Washington — Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke with CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell for her first television interview since joining the Supreme Court in October 2020, responding to criticism that the Supreme Court is allowing President Trump to expand the bounds of executive power and discussing the attacks waged on the federal judiciary.
Selected by President Trump to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Barrett’s appointment to the high court widened its conservative majority to 6-3. At 53, she is likely to serve for decades.
So far in her tenure on the Supreme Court, Barrett has been in the majority in landmark decisions overturning Roe v. Wade, ending affirmative action in higher education, and curbing federal regulatory power. She also joined with her conservative colleagues in ruling last year that former presidents have immunity from federal prosecution for official actions taken while in office.
But this year, she earned the ire of some conservatives after declining to grant the Trump administration emergency relief during an early stage of a challenge to its freezing of foreign aid funding. Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts also joined with the three liberal justices in rejecting Mr. Trump’s bid to delay his sentencing earlier this year for a felony criminal conviction in New York.
Barrett has written a new book, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution” (which will be available to the public Sept. 9). She spoke with O’Donnell about an array of topics related to the Supreme Court, including how it handles emergency appeals, its June 2022 ruling unwinding the constitutional right to abortion, and the threats she has faced since becoming a justice.
Here are five takeaways from Barrett’s interview:
Barrett details the decision overturning Roe v. Wade
Shortly after Barrett joined the Supreme Court in October 2020, the high court agreed to take up a case that asked it to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the constitutional right to an abortion.
In June 2022, a five-justice majority on the Supreme Court voted to dismantle the federal abortion protections, saying it would be up to states to decide the issue of abortion access. Barrett was among the five justices who voted to overturn Roe.
Explaining the decision, Barrett said that the Supreme Court did not outlaw abortion through its ruling in the case, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral,” she told O’Donnell. “Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states. All of these kinds of questions, decisions that you mention that require medical judgments, are not ones that the Constitution commits to the court, you know, to decide how far into pregnancy the right of abortion might extend.”
Barrett said that before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, it had drawn lines.
“What Dobbs says is that those calls are properly left to the democratic process, and the states have been working those out,” she said. “There’s been a lot of legislative activity and a lot of state constitutional activity since the decision in Dobbs was rendered.”
Since Roe was reversed, 14 states have enacted near-total bans on abortion, and a handful more have restricted access to the procedure. But 18 states protect abortion access.
“The question is how do you decide because I don’t think that — well, certainly my children would say they don’t want me deciding under the law of Amy what liberties, what rights we have and not. I mean, that’s a job for the American people, and the Constitution leaves virtually every question like that to the democratic process, to the American people,” she said.
Barrett says emergency orders present “challenge” for the court
Since Mr. Trump returned to office for a second term, the Supreme Court has been asked by the Justice Department to intervene in the early stages of cases nearly two dozen times. These cases land on the court’s emergency docket, or “shadow docket,” a term coined by a University of Chicago law professor in 2015.
While emergency relief was typically sought in death penalty cases, the Supreme Court has in recent years been asked to issue interim orders that, if granted, remain in place while litigation moves through the lower courts.
As federal judges have issued injunctions blocking many of Mr. Trump’s policies this year, the Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to step in and freeze those orders, allowing it to continue enforcing a challenged policy as the cases proceed. The high court has allowed Mr. Trump to fire members of independent agencies, terminate grants from the Department of Education and National Institutes of Health, and move forward with agency plans to terminate thousands of federal workers, among other decisions.
The Trump administration has prevailed in most of those emergency appeals. The Supreme Court’s handling of those requests has sparked complaints from its critics, as it often does not provide a written explanation for its decision.
“The emergency orders present a challenge because they do require the work of the court to proceed far more quickly than it normally does,” Barrett told O’Donnell.
The justice said the Supreme Court “typically moves slowly.” When it agrees to hear a case and decide the merits, each side submits briefs presenting their legal arguments, the justices hear oral arguments and then typically spend weeks, if not months, working on opinions.
“I describe in the book the way that oral argument has grown and developed over 200 years, it’s taken us to kind of settle into the way that we do arguments and opinions,” Barrett said. “The emergency docket moves much more quickly, and it is a much more recent phenomenon.”
She added: “The emergency docket is newer, and so I would say those processes are still being shaped and sorted out.”
Barrett says it’s “wrong” to suggest the Supreme Court has an agenda
Mr. Trump shaped the current composition of the Supreme Court, appointing three of its nine justices — Barrett and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — during his first term.
