobbs decision, and reflected on her originalist judicial philosophy.
Her book touches on details such as assigned seating, courtroom traditions, and the gap between outside perception and inside reality.
“You know, we don’t wear red and blue, we all wear black because judges are nonpartisan. And the idea is that we are all listening to the law. We’re all trying to get it right. We’re not playing for a team,” she told Baier. “We don’t sit on specific sides of the bench, left and right. You know, we sit in order of seniority.”
Barrett underscored the disconnect between public perception and the Court’s inner workings, noting:
“I often ask new law clerks what surprised you most when you started? And one of the most common answers is the difference between what’s happening on the inside and what people think is happening on the inside.”
The interview is about 17 minutes long. You should watch the whole thing.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Has she MET Ketanji-Brown, Kagan, or the Wise Latina?
Of course she has. They sit together in Conference all the time.
Well maybe they don’t sit together even when on conference.
The malignantly narcissistic, self-reverential non-biologist and the dim-witted Latina, more aptly.
She os often on like with the other 3
She has been overall a disappointment
Deliberately obtuse.
Even if the Justices aren’t “playing for a team”, they were selected for their ideology and judicial philosophy, and in the present age, ideology and partisanship have extremely close alignment.
District court judges wear black too and they definitely are playing for a team – many of them.
And Circuit Appellate Court judges. And that is the main pool from which Supreme Court Justice nominees are drawn.
Perception of the existence of “political teams” is inversely proportional to one’s belief in the honesty and integrity of the operation of our government. For the last generation or two, that operation has been in doubt for more and more Americans.
Subotai Bahadur
Or, I’ll say it plainly: they play for a price.
What did you want her to say?
“The Supreme Court is nothing more than a political group if you are not getting the verdicts you want pack the court there is nothing more than that”
Either you want the justices to defend the court or you want them to attack it there are no alternatives.
By the way if you understand subtlety she insulted the hell out of the Democrats on the Supreme Court in her Weiss interview by saying if you like the result of all of the verdicts you write you are a bad judge.
They don’t need to defend it, nor attack it. They just have to do their jobs. Roberts and the rest of the robed tyrants need to stop talking in public about the people that have cases before them.
First Amendment of not, none of them should ever speak ill of the President or Congress.
Just. Do. Your. Damn. Job.
If you meant it is questionable if the supreme court justices should do interviews at all I agree.
However Barrett did not attack Trump at all. The only attack I saw her make was when she insulted the left wing judges.
The only thing they are missing while ruling on constitutionality and justice is a scythe and hood.
The scythe metaphor meant harvest.
Did you miss the many Trump victories since he was elected???
The Supreme Court is what prevented the United States from becoming another Europe or Canada when Obama was elected and don’t you forget that.
“We’re all trying to get it right. We’re not playing for a team,” she told Baier. “We don’t sit on specific sides of the bench, left and right.”
Absolutely WRONG! In every count.
Regardless of what she or Roberts have said. There ARE Obama judges, there ARE Biden judges, and there ARE Clinton judges. Just like there ARE Bush judges.
But for the most part, nearly every SC Just Us nominated by a Republican will sway far left on many occasions. That’s because until Trump, Republicans would allow any justice nominated by a Democrat to pass through to a vote.
But nearly every Democrat will force a Republican nominee to be removed from consideration, or in those very limited instances, force a Republican to nominate a left of center judge to avoid getting Borked.
So, please feel free to take off your rose colored glasses. It is impeding your vision.
If she says that she hurts the legitimacy of the court in the eyes of a massive number of Americans.
I agree with you that it is at best questionable for a judge to do an interview.
However once an interview starts that question will come up and it becomes a binary of “attack court or defend court”.
Again the ONLY thing that stopped us from becoming Europe under Obama was the court system upholding enough of the constitution.
Do not delude yourself. We could just as easily have slid into the opening stages of tyranny like the UK or France without the judiciary.
Angels wear white because they’re Democrats.
I’m hoping you simply forgot the sarc tag. If not I’ll offer this response:
Klan members wear white as well.
Remember, the Bible compared the Pharisees to “whited sepulchers”. On the outside they dressed to the best but on the inside they were as wicked as any demon the devil had. Then Jesus said unless your rightousness exceeds that of these Pharisees, you will in NO WISE enter into the kingdom of heaven!
