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“And for the folks who say, ‘Well, the Founders were dealing with completely different problems back then. They were not contemplating what a country could look like decades, decades later.’ How do you — you know, they want a living, breathing Constitution that changes. How do you respond to that?” Baier asked.
Barrett explained that the Constitution was written with both specific and broad principles in mind.
“The genius of our Constitution — and I talk about this in the book when I describe originalism, I describe our written Constitution — is that it’s written at varying levels of generality. So, sometimes it’s very specific. The president has to be at least 35 years old,” Barrett said.
“But sometimes it’s very general. We’re protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. We have freedom of speech. And to have freedom of speech doesn’t mean that you have freedom only to pass out pamphlets in a town square. I mean, it means that you have freedom to be on broadcast news,” she added.
Baier then cut to the heart of the matter: “Right. And the 22nd Amendment says you can only run for office for two terms.”
Barrett didn’t hesitate. “True,” she said.
“You think that that’s cut and dry?” Baier asked.
Barrett replied, “Well, that’s — you know, that’s what the amendment says, right? You know, after FDR had four terms, that’s what that amendment says.”
But Trump’s potential third run wasn’t the only headline. In a separate interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, Barrett stressed that the Supreme Court “should not be imposing its own values on the American people.”
“You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law. Sometimes in statutes,” Barrett said. “But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That’s for the democratic process.”
That philosophy has already shaped major decisions. Months after Barrett joined the Court, the justices overturned Roe v. Wade, sending abortion law back to the states.
Barrett’s book also highlights how the Court has treated different rights: “The court has held that the rights to marry, engage in sexual intimacy, use birth control, and raise children are fundamental, but the rights to do business, commit suicide, and obtain abortion are not.”
Now, the Court is weighing whether to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis—jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples—is leading the charge to overturn it.
If the Court takes the case and overturns Obergefell, same-sex marriage could once again become a state-by-state issue, reshaping the legal landscape nearly a decade after the original ruling.
With Barrett and other conservative justices signaling a return to constitutional originalism, major cultural and legal battles could be on the horizon.
