The Amy Coney Barrett Hearings Were a Failure
What Americans saw unfold on their screens this past week was a confirmation battle spotlighting familiar partisan divides. What they deserved was an open reckoning with what Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s elevation means for the country’s political and constitutional architecture.
The views of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor on health care and other substantive issues—such as abortion, gun control, immigration, and climate change—will obviously have enormous implications for individual rights and Congress’s ability to enact progressive legislation over the coming decades. But the divergence between Democrats and Republicans on these subjects falls within the bounds of small-d democratic argument. The same cannot be said about the conservative project to systematically undermine fair and free elections, and its reliance on the Supreme Court as the linchpin in that plan.