What about it rhhardin? If color matters ,and a judge wants to be impartial or “nonpartisan” grey would be the correct color.
As far as the color of robes that judges wear, why don’t they wear grey or silver?
Maybe they should wear white to remind themselves that they ought to have pure motives when making decisions.
Shows the grease too easily.
Times like this I wish I could post images — I have a great animated GIF of Snoopy snickering, which is the appropriate response to Barrett’s claims.
You used to be able to, by typing in your own HTML, but the site admins apparently weren’t aware of it.
When I first got here, I posted a historical photo of John Brown’s hanging, to illustrate an issue in the article.
The next time I tried posting an image, the robo-censor ate my HTML.
More like they wear black to hide their partisanship.
“You know, we don’t wear red and blue, we all wear black because judges are nonpartisan”
6-3.
6-3.
6-3.
6-3.
And not just any 3.
The SAME 3 every time.
Just like violent crime, it’s more often than not the same people.
The same six as well.
There are no impartial judges. Some are partial to the law, others to politics and circumstances (meaning they are only partial to the law when it serves their purposes).
Well, saying that would have been redundant, since the math precludes any other outcome.,
she is pushing her book where she laments but yet convinces us ( or really only herself) that while going against her own moral convictions ( pro death penalty in one case) that she is a conservative
her left wing wwjd application to our common sense crime laws
belies her pov…agenda
illegal entrance into this country is illegal
and criminals must not be treated like non criminals as well as the other way around
maybe she is trying out her
johnny cash reasoning
She’s lying, she knows that she’s lying, we know that she’s lying, she knows that we know that she’s lying and she know that she does so with impunity
I am not sure she knows she is lying…really, those black robes seem to distort reality in some way.
they wear black b/c it hides the stains
of incorrect rulings
“… we all wear black because judges are nonpartisan ,,,’
The biggest lie of the century. If judges are nonpartisan then why are their decisions so predictable on the basis of politics? If I can get the data, I will calculate a “coefficient of concordance,” also called “Kendall’s W” for the justices. This coefficient measures the degree of agreement among multiple raters. Of course we don’t need any fancy statistics tell us the obvious, SCOTUS justices are hyper partisan, and always have been. Amy Coney Barrett deserves to removal from the court for telling this whopper. Of course Ketanji-Brown should also be removed for incompetence, partisan bias, along with outrageous comments and attacks on her fellow justices.
So why did Trump ever nominate Barrett? Answer: he relied on recommendations from the Federalist Society. Various commenters warned us that Barrett would turn out to be a big disappointment.
Saying stuff like this doesn’t make you seem nonpartisan, measured, contemplative, or judicial, Barrett.
It makes you sound delusional.
Stop openly denying the reality we all know.
The first step of solving a problem is admitting there is a problem.
1. Judges aren’t partisan.
2. Ninth Circuit judges are zealous, not partisan.
3. Hannah Dugan was partisan, but we indicted her. <– you are here
4 Judges are partisan, and here's why that's a good thing.
You skipped the step of ‘you are a bad person for noticing’
nailed it.
Supposed to be non-partisan, and supposed to rule according to the Constitution rather than party doctrine and dogma, is significantly different to are and do.
President Trump was 100% correct on this issue when he said that everyone knows the outcome of any case as soon as you know who the judge is.
To be extremely generous, Barrett might be trying to say that judges are SUPPOSED TO BE non-partisan. Ideally. In a world that no one has ever actually lived in.
Really, though, she’s just flat out lying here.
Wow, she ain’t got a clue if she thinks other judges aren’t playing for a team. It’s pretty obvious which team the three libtards on the Supreme Court play for
I am not sure she knows she is lying…really, those black robes seem to distort reality in some way.
Grey would be the correct color if you wanted to show impartiality. A equal mixture of white and black. Judges will one day be judged for all the decisions they make. No escaping when the day comes that they will stand before the Judge of judges. Judges are not perfect and the decisions they make they are responsible for. Enough on color of their robes. Silver would be a better choice than black. Black reminds you of death or a funeral.
….If only this was true.