What Americans saw unfold on their screens this past week was a confirmation battle spotlighting familiar partisan divides. What they deserved was an open reckoning with what Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s elevation means for the country’s political and constitutional architecture.
The views of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor on health care and other substantive issues—such as abortion, gun control, immigration, and climate change—will obviously have enormous implications for individual rights and Congress’s ability to enact progressive legislation over the coming decades. But the divergence between Democrats and Republicans on these subjects falls within the bounds of small-d democratic argument. The same cannot be said about the conservative project to systematically undermine fair and free elections, and its reliance on the Supreme Court as the linchpin in that plan.
Mary Ziegler: The secret code of the Amy Coney Barrett hearing
The United States is a representative democracy, which means, theoretically, that the will of the people is expressed through the election of officials who are entrusted with acting on their constituents’ behalf and in their best interests. The United States is also a constitutional democracy, in which this popular will is further circumscribed by a judiciary that interprets what is permissible under the Constitution and other laws of the land. From a design standpoint, few things could be more devastating to democracy in this country than the use of one-half of this system to break the other.