In her opening statement today, Amy Coney Barrett said her judicial philosophy was molded by and closest to Antonin Scalia, whose rulings were driven by his partisanship and using SCOTUS to impose Republican policy priorities.

Scalia favored Chevron deference in the late 1980s when Republicans usually won the presidency and Democrats had controlled Congress for 40 years. But when Democrats started winning the presidency frequently, he soured on Chevron by the end of his career.

When religious liberty was an anti-drug issue in 1989, Scalia said religious freedom should be limited and drug laws enforced. But when religious liberty conflicted with anti-discrimination laws of government health care, he decided religious freedom should override laws.

Scalia was a big supported of Bush v. Gore, which famously the majority (in an unsigned opinion) wrote was based on no legal principle that should ever be applied in any other case.

Scalia refused to discuss the rationale behind Bush v Gore when journalists or students asked, saying repeatedly in many settings "get over it."

Scalia wrote the majority opinion in Heller v. DC, which overturned how the 2nd amendment had been interpreted throughout American history, and instead wrote the "well regulated militia" portion out of the amendment. Because repealing gun laws were then a Republican priority.

And Scalia voted for Shelby County v. Holder, which repeals the main enforcement mechanism of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, under the preposterous reasoning that the Reconstruction Amendments weren't meant to have a disproportionate effect on the South.

Why did Scalia decide to use SCOTUS as a super-legislature to repeal arguably the most important legislation of the 20th Century, despite Section 2 of the 15th Amendment clearly giving Congress discretion to enforce Black voting rights? It would help elect Republicans.

Typo: "anti-discrimination laws *or* government health care"