Trump Front Runner Amy Coney Barrett Says “A Thing Worth Doing is Worth Doing Badly”

Amy Coney Barrett is a dream nominee for Donald Trump. He likes attractive people. Check that box. 

She has seven children and is having a phenomenal career. Great armor against Democrats; great appeal to Republicans.

Really, on the surface the only thing not to like is that her name sounds too much like Comey.

I worry about her intellect and values. She is plenty smart; but also plenty narrow and rigid.

I had a brief interaction with her when she was an Executive Editor with the Notre Dame Law Review, where I published a research article.

I mention this because part of her academic career has been built by publishing her research in the same journal where she served as an editor (though she has impressive publications elsewhere, too).

I’ve read two of her recent articles. They are extremely well-written. She is a deep thinker. But again, she plows her furrow in very narrow and also troubling lines.

To summarize my concerns, let me quote her most recent article, “Originalism and Stare Decisis,” published in her “home” law review, which reads like an obsequious tribute to Justice Antonin Scalia. She concludes with these thoughts (quotes in red text):

CONCLUSION

Justice Scalia admitted that “in a crunch I may prove a faint-hearted originalist.” Stare decisis, however, rarely put him in a crunch, mostly because of the underappreciated features of our system that keep the law stable without need for resort to the doctrine of stare decisis. To the extent he was occasionally faint hearted, however, who could blame him for being human? As the Justice himself put it:

As for the fact that originalism is strong medicine, and that one cannot realistically expect judges (probably myself included) to apply it without a trace of constitutional perfectionism: I suppose I must respond that this is a world in which nothing is flawless, and fall back upon G.K. Chesterton’s observation that a thing worth doing is worth doing badly.

Nothing is flawless, but I, for one, find it impossible to say that Justice Scalia did his job badly.

What is she saying here? The Constitution is fixed in meaning by what white male framers envisioned at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. A justice should start here, and also try to end here with his or her analysis. If the present doesn’t really match the realities of 1787— for example, a woman’s right to control her reproductive decisions— it’s okay because taking down Roe—a bad thing to do from the standpoint of stare decisis (precedent) is “a thing worth doing is worth doing badly.”

C.K. Chesterton-- the background authority Barrett admires by implication-- was a brilliant writer and philosopher who routinely referred to himself as an “orthodox” Christian.

If you want to read her most recent publication click here https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=4734&context=ndlr.