Amy Coney Barrett Isn’t What the Conservative Legal Movement Expected
What separates Barrett from her fellow conservatives is how she reached the court. In many ways, her résumé is exactly what the conservative legal establishment looks for from prospective judicial nominees. Barrett clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman, a staunch conservative on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then for Justice Antonin Scalia. While working in private practice in the late 1990s and early 2000s, she was one of the many lawyers who worked on the Bush v. Gore litigation for the George W. Bush campaign during the 2000 election. (So did Roberts and Kavanaugh.)
From there, she entered legal academia—first at George Washington University, then at the University of Virginia, and finally at Notre Dame. That path sets her apart from the other five conservatives on the court. She is the only one, for example, who did not work in the executive branch for a Republican president. Justice Clarence Thomas, Alito, and Roberts worked for the Reagan administration; Justice Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh worked for the second Bush administration. All but Kavanaugh worked in the Justice Department, a common launchpad for future judicial careers.
Barrett, in other words, avoided the usual stomping grounds for future conservative justices. I’ve written before about how the conservative legal movement is largely structured as an elite social club. It is designed to identify and screen prospective judicial nominees for ideological suitability. Legal conservatives are haunted to this day by George H.W. Bush’s selection of David Souter to fill a key vacancy in 1990. The Bush White House insisted Souter was a reliable conservative when it nominated him. He soon drifted leftward after joining the court, eventually becoming a reliable member of its liberal bloc.
