It's a conventional rhetorical move to characterize Congress and the White House as the "political branches." But that implicitly suggests that the Supreme Court is not also a political branch -- and that's false. https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1315289223956758528

If Barrett had been on the Court in 2012, it's hard to believe the Affordable Care Act would still be on the books. And it'd be risible to characterize a vote to strike down in the law as non-political.

The point is not that the justices are politicians or that they always favor one political party over the other. It is that they are selected for their jurisprudential and ideological commitments -- precisely because those commitments are seen to advance political objectives.

And because ideological commitments will affect how justices evaluate the strength of competing arguments, their rulings in particular cases will often track raw political beliefs.

This isn't a point about R v D justices. It's a point about *all* justices.

So it's dead wrong to characterize the Supreme Court as an apolitical branch that's somehow above the fray. It's not. Once you see it as yet another part of the rough-and-tumble of American politics, you can see through most of the cant around this nomination.

Republicans want to confirm Judge Barrett because it will advance their political objectives. Democrats are opposing for much the same reason. The same was true when the roles were reversed and Judge Garland was nominated. The difference now is Rs have the votes to confirm.

So forgive me for not spending the day watching Justice Barrett deliver platitudes about only applying the law. I have no doubt she *will* apply the law -- by her lights. But those aren't my lights.

I say all this, too, even though Judge Barrett appears, by all accounts, to be a thoroughly admirable human being -- indeed, almost superhumanly so. On a personal level, there's no question she's deserving.

But the Supreme Court isn't a country club, and Barrett's ascension to the Court will mean that there is a bigger margin for extremism on a Court that is already pretty extreme. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/america-will-be-michigan-soon/616635/

That's all for today, I've got work to do and a televised confirmation hearing to avoid. /fin

(A lot of this draws on lessons I've learned from @Richard_Primus and @joshchafetz. They're smarter than I am and you should follow them.)