WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in the spotlight after siding against President Donald Trump in recent rulings, has a well-timed new book coming out.
Barrett took the bench in the waning days of Trump‘s first term, amid controversy over her replacing the liberal feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, interest in Barrett is intensifying as she has emerged as a conservative justice who does not rule in lockstep with Trump’s agenda.
In “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution,” which comes out in September, Barrett will discuss her deliberation process and dealing with media scrutiny, according to an announcement from Sentinel Books.
“The process of judging, which happens behind closed doors, can seem like a mystery,” Barrett says in the book. “It shouldn’t.”
The mother of seven also writes about what it’s like to be a Supreme Court justice with school-age children, how she’s adjusted to the court and what a normal day looks like.
Barrett was subject to scathing criticism recently from some of Trump’s most vocal supporters after Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s three liberal justices in backing an order that the Trump administration has to pay foreign aid organizations for work they already did for the government.
Jack Posobiec, a senior editor at Human Events, a conservative political news and analysis site, called Barrett “a warning against the dangers of Republican DEI.”
In addition, Barrett stood out several times in last year’s blockbuster’s term.
In pivotal arguments over Trump’s claims of absolute immunity from prosecution, Barrett got Trump’s lawyer to concede that some of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election weren’t official presidential acts.
She clashed with fellow conservatives about their reliance on history to decide cases.
And Barrett overtook Roberts as the Republican appointee casting the most liberal votes in divided cases, including on an air pollution control case and over whether defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol can be prosecuted for obstructing Congress.
She also joined part of the liberal justices’ dissent on presidential immunity.
But since joining the court, Barrett has also voted for major conservative causes: overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, ending race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities, and overturning a 40-year precedent that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and more.
“We are immensely proud to publish the first book from such a distinguished jurist at a time when the Court’s decisions have never been more consequential,” Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Sentinel, said in a statement.
