I’m thinking in particular of The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, who finds hope in Barrett’s brief walk-on role as Not Insane Person in the dramas of the moment.

Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, onetime scourge of teenage potty mouths—I kid! I kid!—is the latest smart person to go digging for the pony in the current carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Marcus seems impressed by some mavericky impulses out of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who, to be entirely fair, does not seem to be as much of a wild-eyed fanatic as Justice Sam Alito, as much of a conservative apparatchik as Justice Neil Gorsuch, as much of a vengeful sublet as Justice Clarence Thomas, as much of a lab-grown wingnut as Justice Brett Kavanaugh, or as much of a predictable irrelevance as Chief Justice John Roberts. That’s all of them, I think.

Anyway, Marcus finds hope in Barrett's brief walk-on role as Not Insane Person in the dramas of the moment.

Still, benchmarking Barrett against her conservative colleagues—and against expectations at the time she was confirmed—she has been what passes for a pleasant surprise since being named to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. Barrett’s long-standing ties to a conservative Catholic group, People of Praise, raised warnings that she would be an eager handmaid to the conservative male majority; in reality, Barrett has been no submissive pushover. And despite academic writings that suggested Barrett would not hesitate to overturn constitutional law precedents with which she disagreed, her judicial opinions have shown her to be more cautious technocrat than ideological fence-swinger.

I don’t mean to harsh anyone’s mellow, but at the moment, Florida is living through an example of Barrett’s “hesitation” to overturn one particular constitutional-law precedent. From Politico:

Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect Wednesday, making the procedure nearly impossible to access for many would-be patients throughout most of the southern United States. Women from Florida to Texas are cut off from obtaining abortions either entirely or beyond the very beginning stages of pregnancy—unless they have the time and means to travel across states to a place where appointments are available, an option many women will not have.

The shift away from abortion access in Florida opens a new phase in the post–Roe v. Wade world, with severe new limitations on abortion in place across a vast and unbroken stretch of the country. The new landscape further limits access to care for women and is guaranteed to strain reproductive health care services in nearby states that still allow for broad access to the procedure.

Leaving aside for the moment the clear fact that Barrett played hide-and-seek with the truth in her accelerated confirmation hearings as deftly as her brethren did, she is as responsible as the rest of them for the consequences of the Dobbs decision. All women who have suffered since that decision are on Barrett’s tab as much as they are on Alito’s. Any woman who dies as a result of complications that could’ve been avoided with a therapeutic abortion goes on her side of the ledger as starkly as it’s written in Kavanaugh’s. That’s not moderation. That’s accessorial conduct, and history is going to arraign her for it as surely as it’s going to arraign the other members of the carefully manufactured conservative majority.

Marcus also cites, as a number of observers have, Barrett’s performance during the oral arguments in the presidential immunity case.

In the immunity case, Barrett tag-teamed with Justice Elena Kagan to obtain potentially significant concessions from Trump attorney D. John Sauer about actions Trump took as president that Sauer acknowledged could still be prosecuted because they constituted private acts. Barrett expressed incredulity at Sauer’s claim that the constitutional remedy of impeachment means that a president can only be criminally convicted if he is first impeached and removed from office.

“There are many other people who are subject to impeachment, including the nine sitting on this bench, and I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that impeachment would have to be the gateway to criminal prosecution for any of the many other officers subject to impeachment,” Barrett said. “So why is the president different when the impeachment clause doesn’t say so?”

All these wise heads miss the entire point. The Supreme Court never should have taken this nonsense case in the first place. Barrett had no apparent problem with the order that granted certiorari back in February, or with the four-month delay in hearing the case. The whole point of taking on the case at all arguably was to delay the actual trial until after the November election. Barrett’s vaunted middle position also added to the delay and if, as expected, the Court devises some phony procedure to distinguish between “official” and “private” presidential actions, Barrett is the one who gave them the running room to do so. Hope is a thing with feathers. Alas, so is a vulture.