Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the youngest member of the U.S. Supreme Court at 53, has found herself at the center of a national conversation about the court’s independence, its role in shaping American law, and the personal toll of high-profile public service. In a pair of interviews with CBS News and USA TODAY, Barrett opened up about her tenure on the bench, her new book, and the pressures that come with being a modern Supreme Court justice—especially one whose decisions have upended decades of precedent and ignited fierce debate across the political spectrum.
Barrett, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in October 2020 to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, shifted the court’s ideological balance to a 6-3 conservative majority. Her appointment just weeks before the 2020 presidential election was itself a flashpoint, and her subsequent votes—most notably her role in the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade—have only heightened the scrutiny.
Despite expectations from both supporters and critics that she would be a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda, Barrett has staked out an independent path. “I’m nobody’s justice,” she declared to USA TODAY, adding with a laugh, “If Trump called me, I might wonder if he had the wrong number.” Her willingness to side with both conservative and liberal colleagues on key cases has led some to label her a swing vote, a characterization she resists. “Swing, I think, implies indecisiveness. You just kind of blow back and forth. And that’s not how I approach the law at all.”
Barrett’s approach to judging is the subject of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, published September 9, 2025. The book, she told CBS News, is meant to persuade Americans that justices don’t decide cases based on personal preference or politics. “The question is how do you decide because I don’t think that—well, certainly my children would say they don’t want me deciding under the law of Amy what liberties, what rights we have and not. I mean, that’s a job for the American people, and the Constitution leaves virtually every question like that to the democratic process, to the American people.”
Barrett’s vote in Dobbs, which ended the federal constitutional right to abortion, returned abortion regulation to the states—a move that has led to a patchwork of laws across the country. Fourteen states have since banned abortion, several others have restricted access, and 18 states have enacted protections. “Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states,” Barrett explained to CBS News. “All of these kinds of questions, decisions that you mention that require medical judgments, are not ones that the Constitution commits to the court, you know, to decide how far into pregnancy the right of abortion might extend.”
Barrett’s jurisprudence has sometimes drawn ire from both sides of the aisle. Some conservatives, including Trump’s most ardent supporters, have been frustrated when she joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s liberals to rule against the Trump administration on emergency relief or to delay sentencing in high-profile cases. Conservative activist Amy Kremer called Barrett “the biggest disappointment on the court,” and Fox News host Mark Levin accused her of deceiving people about her constitutional reliability. Barrett, for her part, seems unfazed. “I’ve been criticized by the left, I’ve been criticized by the right, I’m sure I’ve been criticized by the middle,” she told CBS News. “If you can’t have a stomach for people not liking you, and if you don’t have a stomach for criticism, then you’re not suited to the role.”
The Supreme Court’s use of the emergency docket—sometimes called the “shadow docket”—has also come under fire, especially as the Trump administration has won most of its nearly two dozen emergency appeals to the court. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of Barrett’s liberal colleagues, recently wrote that the court seems to have a rule: “this Administration always wins.” Barrett disagrees. “I don’t think it’s true,” she told USA TODAY, emphasizing that the court’s decisions are about the presidency as an institution, not about any one individual. “The decisions that we make about executive power today are the same ones that will still be precedent three or four presidents from now.”
Barrett acknowledged that the emergency docket presents unique challenges. “The emergency orders present a challenge because they do require the work of the court to proceed far more quickly than it normally does,” she said to CBS News. Unlike the court’s traditional process—where each side submits briefs, the justices hear oral arguments, and opinions are crafted over weeks or months—emergency appeals demand rapid decisions. “The emergency docket is newer, and so I would say those processes are still being shaped and sorted out.”
Her work has not come without personal cost. The leak of the draft Dobbs opinion in May 2022 led to protests outside her home and those of other conservative justices, as well as increased threats. Barrett’s family developed safety routines, and she now owns a bulletproof vest—something her son once tried on out of curiosity. “Thinking, ‘This is a parenting moment that I wasn’t quite prepared for,’ I said, ‘Sure. Go ahead.’ And he puts it on. And then he looked up at me and he said, ‘Wait. Why do you have a bullet-proof vest?’” Barrett recalled to CBS News. She has received death threats and condemned violence against public officials: “I think that it should not be the price of public service for any official, judges included, to face violence or threats of violence.”
Barrett is also the first and only mother of school-age children to serve on the Supreme Court—a distinction that has shaped her perspective in unexpected ways. “It doesn’t matter in terms of the law, because I think the law is law whether you’re a mother or not, or a man or a woman,” she told USA TODAY. But her experience as a parent, especially of a child with Down syndrome, has informed her understanding of cases involving children with disabilities and technology. “I do feel very grounded and connected to the lives of real people and the lives of people who have a wide range of experiences that are very different from the lawyers, for example, who practice before us. So I think that gives me perspective on people.”
As public trust in the Supreme Court hovers near a three-decade low, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, Barrett knows the court’s legitimacy is under scrutiny. A 2024 USA TODAY/Ipsos poll found that many Americans believe the court decides cases based on ideology, not law. Barrett’s response is to double down on her commitment to legal reasoning over politics. “I’ve disagreed with all of my colleagues at different times, but that’s because I’m not trying to march in lockstep with anyone—nor is anyone else. We’re just trying to get the law right.”
Barrett’s story is one of resilience, independence, and a willingness to weather criticism from all sides. As she puts it, being a justice is not glamorous, but it is public service and hard work—a calling she embraces, even as it means sacrificing privacy and enduring personal risk. Her tenure on the court, and her reflections in Listening to the Law, offer a rare window into the life and thinking of a justice determined to “stay in her lane,” listen to the law, and serve the country for decades to come.