Amy Coney Barrett, Liar and Climate Denier, Disqualifies Herself for Any Position Involving Factual Evaluation

 

by Thomas Neuburger

It couldn't be more simple. When Notre Dame Law professor and Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was asked at her Senate hearing about climate change (one of the few times senators questioned her on this subject), she had this to say:

“I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not.”

Every human on the planet is "competent to opine" on what causes global warming. Every human on the planet knows what causes global warming. We are causing global warming, and we will drive most of our children off of the planet and to their graves if we don't start addressing it in a meaningful and effective way. 

Here's her full quote, courtesy of this piece by David Sirota and Andrew Perez:

“I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not. I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge, nor do I feel like I have views that are informed enough and I haven’t studied scientific data. I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion on what I think causes global warming.”

All of this is disqualifying on its face — not just her denialism, but this as well:

I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge.

If confirmed before the election, she could help decide a landmark case involving a fossil fuel firm, Shell Oil, for which her father worked as a long-time lawyer:

Less than two weeks before the confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Royal Dutch Shell and other oil giants that are being sued by cities and states for the climate damage those companies created. Shell and the others are asking justices to allow the case to be heard in federal court.

In 2018, Inside Climate News reported that “internal company documents uncovered by a Dutch news organization show that the oil giant Shell had a deep understanding, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions.” 

Barrett’s father, Michael, has written that “most of my legal career was spent as an attorney with Shell in New Orleans.”

Her "views on global warming" will be "relevant to the job" she does almost immediately, and hundreds of times more as well in the 40 years she could reasonably expect to serve.

Again, a liar, disqualified by her own testimony from any judicial position involving evaluation based on facts.

Laughing On the Way to the Gallows

Twitter had fun with her answer, though the consequences of it — a climate denier on the Court — will be no fun at all. Bill McKibben's quip is above. Here are a few others:

Sunrise Movement: "I have read things about gravity. I would not say I have firm views on it ... this answer is disqualifying."

Chris Andrea Robert: "Is the Earth flat or round? I've read things, I would not say I have firm views on it."

Gallows humor. Graveyard jests. Grinning on the way to the needle and the rope. 

As Eric Holthaus wrote, "It’s ... a sign of a complete failure of our democracy – to be confirming a climate denier to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court during a moment when urgent climate action is an existential priority."

Notre Dame Helps Trump Put a Climate Denier on the Court

And a complete failure of the University of Notre Dame as well, which appears, both institutionally and from its Law School, to fully support her nomination.  

Barrett certainly has the support of it president, Fr. John Jenkins (Barrett is "a person of the utmost integrity who, as a jurist, acts first and foremost in accord with the law"), and the Dean of its Law School (she's "an absolutely brilliant legal scholar and jurist [and] one of the most thoughtful, open-minded...people I have ever met"). 

In 2017, when she was nominated to the 7th District Court, she had 100% support of its Law School faculty. A 2020 letter signed by 88 faculty members requested that she "halt the nomination process until after Election Day," but no faculty members of the Law School signed on.

This tells you more about Fr. Jenkins, the makeup of its Law School, and, frankly, Notre Dame in general, than it does about Amy Coney Barrett, who doesn't have the guts to say word one about the greatest challenge facing our species — and her children — in the 40 years she'll sit permanently on the Court.

A Complete Failure of Democracy

Speaking as a graduate of the university in question myself, I'm beyond appalled — and appalled by the Democrats' lack of response at the hearing as well. 

Where are their cries that in 2020 a climate denier is unqualified to sit on any federal bench, much less the Supreme Court? And where is the first question from the Democrats about the pending Shell Oil case?

Holthaus is right: this is a failure of our democracy. The consequences will be great, and God help Amy Coney Barrett if her God is just.