Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke with Bishop Robert Barron in an interview about how her Catholic faith keeps her grounded without unduly informing her high-stakes judicial decisions.
On an episode of "Bishop Barron Presents" released Sunday, Barrett was asked what advice she'd give to a young, enthusiastic Catholic who wants to enter public life. She recounted a conversation with a Notre Dame law student, and Barrett said anyone wondering should "discern" and figure out what they're called to do.
"If you do feel like this is a vocation and something you're called to do, I think it can never be the most important thing," she said.
"So I think being grounded in your faith and who you are and being right in the Lord so that you're not tossed like a ship everywhere, because there are enormous pressures."
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"I think being grounded, not, as we've discussed, not because my faith informs the substance of the decisions that I make. It emphatically does not, but I think it grounds me as a person," she added. "It's who I am as a person, and so it's what enables me to keep my job in public life in perspective and remain the person who I am and continue to try to be the person I hope to be despite the pressures of public life."
Barrett became the fifth woman ever to join the Supreme Court when she was narrowly confirmed following her nomination by President Donald Trump in 2020. She filled the vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death that year, creating a conservative supermajority on the high court.
A devout Catholic who taught at Notre Dame, Barrett has been scrutinized over her religion and whether it affects her jurisprudence. She was one of the six justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in the landmark Dobbs abortion decision in 2022.
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Barrett was memorably challenged over faith by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in 2017 when she was appointed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Feinstein told Barrett the "dogma" of her Catholic beliefs "lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country."
Barrett told Feinstein, "Senator, I see no conflict between having a sincerely held faith and duties as a judge… were I confirmed as a judge, I would decide cases according to the rule of law beginning to end," adding that she would "never impose" her "personal convictions upon the law."
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Barrett described her struggle to reconcile personal beliefs with her duty to uphold the Constitution in an excerpt from her book released Sept. 9, "Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution."
In one anecdote, she described her personal opposition to capital punishment but nevertheless ruled in 2022 in favor of reinstating Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's death sentence.
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Barrett said that if she distorted the law to affirm her stance on the death penalty, she would be interfering with voters' right to self-government and that her office doesn't entitle her to align the legal system with her moral or policy views.
"I found the vote distasteful to cast, and I wish our system worked differently," she wrote. "Yet I had no doubt that voting to affirm the sentence was the right thing for me to do."
