Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Monday she welcomes public scrutiny of the Supreme Court, adding it's hardly new and that she's "acquired a thick skin" since her relatively recent appointment to the bench in 2020 by former President Donald Trump.
Reminding everyone that she is "still kind of new" to the high court, Barrett, 51, said that criticism of the high court is an age-old expectation and that jurists shouldn't be surprised when they face public scrutiny. She spoke Monday at the 7th Circuit Judicial Conference in Wisconsin and was interviewed by Chief Judge Diane S. Sykes, who was also one of Trump's contenders for the high court when he was president.
MARK MEADOWS COURT HEARING IS FIRST BIG TEST FOR FANI WILLIS'S TRUMP RICO CASE
“Justices and all judges are public figures and public criticism comes with the job,” Barrett said, though she lamented that justices are recognizable in today's world.
“People just didn’t recognize who the justices were,” Barrett said of the time before the internet. “I think that’s better. I don’t think justices should be recognizable in that sense.”
Barrett also spoke about the phenomena of the public being subjected to push notifications on their phones about any news story, including reports about the high court.
“You’re not waiting once a day to read your print newspaper,” she said. “You’re seeing things come across your phone all the time, and you’re seeing pictures of people.”
Sykes did not ask Barrett about any of the Supreme Court's recent decisions, nor did she ask her about any of the alleged ethical dilemmas that have been raised in media reports surrounding Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Barrett was previously a judge on the 7th Circuit and was there from 2017 before she was nominated to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.
“I’ve been at it for a couple of years now,” Barrett said. “I’ve acquired a thick skin, and I think that’s what other figures have to do. I think that’s what all judges have to do.”
Barrett's public appearance on Monday follows reporting about her colleague Justice Elena Kagan's most recent public outing at a conference in Oregon earlier this month, where she threw her support behind an ethics code for the Supreme Court. However, Kagan said there was no unanimity among the justices on how to proceed.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Prior to Kagan's comments, Alito did an interview with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in July, where he argued Congress lacks the authority to impose a code of ethics on the high court. He became the first justice to take a public stand against proposals in Congress for stricter ethics rules for justices in response to heightened scrutiny over their activities outside of work.
The Associated Press learned earlier this summer that Sotomayor may have blurred an ethical line when some of her clerks prodded colleges to purchase her books ahead of visits to their campuses, and reporting from the nonprofit outlet ProPublica revealed earlier this year that Justice Thomas took lavish trips with a top Republican donor.