Critics of the Supreme Court have said the conservative majority has allowed Mr. Trump to expand the bounds of his power by granting the emergency relief he has sought. But Barrett rejected that contention.
“Justices and courts, district courts, are not trying to enable Congress or the executive to do anything. We’re deciding cases,” she told O’Donnell.
Barrett said cases that come to the Supreme Court on its emergency docket are “far more tentative,” and there are more factors that the justices have to consider when asked to grant a stay, including whether the applicant will be irreparably harmed without relief.
“I think people will disagree with respect to any individual order, whether the court made the right judgment about the merits or not,” she said. “I think in so far as the question might suggest that the court has an agenda or some motive, that’s just wrong.”
Barrett said it’s not the Supreme Court’s job to “survey” and form a political view, explaining “our job is to decide these legal questions.”
Barrett details the threats she has received since joining the Supreme Court
In May 2022, a draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was published by the news outlet Politico, an unprecedented leak that Chief Justice John Roberts denounced as a “betrayal.” The person who leaked the draft opinion has not been identified.
In response, demonstrators appeared outside the homes of several of the conservative justices, including Barrett’s, to protest Roe’s impending reversal. The protests went on for months, and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the U.S. Marshals Service to provide additional support to ensure the safety of the justices.
Shortly after the leak, a California man allegedly armed with a gun, knife and various tools was arrested outside of Kavanaugh’s Maryland house. He was charged with attempting to kill a Supreme Court justice and pleaded guilty in April of this year.
Since then, judges across the country have continued to face threats to their safety and harassment. In July, three sitting federal judges spoke out about how they have been targeted after ruling against the Trump administration, including through “swattings” and “pizza doxxings.”
Barrett’s sister was the target of a bomb threat at her home in South Carolina, CNN reported in March. The justice herself is the “not-so-proud owner” of a bulletproof vest, she said, recalling one of her sons asking if he could try it on.
“Thinking, ‘This is a parenting moment that I wasn’t quite prepared for,’ I said, ‘Sure. Go ahead.’ And he puts it on. And then he looked up at me and he said, ‘Wait. Why do you have a bullet-proof vest?'” Barrett recalled. “So, you know, we’ve tried to explain those things to the kids.”
When demonstrators were protesting outside her home, Barrett said her family developed a safety routine for when her children would arrive to find them there. The justice recalled her son getting dropped off, and realizing she had forgotten to tell him there would be protesters outside.
The justice confirmed to O’Donnell that she has received death threats, and condemned threats of violence.
“I think that it should not be the price of public service for any official, judges included, to face violence or threats of violence,” she said.
Barrett said she tries to tune out the criticism lodged against her, which has come from both sides of the aisle, and said judges have been the subject of attacks before.
“I think that’s part of the risk of the job,” she said. “You know, many judges and justices before me have faced criticism and threats. And I am sure that will be true in the future. That’s why it requires a stiff spine.”
Still, Barrett said she believes there has been a shift in the justices’ experience on the Supreme Court that began after Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. Barrett said she is seldom alone now and rarely drives herself.
Barrett said that she doesn’t like “not being anonymous,” and acknowledged that working as a public servant comes at a cost, like losing your privacy.
“One of the things I miss is just being able to go to the grocery store and not worrying that someone’s gonna recognize me. I don’t like that part of it,” she said. “So I find the being a public figure and being with security, I’ve found that hard to get used to, even five years in.”
Barrett says being a justice requires a “stomach for criticism”
Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court by Mr. Trump was praised by conservatives, but she has since received criticism from some of the president’s allies for recent votes in cases involving him and his administration.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who has compiled information for Mr. Trump about White House personnel, called Barrett a “DEI appointee,” referencing diversity, equity and inclusion, and Fox News host Mark Levin claimed the justice “deceived people into thinking she was a reliable constitutionalist.”
“I’ve been criticized by the left, I’ve been criticized by the right, I’m sure I’ve been criticized by the middle,” Barrett said of the attacks on her. “If you can’t have a stomach for people not liking you, and if you don’t have a stomach for criticism, then you’re not suited to the role.”
Still, she acknowledged the difficulties of being “unpopular.”
“That’s why being a judge — you know, people think it’s glamorous but it’s actually public service and hard work. I love it because I love the ability to serve my country, I think that’s a privilege. I enjoy the work. I like my colleagues, my law clerks are wonderful,” Barrett said. “But there is this other side, you know, this personal cost, this willingness to be unpopular.”