If you wanted to design an opinion to provoke this response from Justice Barrett, calling the most interesting / hotly disputed Fed Courts issue in the last five years “mind-numbing” “legalese” is a good way to start!
I feel like Barrett is the type of legal nerd that would get worked up over someone calling procedure "legalese" and dismissing it as "mind numbing" regardless of what the exact topic is
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a lawyer. I follow the legal world as a curious observer who likes to learn and respects all forms of nerdery, so this is very much an outsider's perspective
I really wasn't surprised that Roberts gave Barrett the opinion in CASA. Roberts can't write every politically sensitive case that comes up, and she is the Justice most similar to him by a country mile. It's also an opinion that she is particularly suited to write; she cares very deeply about procedure and has probably thought about it more than anyone else.
I don't really have a strongly polarized opinion on Barrett. I think she's very conservative in both the legal and political sense, but I don't think she's much of an Originalist. She reads much more like a Consequentialist to me. The original meaning of whatever document she's assessing matters to her, but it seems to be pretty far down a list, with institutionalism and consequences above it.
Mostly, I just wish legal commentators could pick a position between calling her the next coming of the antichrist or giving her a verbal tongue bath every time she comes up. No offense to Mr. Lat - I think this article is a very good one
I agree with you; with the benefit of hindsight, the assignment makes a lot of sense. She’s at the center of the Court, and she’s also a former Civil Procedure Professor who knows these issues well.
It’s absurd to suggest that Justice Barrett’s opinions are a reaction to MAGA criticism. This baselessly impugns her integrity, and as a practical matter the opinions surely were well along in the preparation stage before these recent criticisms.
Agreed (as my footnote 5 makes clear). Also, I made your practical point—that her votes were cast and the opinions were being drafted well before the recent criticisms—in the latest episode of Advisory Opinions (recorded yesterday morning):
Prof. Samuel Bray (Justice Barrett's colleague at Notre Dame Law School) is also a leading scholar of the law of equity, and his scholarship was central to the Court's conclusion that the universal injunctions at issue were beyond the scope of traditional equity practice (and thus unauthorized by the Judiciary Act). Like David, I think Barrett was simply deciding the case as she saw it -- her opinion reflects the standard textualist view that congressional authorizations of equitable relief should be cabined by traditional equity practice unless Congress explicitly says otherwise. But I also wonder if she came to find Bray's work on equity especially influential during her time at Notre Dame.
If you wanted to design an opinion to provoke this response from Justice Barrett, calling the most interesting / hotly disputed Fed Courts issue in the last five years “mind-numbing” “legalese” is a good way to start!
So true—fighting words!
I feel like Barrett is the type of legal nerd that would get worked up over someone calling procedure "legalese" and dismissing it as "mind numbing" regardless of what the exact topic is
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a lawyer. I follow the legal world as a curious observer who likes to learn and respects all forms of nerdery, so this is very much an outsider's perspective
I really wasn't surprised that Roberts gave Barrett the opinion in CASA. Roberts can't write every politically sensitive case that comes up, and she is the Justice most similar to him by a country mile. It's also an opinion that she is particularly suited to write; she cares very deeply about procedure and has probably thought about it more than anyone else.
I don't really have a strongly polarized opinion on Barrett. I think she's very conservative in both the legal and political sense, but I don't think she's much of an Originalist. She reads much more like a Consequentialist to me. The original meaning of whatever document she's assessing matters to her, but it seems to be pretty far down a list, with institutionalism and consequences above it.
Mostly, I just wish legal commentators could pick a position between calling her the next coming of the antichrist or giving her a verbal tongue bath every time she comes up. No offense to Mr. Lat - I think this article is a very good one
I agree with you; with the benefit of hindsight, the assignment makes a lot of sense. She’s at the center of the Court, and she’s also a former Civil Procedure Professor who knows these issues well.
Who could possibly hate her? Well, yes, I know who, but I try very hard never to listen to them.
It’s absurd to suggest that Justice Barrett’s opinions are a reaction to MAGA criticism. This baselessly impugns her integrity, and as a practical matter the opinions surely were well along in the preparation stage before these recent criticisms.
Agreed (as my footnote 5 makes clear). Also, I made your practical point—that her votes were cast and the opinions were being drafted well before the recent criticisms—in the latest episode of Advisory Opinions (recorded yesterday morning):
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/scotus-2025-term-debrief/
Prof. Samuel Bray (Justice Barrett's colleague at Notre Dame Law School) is also a leading scholar of the law of equity, and his scholarship was central to the Court's conclusion that the universal injunctions at issue were beyond the scope of traditional equity practice (and thus unauthorized by the Judiciary Act). Like David, I think Barrett was simply deciding the case as she saw it -- her opinion reflects the standard textualist view that congressional authorizations of equitable relief should be cabined by traditional equity practice unless Congress explicitly says otherwise. But I also wonder if she came to find Bray's work on equity especially influential during her time at Notre Dame.