The journalists and activists talking about Barrett’s ruling in that prison rape case are — under the very most generous interpretation — either ignorant or misleading you.

Beware the trend of saying “this judge is a monster” being used to obscure “this law is monstrous.”

If you wanted to read the case in question, you could here. It reveals ugly things about the system — among them how the law, when applied in a straightforward way, deprives prison rape victims of remedy.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D09-14/C:17-3216:J:Manion:aut:T:fnOp:N:2218849:S:0

This thread by @MaxKennerly, by contrast, offers specific information based on which you could critique the decision. https://twitter.com/maxkennerly/status/1317596060932624385

The virtue of Max’s take is that he explains how the question of whether the rape was within the scope of the guard’s duty is relevant — it’s because the state statute offering compensation requires it. By contrast media coverage falsely suggests the court made that question up.

The reason this matters is that we routinely make judges and politicians into Big Bads in a way that obscures that choosing different judges and politicians will merely put different people in charge of deeply unjust laws and systems.