Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Monday that public scrutiny of the Supreme Court is hardly new and should be welcomed, and that she has developed a “thick skin” about criticism of her role as one of the newest justices.
“With everything, there can be good and bad,” Barrett said at a conference of judges and lawyers. “With the court being in the news, to the extent that it engages people with the work of the court, and paying attention to the court and knowing what the courts do and what the Constitution has to say, that’s a positive development.”
The downside, she said, comes if there is a misperception about the court’s work or if there is the sense that it has “let people down.”
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She was gently interviewed by Diane S. Sykes, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago and a former colleague.
Criticism mostly concerns expensive trips taken years ago by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., underwritten by wealthy business executives and not disclosed in required annual financial reports.
Whether Congress has the authority to impose a specific code of ethics on the Supreme Court has divided Democrats and Republicans, constitutional experts and the justices themselves.
Alito earlier this summer was emphatic in an interview with a lawyer and editorial writer in the Wall Street Journal about Congress’s role.
Justice Elena Kagan wasn’t nearly as definitive when asked at a conference for the 9th Circuit in Portland, Ore. “It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that is somehow not subject to any checks and balances from anybody else,” she said, adding, “I mean, we are not imperial.”
And she said Justice Sonia Sotomayor sent Barrett’s husband, Jesse, back to South Bend, Ind., with Halloween candy chosen for each of her children.
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